Jesus Christ by Whom Man’s Return to God Is Accomplished

Jesus Christ by Whom Man’s Return to God Is Accomplished Apr 14, 2019 12:25:21 GMT

Post by Admin on Apr 14, 2019 12:25:21 GMT

Jesus Christ by Whom Man’s Return to God Is Accomplished

Spiritual Journey

by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

Chapter VI

The mystery of Jesus Christ is so profound, so extraordinary, that it would seem more natural to adore Him in silence than to speak of Him. For we must rightly fear that our words, like our thoughts, are vastly inadequate to express all of the riches contained in the ineffable sanctuary which is Jesus Christ. St. Paul certainly thinks so: “Orantes simul et pro nobis ut Deus aperiat nobis ostium sermonis ad loquendum mysterium Christi...ut manifestem illud ita ut oportet me loqui.—Praying withal for us also, that God may open unto us a door of speech to speak the Mystery of Christ...that I may make it manifest as I ought to speak” (Col. 4:3, 4).

St. Paul’s descriptions of Our Lord are marvelous and incite us to make of Jesus Christ our life—“mihi vivere Christus est—for to me, to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21)—and always to become more Christian:

Qui est imago Dei invisibilis, primogenitus omnis creaturæ, quoniam in Ipso condita sunt universa in coelis et in terra visibilia et invisibilia, sive Throni, sive Dominationes, sive Principatus, sive Potestates. Omnia per Ipsum et in Ipso creata sunt. Ipse est ante omnes et omnia in Ipso constant.—Who is the image of the invisible God, the first born of every creature; for in Him were all things created in heaven, and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominations, or principalities, or powers; all things were created by Him, and in Him; and He is before all, and by Him all things consist. (Col. 1: 15-17)

The presence of the Incarnate God in the history of humanity cannot but be its center, as a sun towards which everything tends and from which everything comes. And if one thinks and believes that this mystery of the Incarnation is ordered towards the mystery of the Redemption, then it goes without saying that without Jesus Christ, there can be no salvation possible. Every act and every thought which are not Christian are without saving value, without merit for salvation.

To try to place this mystery, we will reproduce a beautiful page of Father Pegues in his Catechism of the Summa Theologica of Saint Thomas Aquinas, where he begins the tertia pars of the Summa, which puts us in contact with the mystery of Jesus Christ or man’s path of return to God:

What is meant by the mystery of the Incarnation or of the Word made flesh?

It is that truth, absolutely incomprehensible for us on earth, according to which the second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, viz., the Word or the only Son of God, existing from all eternity together with the Father and the Holy Ghost, the same, one, and only true God, the Creator and Sovereign Master of all things, came, in time, upon this earth by His Incarnation in the womb of the Virgin Mary of whom He was born: lived moreover our mortal life and evangelized the Jewish race in Palestine to whom He was personally sent by His Father; was rejected by this people, was betrayed and delivered up to Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor; was condemned and put to death on a cross; was buried, and descended into hell, and rose again from the dead on the third day; ascended into heaven forty days afterwards; sits at the right hand of God the Father, from whence He governs the Church established by Him on earth, and to which He sent the Holy Ghost, who is His as well as the Father’s; sanctified this Church by the sacraments of His grace, so preparing it for His second coming at the end of time; at the last day He will judge the living and the dead, having made the latter rise from their tombs; and this in order to make the final separation of the good from the bad; the good He will take with Him into the Kingdom of His Father, and the bad He will curse and condemn to everlasting punishments.

This brief dogmatic and historic survey of the mystery of the Incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ enlightens us somewhat on the gifts and privileges of God Incarnate, and the consequences which proceed from the Incarnation for all of humanity and for every man individually. For all are profoundly affected by the coming of God among them, and their future for eternity will depend henceforward on their relationship with Jesus Christ, whether they be conscious of it or not, whether they wish it or not.

We shall never meditate enough on the riches of the treasure which is Jesus Christ. “Si scires donum Dei—if thou didst know the gift of God” (Jn. 4:10), said Jesus to the Samaritan woman. “There hath stood one in the midst of you,” said St. John the Baptist, “whom you know not...the latchet of whose shoe I am not worthy to loose” (Jn. 1:26-27). God the Father and God the Holy Ghost manifest themselves that we might discover the mystery of Jesus: “And forthwith coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit as a dove descending, and remaining on Him. And there came a voice from heaven: Thou art My beloved Son; in Thee I am well pleased” (Mk. 1:10-11). “I saw the Spirit coming down, as a dove from heaven, and He remained upon Him. And I knew Him not; but He who sent me to baptize with water said to me: He upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining upon Him, He it is that baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. And I saw, and I gave testimony, that this is the Son of God” (Jn. 1:32-34).

