INTRODUCTION
1. Our Most Merciful Redeemer, after conquering the salvation of the human lineage on the tree of the Cross and before his ascension to the Father from this world, said to his apostles and disciples, distressed at his departure, to console them: «See that I I am with you every day until the end of the world” (Mt 28,20). Sweet voice, pledge of all hope and security; This voice, venerable brothers, comes to mind easily how many times we contemplate from this high summit the universal family of men, of so many evils and miseries toiled, and even the Church, of so many relentless challenges and so many oppressed snares.
But as some of the people perhaps still do not know, and others disdain, those complaints of the most loving Jesus when he appeared to Saint Margarita María de Alacoque, and what he said he hoped and wanted men, for their benefit, placens, venerable brothers, to tell you something about the honest satisfaction to which we are obligated with respect to the Most Holy Heart of Jesus; with the design that what we communicate to you each one of you will teach his flock and excite it to practice it.
2.
Among all the testimonies of the infinite benignity of our Redeemer, the fact
that, when the charity of the faithful was warmed, the charity of God was
presented to be honored with special worship, and the treasures of his goodness
were discovered. for that form of devotion with which we worship the Most
Sacred Heart of Jesus, "in whom are hidden all the treasures of his wisdom
and knowledge" (Col 2, 3).
3. And rightly so, venerable brethren; For in this most splendid sign and in this form of consequent devotion, is it not true that the sum of all religion and even the most perfect standard of life are contained, as it most expeditiously leads the spirits to intimately know Christ Our Lord, and prompts them to love him more passionately, and to imitate him more effectively? No wonder, then, that our predecessors incessantly vindicated this most private devotion to the recriminations of the slanderers and that they extolled it with high praise and earnestly encouraged it, according to the circumstances.
Thus,
with the grace of God, the devotion of the faithful to the Most Sacred Heart of
Jesus has grown from day to day; hence those pious associations, which multiply
everywhere, to promote the cult of the divine Heart; hence the custom, now
widespread everywhere, of receiving Communion on the first Friday of each
month, according to the desire of Jesus Christ.
Consecration
As
we already said in our encyclical Quas prima, agreeing to the wishes and
repeated and numerous prayers of bishops and faithful, with the favor of God we
complete and perfect, when, at the end of the jubilee year, we institute the
feast of Christ the King and his solemn celebration throughout the Christian
world.
5. To these duties, especially to the consecration, so fruitful and confirmed on the feast of Christ the King, it is necessary to add another duty, of which a little more extensively we want, venerable brothers, to speak to you in these letters; We refer to the duty to pay to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus that honest satisfaction that they call reparation.
If the first and foremost of consecration is that the love of the creature responds to the love of the Creator, another duty follows spontaneously: that of compensating the injuries somehow inflicted on uncreated Love, if it was scorned with oblivion or outraged with offense. . We vulgarly call this duty reparation.
And if the same reasons compel us to do both, with a more pressing title of justice and love we are obliged to the duty to repair and atone: of, justice, regarding the expiation of the offense made to God for our sins and regarding the reintegration of the violated order; of love, in terms of suffering with Christ patient and "saturated with shame" and, according to our poverty, offering him some consolation.
Sinners
as we all are, weighed down with many guilt, we should not limit ourselves to
honoring our God with only that worship with which we adore and give the gifts
due to his Supreme Majesty, or we supplicatingly acknowledge his absolute
dominance, or we praise his absolute dominance with thanksgiving. infinite
length; but, in addition to this, it is necessary to satisfy God, the most just
judge, "for our innumerable sins, offenses and negligence." To the
consecration, then, with which we offer ourselves to God, with that holiness
and firmness that, as the Angelic says, are proper to consecration [1], must be
added the expiation with which sins are totally extinguished, lest the sanctity
of divine justice rejects our impudent unworthiness, and rejects our offering,
being ungrateful, instead of accepting it as agreeable.
Atonement
of Christ
6.
But no created force was sufficient to expiate the crimes of men if the Son of
God had not taken human nature to repair it. This is how the Savior of men
himself announced it through the lips of the sacred Psalmist: «Host and
oblation you did not want; the more you appropriated my body. Burnt offerings
for sin did not please you; then I said: here I am »(Heb 10,5.7)). And
“certainly He bore our diseases and suffered our pains; He was wounded for our
iniquities ”(Is 53: 4-5); and "he bore our sins in his body on the
tree" (1 Pe 2,24); "Erasing the certificate of the decree that was
contrary to us, taking him out of the way and nailing him to the cross"
(Col 2,14), "so that, dead to sin, we may live to justice" (1 Pe
2,24).
