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Theological Clarifications of Father Jobert OSB.
This
is a selection of some of the papers Father Jobert
1. Personal witness of Father Philippe Jobert, OSB. Monk and
theologian of
St. Peters
Abbey,
2. Terminology
3. How to understand the small cross of the Crucified Innocence
4. The Mystery of the Child Jesus
5. Covenant
6. The Novitiate of the Holy Family for our time
7. The New Order of the human family
8.
Origin of the
roles of Mary and Joseph in the
9. Our Lady of the Hidden and Mystical Wounds
10. Crucified innocence and Divine Innocence –
11. Holy Innocents in our times
12. Theological arguments for the martyrdom of children killed before birth
13. The
Holy
Sacrifice of the Mass and the claiming of
14. Virgin Souls
15. Kings, Priests, Prophets - aborted children's participation in Christ's threefold office
16. Limbo, no
17. Brief explanations of key theological themes in relation to the children
18. The Philosophy of Divine
Love
1. Personal witness of Father Philippe
Jobert, OSB. Monk and theologian of St. Peters Abbey, Solesmes,
28th
June 2000.
In Nazareth House, between the 16th
and the 28th of June a theological investigation into the doctrine
of Divine Innocence brought important progress in understanding the truths
which are contained in the terminology of the Messages. The conclusions of this investigation will be
useful in order to write a document to present Divine Innocence to the
authorities of the Church and to the theologians. We need to show to them through theology how
the doctrine of the Messages is already contained implicitly in divine
Revelation and in the teaching of the Church.
A theological explanation of Divine Innocence will make explicit the
immediate link between divine Revelation given to the Church and the doctrine
of the Messages.
For instance, a list of the themes,
which are treated in the Messages, arranged in an alphabetical order, led to a
systematic ordering of these themes according to theological regulations. The result was that the Novitiate of the Holy
Family appeared as the organic and complete Plan of Salvation, with all the
relations between the Holy Trinity [the common work of the three divine
Persons], through the Mystery of the Incarnation in the Holy Family and
mankind. The Novitiate is a new expression of this eternal Plan, which is to be
fulfilled in our times; at the same time, it is clearly expressed in proper
words, and personified in the persons of the Holy Family, so that it can be
easily understood, and put into practice by everybody.
Another result was that the Claiming of
aborted children found its important place in this plan of salvation. The most
recent messages manifest the notion of the “Baptism of Love”, which proves to
be a key to the full doctrine of baptism which, from the Baptism of Christ in
the
These two examples concerning the
most important themes of Divine Innocence are the main discoveries of our work,
among many other clarifications.
Fr.
Philippe Jobert
Also, with
regard to the overall content of this inspiration and the instrument God has
chosen to communicate this message to the Church and to the world, Father
Philippe has stated:
“I
am not issuing a statement about the authenticity of her messages, but about
what is contained within them, from a theological point of view. However, I can say that they not only contain
nothing contrary, nor alien to the teaching of the Church, but what they say is
a far deeper theology than everything I know, either in classical theology, or
in modern researches…There are no books from which she (Patricia de Menezes)
could have taken ideas and formulas.
There are no theologians, in the present time, who could have inspired her
writings. My conclusion is that there is
no natural explanation of so deep and so strong a doctrine, which may be called
without exaggeration, the “Logic of Love”.
Fr. Philippe Jobert
Just as Holy Scripture is
the source of theology, the messages from the inspiration are, in their
wording, the source of their own theological explanation. So it is necessary to explain each expression
proper to the message, and, inversely to go back to the actual terminology of
the messages to grasp all that is contained within them.
1) Divine
Innocence:
This is a divine attribute, which means
the divine Perfection as opposed to any evil, any sin; the divine Will is
perfect as being identical to infinite Good, and ordering everything to this
infinite Good. God enjoys all that is
good, and hates all that is bad and opposed to His Goodness. All that is good shares in His Goodness, and
in the same measure, in His Divine Innocence.
2) Christ’s
Crucified Innocence:
The Son of God Incarnate communicates
His Divine Innocence to His human nature.
When, as a man, He is crucified by the forces of evil, His Innocence is
crucified: that means that these forces of evil which crucify Him, are
absolutely opposed to His Innocence.
Because His Innocence is infinite Love, this Love is Mercy for the
sinners’ misery, and Justice against their sins in His Heart.
3) The crucified
innocence of the children (killed before birth) and of people:
All those who share in Divine Innocence
are innocent, in as much as they seek good and refuse sin. The children are innocent in that they have
no actual sin, because they do not enjoy the use of their freewill. When innocent people are victims of the
forces of evil, their innocence is crucified.
4) Divine
Innocence triumphant in human crucified innocence:
As members of Christ, who lives in them
through faith and grace, it is Christ who is crucified in their crucified
innocence. Because Christ’s Crucified
Innocence is Triumphant, having defeated the forces of evil, the devil, sin,
and death by His Passion and His Resurrection, His Divine Innocence Crucified
is triumphant in our crucified innocence in as much as we share in His Love,
Mercy, and Justice.
5) The Novitiate
of the Holy Family:
The primitive order of the family, created
by God in our first parents and destroyed by their sin, is restored in the Holy
Family by the Son of God Incarnate,
Jesus, Mary His Mother and Joseph, Mary’s spouse. All mankind is
contained in Jesus who redeems it from sin and death through His Cross, who
sanctifies it through grace, and will raise it at the end of time. Mary personifies the primitive role of Eve as
a female person, restored in herself, and Joseph personifies the primitive role
of Adam as a male person, restored in himself.
Both of them are God’s instruments in their genders and roles, motherly
and fatherly, to help families and single men and women to live according to
the original order of things: in union in their complimentary roles of man and
woman, for the birth and education of their children to the good.
Furthermore, they are associated with
Christ in His powers: prophetic, priestly, kingly, to attract people, to bring
people to Christ, and to help them live according to the Gospel, in faith,
hope, and charity, and in all the virtues. The action of Mary and Joseph as
instruments is real, dependant upon Christ’s sanctifying action, as
intercessors to obtain grace and all necessary assistance from Him on a human
level. Their action is mainly ordered to
the personification of their roles, the fatherly role and fatherhood, the
motherly role and motherhood, not only in families, but in every vocation: even
priests and religious are under their influence in this way.
The foundation of this influence must
be considered in a comparison with human society. The family is the source of civil
society. The Holy Family is the source
of the Church, and also her perfection: there is no distinction between the
Church and the Holy Family. What the
Holy Family is invisibly in heaven, the Church is visibly on earth. Every member of the Church is a member of the
Holy Family.
Thus, the Novitiate of the Holy Family
is a modern expression of the eternal plan of Salvation. Because our life on earth is a novitiate of
the eternal life, the Novitiate of the Holy Family is a training for eternal
life under the influence of the Holy Family: it is an ordered Christian life,
according to the Gospel, the teaching of the Church: the study of the faith,
liturgical prayer, Mass, Eucharistic Adoration, the Sacraments, the Rosary,
etc. and in particular divine Wisdom and
Truth. It is a fully Christ-centred life
under the care of Our Lady and
The Novitiate does not add anything to
the normal Christian life and to membership in the Church but tends to the
perfection of this Christian life to which all the faithful are called. Because the Holy Family perfectly shares in
the Trinitarian life, through their commitment to the Holy Family, through
their perfect fulfilment of the roles of Mary and Joseph as women and men, the
faithful pursue the best way of sharing more and more fully in the Trinitarian
life and of reaching the perfection of charity in the Novitiate.
In this way, people in every state of
life, married, single, priests, religious etc., may, through the Novitiate,
root their life more deeply in the Church, when they commit themselves, without
any change in their kind of existence, to the Holy Family which is the heavenly
summit of the Church. In doing so, they
become one Holy Family.
6)
“Rabbi, where do you live?” “Come and
see.” (Jn 1:38,39). Even in our age,
Christ lives in the Holy Family. He
lives in the Blessed Sacrament on earth and Our Lady and
7) Mother of the Hidden and Mystical
Wounds:
According
to Simeon’s prophecy, the Heart of Our Lady was pierced by a sword of pain,
when her Son died on the Cross (Lk 2:35).
Her Heart contained all mankind, because it was overshadowed by the Holy
Spirit, who as Creator, contains all men as objects of God’s Love. Thus her wounded Heart contains all human
suffering and wounds in a mystical way (‘mystic’ is human life as transformed
by the Holy Spirit).
Just
as the wound of Our Lady’s Heart is hidden, so all these mystical wounds are
hidden: she offers them to her Son to be healed by His Mercy. Our Lord’s wounds in His Heart and body are
the ransom of our sins, which in this way are the cause of Our Lady’s hidden
wound. Her wound is a sharing in
Christ’s wounds, as well as all human wounds which are mystically contained in
hers. Through this sharing, she is
united to Christ’s Passion, and with her the whole Church, first as redeemed,
then as instrument of the fulfilment of Redemption in the whole of mankind.
8) Eucharistic
Heart of Jesus:
In the Blessed Sacrament, in Christ’s
sacramental Body, Christ’s Heart is really present, and His Divine Love, as
well as His human mercy, is present through concomitance, in His Heart. In heaven, Our Lady is, with her glorious body,
associated with her risen Son, she is also united to His sacramental Presence
through the union of her Heart with Christ’s Eucharistic Heart. This union is sealed by the Holy Spirit who
fills their Hearts. So her Heart is also
Eucharistic.
This union makes the heart of
9) The
Eucharistic University:
Christ is a living and acting divine
Person in the Blessed Sacrament. To the
people who submit themselves to His action, He gives light for their
intelligence; so that, when they study before the Blessed Sacrament, whatever
the subject of their study, they receive knowledge at a higher level because
they share in Christ’s Wisdom in the submission of their intelligence to His
Love.
10) Philosophy of
Divine Love:
All
philosophies are the result of human research into various things to discover
their ultimate causes. When philosophers
submit their intelligence to reality, God, acting through the being of things,
gives them a share in His truth; but when they substitute their own ideas for
the objective knowledge which is given to them by God through these particular
things, their intelligence becomes independent and subjective, and they wander
into the domain of error. An error
cannot cope with reality, because it does not come from an experience of
reality. Objective truth is not
complete, when the subjective experience of one’s self is not integrated into
it. Objective knowledge of subjectivity
through experience is the refutation of subjectivism which is the cause of all
errors through its independence from experience. Even when a philosophy is true, it remains
incomplete, because it does not discover the ultimate cause of being: it is a
limited sharing in God’s Wisdom.
The Philosophy of Divine Love is the
perfect philosophy. When we speak of
God’s philosophy, the word does not mean the research of Truth, but the
identity of Love and Truth in God. Out
of His Love, God gave a gratuitous participation in His Wisdom through faith,
and in His Truth through Revelation: in this way the human mind is elevated on
both sides: subjective and objective.
