Why Catholics Keep Christ On The Cross | Pope Pius XII

0:00Brought to you by CharityMobile. Now more than ever, it's important to buy the way you believe. Switch to the phone company that supports family and life. Use promo code Tradition at charitymobile.com for a special offer. The Mass and the Life of Jesus Christ. Not usually something we put together when thinking about the Mass. But the Mass does show us the life and earthly life and the mission of our blessed Lord. Not only through the Gospels, but in the traditional Mass where virtually every single thing said by the priest is straight from Scripture, you can gain pretty quickly an understanding of the earthly life of our blessed Lord. This is one of the points that Pope Pius XII was making as we return now to Medietro

1:00Day, the landmark encyclical of Pope Pius XII. Throughout the entire year, the Mass and the Divine Office center especially around the person of Jesus Christ. This arrangement is so suitably disposed that our Savior dominates the scene in the mysteries of his humiliation, of his redemption and triumph. So a sacred liturgy calls to mind the mysteries of Jesus Christ. It strives to make all believers take their part in them so that the divine head of the mystical body may live in all the members with the fullness of his holiness. Let the souls of Christians be like altars on each one of which a different face of the sacrifice offered by the high priest comes to life again, as it were. Pain's in tears which wipe away an expiate sin. Dedication to God which Pius XII, dedication and even emulation of one self made promptly, generously and earnestly. And finally, the intimate union by which we commit ourselves and all we have to God,

2:01in whom we find our rest. The perfection of religion is to imitate whom you adore. By the suitable ways and methods in which the liturgy at stated times proposes the life of Jesus Christ for our meditation, the church gives us examples to imitate, points out treasures of sanctity for us to make our own, since it is fitting that the mind believes with the lip sing and that what the mind believes should be practiced in public and private life. In the period of Advent, for instance, the church arouses in us the consciousness of the sins we have had the misfortune to commit and urges us by restraining our desires and practicing voluntary mortification of the body. To recollect ourselves in meditation and experience a longing desire to return to God, who alone can free us by his grace from the stain of sin and from its evil consequences. With the coming of the birthday of the Redeemer, she would grant us to the cave of Bethlehem, and there are teaches that we must be born again and undergo a complete reformation.

3:02That will only happen when we are intimately and vitally united to the word of God made man and participate in his divine nature, to which we have been elevated. At the solemnity of the epiphany and in putting before us the call of the Gentiles to the Christian faith, she wishes us daily to give thanks to the Lord for such a blessing. She wishes us to seek with lively faith the living and true God, to penetrate deeply and religiously the things of heaven, to love silence and meditation in order to perceive and grasp more easily heavenly things. That during the days of theft to a jacimah and lent, our holy mother the church over and over again, strives to make each of us seriously consider our misery, so that we may be urged to a practical immandation of our lives, to testation of our sins heartily and expiate them by prayer and penance. For constant prayer and penance done for past sins obtained for us divine help, without which every work of ours is useless and unavailing. In holy week when the most bitter sufferings of Jesus Christ are put before us by the

4:03liturgy, the church invites us to come to Calvary and follow in the bloodstain footsteps of the divine Redeemer, to carry the cross willingly with him, to reproduce in our own hearts his spirit of expiation and atonement and to die together with him. At the pastoral season which commemorates the triumph of Christ, our souls are filled with deep interior joy. We accordingly should also consider that we must rise in union with the Redeemer, from our cold and slothful life to one of greater fervor and holiness, by giving ourselves completely and generously to God, and by forgetting this wretched world in order to aspire only to the things of heaven. If you be risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, mind the things that are above. Finally, during the time of Pentecost, the church by her precept and practice, urges us to be more docile in the action of the Holy Spirit, who wishes us to be on fire with divine love, so that we may daily strive to advance more in virtue, thus become holy as Christ our Lord and his Father are holy.

5:04Thus though a turgical year should be considered as a splendid hymn of praise, offered to the heavenly Father, by the Christian family through Jesus, their perpetual mediator. Nevertheless requires a diligent and well-ordered study on our part to be able to know and praise our Redeemer ever more and more. It requires a serious effort and constant practice to imitate his mysteries, to enter willingly upon his path of sorrow, unless finally share his glory and eternal happiness. From what we have already explained to Venerable Brethren, it is perfectly clear how much modern writers are wanting in the genuine and true liturgical spirit, who, deceived by the illusion of a higher mysticism, dared to assert that attention should be paid not to the historic Christ but to a pneumatic or glorified Christ. They do not hesitate to assert that a change is taken place in the piety of the faithful. By dethroning as it were, Christ from his position, since they say that the glorified Christ, who, living in rain of forever and sit us at the right hand of God the Father, has been overshadowed and in his place has been substituted by that Christ who lived

6:08on earth. For this reason some have gone so far as to want to remove from the Church's images of the Divine Word of Deemer suffering on the cross. But these false statements are completely opposed to the solid doctrine hand down by tradition. You believe in Christ born in the flesh, says Augustin, and you will come to Christ be gotten of God. In the sacred liturgy the whole Christ has proposed to us in all the circumstances of his life, as the word of the eternal Father, as born of the virgin mother of God, as he who teaches us truth, heals the sick, consoles the afflicted, who endures suffering and who dies. Finally, as he who rose triumphantly from the dead and who, raining in the glory of heaven, sends us the Holy Paraclete, and who abides in his church forever. Jesus Christ yesterday and today and the same forever. Besides, the liturgy shows us Christ not only as a model to be imitated, but as a master to whom we should listen readily, a shepherd whom we should follow, author of our salvation, the source of our holiness and the head of the mystical body whose members we are, living

7:10by his very life. Since his bitter suffering is constituted the principal mystery of our redemption, it is only fitting that the Catholic faith should give it the greatest prominence. This mystery is the very center of divine worship since the mass represents and renews it every day, and since all the sacraments are most closely united with the cross. Hence the liturgical year devoted to the fostered and accompanied by the church is not a cold and lifeless representation of the events of the past, or a simple and bare record of a former age. It is rather Christ himself who is ever living in his church. Here he continues that journey of immense mercy, which he lovingly began in his mortal life, going about doing good, with the design of bringing men to know his mysteries and in a way lived by them. These mysteries are ever present and active, not in a vague and uncertain way as some modern writers hold, but in the way that the Catholic doctrine teaches us. According to the doctors of the church, they are shining examples of Christian perfection,

8:11as well as sources of divine grace, due to merit and prayers of Christ. They still influence us because each mystery brings us its own special grace for our salvation. Moreover our holy mother, the church, while proposing for our contemplation the mysteries of our redeemer asks in her prayers for those gifts which would give her children the greatest possible share in the spirit of these mysteries through the merits of Christ. By means of his inspiration and help and through the cooperation of our wills, we can receive from him living vitality as branches do from the tree and members from the head. And slowly and laboriously we can transform ourselves into the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ. Thus the words of Pope Pius XII, on the liturgical calendar, on what it means to be Christ-like and why we have an image of Christ in his suffering humanity on the cross and why we as Catholics refuse to take him down.

9:14Something to think about, especially now as we begin journeying towards the feast of Christ the King, both on the old calendar and the new. Let me know what you think of this in the comments please. If you have not, it does help sharing this on social media helps as well. And please pray for the church. I'm Anthony Stein, Ave Maria.