Our atonement, priests in
Christ
For
this reason the Apostle admonishes us that, "bearing in our body the
mortification of Jesus" (2 Cor 4:10), and with Christ buried and planted,
not only in the likeness of his death we crucify our flesh with its vices and
lusts (cf. Gal 5,24), "fleeing from what in the world is corruption of
lust" (2 Pe 1,4), but rather "in our bodies the life of Jesus is
manifested" (2 Cor 4,10), and, made partakers of his eternal priesthood,
"let us offer gifts and sacrifices for sins" (Heb 5,1).
Not only do they enjoy the participation of this mysterious priesthood and of this duty to satisfy and sacrifice those whom our Lord Jesus Christ uses to offer God the immaculate oblation from the east until sunset in every place (Mal 1-2), but that the entire Christian flock, rightly called by the Prince of the Apostles "chosen lineage, royal priesthood" (1 Pet 2,9), must offer for themselves and for the whole human race sacrifices for sins, almost in their own way that every priest and high priest "taken from among men, is constituted in favor of men as far as God is concerned" (Heb 5,1).
Thus,
just as consecration professes and affirms the union with Christ, so the
atonement begins this union by erasing guilt, perfecting it by participating in
his sufferings, and consummating it by offering sacrifices for the brothers.
Such was, certainly, the design of the merciful Jesus when he wanted to reveal
to us his Heart with the emblems of his passion and throwing out flames of
charity: that looking on the one hand at the infinite malice of sin, and, on
the other, admiring the infinite charity of the Redeemer the more vehemently we
detest sin and the more ardently we reciprocate its charity.
Reparative Communion and Holy
Hour
Comfort Christ
10.
But how can these acts of reparation comfort Christ, who happily reigns in
heaven? We respond with the words of Saint Augustine: "Give me a heart
that loves and will feel what I say" [4].
The passion of Christ in his Body, the Church
11.
Add that the gleaning passion of Christ is renewed and in a certain way
continues and is completed in the mystical Body, which is the Church. Well,
using other words of Saint Augustine [5]: «Christ suffered what he should have
suffered; nothing is lacking according to your passion. Passion is complete,
but in the head; the passions of Christ were still lacking in the body. Our
Lord deigned to declare this same thing when, appearing to Saul, "who
breathed threats and death against the disciples" (Acts 91,1), he said to
him: "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting" (Acts 5); clearly meaning
that in the persecutions against the Church it is the divine Head of the Church
who is harassed and challenged. With good reason, then, Jesus Christ, who still
suffers in his mystical Body, wishes to have us as partners in the atonement,
and this asks with him our own need; because being as we are "the body of
Christ, and each one for his part a member" (1 Cor 12:27), it is necessary
that what the head suffers, the members suffer with it (Ibid.).
12. How much, especially in our times, the need for this atonement and reparation will not be hidden from those who see and contemplate this world, as we said, "in the power of the wicked" (1 Jn 5,19). Cry of peoples who groan, whose princes or rectors gathered together and conspired together against the Lord and his Church (2 Pet 2, 2) rises to Us from everywhere. Through those regions we see all divine and human rights trampled; the temples were demolished and destroyed, the men and women religious expelled from their homes, afflicted with outrages, torments, jails and hunger; multitudes of boys and girls torn from the womb of Mother Church, and led to deny and blaspheme Jesus Christ and the most horrendous crimes of lust; all the Christian people severely threatened and oppressed, put in the trance of apostatizing from the faith or suffering the most cruel death. All of which is so sad that these events seem to manifest "the beginnings of those pains" that were to precede "the man of sin who rises up against everything that is called God or that is worshiped" (2 Thess 2,4). .
And
it is even sadder, venerable brethren, that among the faithful themselves,
washed in baptism with the blood of the Immaculate Lamb and enriched with
grace, there are so many men, of every order or class, who with incredible
ignorance of divine things, infused with false doctrines, they live a life full
of vices, far from the Father's house; life not illuminated by the light of
faith, nor encouraged by hope in future happiness, nor warmed and fostered by
the warmth of charity, so that they truly seem to sit in darkness and in the
shadow of death. In addition, the carelessness of ecclesiastical discipline and
those ancient institutions on which the whole of Christian life is founded and
with which domestic society is governed and the sanctity of marriage is
defended is also spreading among the faithful; the education of children was
totally disparaged or depraved with flattery, even denied to the Church the
faculty of educating Christian youth; the deplorable neglect of Christian
modesty in life and especially in women's dress; the unbridled greed for
perishable things, the unbridled longing for a popular aura; the defamation of
legitimate authority, and, finally, the contempt of the word of God, with which
faith is destroyed or brought to the brink of ruin.
