Transcript:
Christopher Wendt:
We have exhausted those questions and thought tonight that we would return to His Excellency’s catechism class on the Passion of Our Lord. This topic is timely and appropriate for the season of Lent this week.
Shortly, on March 13, we will be doing another Q&A session. I’m sure we will have enough consolidated questions from you. In May, we will be presenting on Our Lady of Fatima. Soon, we will do the next class the next broadcast on March 13th. We will be doing another Q&A session I’m sure we’ll have enough of your questions by then consolidated.
Without further ado, I would like to turn this evening over to His Excellency Bishop Athanasius Schneider. Thank you, Your Excellency, for being with us here tonight and for taking your time to teach us the true faith of Christ.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider
So let us start with a prayer,
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen
Pater Noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra.
Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen
Today, we will talk about the article on the symbol of faith and the Catechism of the Council of Trent with the theme “Suffered under Pontius Pilate, He was crucified, died, and was buried.”
St. Thomas Aquinas said It is just as necessary for the Christian to believe in the passion and death of the Son of God as it is to believe in His Incarnation. For, as St. Gregory says, “There would have been no advantage in His having been born for us unless we had profited by His Redemption.” That Christ died for us is so tremendous a fact that our intellect can scarcely grasp it; for in no way does it fall in the natural way of our understanding.
The grace of God is so great and His love for us is such that we cannot understand what He has done for us. Therefore we believe and profess in the article of the Credo “He suffered under Pontius Pilate. Christ was crucified, died, and was buried.”
The first part of this Article proposes for our belief that when Pontius Pilate governed the province of Judea, Christ the Lord was nailed to a cross. Having been seized” mocked, outraged, and tortured in various forms” He was finally crucified.
“Suffered,”
It cannot be a matter of doubt that His soul” as to its inferior part” was sensible of these torments; for as He assumed human nature” it is a necessary consequence that He really, and in His soul, experienced a most acute sense of pain. Hence these words of the Saviour: My soul is sorrowful even unto death.
Although human nature was united to the Divine Person, He felt the bitterness of His Passion as acutely as if no such union had existed” because in the one Person of Jesus Christ were preserved the properties of both natures” human and divine; and therefore what was passible and mortal remained passible and mortal; while what was impassible and immortal, that is, His Divine Nature, continued impassible and immortal.
“Christ was crucified,”
The fact that He suffered death precisely on the wood of the cross must also be attributed to a particular counsel of God, which decreed that life should return by the way whence death had arisen The serpent who had triumphed over our first parents by the wood (of a tree) was vanquished by Christ on the wood of the cross.
Many other reasons that the Fathers have discussed in detail might be adduced to show that it was fit that our Redeemer should suffer death on the cross rather than in any other way. But, as the pastor will show it is enough for the faithful to believe that this kind of death was chosen by the Saviour because it appeared better adapted and more appropriate to the redemption of the human race; for there certainly could be none more ignominious and humiliating. Not only among the Gentiles was the punishment of the cross held accursed and full of shame and infamy, but even in the Law of Moses the man is called accursed that hangs on a tree – on the cross.
And so we look at the Importance of the History of the Passion of Christ, for our salvation.
It is on this Article, as on their foundation, that the Christian faith and religion rest; and if this truth be firmly established, all the rest is secure. Indeed, if one thing more than another presents difficulty to the mind and understanding of man, assuredly it is the mystery of the cross, which, beyond all doubt, must be considered the most difficult of all; so much so that only with great difficulty can we grasp the fact that our salvation depends on the cross, and on Him who for us was nailed thereon.
In this, however, as the Apostle teaches, we may well admire the wonderful Providence of God; for, seeing that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching, to save them that believe. It is no wonder, then, that the Prophets, before the coming of Christ, and the Apostles, after His death and Resurrection, labored so strenuously to convince mankind that He was the Redeemer of the world, and to bring them under the power and obedience of the Crucified.
And now, we have to consider all figures and prophecies in the Old Testament that talk about the Passion and Death of our Savior.
Since, therefore, nothing is so far above the reach of human reason as the mystery of the cross, the Lord immediately after the fall ceased not, both by figures and prophecies, to signify the death by which His Son was to die and to redeem us.
To mention a few of these types. First of all, Abel, who fell victim to the envy of his brother, Isaac who was commanded to be offered in sacrifice by Abraham, the lamb immolated by the Jews on their departure from Egypt, and also the brazen serpent lifted by Moses in the desert, were all figures of the Passion and death of Christ, our Lord.
