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| St. Padre Pio, pray for us. May the Lord, by your powerful intercession, grant us to love Him more and more and to participate by our own acts of love in His holy Passion. |
On
Reparation for Sin, from the Encyclical Letter of His Holiness Pope Pius XI, MISERENTISSIMUS
REDEMPTOR, On Reparation to the Sacred Heart (Nos. 9,10)
But no created power was sufficient to expiate the
sins of men, if the Son of God had not assumed man's nature in order to redeem
it. This, indeed, the Savior of men Himself declared by the mouth of the sacred
Psalmist: "Sacrifice and oblation thou wouldest not: but a body thou hast
fitted to me: Holocausts for sin did not please thee: then said I: Behold I
come" (Hebrews x, 5-7). And in very deed, "Surely He hath
borne our infirmities, and carried our sorrows. . . He was wounded for our
iniquities (Isaias liii,
4-5.) … Yet, though the copious
redemption of Christ has abundantly forgiven us all offenses (Cf. Colossians ii, 13), nevertheless, because of that
wondrous divine dispensation whereby those things that are wanting of the
sufferings of Christ are to be filled up in our flesh for His body which is the
Church (Cf. Colossians i,
24), to the praises and satisfactions, "which Christ in the name of
sinners rendered unto God" we can also add our praises and satisfactions,
and indeed it behoves us so to do.
However, we must ever remember that the whole virtue
of the expiation depends on the one bloody sacrifice of Christ, which without
intermission of time is renewed on our altars in an unbloody manner, "For
the victim is one and the same, the same now offering by the ministry of
priests, who then offered Himself on the cross, the manner alone of offering
being different" (Council of Trent, Session XXIII, Chapter 2). Wherefore with this most august
Eucharistic Sacrifice there ought to be joined an oblation both of the
ministers and of all the faithful, so that they also may "present
themselves living sacrifices, holy, pleasing unto God" (Romans xii, 1). Nay more, St. Cyprian does not hesitate
to affirm that "the Lord's sacrifice is not celebrated with legitimate
sanctification, unless our oblation and sacrifice correspond to His
passion" (Ephesians 63).
For this reason, the Apostle admonishes us that "bearing about in our body
the mortification of Jesus" (2 Corinthians iv, 10), and buried together with Christ, and planted
together in the likeness of His death (Cf. Romans vi, 4-5), we must not only crucify our flesh with the
vices and concupiscences (Cf.Galatians v, 24), "flying the corruption of that
concupiscence which is in the world" (2 Peter i, 4), but "that the life also of Jesus may be
made manifest in our bodies" (2 Corinthians iv, 10) and being
made partakers of His eternal priesthood we are to offer up "gifts and
sacrifices for sins" (Hebrews v, 1). Nor do those only enjoy a participation in this mystic
priesthood and in the office of satisfying and sacrificing, whom our Pontiff
Christ Jesus uses as His ministers to offer up the clean oblation to God's Name
in every place from the rising of the sun to the going down (Malachias i, 11), but the whole Christian people
rightly called by the Prince of the Apostles "a chosen generation, a
kingly priesthood" (1 Peter ii, 9), ought to offer for sins both for itself and for all mankind
(Cf. Hebrews v, 3), in
much the same manner as every priest and pontiff "taken from among men, is
ordained for men in the things that appertain to God" (Hebrews v, 1).
But the more perfectly that our oblation and
sacrifice corresponds to the sacrifice of Our Lord, that is to say, the more
perfectly we have immolated our love and our desires and have crucified our
flesh by that mystic crucifixion of which the Apostle speaks, the more abundant
fruits of that propitiation and expiation shall we receive for ourselves and
for others. For there is a wondrous and close union of all the faithful with
Christ, such as that which prevails between the head and the other members;
moreover by that mystic Communion of Saints which we profess in the Catholic
creed, both individual men and peoples are joined together not only with one
another but also with him, "who is the head, Christ; from whom the whole
body, being compacted and fitly joined together, by what every joint supplieth,
according to the operation in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the
body unto the edifying of itself in charity" (Ephesians iv, 15-16). It was
this indeed that the Mediator of God and men, Christ Jesus, when He was near to
death, asked of His Father: "I in them, and thou in me: that they may be
made perfect in one" (John xvii, 23).
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