Using its own philosophy, the human mind tries to discover more and more
the divine Truth which is contained in Revelation; in this theological work the
necessary condition to better perceive this content is a submission of reason
to faith: this act of obedience is love, and a participation in Divine Love.
A deeper participation in Divine Love,
under the motion of the Holy Spirit, leads to a deeper sharing in Divine
Wisdom. Human intelligence discovers new meanings within Divine Revelation,
through a perception of the Divine Love Himself by mystical experience. In such a way, the Holy Spirit communicates
the Philosophy of Divine Love itself, which is complete and perfect truth. However, this communication is given in the
obscurity of faith, and remains always limited by the limits of human
intelligence, as well as by the measure of the gift of God. Coming from an experience of God, this
philosophy is superior to all philosophies which come only from an experience
of things.
11)
Song of Divine Love:
Praise is an act of intelligence,
which, under an impulse of love, expresses its admiration. When the object of the knowledge transcends
the capacity of its comprehension, from its own knowledge it tries to express
this transcendence. This link between
knowledge and praise is similar to the link between the shared philosophy of
Divine Love and the Song of Love. This
Song is a pure praise which expresses, through a symbolic language, that which
transcends the creature’s capacity in its experience of Divine Love. This praise of all divine perfections, all divine
works, as experienced by the creature, is admiration, thanksgiving, joy,
because God alone is its object.
Reparation concerns human sins, even though it is a result of love. All that God has done for mankind, salvation,
sanctification, glorification, is a cause of praise and is the source of the
Song of Love.
12)
Enlightenment:
The submission of all knowledge, drawn
from an experience of things, to Christ’s light in the Eucharistic University,
leads to a new age of enlightenment, the ultimate cause of which is Divine
Love.
3. How to understand the small cross of the
Crucified Innocence.
This cross is symbolic,
and it must not be looked at as an historical representation of Christ
Crucified. Christian doctrine explains
the connection between both sides of the small cross. The little cross is the
symbol of two successive states of mankind; on the one side mankind as slave of
sin and death and on the other side mankind which Christ redeems and
raises. The crucified child on the first
side is a symbol of human crucified innocence.
We must not forget that mankind was created by God in the state of
original innocence; the perfect order of humanity as an image of God, through
grace. Original sin has crucified this
original innocence, and all sins, which follow original sin, cause innumerable
disorders and sufferings in mankind throughout the ages. Original innocence is crucified in mankind
all over the world by our sins and by the sins of others in our times.
Christ as Creator
contains, pre-existent in Himself, all men of all times, who subsist with Him
in His individual human nature. In such
a way, Christ takes upon Himself all their pains, which are the punishment of
their sins. Through His obedience unto
the Cross and death, in Him they expiate their sins, and through His
Resurrection, their original innocence is restored in a participation of
eternal life, which is grace (Rom 5:23).
The triumphant child on the second side of the cross is the symbol of
this restoration.
Thus Christ’s Crucified
Innocence is Triumphant in their crucified innocence. Now, as St. Paul says: “It makes me happy to
be suffering for you now and in my own body, to make up all the hardships that
still have to be undergone by Christ for the sake of His Body, the Church” (Col
1:24). Each Christian must freely share
in Christ’s Redemption through faith, baptism, and all the sacraments; and
being a member of the Mystical Body of Christ, he must apply in his life, under
the Holy Spirit’s impulse, through abnegation, obedience and trials of all
kinds, the restoration of his personal original innocence. More precisely, it is Christ who operates in
him through grace this transformation into the likeness of His Divine Crucified
Innocence, since the work has already been fulfilled by Him on the Cross. What was virtually completed by Christ on the
Cross, is actually completed by every Christian who takes up his own cross
until the end of time. Through
conversion from sin to faith, hope, and charity, Christ takes us into His Divine
Crucified Innocence and He is triumphant in our crucified innocence. Thus the passage from one side of the small
cross, to the other side is explained on scriptural and theological grounds.
Childhood is the symbol
of innocence. Because we really are
children of God, and children before God, because to be admitted into the
kingdom of heaven, we must become like children in the Child Jesus. The little cross represents Christ’s Triumph
as His Childhood’s triumph, and our crucified innocence in the Divine Innocence
Crucified, is represented as Triumphant
in the Child Jesus.
So the small cross
symbolises a complete synthesis of the Way of Divine Innocence.
4. The
Mystery of the Child Jesus.
At
the time of the birth of Jesus (Lk 2:10), the angels announced to the Shepherds
a great joy: a Saviour was born to them.
Like all men, the Shepherds were sinners with an unhappy conscience,
yearning for salvation. They went and found
a child laid in a manger. A child’s
property is innocence: that is the reason why sinners are attracted by
childhood. They love in a child this
innocence which they have lost, and which they secretly hope to recover. The Child Jesus is a Saviour, because He is
not only innocent, but Divine Innocence Incarnate, coming to this world to save
sinners from their sins, as it was said to St. Joseph (Mt 1:21).
Divine
Innocence is God’s Goodness itself, considered as opposed to every evil. It adds to the notion of perfect Goodness a
negation excluding any evil. As God is
absolute Goodness, making only good, Innocence implies a comparison with
creation, from only which every evil comes.
Because the creature is made from nothing, it keeps an intrinsic
potentiality to go back to nothing, to lose its given being, and to lose in
acting, the perfect being to which it is ordained: this loss is evil corrupting
actuality and activity. For a man, it is
death and sin, which is the fate of mankind from the original sin committed by
our first parents. Divine Innocence,
being opposed to evil in creation, is the principle of Divine Mercy, which
wants to liberate mankind from its subjection to death and sin.
The
Divine Act of Being is Divine Innocence and also Divine Love. Mercy is an extension of Love, which properly
wants Good, consequently wanting to suppress misery, because misery is a
deprivation of good in the creature.
Perfect mercy consists in taking upon oneself another’s misery, to
liberate him from his misery. Divine Mercy in Incarnation consists for Christ
to take upon Himself the misery of the death of mankind; furthermore He takes
upon Himself the spiritual misery of mankind, which is deprivation of beatific
vision; when He becomes a man, He deprives Himself from His divine glory, which
consists in being recognised as the Son of God.
The Incarnation is for Him an infinite humiliation. St. Paul writes: “Though He was in a divine
state, He did not vindicate His equality with God, but He annihilated Himself,
assuming the state of a slave, becoming like men and recognised as a man through
everything which was seen of Him; He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto
death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:7).
Being
the Creator, Christ contains pre-existing in Him all creatures, and among them,
all men. As He subsists in an individual
human nature, all men subsist also in this human nature. When Christ acts, suffers, dies and rises in
His human nature, all men in Him act, suffer, die and rise. In Christ, they undergo the pain of their
sins, death for their disobedience, humiliation for their pride willing to be
equal to God.
Just
as Divine Innocence is the principle of Love as Mercy, it is the principle of
Love as Justice. According to this Love
as Justice, Christ justifies sinners in Himself and destroys their sins through
His act of obedience and His act of humility.
So His Love as Justice is identified with His Love as Mercy, because it
frees sinners from their misery of guilt.
Likewise his Mercy is Justice, when He pays for them the debt of death
and humiliation.
Christ
is a Divine Person subsisting in an individual human nature. Being God who is His Act of Being, Christ
exercises His Divine Act of Being in His human nature. All states of His human life, all acts and
sufferings, are eternalised by His Divine Act of Being, even though they have
historically passed. So, although Christ
is an adult and no more a child according to His human history, He is actually
the Child Jesus according to His Divine Act of Being. Though Christ’s sacrifice as offered on the
Cross was ended by His death according to His human history, it remains actual
according to His eternal Act of Being.
It is “perpetuated along centuries, until Christ returns” in the
Eucharist, as the Second Vatican Council teaches (Const, Sacro. Sanctum
Concilium n.47).
The
Divine Act of Being, as “the power of the Most High, overshadowed the Virgin
Mary” (Lk 1:35), so that she conceived Christ and became the Mother of
God. According to the divine command
given to Joseph by the Angel, the Divine Act of Being made him Mary’s spouse
for ever, through his consent to receive her as his wife (Mt 1:20). Thus Christ’s Divine Act of Being constitutes
the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary, Joseph; the Holy Family is the source of the
Church, invisibly living in the Church, and acting in her members for their
salvation.
By
His Divine Act of Being Christ builds His Church on Peter as her
foundation. He teaches His Gospel, gives
His grace, and leads the people of God through her; through her visible
hierarchy and her visible sacraments, communicating the remission of sins and
eternal life, the fruit of His Passion and Resurrection.
Meanwhile,
invisibly, the Child Jesus attracts all men, through Mary and Joseph as His
instruments, to share in His Divine Innocence, which is His uncreated
grace. The eternal Child Jesus,
eternally crucified, is Divine Innocence Crucified. If people commit themselves to His Divine
Innocence Crucified, through the mediation of Mary and Joseph, in the Novitiate
of the Holy Family, He unites them to Himself, overshadows them with His Divine
Innocence, and gives them a sharing in His Divine Innocence Crucified and
Triumphant.
Nobody is more like the
Child Jesus’ Crucified Innocence than the children who are killed before birth
through abortion and embryo experiments.
Because of their likeness to His Divine Innocence Crucified and because
Divine Innocence is the principle of Divine Mercy and Divine Justice, Christ
Crucified gratuitously unites these Innocents with His own eternal Sacrifice. He involves them in His offering to the
Father, as He does in the Holy Eucharist, and justifies them at the moment of
their violent death, through the merciful gift of His sanctifying grace, making
them martyrs in Himself. In them, like
in the Mass, He actualises His own martyrdom. His Divine Innocence Crucified is triumphant
in their martyrdom.
Such is the mystery of
Divine Innocence, Incarnate in the Child Jesus, and Crucified in Christ’s
Passion, as well as in the suffering members of His Mystical Body, even in the
smallest ones, the children killed before birth, the little brothers and
sisters of the Child Jesus.
‘This cup is
the new Covenant in my blood, poured out for you’ [Lk.22: 20]
A covenant is an exchange of
loves. The New Covenant is situated in
Christ Himself. In Him God’s Love is
given to human nature: as a man Christ receives the Divine Being; and when He
gives his life in sacrifice on the Cross, He gives His human love to the
Father. Thus the original Covenant
between God and mankind, broken by the original sin of our first parents, is
restored in Christ’s blood, because all men of all times are included in
Christ, for they pre-exist in Him as their Creator, and subsist with Him in His
human nature.