13.
How many faithful piously meditate on all this, they will not be able to but
feel, fired in love for the sorrowful Christ, the burning desire to atone for
their faults and those of others; to repair the honor of Christ, to seek the
eternal health of souls. The words of the Apostle: "Where crime abounded,
grace abounded all the more" (Rom 5,20), somehow also fit to describe our
times; For although the perversity of men grows exceedingly, marvelously it
also grows, inspiring the Holy Spirit, the number of the faithful of both
sexes, who with resolute spirit seek to satisfy the divine Heart for all the
offenses that are done to it, and They still do not hesitate to offer
themselves to Christ as victims.
Here have their origin many religious families of men and women who, with fervent zeal and as ambitious to serve, propose to act day and night as the Angel who consoled Jesus in the Garden; hence the pious associations also approved by the Apostolic See and enriched with indulgences, which also make this office of atonement their own with appropriate exercises of piety and virtues; hence finally the frequent and solemn acts of reparation aimed at repairing divine honor, not only for the individual faithful, but also for parishes, dioceses and cities.
Cause of many goods
14. Well then: venerable brethren, just as the devotion of consecration, in its humble beginnings, extended later, begins to have its desired splendor with our confirmation, thus the devotion of atonement or reparation, from the beginning holyly introduced and holy propagated. We very much hope that, more firmly sanctioned by our apostolic authority, more solemnly it is practiced throughout the Catholic universe. To this end we dispose and command that every year on the feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus - a feast that on this occasion we order to be raised to the liturgical degree of double first class with an octave - in all the temples of the world the act of reparation be solemnly recited. To the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, whose prayer we put at the bottom of this letter so that our faults are repaired and the violated rights of Christ, High King and most loving Lord, be repaired.
It is not to be doubted, venerable brothers, but that, from this holy devotion established and sent to the whole Church, many and illustrious goods will come not only to individuals, but to sacred, civil and domestic society, since our The Redeemer himself promised Saint Margaret Mary "that all those who with this devotion would honor his Heart, would be filled with heavenly graces."
Sinners, certainly, "seeing the one they pierced" (Jn 19,37), and moved by the groans and cries of the whole Church, grieving for the injuries inflicted on the High King, "will return to his heart" (Is 46,8 ); lest they be stubborn and unrepentant in their faults, when they see the One whom they wounded "coming in the clouds of heaven" (Mt 26,64), late and in vain they cry over Him (cf. Rev 1,7).
The
just more and more will justify and sanctify themselves, and with new fervor
they will give themselves to the service of their King, whom they look at so
despised and fought and with so many outrages outraged; but especially they
will feel enraged to work for the salvation of souls, penetrated by that
complaint of the divine Victim: "What use in my blood?" (Ps 19.10);
and of that joy that the most sacred Heart of Jesus will receive "for a
single sinner who does penance" (Lk 15,4).
We especially long and hope that that justice of God, who for ten righteous people moved with mercy forgave those of Sodom, much more will forgive all men, pleadingly invoked and happily appeased by the entire community of the faithful united with Christ, their Mediator and Head.
The Repairing Virgin
EXPIRATIONAL PRAYER
TO THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS
Sweet
Jesus, whose charity poured out on men is so ungratefully paid for with
forgetfulness, disdain and contempt, look at us here prostrate before your
altar. We want to repair with special expressions of honor such unworthy
coldness and the insults with which your loving Heart is hurt everywhere by
men.
Hopefully
we can wash away these crimes with our blood! In the meantime, as reparation
for the divine honor violated, we present to you, accompanying her with the
expiations of your Mother the Virgin, of all the saints and of the pious
faithful, that satisfaction that you yourself offered one day on the cross to
the Father, and that you renew every day on the altars. We promise you with all
our heart to compensate as far as it is on our part, and with the help of your
grace, the sins committed by us and by others: indifference to such great love
with the firmness of faith, the innocence of life , the perfect observance of
the evangelical law, especially of charity, and also prevent with all our
strength the injuries against you, and attract as many as we can to follow you.
Accept, we beg You, most benign Jesus, through the intercession of the Blessed
Virgin Mary Reparatrix, the voluntary offer of atonement; and with the great
gift of perseverance, keep us most faithful until death in worship and service
to you, so that one day we may all arrive at the homeland where you with the
Father and with the Holy Spirit live and reign forever and ever… Amen.
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