Everything which followed confirmed this judgment of John the Baptist. From the Annunciation of the angel to Mary on, all events concerning Him had shown this to be true.

Jesus is indeed the Emmanuel—God among us.

If this man is God, what an abundance of gifts must fill His soul and His body! In taking to Himself this soul and this body, God confers on this man unique attributes, rights, gifts, and privileges which surpass all that we can imagine.

Let us draw near this divine sanctuary so as to better appreciate Him and adore Him more perfectly and more profoundly, and so as to consecrate ourselves, with enthusiasm and without limit, in His service. How can we not feel called, like the apostles who immediately abandoned everything to follow Him?

Three particular graces adorn the body of Jesus from the moment of His conception in the womb of the Virgin Mary and from the very infusion of the soul into the body which had been prepared for Him.

1. The first grace, which is also the source of the other two, is unique in all of creation. By His eternal decision to unite to His Person a soul and a body, God the Word communicated to these creatures in an ineffable and mysterious manner His own divinity in all abundance, inasmuch as these creatures, by the divine will, were capable of receiving it. It is spoken of as the Hypostatic Union, which conferred upon this soul and this body a divine dignity. All of the acts of this soul and this body are consequently divine and are justly attributed to God, who assumes the responsibility for every activity of this soul and this body.

By its very nature, and necessarily, this grace of union conferred upon the Person indwelling this human nature some unique titles: Mediator, Savior, Priest, and King. All mediation, all priesthood, all royalty among creatures is by participation in these properties which are the natural and proper jewels of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

How, then, can we not be convinced of the sublimity of our priesthood, which is a participation in the grace of union which is proper to Our Lord? It is, in effect, by His Priesthood that Our Lord exercises His mediation, His role as Savior; and the essential act of His Priesthood, His Sacrifice on Calvary, by which He merited for us all the graces of salvation. The Cross appears already, by this grace of union, as the sign of the immolation of His divine body and the oblation of His holy soul to His Father, a supremely efficacious prayer.

This is the essence of the heritage He bequeathed to the Church: His eucharistic and propitiatory Sacrifice, continued on the altars by those who are chosen to share in His unique priesthood.

Would that the seminarians, priests, and bishops find the meaning of their priesthood in these few fundamental truths on the grace of union in Our Lord. Would that they might appreciate the sublimity of the heritage which is bequeathed to them, which ought to be the source of their sanctification and of their apostolate: the act of sacrifice. Our Lord’s act of sacrifice being the act which constitutes the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the life of Christ, Priest and Victim, must be the basis of their interior life and also the basis of their ministry, which is to give Jesus to souls.

This indissoluble union of the Sacrifice and the Sacrament which, in His Wisdom, the Word Incarnate willed, is precisely what the Protestants reject and what the innovators of Vatican II have practically abolished by ecumenism!

2. The grace of union confers on Our Lord’s body and soul a sanctifying grace which is quite unique in the world. It is so abundant that it becomes the source of all sanctifying grace, which is nothing other than the communication of the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Charity of Our Lord, “de quo nos omnes accepimus—of His fullness we have all received” (Jn. 1: 16).

This sanctifying grace produces in Our Lord’s body and soul marvelous effects. His soul, as soon as it came into being, received the Beatific Vision. He enjoyed this vision in His soul right throughout His existence and even on the Cross. It is indeed a great mystery that His soul was at the same time inundated with the most perfect bliss and flooded with pain and sorrow!

Since He had in His soul the Beatific Vision, Our Lord could only have the theological virtue of charity, but not faith and hope, which disappear in the Beatific Vision.

It is difficult fully to appreciate the profoundness and riches of the charity of Jesus’ soul. It is quite clear that this grace, though it was created of ineffable perfection, cannot be compared to the infinite source of charity from whence it proceeded, which is none other than the divine life of Jesus in the bosom of the Trinity.

This sanctifying grace, unique in its riches, filled the soul of Jesus with the virtues, gifts, beatitudes, and fruits of the Holy Ghost.