Even though in the original
Covenant, mankind refused love to God, God’s Love is faithful to His Covenant
and continues to keep mankind within Himself, who created and who maintains in
being the whole universe. The Old
Covenant is an act of God’s Love, choosing a people from mankind to start again
with Him in an exchange of love. The
love that is required from the Jewish people is a human love because mankind is
deprived of the original justice, which is grace. The gifts which are promised by God’s Love
in the Old Covenant are on a human level, to which mankind is reduced by
original sin. However, within the
promise of a descendance was included the birth of Christ in whom the original
exchange of love, where God offered man a share in His Divine Life, would be
restored.
Mary is at the same time the summit
and the last fruit of the Old Covenant.
In her womb Christ was conceived by the operation of the Holy
Spirit. The New Covenant, which is the
union of the divine and human natures in the Person of the Son of God, starts
in her and from her. Since the Holy
Spirit as the Creator, contains pre-existing in Himself, all men as objects of
the Divine Love, and because the Holy Spirit is present in Mary’s heart and
moves it, she gave for all mankind’s sake through her ‘Fiat’, the consent of love
which makes her the Mother of the Savior.
Thus Mary is the link between the Old and the New Covenants, and the
human origin of the New Covenant. This
New Covenant begins in Mary’s womb and is achieved completely on the Cross, by
the supreme act of love for God and for all men through which Christ gave His
life for them.
This New Covenant in Christ’s Blood
is continued until the end of the world by the Holy Eucharist which perpetuates
and actualizes it everyday. Since His
visible presence on earth ended with his Ascension, Christ now gives His
sacramental Body and Blood to the Church as a source of divine life. In the Eucharistic communion, the New
Covenant is fulfilled in each of the faithful who is united with Christ by
it.
This personal union is part of a
collective union with Christ who created the Church by the gift of the Holy
Spirit to His Apostles, gathered with Mary on the day of Pentecost. The Church is a new People of God, united to
Him by the New Covenant through the Holy Spirit who gives birth in baptism to
adoptive sons of God. The Holy Spirit
realises in each baptized person the New Covenant achieved by Christ on the
Cross for all men pre-existing in Himself.
The Church becomes the Mother of the sons of God on earth, continuing
the motherly mission of Mary who engendered them pre-existing in Christ.
The source and perfection of the
Church is in the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. The original Covenant of God with the first
couple instituted the perfect order of things on a human level. This first couple lived, united by Divine
Love and shared through grace, the complimentary roles of man and woman. This original order is restored and elevated
in the Holy Family, who shares in Christ the life of the Holy Trinity: this
sharing achieves the new Covenant between God and mankind at its highest
level. It is a transformation of the
whole human society in Christ. This
transformation in Christ of the whole human society is made on two levels,
according to two levels of life: human life in the family and civil society,
supernatural life in the Church. On
both levels the Holy Family is the source and model of Christian life, because
the New Covenant through the Holy Family reaches all human persons as members
of the Church, and as members of the human family and civil society. The Holy Trinity lives in the Holy
Family. Jesus lives in those who agree
to receive this Trinitarian grace through the Holy Family. Thus the New Covenant reaches human families
through the Holy Family, giving to all men the role of Joseph, to all women the
role of Mary, and to all their members the life of Jesus, Son of God and Son of
man, source of unity.
The Novitiate of the Holy Family is
the Christian life at all levels, lived according to the Gospel, in the
dependence of the Holy Family. It is a
training of progress in virtue to reach the perfection of the New Covenant,
which is the reign of Divine Love in the Church, in the family, in civil society.
It sanctifies all roles, from the hierarchy of the Church to fatherhood and
motherhood in families, in Christ’s Unity.
Since Our Lord said that those who
are last on earth would be the first in heaven, we may consider the children
killed by abortion to have their place at the highest level of participation in
the New Covenant. They are perfectly
conformed to Christ’s Crucified Innocence by their crucified innocence; being
the most helpless; the most despised; the most forgotten; the least among all
men. God’s Mercy is everything in them
and reigns perfectly: in their martyrdom they reach the summit of the Novitiate
of the Holy Family and they are the preferred children of Mary and Joseph since
they are completely identified with Jesus.
Note: God is the Prime Lover in the
Covenant, the first effect of the Covenant is prevenient grace: In our first parents
In the Immaculate Conception.
In the martyrdom of unborn children.
The
theory of limbo forgets and neglects the Covenant. Through abortion the devil tries to undermine
the Covenant.
6. The Novitiate of the Holy Family for our
time.
The Pope, John Paul II, looking at
our times, spoke about the role of the Church in relation to
globalisation. This phenomenon is
generally considered firstly from an economic, and secondly from a political
point of view; in such a way however that the dignity of the human person is
forgotten and will eventually be destroyed, although it is of the highest
value. The Church is obliged to
vigorously defend the original order which God established when He created the
human person; that is to say its supreme dignity of being made in the image of
the Holy Trinity.
The commentary given by Cardinal
Ratzinger about the secret of
The human person has its origin in
the family. The original order of the
family, wounded by original sin, was restored in its perfection in the Holy
Family as in an individual family.
Starting from the individual Holy Family, Jesus, Mary and
Christ came in this world to fulfill
His Father’s Will, which is the original order of the family: that is the
reason why He was obedient to His human parents. He was conceived, born, educated, at
This development is called the
Novitiate of the Holy Family, because it is a progressive learning of the
divine order for men, women and priests, which is personified in Jesus, Mary
and
7. The New Order of the human family.
The mystery of the
Incarnation is first a mystery of humility.
The Holy Trinity used its divine power, which had made the whole
universe out of nothing, to reduce the Son of God to the lowest state of
mankind, childhood. The Divine Act of
Being makes Him at the same time Infinite God and a powerless Child.
For this purpose of
humility to be fulfilled, the Son of God chose a virgin from the people of
In the same way, the Son
of God chose a man from the kingly stem of
Thus the Holy Family is
formed by the Divine Act of Being which makes Jesus a Divine Person Incarnate,
which makes Mary His Mother, which makes Joseph His Guardian. Such is the divine order established forever
by the eternal Act of Being whose name is: ‘I Am’.
Because Jesus is, as God,
the Creator of mankind, He contains within Himself, eternally pre-existing in
Him, all men of all times. As
pre-existing in Him, they subsist with Him in His individual human nature. They are born in Him from the Virgin Mary,
who becomes their Mother in Christ. For
the same reason, they are entrusted to the care of Joseph, in Christ.
Because Christ is, as
God, His Divine Act of Being, which He exercises in both His natures, all
states of His life, all acts humanly done during His historical passage on
earth, are eternalised by His Divine Act of Being. So His Childhood is eternalised, even though
historically Jesus is no more a child.
Because the motherly
mission of Mary, and the fatherly mission of Joseph rely upon the Divine Act of
Being operating through them as its instruments, they are united with the
mission of Jesus as the Saviour. A
unique operation of salvation is operated by Christ, the One Saviour, with the
co-operation of Mary and Joseph. The
permanent order of salvation is the permanent mission of the Holy Family. No salvation is realised, outside this order. The whole of mankind is engendered by Mary
and set under the care of Joseph forever, as contained in the eternal Child
Jesus. All humanity are, in Christ,
members of the Holy Family.
In such a way, all humans
suffer in Christ’s Passion, die in Him on the Cross, are raised in Him, and
introduced with Him in glory. After His
Ascension, when all mankind pre-exists in Him in glory, Christ sends His Holy
Spirit to the Church. This Divine Act of
Being henceforth is present in Peter and in the Apostles, whom He previously
chose as instruments of His prophetic, priestly and kingly power. They will continue Christ’s mission of
Salvation among men of all times and everywhere.
They will actualise in
each person what has been achieved by Christ for this person pre-existing in
Him through predication, the sacraments and the government of the Church. The same Divine Act of Being is operating
through these persons as its visible instruments of salvation, and through the
invisible Holy Family.
Just as families are the
source of society, and live in society, the Holy Family is the source of the
Church, and lives in the Church really, though invisibly. The Church starts in the Child Jesus, since
all men pre-exist in Him. Mary and
Joseph are the first actual members of the Church as united with Christ by
their divine
The power of Mary and
Joseph in the Church is complementary to the sanctifying power of the
hierarchy, because it comes from the same Divine Act of Being of Christ. It disposes from inside, through the personal
holiness of the motherly and fatherly roles of Mary and Joseph, and through the
daily life of every human person, to be transformed by Christ’s grace into a
living member of His Mystical Body.
Mary and Joseph take care
of the Mystical Body of Christ as a continuation of their care of the body of
the Child Jesus, because the Church is the continuation of the Holy
Family. What the Holy Family does
invisibly, the Church does visibly: one life, and one principle of this life,
the Divine Act of Being of Christ, operating differently in each one according
to his proper mission. This is the real
and permanent New Order of the human family forever.
The Holy Family is not an
optional devotion. The Child Jesus is
not a reality of the past. The Holy
Family has not finished its mission on earth.
This mission constitutes the inner part of the public mission of the
Church until the end of time. It is
necessary for everybody to become conscious of this presence of the Holy Family
in the Church, to become a member of the Holy Family, because the Holy Family
really transforms every one into the image of the Son of God. Every man is a child compared to God. Nobody
can be saved if he does not become like a child (Mt 15:3). That is the reason
why the Holy Family transforms us into the living Child Jesus. We do not live in independence but the Child
Jesus lives in us, teaches us, leads us from inside, when Mary and Joseph take
care of His life in us. The Child Jesus
is the beginning and He is the end (cf. Rev 1:8).
The consequence of this
divine order, established in the Holy Family, and living in it, is that
everybody must introduce himself into this divine order. The Novitiate of the Holy Family is the way
of this introduction, because it restores the perfect natural order of the
family through the respective roles of men and women according to the roles of
Mary and Joseph between each other, and towards the Child Jesus. As Jesus makes, through His own grace, every
willing person a child of God, by the power of His Divine Act of Being
operating through His own human nature, Mary and Joseph are also active to
bring the same person to Christ, disposing them to receive grace from Him, as
instruments of His Divine Act of Being in a different way. As Mary and Joseph inseparably co-operate to
Christ’s action giving sanctifying grace and as the Divine Act of Being is the
unique principle and end of their associated different operations, everybody
ought to commit himself to the Holy Family, to become an actual member of the
Holy Family; since he was already a member of the Holy Family, as pre-existing
in Christ, engendered by Mary in Christ, and entrusted to Joseph in Christ. Our life in the Church is an actualisation of
what has been already achieved for all of us in the Holy Family, and what is
presently realised in us by the living Holy Family, and which requires our
commitment to it in every state of life, every vocation, springing from the
knowledge and consciousness of the divine order incarnated by God in the Holy
Family.
Our first parents,
originally were ordered to transmit under the action of prevenient grace, a
justified human nature, preserved from natural defects. The soul immediately submitted to grace, and
the body perfectly submitted to the soul, and through it, to the influence of
grace: consequently their offspring would have been conceived in prevenient
grace, and also immortal and immune from covetousness.
