Pope Francis, 1936-2025

“[W]e need to realize that [Jesus’] risen Heart preserves Its wound as a constant memory, and that the working of grace makes possible an experience that is not restricted to a single moment of the past. In pondering this, we find ourselves invited to take a mystical path that transcends our mental limitations yet remains firmly grounded in the word of God. Pope Pius XI makes this clear: ‘How can these acts of reparation offer solace now, when Christ is already reigning in the beatitude of heaven? To this question, we may answer in the words of Saint Augustine, which are very apposite here – ‘Give me the one who loves, and he will understand what I say’. Anyone possessed of great love for God, and who looks back to the past, can dwell in meditation on Christ, and see Him labouring for man, sorrowing, suffering the greatest hardships, ‘for us men and for our salvation’, well-nigh worn out with sadness, with anguish, nay ‘bruised for our sins’ ( Is 53:5), and bringing us healing by those very bruises. The more the faithful ponder all these things the more clearly they see that the sins of mankind, whenever they were committed, were the reason why Christ was delivered up to death’.

“Those words of Pius XI merit serious consideration. When Scripture states that believers who fail to live in accordance with their faith ‘are crucifying again the Son of God’ (Heb 6:6), or when Paul, offering His sufferings for the sake of others, says that, ‘in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions’ (Col 1:24), or again, when Christ in His passion prays not only for His disciples at that time, but also for ‘those who will believe in me through their word’ (Jn 17:20), all these statements challenge our usual way of thinking. They show us that it is not possible to sever the past completely from the present, however difficult our minds find this to grasp. The Gospel, in all its richness, was written not only for our prayerful meditation, but also to enable us to experience its reality in our works of love and in our interior life. […]

“The one mystery, present by grace in both these dimensions, ensures that whenever we offer some suffering of our own to Christ for His consolation, that suffering is illuminated and transfigured in the paschal light of His love. We share in this mystery in our own life because Christ Himself first chose to share in that life. He wished to experience first, as Head, what He would then experience in His Body, the Church: both our wounds and our consolations. When we live in God’s grace, this mutual sharing becomes for us a spiritual experience. In a word, the risen Lord, by the working of His grace, mysteriously unites us to His passion. The hearts of the faithful, who experience the joy of the resurrection, yet at the same time desire to share in the Lord’s passion, understand this. They desire to share in His sufferings by offering Him the sufferings, the struggles, the disappointments and the fears that are part of their own lives. Nor do they experience this as isolated individuals, since their sufferings are also a participation in the suffering of the mystical Body of Christ, the holy pilgrim People of God, which shares in the passion of Christ in every time and place. The devotion of consolation, then, is in no way ahistorical or abstract; it becomes flesh and blood in the Church’s pilgrimage through history. […]

“Our rejection of His love erects a barrier to that gracious gift, whereas our trusting acceptance of it opens a space, a channel enabling it to pour into our hearts. […] If He does not encounter openness and confidence in me, His love is deprived – because He Himself has willed it – of its extension, unique and unrepeatable, in my life and in this world, where He calls me to make Him present. Again, this does not stem from any weakness on His part but rather from His infinite freedom, His mysterious power and His perfect love for each of us.[…]

“Saint Margaret Mary recounted that, in one of Christ’s appearances, He spoke of His Heart’s passionate love for us, telling her that, ‘unable to contain the flames of His burning charity, He must spread them abroad’. Since the Lord, who can do all things, desired in His divine freedom to require our cooperation, reparation can be understood as our removal of the obstacles we place before the expansion of Christ’s love in the world by our lack of trust, gratitude and self-sacrifice. […]

“Sisters and brothers, I propose that we develop this means of reparation, which is, in a word, to offer the Heart of Christ a new possibility of spreading in this world the flames of His ardent and gracious love. While it remains true that reparation entails the desire to ‘render compensation for the injuries inflicted on uncreated Love, whether by negligence or grave offense’ [Pope Pius XI], the most fitting way to do this is for our love to offer the Lord a possibility of spreading, in amends for all those occasions when His love has been rejected or refused. This involves more than simply the ‘consolation’ of Christ of which we spoke…it finds expression in acts of fraternal love by which we heal the wounds of the Church and of the world. In this way, we offer the healing power of the Heart of Christ new ways of expressing itself. […]

“Christ alone saves us by His offering on the cross; He alone redeems us, for ‘there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all’ (1 Tim 2:5-6). The reparation that we offer is a freely accepted participation in His redeeming love and His one sacrifice. We thus complete in our flesh ‘what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of His body, that is, the Church’ ( Col 1:24); and Christ Himself prolongs through us the effects of His complete and loving self-oblation.”

-Pope Francis, Selections from Dilexit Nos