3. To this grace gratum faciens, source of the sanctity of Jesus’ soul and body, were added as well all the graces gratis datæ, or extraordinary graces. By these latter Jesus was able to accomplish His unique role of Savior, Sanctifier, and Glorifier: graces of healing, miracles, marvels, of diversity of languages, of interpretation of speech, and especially of prophecy. Jesus being the Prophet by His divine and human nature, no other prophet was to follow Him. The apostles were not prophets, but instruments of the Prophet to constitute by Tradition and Scripture the deposit of faith, which was closed at the death of the last of the apostles. The successors of the apostles simply have to faithfully and exactly transmit the truths contained in this deposit.

The prophetic period thus gave place to the dogmatic period, during which the popes and bishops have the charge of conserving and transmitting the deposit without alteration in eodem sensu et eadem sententia, until the end of time.

This gives us the true understanding of Jesus the Prophet, a notion of capital importance.

Jesus’ body also possessed marvelous gifts of performing miracles. It should have been glorious, as a fruit of the Beatific Vision. But it is by an additional miracle that Jesus did not manifest the glory of His body, except on the day of His Transfiguration and of His Resurrection. The entire Gospel manifests the power of the body of Jesus. Even in the sepulcher, the incorruptible body of Jesus remained united to the Word, who returned His soul to it and caused it to rise from the dead.

Jesus’ grace is such a unique and abundant source of salvation that it justly carries a name which is proper to Our Lord: Gratia Capitis, the grace of the leader, or of the head. This signifies quite clearly that it is to Jesus Christ alone, to the Son of God Incarnate, that all in the work of salvation and all that is ordered towards supernatural good must ultimately be related and return.

“Non est in alio aliquo salus—there is no salvation outside of Our Lord.” Those who work to save souls must found their actions on this principle of the capital grace of Our Lord. Anything done without regard for Our Lord, either directly or indirectly, is vain and in no way profitable for eternal salvation.

This must be a directing principle of our pastoral activity. We must strive to supernaturalize everything by prayer and charity, refusing to involve in our activities too many participants who manifest their opposition to any religious and Christian act. But it is another thing to accept those who have good dispositions but are ignorant and can convert to Our Lord. Since everything in God’s plan is ordered to the salvation of souls by Jesus Christ, and by Him alone, we are to encourage in every domain, society, politics, economics, the family, those who strive to attach their actions to the law of Our Lord, both natural and supernatural. For Our Lord rules all; His law should be the law of all nations and of all men without exception.

In time, as in eternity, the reign of Satan is opposed to that of Our Lord. Satan is not the head of the wicked in the sense that he can communicate evil from within as Jesus Christ communicates good, but in the sense that, in the order of external government, he tends to turn men away from God, as Jesus Christ tends to bring them to Him, and that all those who sin imitate the rebellion of Satan and his pride, as the good imitate the submission and obedience of Jesus Christ (III, Q. 8, Art. 7).

We will never fully understand the struggle between the good and the bad throughout history so long as we do not see it as the personal and unyielding battle for all time between Satan and Jesus Christ.

What duty is incumbent upon every man because of this fundamental and unyielding battle between the two opposed leaders of mankind? It is the duty never to compromise, in any matter whatsoever, with what is of Satan or his followers, and to enlist ourselves beneath the standard of Jesus Christ, and there to remain always and to fight valiantly (Pegues, p. 383 [Fr. ed.]).

Because the blessings of sanctifying grace come to us through the hands of the priest and the Catholic Church, let us take care not to forget that every grace, and every increase of grace, comes to us from the inexhaustible source of the grace of Jesus, and can only come from Him, our only Savior.
The reality of Jesus’ divine life circulating in our souls and our bodies should be for us a subject of continual thanksgiving and also a source of active vigilance so that we do not let our lamps go out as the foolish virgins did.

Let us meditate and contemplate the pierced Heart of Jesus, whence come the fountains of eternal life.

The ornamentation of this sanctuary which is Jesus is not limited to the three graces about which we have spoken. The union of the person of the Word to the human soul of Jesus confers on this soul the unique privilege of the Beatific Vision from the instant of His creation.

Certainly, Jesus (God) has no need of this knowledge. His divine knowledge infinitely surpasses the knowledge of the Beatific Vision, but nevertheless the Creator of all things, having wanted to personally assume a human soul and body, assumed also their faculties of knowledge and understanding and carried them to their greatest possible perfection. It was thus that the soul of Jesus possessed the Beatific Vision, the infused knowledge of the angels, and the experiential knowledge of men; and this, to the most perfect degree which can be given to an angelic creature and a human creature.

Thus from the very first instant, the Incarnate Son of God could see by His human nature everything and all things in the Divine Word that He was Himself, in such a way that there is nothing whatsoever in the present, past, or future, whether actions, words, or thoughts, with respect to whomever and of whatever time period, that the Incarnate Son of God did not know from the first instant of His Incarnation, by the human nature He hypostatically united to Himself in the Divine Word that He was (cf. III, Q. 10, Art. 2 and 4).