As a result of original
sin, they transmit a corruptible human nature, deprived of sanctifying grace,
of immortality and mastery over passions.
Through Mary and Joseph, Jesus remedies to the natural defects in the inferior
parts of the person, whereas He remedies to the deprivation of grace in the
superior part by the communication of His personal grace to the spiritual soul.
Mary and Joseph, under
the motion of Christ’s Divine Act of Being of which they are instruments,
operate in human persons to suppress the obstacles to their reception of grace,
resulting from original sin, i.e. death and covetousness. Christ, operating by His Divine Act of Being
through Mary and Joseph, transmits to these human persons the human likeness of
Mary as the Lord’s Maid (Lk 1:38) and of Joseph as the just man (Mt 1:19),
which submits them to His gift of grace.
Likewise, He perpetuates in these persons the respective roles of Mary
and Joseph between each other and towards the Child Jesus; these roles make
them instruments of Divine Love. Such is
the subordinate and auxiliary mediation of Mary and Joseph: to dispose subjects
to the reception of Christ’s grace and to its action.
Through this system of mediation, Jesus remedies, not only to human covetousness, but also to death as an obstacle to the reception of Christ’s grace. Children who die in the womb of their mothers are necessarily deprived of baptism and seemingly salvation. But under the motion of Christ’s Divine Act of Being, Mary and Joseph take care of dying children and submit them to the justifying power of Christ so that they can be saved.
8. Origin of the roles of Mary and Joseph in
the Novitiate of the Holy Family.
When God created mankind,
He was present in the first two persons, through prevenient sanctifying
grace. He was present in their souls,
and through their souls, in their body: the sanctifying prevenient grace
penetrated the whole human nature, from the spiritual soul to the body: so they
shared in the divine life. God was
present in them, not only as a principle of human life, but even as a principle
of a participation in the divine life.
God was present in their generative power, not only for the procreation
of human persons, but also to make their children His children, through the
gift of a seed of eternal life, which is grace.
After
original sin, mankind was separated from God and deprived of grace. God, whose Love is permanent, and who wants
to give eternal life to mankind, although mankind refused it, sent His Son to
become a man, and to save mankind from death and sin.
The
Son of God became a man like all men, being conceived and born of a woman,
Mary. The principle of His Conception is
the Holy Spirit. In the Incarnation, God
is again present in a human person, Mary, not only through grace, but in
Himself. In her Immaculate Conception
Mary was previously prepared to receive this new presence of the Son of God in
herself, by prevenient grace.
This
grace had the same effects as original grace had in our first parents: it
preserved her from original sin, from concupiscence especially. Her plenitude of grace penetrates and moves
her whole activity under the divine guidance.
The Son of God is present in her generative power to become, as a man,
principle of grace for all mankind. Her motherhood
is completely overshadowed by the Holy Spirit.
Her role as a mother is an effect of grace, which orders her perfectly
to Christ through charity.
The
role of Mary and the role of Joseph are effects of grace in the ordinary
activity of a woman and a man as subjects of this gratuitous gift, which is a
participation in the life of the Holy Trinity.
These
roles are effects of grace in the Church for persons who submit themselves
through the Sacraments to Christ’s grace, relying upon Mary’s and Joseph’s
intercession, especially in their motherhood and fatherhood. The result is that the roles of Mary and
Joseph are personified in such persons as subjects of Christ’s grace. These persons are within the communion of the
Holy Family and are united with the Holy Trinity, since they are Christ’s
members. Thus, the origin of the roles
of Mary and Joseph in the Novitiate of the Holy Family is Divine Love
transforming motherhood and the motherly role, and fatherhood and the fatherly
role, into Himself.
9. Our Lady of the Hidden and
Mystical Wounds.
I. Our Lady is always linked to
the Church as Mother: each time she is wounded, the Church is wounded. The motherhood of women and the fatherhood of
men are wounded and when their roles are disordered children are wounded, their
innocence crucified especially in abortion.
Our Lady comes close to her children, to their crosses, which are the
Cross of Christ. She instinctively knows
that every wound can be healed by the power of Christ's Wounds: this healing
which flows from Christ through the Sacraments of the Church. The awareness of the dignity of their roles
stops the wounding. Each time the divine
order of things is distorted by sin, the result is crucified innocence and many
wounds: which effect the whole body of Christ. Our Lady delights when she sees
our progress because it is our progression in her Son's Divine Innocence. Because of her continual intercession down
the centuries for us, her Son orders us to honor her Hidden and Mystical Wounds
(Mystical is intimately united with the Mystical Body, the
II. The eternal divine purpose was that all
things be subjected to God, so that He may be all in all (1Cor 15:28): which
means a union between God and His human creatures. In creation, our first parents were subjected
to God by sanctifying grace, and united to Him through faith, hope, and
charity. Being created in the image of
God, they were free in their love of God just as God loved them freely. There was an operative alliance between God
and mankind. It was operative as an
exchange of mutual love. However, our
first parents broke this alliance, rejecting subjection to God’s Wisdom and
Will, and they preferred to seek independently their good according to their
own thought and desire.
God’s Love, being
unchanged, wants the restoration of the primitive alliance, but at a higher
level. This new alliance would be, not
only operative, but entitative: which means that in One Divine Person, the Son,
divine nature and human nature would be united by one Divine Act of Being. However mankind’s consent is required to draw
up this new alliance.
As a partner in this new
alliance, God chose a Virgin from
The Holy Spirit is
identical to the Divine Act of Being, common to the Three Divine Persons. In the Divine Act of Being, all men are
contained as creatures pre-existing in their Creator. Mary also is contained in the Divine Act of
Being, and she is one with all men as such.
When the Holy Spirit comes upon her (Lk 1:35), first uniting her will to
Himself, her free consent is made as one with all mankind’s will to accept the
Incarnation. Thus, when she says: “Let
what you have said be done onto me” the new alliance between God and mankind is
prepared, through Mary’s mediation, on the side of mankind. Then, the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father and
the Son, actualises the generative faculty of Mary, when the Son takes her as
His mother, through that same Divine Act of Being. From her, He assumes into His Divine Person
an individual human nature; when Mary conceives the Son of God as her Son in
human nature, the new alliance of divine nature and human nature is completed.
The Son of God Incarnate,
Jesus Christ, subsists in His individual human nature, which is a part of His
Person. He exercises His Divine Act of
Being in it and through it. All men
pre-existing and contained in this Divine Act of Being, subsist and operate
with Christ, in it and through it. When
Christ acts, suffers, dies, rises, they act, suffer, die and rise in Him and
with Him.
Mary, being the Mother of
Christ, is the Mother of all men contained in Christ. As the Holy Spirit remains united to her operating
love in her Heart, she is united to all men by the same motherly love, which
unites her to Christ. Old Simeon
foretold her that a sword of sorrow would pierce her Heart (Lk 2:35): which was
the prophecy of Christ’s Passion, but also of all sufferings of mankind, her
children, through the centuries. Her
Compassion wounds her Heart: being the Mother of Christ, who is Divine Mercy,
she is the Mother of Mercy, wholly and perfectly merciful. She is united to her Son in His work of Mercy
by the Holy Spirit. She bears in her
Heart all the wounds of her children especially in our times when the plague of
abortion breaks all bounds, her Heart is wounded by the millions and millions
of children killed before birth.
Mary is subjected and
ordered by the Holy Spirit to Christ, not only as her Son, but also as the
Word, in whom she will see God. After
the Assumption, being glorified in soul and body, she sees in the Word all men,
her sons, actually living and suffering.
At the time of Christ’s Passion, the object of her Compassion was, not
only Christ, but all men contained as pre-existing in Christ. Then, her Heart was wounded, not only by
Christ’s sufferings, but also by the sufferings of all mankind in all times.
Historically, her
Compassion is ended and replaced by a sharing in Divine beatitude. Christ who, through the Holy Spirit, was the
principle of her Merciful Compassion at the time of His Passion, now uses her
as His instrument to apply, to actually suffering men, the effects of her
affective mercy: His Divine Act of Being, being eternal and co-existing for all
times, joins her historical Compassion as an instrumental cause to its present
effects. This explains why Our Lady
appears sometimes weeping and expressing her sorrows as present, showing her
Heart as wounded by mankind’s sins and sufferings. That is a presence as a cause to its actual
effects. Being the result of the mystery
of Christ’s Divine Act of Being operating through her, this presence is
mysterious: that is the reason why Mary is called the Mother of the Hidden and
Mystical Wounds.
10. Crucified innocence and Divine Innocence – the case of aborted
children.
Christ is Divine and
Crucified Innocence, because innocence means the state of somebody who has no
fault, no sin, no defect in his will.
Christ’s Crucified Innocence is shared by those who suffer and die in
Him and for Him, and above all by those who have not committed any actual sin,
that is to say children killed in the wombs of their mothers. They pre-existed in Christ dying for them and
for all mankind on the Cross, and Christ did not lose any of those who were
given to Him by His Father, except Judas and all those who refuse His
Salvation.
The aborted children were
created by God’s Love and God loves His image in them: He wants to elevate these images of Himself
by grace to be His children in the Son, who is His Divine image, because He
loves man like He loves Himself. When
they are killed by their parents contrary to the divine truth of life, they
share in Christ’s Crucifixion, and thus they have an external likeness to
Christ Crucified, which is the sacrament opening their souls to grace and
uniting them to Him. Their crucified
innocence becomes triumphant in Christ’s Divine Innocence, and in Christ they
have the Father as their Father.
Abortion tries to
suppress the filiation of the child, which is the image of the Divine
Filiation. Christ is at the same time
Son of God and Son of man; when the children are killed Christ is wounded,
because He loves them as Himself; His human filiation is wounded and His Mother
Mary is wounded in her Motherhood (the Mother Church and natural parents are
also wounded). The children are united
to Christ as the Crucified Son of God, and so they receive the adoptive
filiation in Christ. It is a baptism of
love in Christ’s Divine Innocence, which includes not only the Sacrament of
Baptism but also the Sacrament of Confirmation, making them martyrs who witness
to the truth of Christ, Son of God and Son of man.
In the first order of
creation, fatherhood and motherhood were chosen by God to be instruments of His
Divine Fatherhood in grace. They
continue this mission after original sin, on the human level only; but God
continues giving His grace to mankind in His Divine Son’s Incarnation; He
replaces the parents of the children when they deny them as their children, and
when they suppress the human filiation, making them images of His Crucified
Son, united to them by His Fatherly Love.
Afterwards the children draw their parents to this adoptive filiation
which they enjoy in the Kingdom of heaven, in the Communion of Saints.
11. Holy Innocents in our times.
A paper
written by Dom. Philippe Jobert O.S.B.,
monk of Solesmes Abbey
In his Encyclical Letter
"EVANGELIUM VITAE" (n.99) John-Paul II writes "Your child lives
in the Lord". With these words he
asserts the glory of the children slain in the wombs of their mothers.
