Personal Sanctity: St. Josemaria Escriva.: "Basta que uno…" ("It's Enough That One...")
The Kind of God We Are Dealing With: Impetuous Love For the Sake of “One ” [Theology
of the Remnant]
·
Noah: God saved all humanity for the love
of Noah: “I have determine to make an
end of all flesh; for the earth is filled with violence through them; behold, I
will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark…. For behold, I will
bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the
breath of life from under heaven; everything that is on the earth shall die.
But I will establish my covenant with you; and you shall come into the ark,
you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you.’”[1]
·
Sodom and Gomorrah: Abraham said to God:
“Wilt thou indeed destroy the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are
fifty righteous within the city; wilt thou then destroy the place and not spare
it for the fifty righteous who are in it?...
And the Lord said, ‘If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I
will spare the whole place for their sake’… Abraham answered… Suppose five of
the fifty righteous are lacking? Wilt thou destroy the whole city for lack of
five?’ And he said, ‘I will not destroy it if I find forty-five t here….”[2]
·
The Molten Calf: Moses alone said to the
Lord: “O Lord, why does thy wrath burn hot against thy people, whom t hou hast
brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power and with mighty
hand?... Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people…’
And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do to his people.”[3]
·
E Elijah: a drought over the whole land was
lifted for the sake of Elijah.[4]
·
The Betrayal of Jesus by the Jews: the remnant of Jews: The Virgin, Joseph,
Elizabeth and Zechariah, John the Baptist, the apostles, Stephen the first
martyr, St. Paul, etc.
·
T Talmudic Judaism: “The world must contain
not less than thirty-six [36] righteous men in each generation” (Talmud Tract Sanhedrin
97 b. The Babylonian Talmud, ed. Rabbi Dr. I. Epstein [London:
Soncino Press, 1935). P. 659.
·
“The most dramatic private revelations of the
last century were those of Fatima, in which first the Angel of Portugal, and
then the Blessed Virgin Mary, appeared to three young shepherd children in a
remote village of Portugal during 1916 and 1917. At his first appearance the
Angel of Portugal exhorted the children to pray. When he appeared again some
months later, he found them playing and reproved them: ‘What are you dong’ he
asked. ‘Pray! Pray very much! The Hearts of Jesus and Mary have designs of
mercy on you. Offer prayers and sacrifices constantly to the Most High… You
will thus draw down peace upon your country.“The prayers and
sacrifices of these three young children were, at least in part, responsible
delivering the entire country of Portugal from the horrors of World War I. The
historicity of the apparitions at Fatima was confirmed by the extraordinary fact that the culminating ‘miracle of the sun’ of October
13, 1917, in which the sun was seen to dance in the sky and drop to earth , was
announced in advance and witnessed by at least 70,000, including many skeptics
and atheists as well as believing Catholics.”[5]
·
St. Faustina: “Jesus revealed that as a result of her
prayers, Poland would be spared total destruction during World War II:
2.
“My Daughter, your confidence and love restrain
My justice, and I cannot inflict punishment because you hinder Me from doing so.”
3.
“[L]et me tell you that there are [but a few]
souls living in the world who love Me dearly… They are a defense for the world
before the justice of the Heavenly Father and a means of obtaining mercy for
the world. The love and sacrifice of these souls sustain the world in
existence.”
4.
“For you sake I will withhold the hand which
punishes: for your sake I bless the earth.”
5.
“By your entreaties, you and your companions
shall obtain mercy for yourselves and for the world.”
6.
“Through your prayers, You shall mediate between
heaven and earth.”
How to turn everything into prayer of mediation: Live what St. Josemaria called “The Priestly
Soul.”
Understand this: The divine Person of the Son willed
obedience with via His humanity. But it is not His will obeying, but Himself
via that will of the humanity assumed from the Virgin. Clearly, the Virgin gave
Him His flesh from her Jewish flesh, but the flesh could not be “flesh” without
an informing soul. So, to take flesh from her is to receive a soul
from the Creator. And the soul as “this” immaterial principle of informing
“this” flesh is also the immaterial substrate of the faculties of intellect and
will. But the soul is not the Person. They are as distinct as created nature
and Uncreated Person. But the immensity of the Incarnation consists in a divine
Creator become part of His Creation,
and He does so by assimilating the distinct and created human nature as His. That is, He lives out His divine
Life as relation to the Father through the mediation. Joseph Ratzinger says it
this way: “Just as the Lord’s flesh may be called the flesh of the Logos, his
human will may also be termed the Logos’ own will… Thus the Logos adopts the
being of the man Jesus into his own being and speaks of it in terms of his own
I: ‘For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of
him who sent me’ (Jn. 6, 38). In the Son’s obedience, where both wills become
one in a single Yes [of the divine I] to the will of the Father , communion
takes place between human and divine being. The’ wondrous exchange,’ the alchemy of being’ is realized
here as a liberating and reconciling communication…” God becomes man so that
man can become God.
We are
then baptized into this and are able to live it in every act that we
perform, powered by the Sacrifice of the Mass participated in by presence,
intention and sacramentally. Hence, St.
Josemaria commented that the Mass must be lived in the “street.”
[1]
Genesis 6, 5 – 7,7.
[2]
Genesis 18, 20-29.
[3]
Exodus 32, 7-14.
[4] 1
Kings 18.
[5]
Roy H. Shoeman, “Salvation Is From the
Jews, Ignatius (2003) 30.
[6]
St. M. Faustina Kowalska, Diving Mercy in
My Soul: The Diary of Sister M. Faustina Kowallska (Stockbridge, Mass.: Marian
Press, 1987). P. 21 (Para. 40).
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