These divine realities in Jesus Christ clarify His intimate and personal relations with all the created spirits in heaven and on earth. Even in His human soul, Jesus knew us all, and in all the details of our lives. Nothing escapes Him, neither as Creator nor as Savior. And this knowledge gives rise to a boundless love for the souls who turn towards Him, who give themselves to Him, who accomplish His will. His soul ardently desires to communicate His glory to them. That is why Jesus will be the Judge of all souls.

Let us be aware of these realities, of the absolute necessity of offering ourselves to Jesus, as the prayers at the Offertory of the Mass say, and of living this offering unceasingly. Let us be a part of the “quotquot autem receperunt eum—as many as received Him,” in order to be His children: “Dedit eis potestatem filios Dei fieri—He gave them power to be made sons of God” (Jn. 1:12). These words weigh heavily in the history of souls. They are eternally powerful and will separate the just from the unjust.

Jesus is not optional. “Qui non est mecum, contra me est—He that is not with Me is against Me” (Mt. 12:30). To deny this is the fundamental error of religious liberty and ecumenism.

The consequences of the union of the Word of God, of God Himself, with a human soul and body (over and above those of which we have just spoken in the last few pages) are such that they truly make of this human creature a subject unique in His kind, more divine than human, and more spiritual than corporal. Our Lord’s entire life proves it. He lives more in heaven than on earth, for He is heaven. His Person has all power over His soul and His body, even to separate and reunite them as He wishes and when He wishes.

His glory, His power, His sanctity, His wisdom, the permanence of the eternal mission which comes from His Father, in the exact realization of His temporal mission of salvation, all these shine forth in His life, in His acts, and in His words.

That is what St. Thomas discloses in detail in studying every step of Jesus’ life and His mysteries up to the Ascension.

This meditation on the life of Jesus in all its details puts us little by little in an atmosphere of supernatural reality, and delivers us from the customary way in which men live, so deceived as to take no account of this great reality. Sin, and the results of sin, has succeeded in creating a world of mirages, illusions, and errors. This has developed to such an extent that men eventually grow accustomed to this world, sensitized, sensualized, humanized, no longer being able to see that all this is vain and ephemeral in relation to the true spiritual and supernatural life, in relation to eternal life.
The holy and admirable life of Jesus is a constant reminder of the spiritual and divine realities which alone are valuable and eternal. Everything in Jesus returns to God, to the truth, to reality, to wisdom, and to sanctity.

Would that we might always be more convinced of the necessity of following Jesus, as He asks of His disciples: “Si quis sequitur me non ambulat in tenebris—He who follows Me does not walk in darkness. If someone wishes to be My disciple, let him carry his cross and follow Me.” For there is no other choice: either follow Jesus or rejoin Satan.

It is not at all surprising if Jesus suffers to see men prefer the darkness to the Light—and what Light! It is the Light which created the world, which supports it in existence, which enlightens every man who comes into this world, which brings to them the Light of salvation and of eternal glory. But they prefer the darkness of the world, of this world which is against Our Lord, of this world of the flesh, of money, of egoism, of pride—the threshold to hell!

Before we leave the person of Jesus Christ, let us concentrate on understanding His redeeming work of salvation and on meditating upon the means instituted by Jesus to communicate anew the grace of salvation; let us strive to impress indelibly upon our minds the real, living image of Jesus, who should illuminate and direct all of our lives.

Here is the perspective of Father Pegues in his catechism (p. 411 [Fr. ed.]):

Yes! When we say Jesus Christ, we are speaking of the only Son of God, who, being from all eternity with His Father and the Holy Ghost the same, one and only True God, by whom all things were created and who sustains them and governs them as Sovereign Master, took our human nature on Himself in time. Thus He is truly man like us, yet continues to be with the Father and the Holy Ghost, the same God that He is from all eternity. Consequently, in His human nature and since He is a man like us, He possesses privileges of grace that are, in a certain way, infinite. Paramount is His quality as Savior of mankind, which constitutes Him, as man, the unique Mediator between God and men, Sovereign Priest, Supreme King, Prophet without equal, and Leader and Head of all the assembly of the elect, angels and men, all forming His true Mystical Body.

Source: Lefebvre, Marcel, Spiritual Journey. Kansas City: Angelus Press, E-Book

[Emphasis - The Catacombs]