A. Glory:
We must find
arguments, which demonstrate how this glory is applicable to these children.
1.
They are images of God, having a
spiritual soul from the first moment of their conception.
2.
They are innocent, not having
committed any actual sin. They are
deprived of supernatural justice only by original sin. Their natural will is not ordered to the
beatific vision.
3.
They are violently deprived of human
birth, and then of baptism, the ordinary means of salvation.
4.
In glory they are innumerable living
praises to the gratuitous Mercy of God, and intercessors for their slaughterers
and for all sinners.
This glory is
acceptable to God because:
1.
Holy Scripture reveals His universal
salvific Will (Mt. 18,14; 1 Tim: 2,4; 2 Pet: 3,9), to which there is no
obstacle in the souls of the slain children.
2.
The cases of Jeremiah (Jer: 1,5) and
of St John the Baptist (Lk: 1,15) show that God can freely sanctify by grace a
child in the womb of His mother. The
similar case of Mary is a dogma of faith: viz. the Immaculate Conception.
3.
Christ poured out His blood and gave
His life on the Cross for all men to be saved.
Being the Creator, He contains, pre-existing in Himself, all
creatures. With Christ, who is a Divine
Person subsisting in an individual human nature, all men, pre-existing in this
Divine Person, subsist in His individual human nature. Therefore, when Christ operates, suffers and
dies, all men operate, suffer and die with Him. Among them the unborn infants are virtually
saved: to be actually saved, it is necessary only that God's grace be granted
to them before their actual death, since they have already died virtually in
Christ on the Cross.
4.
Christ said several times that the
smallest ones and children are dearest to His heart. Since this power of salvation is not limited
to the Sacraments, He anticipates for these preferred ones the gift of grace,
which they cannot otherwise receive.
However, the
strongest argument for the glory of aborted children seems to be the Divine
Logic of Love. Notwithstanding God's
supreme freedom and the gratuitous nature of salvation, there is an extremely
deep connection between the mystery of Divine Love and the glory of slain
children according to the three levels of God's Love which are distinguished by
their effects:
1.
Love of charity: through which God
wills that all men become members of Christ, united to Him, conformed by
adoptive filiation to His image as God's Son in glory.
2.
Love of justice: through which God
wants the glory of all men as due in justice to the Blood poured out by Christ
for them. Love of justice also for the
children, cruelly deprived of the ordinary means of salvation.
3.
Love of mercy: through which God has
given His Son as a ransom to sin and death for the liberation of all men ...
and who has a greater misery than these children? Even the greatest sinners, and among them
the abortionists, can at any moment until the last second before death, be
converted from their sins by grace changing their free will; but these
innocents, not having the exercise of free will, are deprived even of this
possibility.
God, who is Love,
created mankind with the gift of natural life to be the matter for the gift of
eternal life. There is no necessity
within human nature to receive grace, which is eternal life. Nor is there any disposition to receive
grace. There is simply a spiritual
ability to be gratuitously elevated to share in the Life of the Holy Trinity,
which infinitely transcends human nature.
If human life is
supernaturally ordered towards eternal life, this comes only from the divine
purpose of Love, which attracts human life to Itself. This purpose can neither be frustrated nor
thwarted. If the forces of evil try to
obstruct the divine plan by killing the unborn, these forces of evil are
overcome by the Logic of Love, anticipating the gift of grace before the death
of the unborn. We must not fear
exaggeration when we speak of the infinity of God's Love transcending our
knowledge (Eph: 3,19), and of the power of His desire for universal salvation,
especially in favour of the innumerable innocents killed through abortion.
B. Martyrdom:
Since they are
killed, is it possible to call them martyrs?
Martyrdom means witness to Jesus Christ, God and Man, borne at the price
of human life. It is the most heroic act
of faith, hope and charity, implying a voluntary preference for eternal life,
and a renunciation of earthly life. The
martyrs are perfectly similar to Christ, the King of martyrs, who was condemned
to death and crucified for His witness to the truth of His Divinity. This likeness to Christ is the reason for an
extension of the title of martyr to those who were killed for their
relationship to Christ, even if they were not free to choose Him. The Holy Innocents were slaughtered by Herod,
who wanted to kill Christ: formally Christ was martyred in each of them. They were witnesses to Christ as Messiah by
their blood, without any possibility of willing it.
We now wish to
compare the case of unborn children to that of the Holy Innocents; but is there
a relationship between them and Christ as regards their death? Their murderers try to suppress their
filiation to a father and a mother. This
filiation is an image of the divine Filiation of Christ. Furthermore it is similar to the human
filiation of Christ, who called Himself the Son of man. However, the slaughter of the unborn is not
aimed at the suppression of Christ’s filiation as such, and so, from this point
of view, the victims of abortion cannot be considered martyrs.
The same answer
can be opposed to the argument based on life.
Christ said: "I am the Life" (Jn 14,6). The life of the unborn is an image of, and
participation - if remote - in Christ as Life, but this relationship is
extraneous to the intention of abortionists.
We
cannot therefore use only the subjective likeness to Christ of these children
as innocent persons as proof of martyrdom.
This proof must be looked for elsewhere to be objective.
Aborted children
are martyrs for the divine truth about life.
"Thou shalt not kill." This commandment of God is revealed in
Holy Scripture (Ex: 20,13); it is also written in the heart of every human
person, as a part of natural law. Those who terminate the life of the unborn
willingly transgress this divine law; and so objectively the unborn are
rendered victims, although they do not have any opportunity of choosing to die
for the truth about life. This
objectively confers on their death the formal notion (ratio formalis) of
martyrdom.
Some may wonder
how God can consider so important something as tenuous, as frail and as
insignificant (in the sight of many people) as a human embryo at the time of
its conception. However, it must be
remembered that Christ poured out His Blood for the soul, which gives the
embryo its spiritual and corporal life.
Furthermore, to understand the seriousness of the precept "Thou
shalt not kill", it must not be forgotten that human life is the necessary
matter for the reception of the gratuitous gift of eternal life. To suppress human life is to prevent God from
giving grace. In the light of the Logic
of Love, no crime is worse than to render impossible the connection between
earthly and eternal life, a connection which is established gratuitously by
God's Will.
According to His
universal Will of salvation, God prevents the break of this connection by the
precious gift of sanctifying grace, at the very moment of the murder of the
unborn children. Indeed, these children
belong to the Love of God who created them.
They belong to the Love of Christ who saved them on the Cross, when they
pre-existed and subsisted in His Crucified Humanity. They belong especially to Christ as embryos
because, not having the use of their free will, they have no
self-determination. They have only human
nature, and God's
Christ Himself
gives a witness to His divine truth about life through their death, because
this death continues His own death on the Cross. Mary, the Mother of the Hidden and Mystical
Wounds, becomes actually their mother.
Because Christ is a martyr in them, while assuming their death as His
own death, they are actually martyrs in Christ.
The Church, as Mystical Body of Christ, gives a voice to their witness
when she proclaims them as martyrs and as her children.
In this way, the
Victory of Christ over sin and death is complete and fully manifested by this
innumerable crowd of martyrs. Likewise,
the grandeur of the plan of salvation, the power of Christ's Blood, and the
infinity of the Mercy of God who conceived it, are proclaimed.
Thus God who
created the universe and mankind for the glory of His Mercy, reveals supremely
this Mercy, not only in giving grace to the unborn before they are deprived of
life, but above all in giving them the glory of martyrdom, since their death is
configured to Christ's death as a witness to divine Truth.
Through their
death as martyrs, they become members of the Mystical Body of Christ who
sanctifies them. They are sanctified,
not outside, but inside the Church. She
is their mother, not through the Sacrament of Baptism, but in claiming them as
her glorious sons through a baptism of blood.
She gives their blood a voice proclaiming the divine truth of life, the
glory of Divine Mercy, and the power of Christ’s Blood.
Christ Himself,
as God's Word living in the glorified children, speaks through their blood as a
witness to the divine Truth about life. Furthermore Christ lives in the Church
as God's Word when the Church speaks. He
proclaims the children as members of the Church when she, recognising them as
martyrs, identifies their witness with Christ's witness.
God the Father
generates His Son when He expresses Himself in His Word. The world was created by the Word of God (Jn:
1,3), who became a man through Mary's "Fiat". The Word of God gives birth to the slain
children in the Church, their Virgin Mother, when she proclaims them as her
glorious sons: it is a generation by word.
As in Baptism there is a sacred word joined to water (Eph: 5,26), which
gives birth to God's adoptive sons. As
the parents, in the name of their child, confess their faith and renounce the
deeds of Satan,
Thus, immediate
justification of the children in their mother's womb does not in any way
deprive the Church of her saving mission, because this proclamation is itself a
necessary act of the Church in making their witness heard by all people. Although they already live in the Lord (EV.
n.99), they are not yet born in glory, so long as the Church has not asserted
this glory. Through this assertion,
which gives them birth in glory, she becomes their Mother.
This proclamation
is not only a glory for the children, but above all for God, for Christ
Crucified, and for the Church. Their
witness glorifies the absolute gratuitousness of their salvation by God because
they cannot freely co-operate with that salvation.
It is a glory
also for us; since in the Holy Eucharist we are in communion with all who are
contained in Christ, not least with the glorious martyred children.
Post scriptum: “Can the Magisterium of the Church
acknowledge children killed in abortion as companions of the Holy Innocents and
therefore as martyrs?”
The
whole argument of this cause is founded on the basis of the universality of the
Salvific Will of God. It implies two
main consequences:
1. Salvation is
considered in its principle, which is the Mercy of God, and the justification
which Christ achieves on the Cross: it is God’s work.
2. Thus, this
work of God has no limits: it is universal in itself, offered to all men. The
limits come only from men who resist the salvific power of Christ’s Blood.
It
is under the light of this universal salvific power, that the case of unborn
children must be considered. Not having
the use of their freewill, they do not resist or limit the effects of the
universality of Christ’s power of salvation.
Christ does everything to suppress the power of sin, which He has
defeated on the Cross; His victory over original sin is absolute and
definitive. His victory over death,
which is fulfilled by resurrection, begins in the gift of grace, the
resurrection of souls, to the children at the moment of their violent
death. The result of this salvific work
of Christ for the children is a glory for God’s Mercy and for Christ alone,
because nothing can be related to human co-operation in it.
The
same reason must be invoked for unborn children’s martyrdom. Martyrdom is a divine grace, which is given
to some persons who co-operate with their freedom; so it becomes a personal act
of the highest charity. In the case of
the children, there is no personal co-operation, for they have not the use of
their freedom. Martyrdom is exclusively
a gratuitous gift of Christ, giving of Himself as the King of martyrs, to
continue His witness to divine Truth, through all unborn children. There is no place for an exception, either
on the part of Christ, or on the part of the children, who conform to His
likeness in death to bear witness to the truth about life. This martyrdom is universal in itself, for it
is a participation of all children in Christ’s martyrdom.