The prophets foretold Christ’s Passion and Death. David, in the Psalms, embraces all the principal mysteries of our Redemption, the prophecies Isaiah in particular the 53rd chapter, are so clear and even graphic that he might be said rather to have recorded a past than predicted a future event.
And then the next part of the Article of Faith says, Christ was dead and buried.
Christ died. It is not without just reason that this is proposed to the faithful as a separate object of belief since some denied His death upon the cross. For example, the Muslims and their Quran denied that Christ died on the cross, or the agnostic sects in the first centuries after Christianity, said that Christ died only apparently not truly because a servant of God cannot die and cannot suffer.
But the apostles, therefore, were justly of the opinion that such an error should be opposed to the doctrine of faith contained in this Article, the truth of which is placed beyond the possibility of doubt by the united testimony of all the Evangelists, who record that Jesus Christ died and yielded up the ghost.
Moreover, as Christ was a true and perfect man, He of course was capable of dying. Now man dies when the soul is separated from the body. When, therefore, we say that Jesus died, we mean that His soul was disunited from His body. We do not admit, however, that the Divinity was separated from His body.
On the contrary, we firmly believe and profess that when His soul was dissociated from His body, His Divinity continued always united both to His body in the Sepulchre and to His soul in limbo. It became the Son of God to die, that, through death, he might destroy him who had the empire of death that is the devil, and might deliver them, who through the fear of death were all their lifetime subject to servitude.
And then we can consider the truth that Christ died freely.
It was the peculiar privilege of Christ the Lord to have died when He decreed to die and to have died not so much by external violence as by internal assent. Not only His death but also its time and place, were ordained by Him. Thus Isaias wrote: He was offered because it was his own will. The Lord before His Passion, declared the same of Himself: I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No man taketh it away from me: but I lay it down of myself, and I have the power to lay it down: and I have the power to take it again.
As to the time and place of His death, He said, when Herod insidiously sought His life: Go and tell that fox: Behold I cast out devils, and do cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I am consummated. Nevertheless, I must walk today and tomorrow, and the day following, because it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem” (Gospel of Luke 13:32) Christ, therefore offered Himself not involuntarily or by compulsion but of His own free will. Going to meet His enemies He said: I am he; and all the punishments which injustice and cruelty inflicted on Him He endured voluntarily and with love.
The Thought Of Christ’s Death Should Excite Our Love And Gratitude.
When we meditate on the sufferings and all the torments of the Redeemer, nothing is better calculated to stir our souls than the thought that He endured them thus voluntarily. Were anyone to endure all kinds of suffering for our sake, not because he chose them but simply because he could not escape them, we should not consider this a very great favor; but were he to endure death freely, and for our sake only, having had it in his power to avoid it, this indeed would be a benefit so overwhelming as to deprive even the most grateful heart, not only of the power of returning but even of feeling due thanks. We may hence form an idea of the transcendent and intense love of Jesus Christ towards us and of His divine and boundless claims to our gratitude.
Then we can contemplate that Christ was buried.
The word buried was added in the Creed, first, that His death might be rendered more certain, for the strongest argument of a person’s death is the proof that his body was buried; and, secondly, to render the miracle of His Resurrection more authentic and illustrious. It is not, however, our belief that the body of Christ alone was interred. The above words propose, as the principal object of our belief, that God was buried; according to the rule of Catholic faith we also say with the strictest truth that God died, and that God was born in Bethlehem of a virgin. For as the Divinity was never separated from His body which was laid in the Sepulchre, we truly confess that God was buried.
This is why the Catholic Church uses these expressions in the tradition and the liturgy. Of course, God cannot die, and God cannot be born from a human person but it is in the sense of the union between the divine nature and the human nature in Jesus Christ. So these expressions can be attributed to both. Since the old times, the church has acknowledged this way of praying and speaking because of the inseparable unity of the two natures in one person and the person is the divine person of the Son of God.
And then we can also consider now the dignity of our Lord who suffers.
And first, we must consider who it is that suffers all these things. His dignity we cannot express in words or even conceive in mind. Of Him St. John says, that He is the Word which was with God. And the Apostle describes Him in sublime terms, saying that this is He -whom God has appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the world, who being the brightness of his glory and the figure of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of his power, making purgation of sins. Sitteth on the right hand of the majesty on high (Epistle to the Hebrews 1-2)
In a word, Jesus Christ, the God-man, suffers. The Creator suffers for His creatures, the Master for His servant. He suffers by whom the Angels, men, the heavens, and the elements were made; in whom, by whom, and of whom, are all things.
