The Need for Expiation

Our Predecessor of happy memory, Leo XIII, admiring the timely opportuneness of the devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, said very aptly: “When in the days near her origin, the Church was oppressed under the yoke of the Caesars the Cross shown on high to the youthful Emperor was at once an omen and a cause of the victory that speedily followed. And here today another most auspicious and most divine sign is offered to our sight, to wit the most Sacred Heart of Jesus, with a Cross set above it shining with most resplendent brightness in the midst of flames. Herein must all hopes be set, from hence must the salvation of men be sought and expected.” […]

Thus, by God’s grace, the devotion of the faithful towards the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus has made great increase in the course of time; hence pious confraternities to promote the worship of the Divine Heart are everywhere erected, hence too the custom of receiving Holy Communion on the first Friday of every month at the desire of Christ Jesus, a custom which now prevails everywhere. […]

The duty of expiation

For if the first and foremost duty in Consecration is that the creature’s love correspond to the love of the Creator, another duty naturally follows: that of rendering compensation for the injuries committed against uncreated Love, if neglected by forgetfulness or violated by offense. This debt is commonly called reparation. […]

Moreover this duty of expiation is laid upon the whole race of men since, as we are taught by the Christian faith, after Adam’s miserable fall, infected by hereditary stain, subject to concupiscence and most wretchedly depraved, it would have been thrust down into eternal destruction.

This indeed is denied by the proud philosophers of this this age, who following the ancient error of Pelagius, ascribe to human nature a certain innate virtue by which of its own force it can go onward to higher things; but the Apostle rejects these false opinions of human pride, admonishing us that we “were by nature children of wrath” (Eph 2:3). […]

United to the Sacrifice of the Christ

The copious Redemption of Christ has abundantly forgiven us all offenses (Cf. Col 2:13), nevertheless, because of that wondrous divine dispensation whereby those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ are to be filled up in our flesh for His body which is the Church (Cf. Col 1:24), we also can and should add our praises and satisfactions to the praises and satisfactions which Christ in the name of sinners rendered unto God.

But we must ever remember that all the strength of expiation depends solely on the bloody sacrifice of Christ, which without intermission of time is renewed on our altars in an unbloody manner, “For the victim is one and the same, the same now offering by the ministry of priests, who then offered Himself on the cross, the manner alone of offering being different.”¹ Wherefore with this most august Eucharistic Sacrifice there ought to be joined an oblation both of the ministers and of all the faithful, so that they also may “present themselves living sacrifices, holy, pleasing unto God” (Rom 12:1). […]

The more perfectly our oblation and sacrifice – consisting in the immolation of self-love and concupiscence, in crucifying the flesh by that mystical crucifixion of which the Apostle speaks (cf. Gal 5:24) – corresponds to the sacrifice of Our Lord, the more abundant fruits of that propitiation and expiation shall we receive for ourselves and for others.

Christ’s Passion is renewed in the Church

There is a wondrous union of all the faithful with Christ, like that between the head and the other members, and a mysterious Communion of Saints which we profess in the Catholic creed, by which both individuals and peoples are joined not only with one another but also with Jesus Christ, who is the Head.” […]

To this it may be added that the expiatory passion of Christ is renewed and in a manner continued and fulfilled in His mystical Body, which is the Church. To again use the words of St. Augustine, “Christ suffered all that He was bound to suffer; nothing is wanting of the measure of His Passion. Therefore the sufferings were fulfilled, but in the Head; there were yet remaining the sufferings of Christ in His Body.”²

This, indeed, Our Lord Jesus Himself vouchsafed to explain when, speaking to Saul, “still breathing threats and murder” (Acts 9:1), He said, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:5), clearly signifying that when persecutions are stirred up against the Church, the Divine Head of the Church is Himself attacked and troubled.

Rightly, therefore, does Christ, still suffering in His Mystical Body, desire to make us partakers of His expiation, and this is also demanded by our intimate union with Him, for since we are “the body of Christ and members of it” (1 Cor 12:27), whatever the Head suffers, all the members must suffer with it. […]

Necessity for reparation

How great is the necessity of this expiation or reparation, more especially in this our age, will be manifest to every one who will examine the world which is “in the power of the evil one” (1 Jn 5:19). […]

But all these evils as it were culminate in the cowardice and the sloth of those who, after the manner of the sleeping and fleeing disciples, wavering in their faith, miserably forsake Christ when He is oppressed by anguish or surrounded by the satellites of Satan. […]

The words of the Apostle: “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Rom 5:20) in some way describe this present age; for while human wickedness has greatly increased, at the same time, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, a marvellous increase has been made in the number of the faithful of both sexes who with eager mind endeavour to make satisfaction for the many injuries offered to the Divine Heart, and even readily offer themselves to Christ as victims. ◊

Excerpts from: PIUS XI.
Miserentissimus Redemptor, 8/5/1928

Notes

¹ COUNCIL OF TRENT. Session XXII, c.2.

² ST. AUGUSTINE. Enarratio in psalmum LXXXVI, n.5.