Catholic during the Great Apostasy

The Cross of the Lord Jesus gives us a teaching of infinite value for salvation; a teaching of what sin is and what the human soul is.

I. In what way will the Cross encourage us to avoid sin?

It is not difficult to see this. The Cross says to us that sin is the only evil, the evil most painful to God and to the heart of man.

Yes, it is evil to God… We read in Scripture that God is grieved, wounded and angered by sin. This God, who has so loved men, who has showered them with favours, cannot in some respect comprehend this ingratitude… Is it possible? cries God in painful awe. Ah! I will go and see … “I will come down and see” (Gen. VIII, 21).
And He saw, and, seized to the depths of His heart with sorrow, He begins to grieve to such an extent that He regrets having created such terribly ungrateful creatures. “It grieved Him, says the Book of Genesis, that He had made man on the earth.” (Gen. VI, 6).
It is probably impossible to express with greater force and with greater power .

What heavy sorrow and bitterness one must be filled with to be moved to such grief. But this heavy sorrow soon changes into indignation and most righteous anger. If God cannot bear indifferently the ingratitude of the sinner, neither should He bear His offence and similar contempt. “I will smite a man, saith God, out of the face of the earth.” (Gen. VI, 7) And He opens at once the vents of heaven, so that in the abysses of water the world is cleansed. All but one family perish… And then for their sins God destroys the five cities of the wicked with fire….

Tell me, please, could the Lord God have revealed to us more bluntly, in a more powerful word or a more threatening deed, the extent to which sin hurts and angers Him?

Ah! so in the book of eternal truths we read something even more astonishing, and the holy Apostle Paul expounds to us this mystery of sorrow and death. Sin goes so far as to renew in our hearts the passion of God, to torment Him again on the Cross. And yet the beloved Saviour gives us His Heart, a Heart with a cross, so that we may know that sin is the cause of God’s renewed death on the cross. Let us remember with our hand on our heart the greatest of the sins of our lives, let us cast our gaze upon this Divine Cross, upon this Cross on which we hung the Saviour.

Let us listen to this God, He says and now as He said at Calvary: “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do…”. And let us implore Him in tears for forgiveness, let us pledge to Him that we will never offend Him again, never inflict death on Him in our hearts.

These are the great truths contained in the Cross of Jesus, which He brings to our remembrance, and is it not enough a single remembrance of that Cross to repel temptation and avoid sin… O my God, rather suffer everything than renew Your Passion, rather die than kill You again in my heart!

Sin, which is the only evil for God, is also an evil in the human heart, it saddens and shatters it with remorse, shame and pain. It blinds, restrains and subjugates them, and finally it ruins and kills them. The Holy Spirit has revealed to us all the havoc that sin has wrought in our souls.

Reason and experience show us and confirm all these miseries! He also has a sword, a glittering sword, and He plunges it into the wicked soul; these are the wraths of shame and sorrow which torment us after the fulfilment of sin. After the fulfilment of sin, the light of the soul is extinguished, its sight is dimmed by the darkness of malice; I am no longer speaking of the heavenly light of faith, but even the spark of reason itself is dimmed by sin.

Yes, alas, even the very freedom of the human soul disappears in evil. Freedom, that supreme gift which God Himself esteems in man, is, as it were, wronged; for God demands our heart, but does not violently draw it… He knocks at the door, but does not break it down… Thus this freedom is lost and the soul allows itself to be subjugated by sin, to be fettered, it allows the passions to rule over it, for whoever commits sin becomes a slave of sin. “All who do sin are servants of sin” (John. VIII, 34).

Recognise, then, that in sin is the greatest evil. By sinning you become a slave. How often you say: “I cannot.” That is right, sin, having taken control in your heart, is stronger than you; it leads you to perdition, ruins you, kills you, strips you bare. And how many people are left in this terrible bondage? This is the greatest mystery and the saddest truth. Ruined souls do not feel any more, they do not love any more… Everything in them is frozen…

Do you not think that sin is the first cause of all your distress, that it is the source of all your misfortunes? Let us hasten, then, to return to the Lord quickly, and he will have mercy on us. We have offended him, but he has not ceased to love us; would he refuse us anything if he saw us returning to him?

II. But it does not end there, that the cross teaches us to avoid sin and induces us to abandon it; it teaches us still the way in which we should and can correct it.