It cannot, therefore, be a matter of surprise that while He agonized under such an accumulation of torments the whole frame of the universe was convulsed; for as the Scriptures inform us, the earth quaked, and the rocks were rent, there was darkness over all the earth, and the sun was obscured. If, then, even mute and inanimate nature sympathized with the sufferings of her Creator, let the faithful consider with what tears they, the living stones of this edifice, should manifest their sorrow.
The reasons why Christ suffered
Should anyone inquire why the Son of God underwent His most bitter Passion, he will find that besides the guilt inherited from our first parents, the principal causes were the vice and crimes which have been perpetrated from the beginning of the world to the present day and those which will be committed to the end of time. In His Passion and death the Son of God, our Saviour, intended to atone for and blot out the sins of all ages, to offer for them to his Father a full and abundant satisfaction and atonement.
Besides, to increase the dignity of this mystery, Christ not only suffered for sinners but even for those who were the very authors and ministers of all the torments He endured. Of this the Apostle reminds us in these words addressed to the Hebrews: Think diligently upon him that endured such opposition from sinners against himself; that you be not wearied, fainting in your minds (Letter to the Hebrews 12:3).
In this guilt are involved all those who fall frequently into sin; for, as our sins consigned Christ the Lord to the death of the cross, most certainly those who wallow in sin and iniquity crucify to themselves again the Son of God, (Letter to the Hebrews 6:6) as far as in them lies, and make a mockery of Christ.
This guilt seems more enormous in us than in the Jews, since according to the testimony of the same Apostle: If they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory (1 Corinthians); while we, on the contrary, professing to know Him, yet denying Him by our actions, seem in some sort to lay violent hands on him. And as the letter of Hebrews says, “They crucify again, the Son of God.”
And then Christ was delivered over to death by the Father and by Himself
But that Christ the Lord was also delivered over to death by the Father and by Himself, the Scriptures bear witness. For in Isaiah (God the Father) says, For the wickedness of my people have I struck him. And a little before the same Prophet filled with the Spirit of God, cried out, as he saw the Lord covered with stripes and wounds: All we like sheep have gone astray, every one hath turned aside into his way: and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:6)
But of the Son it is written by the same prophet: If he shall lay down his life for sin, he shall see a long-lived seed. This the Apostle expresses in language still stronger when, to show how confidently we, on our part, should trust in the boundless mercy and goodness of God, St. Paul the Apostle says: He that spared not even his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how has he not also, with him, given us all things? (Epistle to the Romans 8:32)
Let us consider then also the bitterness of Christ’s passion.
That Christ our Lord suffered the most excruciating torments of mind and body is certain. In the first place, no part of His body did not experience the most agonizing torture. His hands and feet were fastened with nails to the cross; His head was pierced with thorns and smitten with a reed; His face was befouled with spittle and buffeted with blows; His whole body was covered with stripes.
Furthermore, men of all ranks and conditions were gathered together against the Lord and Jesus Christ. Gentiles and Jews were the advisers, the authors, and the ministers of His Passion: Judas betrayed Him, Peter denied Him, and all the rest deserted Him.
His agony was increased by the very constitution and frame of His body. Formed by the power of the Holy Ghost, it was more perfect and better organized than the bodies of other men can be and was therefore endowed with a superior susceptibility and a keener sense of all the torments which it endured.
And as to His interior anguish of soul, that too was no doubt extreme; for those among the Saints who had to endure torments and tortures were not without consolation from above, which enabled them not only to bear their sufferings patiently but in many instances, to feel, in the very midst of them, filled with interior joy. I rejoice, says the Apostle, in my sufferings for you, and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, which is the church;’ and in another place: I am filled with comfort, I exceedingly abound with joy in all our tribulations. Christ our Lord tempered with no admixture of sweetness the bitter chalice of His Passion but permitted His human nature to feel as acutely every species of torment as if He were only man, and not also God.
And now the fruits of Christ’s passion.
In the first place, then, the Passion of our Lord was our deliverance from sin; for, as St. John says, He hath loved us and washed us from our sins in his blood. He hath quickened you together with him, says the Apostle, forgiving you all offenses, blotting out the handwriting of the decree that was against us, which was contrary to us. And he hath taken the same out of the way, fastening it to the cross.