This
universality of salvation and martyrdom in the case of unborn children is so
essential, that to look for an individual case of martyrdom in one child who is
killed in abortion “in odium fidei”, would completely miss the point.[1]
For in such a case, the universal salvific Will of God and Christ’s martyrdom
are not taken into account. The charism
of martyrdom is reduced to the human level, and to the exceptional human
conditions of the violent death of one person only: and the glory of martyrdom
would be received by this person, not by God’s Mercy and Christ Crucified
alone.
In the interpretation of
the evangelical revelation of the universal salvific Will of God, there is a
continued tradition of progression from
12. Theological
arguments for the martyrdom of children killed
before birth.
With
regard to the salvation for unbaptised persons in general, the Second Vatican
Council says: “Those who, through no
fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, but who
nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and moved by grace, try in their
actions to do His Will as they know it, through the dictates of their
conscience, those too may achieve eternal salvation. Nor shall divine
Concerning
children killed by abortion, the Encyclical Evangelium Vitae, according to the
Latin translation (
Mat.
18:14: “So it is not the will of my Father who is in
heaven that one of these little ones should perish.”
1
Tim.2:3-44: “This is good, and acceptable in the sight of
God our Saviour, who desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of
the truth.”
2
Pet.3:9: “The Lord is not slow about His promise as
some count slowness, but is forbearing towards you, not wishing that any should
perish, but that all should reach repentance.”(RSV)
From
these words we grasp that, in the eternal thought and Will of God, the creation
of every human person, and the gift of human life, is ordered to eternal
life. Because of God’s transcendence,
this divine design is fulfilled by the gratuitous gift of a sharing in the
divine nature, which is sanctifying grace: 2 Pet 1:4, “You are to share the
divine nature”.
In
the divine design, the children killed by abortion pre-exist[2]
in the divine Word, to be created and to be assimilated into Him by grace,
becoming children of God and seeing Him: 1
John 3:2. “We are sons of God even now, and what we shall be hereafter
has not been made known as yet. But we
know that, when He comes, we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is”.
When
the Word becomes a man, and subsists in an individual human nature, the children,
pre-existing and subsisting in Him, subsist with Him in His individual
nature. Everything done and suffered by
Christ is also done and suffered by them, who are contained in Him. Thus, they are redeemed and justified in
advance, in the death of Christ on the Cross.
All
these conclusions are certainties, resulting directly from public Revelation,
the teaching of the Church and classical theology. However, they cannot be
considered as the ultimate truths about the state of the children killed by
abortion, for the Holy Spirit always leads the Church to a deeper understanding
of the Divine Truth, once and for all revealed by Christ and His Apostles. The Second Vatican Council says: “The
perception of the things and of the words which the tradition conveys,
increases either through contemplation and study of the believers who meditate
on them in their heart or by interior intelligence of the experience of
spiritual realities”. (Dei Verbum n.8)
Private revelations are
such experiences. According to the deep and precise commentary of Cardinal
Ratzinger about the Secret of Fatima, which gives rules of interpretation on
private revelations, we are authorised to consider that these revelations can
make certain truths more explicit, which are contained implicitly in public
Revelation. They add nothing to public Revelation, which is complete and
definitive (Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 67), but they draw our
attention to some points of Christ’s teaching, which are more useful in our
times. The criterion of the value of private revelations is that they point to
the salvation of souls in Christ.
Precisely
in our times, the plague of abortion, which devastates many countries in the
world, and especially the most ancient Christian ones in Europe, endangers the
salvation of souls; for abortion is a “heinous crime” (Gaudium et Spes, n. 51).
A private revelation shows the way to restrain, and even to stop this
plague. If the Church declares that all
the children killed by abortion are martyrs, she will have in heaven a
countless crowd of intercessors, who have the power to obtain from Divine Mercy
the conversion of their murderers. At
the same time, through the voice of their Mother the Church, they will be an
eloquent witness to the Divine Truth about life for which they died, from every
nation in the world.
This
private revelation calls Our Lord Jesus Christ ‘Divine Innocence Crucified’,
and shows the victims of voluntary abortion as crucified innocence. Thus they
share in Christ’s Victory over sin and death, as members of His Mystical Body
in heaven, since they shared in His Cross.
The
children have original sin, which is a privation of original justice. They receive a Baptism of Love, according to
this private revelation. The meaning of
this baptism of Love can be discovered under the light of the Divine purpose of
universal salvation. God is Love. God is
the prime Lover. God did everything that
was possible and even impossible, such as taking the nature of a slave and
dying on the Cross, out of His love for men, to fulfil His purpose of universal
salvation. Baptism of Love is Christ’s
Baptism. Firstly, because Christ, as the
Son of God, is Love: “He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire”
(Mat 3:12). Then, because Christ, as the
Son of man, is baptised: “There is a baptism I must needs be baptised with, and
how impatient I am for its accomplishment”(Lk.12:50). This baptism, of which
John’s baptism was the prefiguration, is Christ’s Passion, which He suffered
for all men, pre-existing and subsisting in Him. “Greater love has no man than
this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (Jn.15:13).
Christ
gives a participation in His Love, both divine and human, through His Baptism
which washes all sins away, and first of all original sin, and justifies by
sanctifying grace: “The Love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy
Spirit, whom we have received” (Rom.5:5).
The
Baptism of Love is given by divine Love to every human person who shares in
Christ’s Baptism, as He Himself said: “You will be baptised with the baptism I
am to be baptised with” (Mk 10:38). This
gift is granted in various ways. First, the sacramental way: “We who were taken
up into Christ by baptism, have been taken up, all of us into His death”
(Rom.6:3). A second way is the witness of a death suffered for Christ, which
unites the martyr to Christ Himself through charity: “Whoever acknowledges me
before men, I too will acknowledge him before my Father who is in heaven”. (Mt
10:32) “It is the man who loses his life
for my sake that will save it” (ibid. 39).
If the martyr was not baptised, he receives the Baptism of Love through
a baptism of blood. If somebody dies
without baptism of water, but having the desire for this baptism he belongs to
Christ through this desire which is an effect of the Holy Spirit: he receives
the Baptism of Love through a baptism of desire.
The
unborn children do not receive the baptism of water. Having only original sin,
but no actual sin, since they have not the use of their freewill, there is no
obstacle in their soul to the Baptism of Love: their natural desire of
happiness is able to receive sanctifying grace and the gift of the Holy
Spirit. God is the Prime Mover of human
nature and He orders it to Himself implicitly through this natural desire of
happiness. Moreover there is someone who makes up for the children’s inability
to desire baptism explicitly: Mary, as Mother of Christ is Mother of all men
pre-existing and subsisting in Christ.
The Holy Spirit came upon her (Lk.1:35) to make her not only the Mother
of Christ and of all men, but also the intercessor for universal salvation. He
dwells in her Heart forever. As the
Creator of all men, He contains them pre-existing within Himself as objects of
Divine Love and as subjects of the gift of Himself. At the foot of the Cross, Mary’s Heart was
pierced by a sword of pain (Lk.3:35): She became the Mother of the Hidden and
Mystical Wounds, as this private revelation calls her. Being moved by the Holy
Spirit, her Heart, moved by the distress of unborn children, prays for their
salvation, to obtain from the Father’s Mercy the gift of sanctifying grace:
thus, they receive a baptism of desire, through Mary’s desire for them. The same Spirit moves the Church to continue
on earth the motherly mission of Our Lady in Heaven.
Above
all, they receive the Baptism of Love through a baptism of blood, which unites
them to Christ Crucified. They are
killed for the divine Truth about life, which is printed in every human soul,
and revealed in the Decalogue: “Thou shalt not kill”. They are martyrs to the
Gospel of life; for human life is the necessary receptacle of the gratuitous
gift of eternal life, according to the divine purpose of Love for mankind.
United
to Christ as witnesses to the divine Truth transgressed by their murderers,
they are taken by Him as members of His mystical Body, because their innocent
death actualises their participation in His own Passion. Christ Himself bears witness and gives His life
for truth within them and through them, moved by the Holy Spirit. As Christ perpetuates the memorial of His
death in the Mass He perpetuates His Martyrdom through theirs. Thus, their crucified innocence is perfectly
integrated in Christ’s Crucified Innocence, because not yet having freewill,
they are perfectly moveable in their natural will by God’s Love. Christ’s Blood “which is more eloquent than
Abel’s”. (Heb 12:24) speaks through their blood, which is their visible
witness. Finally, Christ is a martyr in
them; “When you refused it to one of the least of my brethren here, you refused
it to me” (Mt 25:45).
Unborn
children are children of God in heaven, but they are not yet born as children
of the Church in this world. The Church
becomes their Mother, when She claims them as her children from all nations in
the world, whatever the religion of their parents. When She utters that they are martyrs in
Christ, She gives them birth publicly.
Through her voice, their witness reaches the ends of the earth; and they
become missionaries, preaching God’s word: “Thou shalt not kill”, for the
conversion of their murderers. Their
numberless army will stop the assaults of abortion.
In
heaven, they praise God’s Mercy, who alone saved them by Christ’s merits. The
Word Incarnate, who was their witness at the time of their martyrdom, is now
their praise because they are forever members of His Mystical Body. Their thanksgiving for the Baptism of Love
which was granted to them, obtains from Divine Mercy a greater extension of
sacramental baptism to children who escaped death before birth, because it is
the same Baptism of Love under a visible form, the same purification by
Christ’s Blood, signified by water. The
Baptism of Love, source of all baptisms (baptism of water, baptism of desire,
baptism of blood) not only does not diminish the importance of the sacramental
baptism, but reinforces it in manifesting the necessity for all men to be
integrated in Christ’s Crucified Innocence triumphant. Unborn children are the
first models of this integration.
This
private revelation[3]
shows explicitly the marvels that are implicitly contained within the Father’s
Mercy, to whom “Evangelium Vitae” commends unborn children. To understand the
Divine Logic of Love which binds Divine Mercy and the martyrdom of unborn
children, it is necessary to use the judgement by connaturality, for this logic
transcends human reason. Created charity
is a participation in Uncreated Charity, and moves believing intelligence in
two ways: first, by a perception of things contained within Divine Love; then
by an impulse to join a predicate to a subject, to form a judgement about the
perceived things. Such a judgement
introduces us into a deeper meaning of public Revelation, but also to a genuine
interpretation of private revelations, manifesting the harmony between each,
which leads to a development of doctrine.
At
this point, it is necessary for an intervention of the third way mentioned by
“Dei Verbum, n.8 ”: the charism of authority given to the Successors of the
Apostles and particularly to the Successor of St. Peter to utter a
pronouncement about this development of Christian doctrine.