The Cross of Jesus reveals a double mystery to sinful man: the mystery of justice and mercy. This cross teaches us how to temper justice with mercy.
Let us remember that if justice and mercy met and embraced at Calvary at the foot of the Cross, it was only because there was a sacrifice there which justified everything by suffering, and by blood and tears blotted out our guilt. This is precisely the main condition of Divine forgiveness: first the tears, that is, the sorrow, then the blood, that is, the atonement or sacrifice.

In order to follow this path with courage and confidence, it is enough to cast a single glance at the cross of Jesus, at the cross of that divine Lamb who bore the sins of the world, who was sacrificed for us; let us join our sufferings to his sufferings, let us mingle our tears with his blood, our death with his.

So let us go forward boldly and confidently! If we suffer let us believe that this is proof of God’s goodness and mercy: “Repent ye transgressors to the heart,” cries the prophet to us (Isai XLVI, 8). Let us go to Jesus, remembering that by following in His footsteps we can atone and gain merit, we can expiate the guilt we have incurred through a lifetime of ingratitude, and through God’s infinite mercy, we can gain not only forgiveness of all our trespasses, but also eternal glory of immeasurable value. Let us bring our prayers to the cross of Jesus. Let us adore that most perfect Cross… Let us seek to console the Divine Master… Let us awaken in ourselves an act of contrition by the most tender love inspired.

If you suffer, may our affections in suffering correspond to the love and zeal of Jesus, in order to reward Him and atone for our sins and to obtain forgiveness for poor sinners.
Let us cling to our hearts and love our cross; it is beautiful, it is good and it is all made of gold, as St Francis de Sales says, that is, all crosses, but above all the cross of the heart.

Hail the holy cross, the only hope,
Grant grace to the virtuous,
Remove the guilt of sinners.

The Cross of Christ the Lord teaches us not only to avoid sin and make amends for it, as we heard yesterday, but it also shows us what the soul is, how we must work to save it and how to lose it for the love of God; to lose it in the sense of the words of the Gospel by denying it, by dying truly in ourselves, in order to live for Jesus Christ and to be crucified with Him for the world and its vanities.

Above all, the Cross teaches us how to save the soul, for the Cross alone shows us all its value. It tells us that God, who so loved and esteemed souls, was not afraid to die for us on the shameful tree of the Cross, and to die amidst such terrible torments and sorrows. “O soul, how great is your price” cries St Augustine. This is the price of the one and only soul: God has purchased it at the cost of the tears, blood, life and death of His Son. This great God of the eternal tabernacle holds the scales in His hand, weighing His life, death, blood and tears on the one hand, and our soul on the other; this is its price.

Christ the Lord gives us his Heart with the Cross so that we may know what price we have been redeemed with. Let us not ask the world about the value of the soul, for it cannot know. How many of the mindless are ready to sell their souls at any moment.

And how much is a soul worth, let us ask the Cross, let us ask the God who died for its salvation. Its price is the tears, the blood, the life and death of Christ! That is its value!

By meditating more frequently on this great mystery of the Cross, by listening more attentively to the words of Calvary; by advancing ever further in the doctrine of salvation, we shall become more and more perfect in the sight of God. For the Cross of Christ, above all the Cross of his heart, will soon teach us the deepest knowledge of the mystery of holiness; it will guide us.
But in order to make death sweet and glorious for us, it is necessary to die completely to the world and to ourselves. If anyone still has any attachment to earth and the slightest attraction to worldly life, Jesus, not only will not live and reign in us, but will soon remove himself altogether, leaving us alone in the darkness of night on the world’s dismal grave.

Let us raise our hearts in fervent prayer to God, doing worthy penance, making reparation to Him for the offence inflicted by so many unfaithful, ungrateful hearts, and, moved to the depths and animated by an ardent desire to multiply His glory, and moved to the depths by an ardent desire to multiply His glory, let us not be content with mere desire and a strong will to work for our own salvation, but let us also arouse in ourselves the desire to save others and to ask God for the greatest possible number of souls and for a spark of that holy fire of love for human hearts redeemed by the power of the Cross of Christ.

O Jesus, our Saviour and God, who loved souls so much, save them, and grant us the strength and grace to work, struggle, suffer and even die with you, so long as these sufferings may save even a few souls.

Amen.

From the French edition compiled by X. Roman Rembieliński prof. of the Seminary Metr. St. John. WARSAW. 1897 r.