In the next place, He has rescued us from the tyranny of the devil, for our Lord Himself says: Now is the judgment of the world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I if I am lifted from the earth, will draw all things to myself (John 12:31)
Again He discharged the punishment due to our sins. And as no sacrifice more pleasing and acceptable could have been offered to God, He reconciled us to the Father, appeased His wrath, and made Him favorable to us.
Finally, by taking away our sins He opened to us heaven, which was closed by the common sin of mankind. And this the Apostle pointed out when he said: We have confidence in the entering into the holies by the blood of Christ (Hebrews 10:19). Nor are we without a type and figure of this mystery in the Old Law. For those who were prohibited to return into their native country before the death of the high priest typified that no one, however just and holy may have been his life, could gain admission into the celestial country until the eternal High-priest, Christ Jesus, had died, and by His death immediately opened heaven to those who, purified by the Sacraments and gifted with faith, hope, and charity, become partakers of His Passion.
Christ’s Passion, a satisfaction, a sacrifice, a redemption, and an example for us
the satisfaction which Jesus Christ has in an admirable manner made to God the Father for our sins is complete. The price which He paid for our ransom was not only adequate and equal to our debts but far exceeded them. 58 Again, it (the Passion of Christ) was a sacrifice most acceptable to God, for when offered by His Son on the altar of the cross, it entirely appeased the wrath and indignation of the Father. This word (sacrifice) the Apostle uses when he says: Christ has loved us, and has delivered himself for us, an oblation and a sacrifice to God for an odor of sweetness (Epistle to the Ephesians 5:2)
Furthermore, it was a redemption, of which the Prince of the Apostles says: You were not redeemed with corruptible things as gold or silver, from your vain conversation of the tradition of your fathers: but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb unspotted and undefiled. While the Apostle teaches: that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us (1 Peter 1:18).
Besides these incomparable blessings, we have also received another of the highest importance; namely, that in the Passion alone we have the most illustrious example of the exercise of every virtue. For Christ so displayed patience, humility, exalted charity, meekness, obedience, and unshaken firmness of soul, not only in suffering for justice, sake, but also in meeting death, that we may truly say on the day of His Passion alone, our Saviour offered, in His Person, a living exemplification of all the moral precepts inculcated during the entire time of His public ministry. He gave us this supreme example of all the virtues.
Let us also reflect on the meaning of our redemption through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Our Lord Jesus Christ, Our Redeemer, has freed us from the evil consequences of sin. Man after the Fall was unable to regain for himself his former holiness and justice, and all the goods that were bound up with these. A man whose body is dead cannot raise himself again to bodily life; so one who is spiritually dead cannot raise himself again to spiritual life. Man after the Fall became like a sick man who cannot move hand or foot, or arise from the bed on which he is lying. What the Good Samaritan was to the man who had fallen among thieves, Our Lord is to the man who has been wounded by the craft of the devil and robbed of his spiritual and supernatural gifts. Jesus Christ is also called Our Saviour or Our Redeemer because He saved us from hell and brought us back at the cost of His precious blood.
Christ freed us from the spiritual consequences of sin in the following manner: He enlightened our understanding by His teaching, inclined our will to good by His precepts and promises, and by His sacrifice of Himself upon the cross won for us the means of grace by which we once more attain to sanctification and become the children of God and heirs of the kingdom of heaven. Christ took upon Himself a threefold office, that of Prophet or Teacher, Priest, and King. This threefold office he ascribes to Himself under various titles. He calls Himself the Light of the world because He enlightens the darkness of our understanding by His doctrine. As light makes distant objects clear and visible, so Christ makes clear to us the most distant objects, God and His perfections, the world to come, heaven and hell, time and eternity. Before Pilate, He calls Himself the King Whose kingdom is not of this world. He also calls Himself the Good Shepherd, Who gives His life for His sheep. He also often compares Himself to a guide or leader.
We are wanderers in this world; we have here no abiding dwelling-place, but seek one that is to come. The road is rough, steep, and surrounded by precipices, and we in our ignorance are in constant danger of wandering from the way. Christ undertakes to be our Guide. He says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life”, and He promises that if we take Him as our Guide, and follow in His sacred footsteps, we shall never go wrong.
St. Paul calls Christ our great High Priest, Who needs not, like other priests, first offer sacrifices for his sins, and then for the people. By His obedience, He atoned for Adam’s disobedience, for He was obedient to death, even to the death of the cross. Christ opened heaven again to us by earning for us the means of grace. By which, and especially by the sacraments and holy Mass, we can obtain sanctifying grace and be made children of God. In opening heaven to us, Christ tore away the veil that shut us out from the holy of holies, i.e., from heaven, and by His blood gave us a sure hope of entering heaven. The cross is thus the key of heaven for us.