13. The Holy
Sacrifice of the Mass and the claiming of the slaughtered children.
The Holy Sacrifice of the
Mass perpetuates the Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. All the parts of the rite are ordered to this
central act, in its sacramental representation, and to its manifestation.
The Liturgy of the Word begins with a penitential act. We regret
publicly our sins; not only our personal sins but the sins of all mankind,
which have offended God. Among these
sins is the monstrous slaughter of children in the womb of their mothers. We ask God for His pardon, for His Divine
Mercy for us, for all sinners, and for the perpetrators of these crimes of
abortion. Divine Mercy has cleansed the
children who were conceived with original sin, in associating them with
Christ’s Sacrifice as martyrs; and they are intercessors for the forgiveness of
all sins.
Kyrie Eleison: The Mercy of God is proclaimed at the beginning
of the Mass as the principle of the total mystery of salvation: the glory of
the children is the most perfect
effect of Divine Mercy.
The Gloria in excelsis Deo is a hymn of praise and thanksgiving to the
Holy Trinity for its work of salvation.
By God’s Love, His good Will towards men brought peace to the world:
peace between God and men by the atonement of all sins realised by Christ
Crucified. The children killed before
birth, which are a huge part of mankind, are not excluded from this work of salvation. They enjoy eternal peace in glory with Christ
their Savior who took away the sins of the world.
The Opening Prayer
gathers all the wishes of the members of the liturgical assembly: these wishes
converge always to grant eternal life, through grace and the practice of
virtue, especially charity for God and for neighbour. To the children killed before birth, God
granted grace at the moment of their death to enable them to be witnesses to
the Gospel of life in Christ; they pray for us in the Communion of Saints, so
that we might join them in eternal life through the gifts of Divine Mercy.
In the Liturgy of the Word
we are taught the truth about God’s mysteries, and especially about
salvation. This work of salvation, which
Christ achieved on earth, is to be completed with our co-operation during life,
because all divine gifts come to us through our earthly life. The children killed before birth fulfil all
this at the moment of their death, when Christ takes them into Himself, to bear
witness to truth through their innocence, especially to the truth about life.
The profession of faith
summarizes this teaching in our assent to truth. We believe in the Father who in His image
created us and the children killed before birth. We believe in Our Lord Jesus Christ, the only
Son of God, Image of God, who became man for our salvation, was crucified,
died, and rose again: all men are comprised in this work of salvation, and even
the children: Seated at the right hand of the Father, He will judge everyone. Those who have killed the children will know
that which they perpetrated against Christ (Matt 25:40). We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Giver of
life, the earthly life, the eternal life, which the children enjoy forever
among all the other martyrs. The Holy
Spirit who has spoken through the prophets, speaks through their prophetic role
of witness to Divine Mercy. We believe in the Church, who gives birth to them,
as their Mother, through a baptism of blood, which purifies them from original
sin. We look for the resurrection of the
dead: the children will be raised for the life of the world to come, among all
the saints.
In the Liturgy of the
Eucharist, we first offer the matter of Christ’s Sacrifice, as a sign of our
offering of ourselves with humble and contrite hearts, in order to be received
by God, which is the meaning of sacrifice: sacrifice for sins, because we are
sinners. We need the forgiveness of our
sins, through Christ’s Sacrifice on the Cross.
Sacrifice of communion, when having been reconciled with God, we share
in the sacramental Body and Blood of Christ, which unites us with His offering
of Himself to His Father. Holocaust,
when being united with Christ through Love we are consumed by the fire of the
Holy Spirit in Christ’s Sacrifice, for the praise and glory of the name of
God. The children are sharers in all
these levels of sacrifice, as innocent members of the Body of Christ Crucified
and of witnesses to Divine Mercy for them.
The prayer over the gifts is
a recapitulation of all offerings, in order to please God, and to obtain His
grace for the whole Church: which is united with the sacrifice of praise and
thanksgiving of the children in the heavenly Church.
The Preface is the entrance
into the Eucharistic Prayer. It is a
praise of all the marvels operated by God, and ends in the angelic praise of
the Divine Sanctity. The children in
heaven sing with the angels the praise of Divine Mercy, which made them
participants in this divine Sanctity.
The Eucharistic Prayer,
following the Sanctus, continues this praise of the divine Sanctity. Uniting the whole Church on earth and in
heaven and especially the martyrs, among whom are the children, it prepares for
the imminent actualization of Christ’s Sacrifice on the Cross. This expresses a fervent hope for peace in
this life, preservation from damnation, and for admission among those God has
chosen as His children in heaven.
Then, the account of the
Last Supper shows and realizes what Our Lord said and did to perpetuate His
Sacrifice, through the transubstantiation of the bread and wine. In His Sacrifice, all men are contained (cf.
Is 53:4-5; Hos 6:1-3), and even the children, who are forgotten because they
are not born. In Christ they offer
themselves; in Christ they are consecrated in Truth as His witnesses, and their
salvation is operated because they are innocent. From the actual and sacramental presence of
the Sacrifice of the Cross, its power radiates all over the world and
throughout all centuries, to unite all children killed before birth to Christ
Crucified and Risen, as martyrs.
After the Consecration, the
Church unites her own offering in thanksgiving for Christ’s Sacrifice,
celebrating the memory of the whole paschal mystery, and of all the gifts
flowing from it. To her offering of the
Holy and immaculate Victim, she unites the sacrifices of Abel, Abraham,
Melchisedec, the co-operation of Angels, and the memory of all the dead,
praying for them.
At the end we pray for
ourselves, sinners, to be admitted among the Apostles and martyrs: the children
are with them, not out of merit, but thanks only to God’s Mercy and Love
through Christ. And they share in the
glory, which Christ gives to His Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit forever
and ever.
The communion rite begins
with the prayer which Christ Himself gave us to obtain pardon for our sins:
‘Our Father who art in heaven’: the children are your children and they
proclaim holy Your name. In them, You
reign, and Your kingdom has come. Your
will is done in their innocence. They
enjoy in heaven, through the beatific vision, Christ who is the Bread of those
who believe on earth. Having been
forgiven, they forgive their murderers, and pray for their repentance and
salvation, because God overcomes the crime of the murderers by His Mercy, and
calls them to share in the glory of their victims. No temptation, no evil, can reach these
victims, who are free forever, having been saved from original sin and made
saints. Being preserved from all
anxiety, they help us to wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior Jesus
Christ, for the glory of His kingdom, where they are happy.
Being reconciled with God
through the gift of His peace through Christ’s Sacrifice, we ask for an
extension of this peace flowing from heaven where the children enjoy it, to the
whole Church, and to all men, through a communion of love, publicly signified.
Thus we are prepared for communion with the Body and Blood of Christ: He is the
Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, and who grants peace. There is no longer an obstacle to our union
with Him: one word only from Him is able to heal our sick souls. Our union with Christ in eucharistic
communion is also a communion with all the saints who are members of His Body,
especially with the little martyrs, our forerunners in heavenly glory.
After communion, in union
with the triumphant Church, the faithful, filled with thanksgiving and praise,
express these in the final prayer. Their
thanksgiving comprises the glory, which has already been given to all saints
and to the children by Divine Mercy.
At the end of the Mass, the
benediction of the Holy Trinity opens to all the promise of the divine merciful
gifts, through which the children have already been united with the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Conclusion:
When the Mass is celebrated
with reference to the claiming of the children, there is a development of
doctrine, by making explicit what is implicitly contained in living Tradition,
as it is done from Holy Scripture. Both
Scripture and Tradition are the Word of God coming to us in two ways, in
complimentarity. The Holy Spirit gives
assistance to the Church to express the Truth in the liturgy and gives the
impulse to develop the understanding of the Eucharistic mystery from the
liturgical rites and texts, with regard to the children’s involvement in
Christ’s Sacrifice.
Virginity is sanctity,
and a perfect image of God’s sanctity.
God’s simplicity is absolutely pure of any mixture, being a perfect
Spirit without any potentiality, any want of anything else, transcending
infinitely the whole universe, either spiritual, or material. This transcendence is His sanctity. Virginity is incorruption, which means that
the spiritual soul, although united with flesh, is not dominated by flesh, and
does not yield to the natural desires of flesh.
Voluntary virginity consecrates the whole person to God in order to be
united to Him exclusively, to belong to God’s Love only, in soul and in body.
The
children, before being killed by abortion, were created incorrupted, having
only the stain of original sin. They
belonged naturally to God’s Love through their natural desire of happiness:
this is their own virginity as images of God’s sanctity. When they are deprived of their body by violent
death, their virginity culminates in martyrdom through a voluntary submission
to the Will of God, under an impulse of grace, and is crowned.
15. Kings, Priests, Prophets - aborted children's participation in Christ's threefold office.
Apocalypse 1,6:
"...has made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father, to Him be
glory and dominion for ever and ever."
Apoc. 5,10:
"... has made them a kingdom and priests to our God and they shall
reign on earth".
Apoc. 20,6:
"...they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and they shall
reign with Him..."
What is written in the Apocalypse about all saints may be applied in a
special way to unborn children:
1. The royal power consists in a
dominion of people uniting their work for the achievement of the common
good. Through the acceptance of their
martyrdom and of God's gratuitous Love, the children are freed from original
sin and from all sins, free of the persecution from those who kill them, free
of all obstacles to their desire for eternal life and to their will to serve
God only, free of every human power: absolute freedom. Moreover, being united by charity to Christ
the King, they share in His royal power over all men. Being submitted to His Will of salvation for
all men, their will is united with His Will, to achieve this salvation with the
co-operation of their prayer. Having
reached the end by the highest act of charity, martyrdom, they will judge all
men with Christ and with the Apostles to whom Christ promised thrones of
judgement.
2. The priestly power consists
in mediation between God and sinners to reconcile them. It brings to men the gifts of God and it
offers to God the sacrifice of men for the repentance and the expiation of
their sins. Christ is the perfect
Mediator. Being God, He gives God's
grace, and being a man, He offers Himself on the Cross, through His obedience
to His Father and the acceptance of suffering and death, as a Sacrifice for all
sinners who are contained in Him as creatures in their Creator. Being sinless and perfectly innocent, He is
loved as a man by His Father, and all men are loved in Him.
All those who are members of Christ through baptism share in His
priestly power, firstly receiving grace from Christ's plenitude of grace, then
obtaining grace for others through the communion of Saints. Charity is a participation in the Divine Love
of Christ who loves every man and wants his salvation. Accepting the trials of human life, they
share in Christ's Passion. They
participate in reparation for their sins and the sins of others to actually
apply the atonement once and for all fulfilled by Christ on the Cross.
Through their martyrdom, a baptism of blood, unborn children killed
before birth have this priestly power.
They are united to Christ Crucified.
