Meditations of ABL: Excerpts from "The Mystery of Jesus"

Meditations of ABL: Excerpts from "The Mystery of Jesus" Sept 7, 2019 13:38:03 GMT

Post by Admin on Sept 7, 2019 13:38:03 GMT

THE WORD MADE FLESH

All the errors which are spread around nowadays, and which make believe that there is another way of salvation other than our Lord Jesus Christ and outside the Catholic religion go expressly against the(se) affirmations of the Gospel, and are explicitly against our Lord Jesus Christ.

Documents coming from the Dutch Bishops' Conference speak of ways of salvation in the non-Christian religions. Absurd. There are no means of salvation outside the Catholic religion founded by our Lord Jesus Christ. Outside the Church there is no salvation. It is a dogma of our faith. Why? Because supernatural grace comes only from the Church. Even those graces which might attain adherents of other religions would come from our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently from His Church, thanks to the prayer of the Church, the mystical spouse of Our Lord who is united to Him and cannot be separated from Him. It is by the intermediary of the Catholic Church that graces are distributed to those who would receive them outside of it.

Undoubtedly, there are souls that are saved and which are not part of the visible structure of the Church, but which belong invisibly to the Church, the mystical body of Christ. The popes have affirmed this. However, undoubtedly this does not occur frequently. The Church must be missionary in order to bring its graces to those who have not received them. If everyone received grace outside the Church, and even if that were by the mediation of the Church, we would not need to be missionaries. It is impossible to be saved by the practice of false religions or by beliefs that are contrary to Church doctrine. It is impossible to be saved by error, by taking a direction opposed to the Holy Ghost, to the Wisdom of God and to the way by which God chose to save us, which is essentially His Incarnation:

Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. No man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him (Jn. 1:17-18).

The mystery of the God-Man is great, clearly; but it is absolutely necessary to meditate on it, and to know the reality, the truth, because this is our faith, our whole life and the life of the world.

Nothing is done in the world that does not relate to Our Lord; it is either for Him or against Him, with Him or without Him. Our Lord is the key to the solution of all the problems. There are none here below that are indifferent to Our Lord. Men try in vain to work without reference to Our Lord, but it is impossible because Our Lord is everywhere.1 He is in everything because He created everything; therefore everything is in His hands. Everything belongs to Him, nothing is outside of Him. Men seek to evade Him, but they cannot because everything is His.

To try to construct human history outside of our Lord Jesus Christ is an absurdity. Our Lord is the center of history. Everything was made by Him and for Him 2 and the only happiness of men and mankind is to be united to Our Lord, to live for God by Jesus Christ, because He is God. He has given us the means; this is why He came. St. John says as much in his first epistle, which is also very beautiful:

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled, of the word of life (I Jn. 1:1).

1. By His Divine Nature

2. cf. Col 1:16

Extracts from The Mystery of Jesus, by Archbishop Lefebvre, Angelus Press 2000

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Meditations of ABL: Excerpts from "The Mystery of Jesus" Sept 10, 2019 10:28:40 GMT

Post by Admin on Sept 10, 2019 10:28:40 GMT

A DIVINE PERSON

With our poor human imagination, it seems difficult to realize that the one to whom the apostles spoke, whom the Blessed Virgin carried in her womb and in her arms, that this Child Jesus is He by whom all things were made.

Placed before the image of the Infant Jesus in the crib, some might be moved to say, "It is not possible, He could not possibly have created the earth; he was just born." To these St. Paul gives the reply: He was just born, yes, but His Person is a divine Person, and this Person is God, the Word of God. It is truly the Word of God who is there present in the crib, who assumes this body and soul. It is the Word of God, it is this divine Person whom we address. When you speak to someone, you address the person. This Person was the Word of God, by whom all was created. How can anyone then say that this Person who is the Word of God made Man is not Saviour, and Priest and King, the three great attributes that this Person gives to this creature of God by the grace of the hypostatic union?⁹

Has any man then the right to be indifferent to the presence of the Word of God in our midst? It is inconceivable. God has willed to come among us; who then has a right to say, "Just let me live my life: I don't need Jesus Christ to live." It is unthinkable, especially since He came to save us from our sins. Consequently, we are all affected because we are all sinners. He came to die on the cross to redeem us from eternal damnation; can anyone then be disinterested? And how can they dare to compare this Person who is our Lord Jesus Christ to Mohammed or Buddha or Luther?... How can a Catholic who has the Faith utter such words? How can they even speak of "the religions, all the religions, the cults" as if they were equal?

Pope Pius VII manifested his indignation when presented with the Constitution of France in which was affirmed the freedom of all the religions. He reacted against the words "all the religions." By these words they were putting the holy religion of God, of our Lord Jesus Christ, on the same level as the heresies and schisms. He was outraged, and he wrote to the Archbishop of Troyes: "Go and see the king. Tell him that it is inadmissible for a Catholic monarch, for a king who calls himself Catholic, to allow the freedom 'of all the religions,' without distinction." The Pope was indignant. This should be the conviction of every Catholic.

It is not possible to be a Catholic and not feel outrage when they speak of "all the religions," placing thereby our Lord on a par with Buddha and all the rest. They do not believe that our Lord is God. They do not believe that it is the Person of God who is before us. Clearly not. Are there several incarnations of God? In Buddha? In Mohammed? In Luther? No, there is only one, in our Lord Jesus Christ. This fact has enormous consequences, and we should sense this in proportion to our belief in the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ.

What St. John says on this point is very important, as we have seen. It can be summed up in this way: He who affirms that Jesus Christ is God is of God, and he who denies that our Lord Jesus Christ is God is an antichrist (cf. I Jn. 2:22). Antichrist! and, consequently, a devil. St. John, for one, had the Faith, and he knew how to draw the consequences.

⁹ The union of two natures, divine and human, of Jesus Christ in one unique person, the Person of the divine Word. From the fact that this man Jesus Christ, is God, he is necessarily Savior, Priest, and King.

Extracts from The Mystery of Jesus, by Archbishop Lefebvre, Angelus Press 2000

Source