In the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Ghost.
My dearly
beloved in Our Lord,
"O Roma
felix..." – "Oh lucky Rome, which has been consecrated by the
glorious blood of the two Princes." (Hymn for Matins and Vespers)
(Brief review of the feasts celebrated
after Pentecost)
Our holy Mother,
the Church, never stops harvesting the fruits of the Redemption. She is doing
it also in the liturgy, celebrating a number of major feasts all
throughout the weeks after Pentecost:
° The feast of Corpus
Christi brings back to our pious memory the institution of the Blessed
Sacrament of the Altar – the Sacrament of Divine Love, the most ingenuous
invention that God has made on our behalf so that He could feed us with His own
divine flesh and blood…
° The feast of
the Sacred Heart,celebrated on the Friday after the Octave of Corpus
Christi and which we remember on the first Friday of every month teaches us the
godly desires of love; of divine charity (caritas) by which we anticipate the
heavenly life which our Lord has promised us: "caritas non deficit" –
charity will be essentially the same in Heaven, as it is now in our Christian
hearts! Here on earth it is imperfect, in Heaven it will be perfect. "Quis
sic amantem non redamet?" - "Who would not love again the One who has
so loved us?"
° The feast of St
John the Baptist is the only birthday of a Saint – besides Our Lord
and Our Blessed Lady – which is celebrated by the Church. (His beheading is
celebrated on August 29.) This is because his life and mission are so
intimately connected with the mission of Our Lord: he is the precursor, the
forerunner of the Messiah.
° The feast of the
Most Precious Blood (July 1st) recalls the fact that "we have
been bought back – redeemed – by a great prize" (1Petr; 1Cor) from the
slavery of sin and the eternal punishment of Hell. The great heavenly treasure
for our souls comes exclusively from the pierced side of Our dying Lord and the
shedding of all of his blood.
° The feast of the
Visitation of Our Lady with her cousin Elizabeth, the mother of St John the
Baptist, celebrated on July 2nd, is a great example of the love of
the Mother of God, not only of God, but also of her neighbor. One slight hint
by the Angel at the Annunciation was enough to make her undertake a long
journey in order to comfort her relative in her needs.
(The Church founded by Christ is
Apostolic)
All these feasts
are held together by the feast of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, the two
princes of the Apostles (June 29th). This is so because the Church
is the body to which Christ has entrusted His revelation, the deposit of the
Faith, and the keys to His heavenly kingdom! Therefore there is no salvation
outside the Church founded by Our Lord, the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and
Roman Church.
Today we are
beleaguered by people – so-called "theologians" – saying it is all
about the "visibility" of the Church: They say that it is impossible
that the hierarchy of bishops and the Pope be lacking to the Church because
then the Church would not be "visible" anymore. - This is a
tremendous aberration and an error full of consequences. The visibility
of the Church consists precisely in her Oneness, Holiness, Apostolicity
and Catholicity (and Romanity). This is how the Church founded by Christ can be
and must be recognized by all men of good will. - In the Creed (Credo) we do
not say: "I believe in the visible Church", but "I believe in
the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church"and “I believe in the Holy
Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints”.
In today's
crisis we have to look closely at the meaning of the words which people are
using. Often enough they do not mean anything, they are without sense, they are
misleading our understanding and the Faith...
The Church is,
among all other characteristics, Apostolic.
She is founded
on a solid ground, an everlasting foundation: that of the Apostles among whom
Sts Peter and Paul are the "princes", i.e. the chiefs, the principal
Apostles. Why? Because St Peter is the personal representative of Christ
("Tu es Petrus..."), and his successors as bishops of Rome have a
universal primate and jurisdiction, they are the Vicars of Christ.
St Paul is the
"Apostle of the Gentiles". He was chosen in a particular way, after
the other Apostles, after Christ’s Ascension. And he had been a fervent Jew, a
Pharisee, a disciple of Gamaliel, a doctor of the law; he had the particular
vocation to make it very clear to everyone that not only the Jews were to
receive the Redemption through Christ, but also all the other nations (the
gentiles). This was very difficult to accept for the Jews, and it took all the
tenacity of St Paul to convince them that this was indeed the will of God.
The Church is
Apostolic. That also means that Our Lord has given to the world the entire
deposit of the Faith and all the essential components of the life of the Church
through the Apostles, and through them alone. They were to transmit the
truth to their successors – which they faithfully did – and so forth, with the
assistance of the Holy Ghost.
The Apostles all
had universal jurisdiction: Each of them set up the Church wherever he went to
preach. But only the successors of St Peter in Rome (St Peter has first been
bishop in Antioch and then bishop of Rome) inherit this universal jurisdiction.
The successors of the other Apostles only lead a certain portion of the Church
in dependence from the bishop of Rome.
It is very clear
that the four notes of the Church (that she is One, Holy, Catholic
and Apostolic) are intimately connected with each other. The teaching
authority which comes first ("Go and teach all nations...") must not
be disconnected from the sanctifying and governing power ("... baptizing
them [...] and teaching them to keep everything I told you").
What is a
bishop? What is a Pope?
- They all are
successors of the Apostles if they are validly consecrated bishops. (There is
no sacramental "consecration" of the Pope or a Cardinal;
sacramentally speaking the Pope is 'just' a bishop, the bishop of Rome.)
- They are the teachers
who have to guarantee the integrity of the Faith, without which it is
impossible to please God (cf. Hebr 6). This teaching of the Faith is the first
prerogative of the Church, of her bishops. Without the teaching of the true
Faith everything else is void; with it everything receives its sanctifying
sense: The priestly power is then exercised fruitfully. (Someone who is
validly baptized outside the true Church receives the baptismal character, but
not the grace of the Sacrament...) The governing power (authority in the
strict sense of the word) is then exercised lawfully, since the Church is
dealing with men who are social creatures, and need to be governed and directed
by superiors, who again have superiors.
But only in this
theological order does it make sense.
Since today we
live in a world that puts everything upside down, we must be careful to get our
ideas straight, especially when the teaching of the Church and theology are
concerned. And underlying to theology is philosophy, which is the love of wisdom,
i.e. the manner of thinking according to the truth.
The Church was
founded by Christ on the solid foundation of the Apostles. They received the
deposit of the Faith in their brave, but still weak hearts. Once they had been
strengthened by the coming of the Holy Ghost, who was to remind them all that
Christ had taught them previously, they preached and defended the revealed
Truth, the Word of God, unfailingly, and even gave their life in order to
attest to the truth. They left the spiritual treasures to their successors, and
thus we still can be worthy children of God in the One, Holy, Catholic and
Apostolic Church. This possibility of salvation exists until the end of times,
according to the promise made by Christ; it cannot cease or disappear.
Our devotion for
the holy Apostles should grow every day to be as strong as it has always been
in the hearts of Catholics. Through the Apostles we have received what we have;
they, guided and strengthened by the Blessed Virgin Mary, have established the
Church throughout the world.
Let us
faithfully hold on to what they have transmitted us.
Pray for us,
Holy Mother of God. - That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
Queen of
Apostles, pray for us.
In the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Ghost.
P. Arnold Trauner (paterarnold@hotmail.com), njemački i engleski.