They are united with the Heart of Christ, source of grace and
forgiveness; they are, by their innocence, privileged intercessors for all
sinners and especially for those who have killed them.
3. The prophetic power consists
in speaking in the name of God against all sins, and for the service of God and
the salvation of men. Through their
witness, given by their blood, unborn children killed before birth are
prophets. The Divine Word Crucified is
speaking through them, through their crucified innocence, uttering a witness to
Truth. Being united to Christ, the
Divine Truth, by their blood, they are precursors of the future manifestation
of Christ's glory. Everybody, having
truth written in their soul "Thou shall not kill", is able to hear
and understand their witness against evil and for righteousness.
The theory of limbo
‘limps’ because it relies upon divine Justice only, and not upon Justice and
Mercy together. God is at the same time
Justice and Mercy: so there is never divine Justice without Mercy.
Ps
88:15: ‘Justice and equity are the foundation
of thy throne,
Mercy and
faithfulness stand in front of thy face.’
However,
many theologians thought that children could not be condemned to hell, because
they did not commit any mortal sin. As
they could not be admitted into heaven, the theologians imagined a third place,
limbo, where they would be deprived of the beatific vision, but not punished
otherwise. So they would enjoy some
natural happiness.
This
opinion was considered traditional enough to be sustained by the Bull “Auctorem
fidei” which condemned the pseudo Council of Pistoia. Against the Jansenists, who followed the
strict opinion of St. Augustine, Pius VI declared (1794) that limbo must be
admitted as a place where those who die with original sin only, are deprived of
the beatific vision, without any punishment by fire.
This
position is common among theologians, and is considered as a teaching of the Church,
because nothing about the fate of children who die unbaptised is explicitly
revealed in the Word of God.
However,
the concept of limbo is founded upon two negative concepts: no heaven, no
hell. It is possible to found a concept
upon a reality, but not a reality upon a concept and all the more so upon
negative concepts: so limbo has no more reality than a purely intellectual
conception. What’s more, the reasoning,
which leads to the existence of limbo, is a result of human logic. However, divine mysteries are not connected
to each other by human logic, but by divine Logic. Because ‘God is love’ (1Jn 4:9), we know that
the divine Logic is the Logic of Love.
- Inasmuch as
divine Love is Charity, God wants the salvation of all men, loving them as Himself,
and so He offers sanctifying grace to all those who are not opposed to His
love: unborn children are unable to resist.
- Inasmuch as
divine Love is Justice, God is just to His Christ who poured out His Blood for
all sinners to be saved, and to atone for all sins: thus the original sin of
unborn children is washed out in His Blood.
- Inasmuch as
divine Love is Mercy, Christ is Divine Mercy made flesh to take upon Himself
all human miseries and to communicate His plenitude of grace to all who believe
in Him and receive His baptism. What
Christ Resurrected operates in His believers through the Sacraments, He
operates also in those who die before they are able to believe and to receive
the Sacraments. At the moment of their
natural death, Christ appears to them in His glorious human nature, as the
vanquisher over death for all men through His Resurrection: spontaneously they
adhere to Him through their natural desire for life, and Christ gives them
eternal life. Their death paid the debt
of their original sin and Christ’s Mercy made them sons of the Resurrection (Lk
20:36) through His grace, elevating their natural desire.
Such
is the Logic of divine Love, which is transcendent. It is out of reach to human reason, but the
Holy Spirit, who alone knows it, reveals its conclusions through the gift of
wisdom to those who become His instruments through a complete abnegation of
their proper wisdom and a perfect submission to Divine Wisdom.
There
is an analogy with the Holy Eucharist: just as in this Sacrament the risen body
of Christ is a food of divine life, so also when Christ Resurrected appears to
dying children, He is to their desire a food of divine life, for He said: “I am
the resurrection and the life” (Jn 11:25).
In
the case of children who are killed in abortion, there is a previous action of
Christ’s Mercy for them: He unites them to His own Martyrdom, as witnesses for
the Gospel of Life. They are martyrs in
Him and are consequently glorified in Him.
In comparison with the Mass, they are united to Christ’s Sacrifice at
the moment of Consecration, whereas other children, victims of miscarriage, are
united to Christ’s glory at the moment of communion to His glorious Body; the
former are intercessors for the latter.
17. Brief explanations of key theological themes in relation to the
children.
Justice: gives
everyone what is due to him. Unjustly
deprived of earthly life through, which God gives to all His means of
salvation, the children killed before birth are granted, at the very moment of
their violent death, grace and charity in Christ, by Divine Justice which makes
them just and worthy of beatific vision and resurrection.
Mercy: removes
misery from those who are deprived of the necessary means of living. Christ, on
the Cross takes upon Himself the whole misery of death and damnation of mankind
to atone for all human sins through His obedience; and His Mercy includes the
children who are innocent, but have original sin: they are deprived by violent
death of all means of salvation, which is their special misery. Christ’s Mercy takes upon Himself this misery
in uniting their innocent will with His Sacrifice through the gift of His
grace.
Love: wants
for another all goods as for oneself.
God’s Charity loves all men as Himself, and will give them a participation
in His own life of knowledge and love in the beatific vision. Only those who do not accept Christ as the
way to eternal life are excluded of their own accord from this sharing in God’s
beatitude. The children cannot resist
the Divine Love in Christ, who communicates His grace to them in a baptism of
Love at the moment of their death.
Law: orders
people to their good. The ancient law was given to the Jews who, like all other
people after original sin, are under the bondage of death and deprivation of
grace. This law leads only to an earthly
justice: it is external and does not transform a sinner into a child of
God. The new law is the Holy Spirit who
leads a person from within through Christ’s grace to eternal life. The new law changes the sinner into a child
of God. It is a gratuitous gift, which
gives an inner justice; through this justice, the child of God is proportioned
to his Father in heaven, and receives the beatific vision as a reward of his love. The children, who are deprived of this
justice, and of all means of receiving it, according to the Logic of Divine
Love, are introduced into the reign of the new law, by Christ’s Mercy
justifying them in His own Sacrifice on the Cross, making their death a
sacrifice in His own death, and opening to them the kingdom of heaven. Not having the use of their freewill, they
obey God’s law in natural love, and this natural love is transformed by the
Holy Spirit into Charity, the new law.
The Word of God:
is
a commandment which shows the way to please God through love, and invites all
to follow it. This word is spoken to
human freedom and requires obedience, which is true love. The children have this natural commandment
written in their souls, and they obey it in their natural will. The Word Incarnate takes them up into
Himself. They obey His Mercy which
elevates them to share in His own Sacrifice at the moment of their death which
is perpetrated against the Word of God; “Thou shall not kill”, and so they
become witnesses to the Word of God.
The Will of God:
is
the divine design of salvation, fulfilled in Christ’s Sacrifice. The natural will of the children is innocent,
although deprived of grace, and conformed by Christ’s Crucified Innocence to
the Divine Innocence, at the moment of their death: their will is united to the
Will of God by Christ’s grace and Christ’s obedience.
Blood: the
blood which flows from Christ’s pierced Heart includes the children in a
baptism of blood, which makes them martyrs in Christ’s love for His Father and
for all mankind, at the moment of their death.
Baptism: this baptism of blood is first a
Baptism of Love.
18. The Philosophy of Divine Love.
Preliminary paper.
1. Philosophy of Divine Love means Divine Wisdom as the
principle of the free designs of Divine Love.
God’s Wisdom is transcendent, and only through Revelation can we know
its statements (Rom 11:33). The
beginning of the Epistle to the Ephesians shows that the divine purpose of
calling man to communion with God is a pure object of faith, out of reach of
human intellect (Faith and Reason n.7).
The word “Philosophy” here has an analogous sense, not to be confused
with human philosophy. Only theology is
able to explain this divine philosophy, and theology relies completely upon
faith and Revelation.
2. Human
philosophy, and more precisely, metaphysics, is the science of being as
being. Like all sciences, and more than
any other, metaphysics has its foundation in the sensitive experience of
material being, because we have no other experience of being. Without this contact with being, metaphysics
would only be a game of concepts and words, absolutely empty and
meaningless. Our objective experience of
the existence of a spiritual soul in man relies upon the sensitive experience
of the effects of intellectual operations, which is possible at the age of
reason, not before. Even the being of an
embryo is not a matter of experience.
God being Spirit, creation is not a matter of experience. Divine Love, which is the principle of
creation, is not a matter of experience.
God, God’s Love, creation, the spiritual soul at the moment of
conception, all these realities are objects of faith. All that the Philosophy of Divine Love expresses
about the invitation, addressed to man as soon as he comes into being, to
converse with God, is an object of faith, revealed in both Testaments,
confirmed by Tradition and by the Church.
To be recognised as a person, the
embryo must have a spiritual soul which would be a matter of experience; being
spiritual the soul is not a matter of experience; thus it is not a subject of
metaphysics, which is founded upon experience, and which transcends empirical
data through abstraction; but empirical data are absolutely necessary to be
abstracted and to become metaphysical subjects.
The Philosophy of Divine Love, transcending every human experience, and
still more, every material experience, does not replace the lack of an
experience which is necessary to prove the presence of a spiritual soul at the
moment of conception.
The Philosophy of Divine Love
proves that God does not leave man without a philosophical way of demonstrating
the presence of a spiritual soul at the moment of conception. This is the way shown in the speech of Pope
John Paul II to the Academy for Life in February 1998 (published in Osservatore
Romano). If a man is able to produce
intellectual acts at the age of reason, and if no substantial change has been
made in him from the moment of conception, the spiritual soul which is the
principle of intellectual acts is present in him from the moment of
conception. The proof of no substantial
change is the experience of the complete substantial program (
The messages of Divine Innocence
speak of the Philosophy of Divine Love.
This is a supernatural experience, a fruit of a gift of the Holy Spirit,
the gift of intelligence. This
supernatural experience, rooted in the Divine Act of Being, does not replace
the natural experience, rooted in the material act of being, known through the
five senses. As well as in Christ, who
has two natures, the divine nature does not replace the human nature: both are
necessary. We must not confuse our
supernatural experience with our natural one.
If human philosophies fall short,
there are two reasons:
1. Most of them
are false: Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Marse, Nietszche, Whitehead, Wittgenstein,
Russell etc…. because they have lost every contact with reality (idealism,
subjectivism, agnosticism, etc). The
philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas founded on the act of being, and sensitive
experience, which Pope John Paul II recommends in the Encyclical Faith and Reason n. 97 is able to
demonstrate the presence of a spiritual soul from the moment of conception, on
the natural level.
2. All of these philosophies are limited to this
natural level, and are thus unable to show the transcendent end to which man is
called by God’s gratuitous Love. This
end is only known through Revelation and faith.
The source of this Revelation is the Philosophy of Divine Love, Divine
Wisdom itself.