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Tags: Catholic, Catholicism, Apologetics, Christian, Jesus 

Reply Catholic Teachings NP
The Dialogue of Saint Catherine of Siena(in the making) Goto Page: [] [<] 1 2 3

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EmeraldWings
Captain

PostPosted: Mon Mar 01, 2010 2:37 pm
30



our humanity? We are Your image, and You have become ours, by this union
which You have accomplished with man, veiling the Eternal Deity with the cloud
of woe, and the corrupted clay of Adam. For what reason? -- Love. Wherefore, You,
O God, have become man, and man has become God. By this ineffable love of Yours,
therefore, I constrain You, and implore You that You do mercy to Your creatures."

How God grieves over the Christian people, and particularly over His ministers;
and touches on the subject of the Sacrament of Christ's Body, and the benefit
of the Incarnation.


Then God, turning the eye of His mercy towards her, allowing Himself to be
constrained by her tears, and bound by the chain of her holy desire, replied with
lamentation -- "My sweetest daughter, your tears constrain Me, because they are
joined with My love, and fall for love of Me, and your painful desires force Me to
answer you; but marvel, and see how My spouse has defiled her face, and become
leprous, on account of her filthiness and self-love, and swollen with the pride and
avarice of those who feed on their own sin.
"What I say of the universal body and the mystical body of the Holy Church (that is
to say the Christian religion) I also say of My ministers, who stand and feed at the
breasts of Holy Church; and, not only should they feed themselves, but it is also
their duty to feed and hold to those breasts the universal body of Christian people,
and also any other people who should wish to leave the darkness of their infidelity,
and bind themselves as members to My Church. See then with what ignorance and
darkness, and ingratitude, are administered, and with what filthy hands are handled
this glorious milk and blood of My spouse, and with what presumption and
irreverence they are received. Wherefore, that which really gives life, often gives,
through the defects of those who receive it, death; that is to say, the precious Blood
of My only-begotten Son, which destroyed death and darkness, and gave life and
truth, and confounded falsehood. For I give this Blood and use It for salvation and
perfection in the case of that man who disposes himself properly to receive it, for It
gives life and adorns the soul with every grace, in proportion to the disposition and
affection of him who receives It; similarly It gives death to him who receives It
unworthily, living in iniquity and in the darkness of mortal sin; to him, I say, It
gives death and not life; not through defect of the Blood, nor through defect of the
minister, though there might be great evil in him, because his evil would not spoil
nor defile the Blood nor diminish Its grace and virtue, nor does an evil minister do
harm to him to whom he gives the Blood, but to himself he does the harm of guilt,
which will be followed by punishment, unless he correct himself with contrition
and repentance. I say then that the Blood does harm to him who receives it
unworthily, not through defect of the Blood, nor of the minister, but through his
own evil disposition and defect inasmuch as he has befouled his mind and body
with such impurity and misery, and has been so cruel to himself and his neighbor.
He has used cruelty to himself, depriving himself of grace, trampling under the feet
of his affection the fruit of the Blood which he had received in Holy Baptism, when
the stain of original sin was taken from him by virtue of the Blood, which stain he
drew from his origin, when he was generated by his father and mother.  
PostPosted: Mon Mar 01, 2010 2:39 pm
31



"Wherefore I gave My Word, My only-begotten Son, because the whole stuff of
human generation was corrupted through the sin of the first man Adam.
Wherefore, all of you, vessels made of this stuff, were corrupted and not disposed to
the possession of eternal life -- so I, with My dignity, joined Myself to the baseness of
your human generation, in order to restore it to grace which you had lost by sin; for
I was incapable of suffering, and yet, on account of guilt, My divine justice
demanded suffering. But man was not sufficient to satisfy it, for, even if he had
satisfied to a certain extent, he could only have satisfied for himself, and not for
other rational creatures, besides which, neither for himself, nor for others, could
man satisfy, his sin having been committed against Me, who am the Infinite Good.
Wishing, however, to restore man, who was enfeebled, and could not satisfy for the
above reason, I sent My Word, My own Son, clothed in your own very nature, the
corrupted clay of Adam, in order that He might endure suffering in that self-same
nature in which man had offended, suffering in His body even to the opprobrious
death of the Cross, and so He satisfied My justice and My divine mercy. For My
mercy willed to make satisfaction for the sin of man and to dispose him to that good
for which I had created him. This human nature, joined with the divine nature,
was sufficient to satisfy for the whole human race, not only on account of the pain
which it sustained in its finite nature, that is in the flesh of Adam, but by virtue of
the Eternal Deity, the divine and infinite nature joined to it. The two natures being
thus joined together, I received and accepted the sacrifice of My only-begotten Son,
kneaded into one dough with the divine nature, by the fire of divine love which
was the fetter which held him fastened and nailed to the Cross in this way. Thus
human nature was sufficient to satisfy for guilt, but only by virtue of the divine
nature. And in this way was destroyed the stain of Adam's sin, only the mark of it
remaining behind, that is an inclination to sin, and to every sort of corporeal defect,
like the cicatrice which remains when a man is healed of a wound. In this way the
original fault of Adam was able still to cause a fatal stain; wherefore the coming of
the great Physician, that is to say, of My only-begotten Son, cured this invalid, He
drinking this bitter medicine, which man could not drink on account of his great
weakness, like a foster-mother who takes medicine instead of her suckling, because
she is grown up and strong, and the child is not fit to endure its bitterness. He was
man's foster-mother, enduring, with the greatness and strength of the Deity united
with your nature, the bitter medicine of the painful death of the Cross, to give life to
you little ones debilitated by guilt. I say therefore that the mark alone of original sin
remains, which sin you take from your father and your mother when you were
generated by them. But this mark is removed from the soul, though not altogether,
by Holy Baptism, which has the virtue of communicating the life of grace by means
of that glorious and precious Blood. Wherefore, at the moment that the soul
receives Holy Baptism, original sin is taken away from her, and grace is infused into
her, and that inclination to sin, which remains from the original corruption, as has
been said, is indeed a source of weakness, but the soul can keep the bridle on it if she
choose. Then the vessel of the soul is disposed to receive and increase in herself
grace, more or less, according as it pleases her to dispose herself willingly with
affection, and desire of loving and serving Me; and, in the same way, she can
dispose herself to evil as to good, in spite of her having received grace in Holy
Baptism. Wherefore when the time of discretion is come, the soul can, by her free
will, make choice either of good or evil, according as it pleases her will; and so great  

EmeraldWings
Captain

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Catholic Teachings NP

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