Today’s feast in many ways contains the encapsulation of our entire faith. The glory of Resurrection comes only through the Cross of Christ. It is a package deal. Many Christians would like to skip over the rather unpleasant fact of the Crucifixion and get right to fruit of that Sacrifice. As Catholics, we know that this cannot be. In God’s time, each moment and all moments together of the life, passion, death, and resurrection of Christ are before Him always.
For eternity, Christ triumphant in Heaven will still be the victim Lamb of God, triumphant on the Cross, where is located His throne. The suffering leads to the glory.
This is the key to the mystery of redemptive suffering, and in His goodness Christ allows us to assist in this mystery by the offering up of the sufferings and crosses we endure. Even then, He assists us, and makes it possible for us to share in His redemptive work.
As men limited by time and space, we encounter this reality through the power of God in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Calvary is actually made present– not just in symbol, but in reality and power– each and every Mass. We participate in the graces won by our Lord on the Cross, and we feast upon the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of the King of Kings.
Today’s feast, fittingly enough, is also the second anniversary of the most important Papal document since the promulgation of the Dogma of the Assumption of Mary– Summorum Pontificum, which acknowledged and guaranteed the right of the faithful to the timeless Mass.
I wanted to write my gratitude to the Holy Father for this document, issued in justice and pastoral care to the whole Church. And I am most grateful to God for the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest and all other groups and individual priests, religious and laymen that have and continue to promote, maintain, and defend the Mass of all ages.
Catholics might be the only religion on the planet, and only Christian faith that shows their crucified Savior on the cross. Timman, your reflection on this central core of our Catholic faith is great.I wouldn't necessarily take it to where you did, i.e. that this crucified Christ leads to the guarantee of "the timeless Mass." You can be certain that in the first hundred years Masses weren't said in Latin, but in Aramaic and Greek, and eventually several other Mediterranean countries including Italy, where the various celebrations of these rites were translated into Latin. The formalness of the Latin Mass even then wasn't immediate – it took centuries of refinement to produce the Mass of which I presume you speak. And the debate about what IS the proper form of Mass will continue for centuries. E.g. I doubt that the priest/minister would ever face away from the attendees while celebrating Mass in the catacombs, but when it was celebrated as such it was to re-emphacize the transcendent God. The Norvus Ordo over-emphacizes the immanent God. Both are wrong if they exclude the other. The crux of our faith IS the Crucified Christ, and I remain pray daily to be more open to this Paschal Mystery.