Christ freed us also from the consequences of sin as it affected our bodies; He has died instead of us, and has thus earned for us the resurrection of our bodies; He has by His teaching and His example taught us what we must do to be happy in this world, to overcome the world, and so to attain to the celestial paradise; lastly, He has given us how we may vanquish and drive far from us the enemy of our souls. By His resurrection, Christ ensured for us the resurrection of our bodies. “By man came death, and by man came also the resurrection from the dead” (1 Cor. 15:21).
By following the teaching of St. Thomas, he says, that Christ’s blood or his bodily life is the price of our redemption and that life He paid. Hence both of these belong immediately to Christ as man. He paid this, this is is work. But this work also belongs to the trinity – to God as the first and remote cause of our redemption, to whom Christ’s life belongs to its first author, his human nature, and from whom Christ received the inspiration of suffering for us. Christ, in his human nature, received this inspiration to suffer for us for God. In the trinity, God is one, and in the trinity, there is only one will, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, unity in the one will of God.
Consequently, it is proper to Christ as man to be the Redeemer immediately; although the redemption may be ascribed to the whole Trinity as its first cause, says St. Thomas Aquinas.
By His resurrection, Christ ensured for us the resurrection of our bodies. And so, By following the teaching of Christ, we shall secure true peace, and by practicing the virtues that He taught us, especially in his suffering, humility, and chastity, we shall overcome the devil and the world.
By the sacramentals, we drive away from us the evil one. Christ has broken the power of the devil, but the final victory over him will be at the end of the world
By the death of Christ, we have won back almost all that was lost by original sin, though some of its consequences remain, such as sickness, death, and evil tendencies of the will and intellect. Yet we have won more by the death of Christ than we lost by sin. Where sin abounded, grace did the more abound (Rom. 5:20). Hence the Church exclaims in the Office for Holy Saturday: “O happy fault, (Felix Culpa) which obtained for us so great a Redeemer.”
The sufferings of our Redeemer invite us to participate in his work of redemption. As Pope Pius XII teaches us in his Encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi,
Because Christ the Head holds such an eminent position, one must not think that he does not require the help of the Body. What Paul said of the human organism is to be applied likewise to the Mystical Body: “The head cannot say to the feet: I do not need of you.” It is manifestly clear that the faithful need the help of the Divine Redeemer, for He has said: “Without me, you can do nothing,” and according to the teaching of the Apostle every advance of this Mystical Body towards its perfection derives from Christ the Head. Yet this, also, must be held, marvelous though it may seem: Christ needs His members. First, because the person of Jesus Christ is represented by the Supreme Pontiff, who in turn must call on others to share much of his solicitude lest he be overwhelmed by the burden of his pastoral office, and must be helped daily by the prayers of the Church. Moreover, as our Savior does not rule the Church directly in a visible manner, He wills to be helped by the members of His Body in carrying out the work of redemption. That is not because He is indigent and weak, but rather because He has so willed it for the greater glory of His spotless Spouse. Dying on the Cross He left to His Church the immense treasury of the Redemption, towards which she contributed nothing. But when those graces come to be distributed, not only does He share this work of sanctification with His Church, but He wills that in some way it be due to her action, of the church.
This is a deep mystery, and we believe that Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus which means outside the church, there is no salvation. This is a deep mystery and an inexhaustible subject of meditation, that the salvation of many depends on the prayers and voluntary penances which the members of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ offer for this intention and on the cooperation of pastors of souls and of the faithful, especially of fathers and mothers of families, cooperation which they must offer to our Divine Savior as though they were His associates in His Mystical Body.
So, the sufferings of Christ have an infinity value and we are called to unite our sufferings with him. As taught by the admirable Pope Leo XIII said that Christ transformed the sufferings into motives of virtue and occasions of merit, and no man can hope for eternal reward unless he follows in the blood-stained footprints of his Saviour. “If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him.” Christ’s labors and sufferings, accepted of His own free will, have marvelously sweetened all suffering and all labor. And not only by His example but by His grace and by the hope held forth of everlasting recompense, has He made pain and grief easier to endure; for that which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation, worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory.
Dominus vobiscum!
Christopher Wendt
Et cum Spiritu tuo.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider
Et benedictio Dei Omnipotentis, Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, descendat super vos et maneat semper. Amen.
Praise be Our Lord Jesus Christ!
Christopher Wendt
Now and Forever!
