Arma Christi, the ‘Weapons of Christ’ or Instruments of His Passion

Arma Christi, the ‘Weapons of Christ’ or Instruments of His Passion 

Margaret C. Galitzin

For the medieval man the symbol was a mark of identification. An emblem expressed a person, such as the winged lion who represents St. Mark, or a great event, such as a lily symbolizing the Annunciation. These symbolic representations have a simplicity, authenticity and sacrality that endure through the ages.

The Fifteen Secret Tortures and Sufferings of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ

The Fifteen Secret Tortures and Sufferings of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ

SOURCE

The following Fifteen Tortures were revealed to Sister Mary Magdalen of the Sancta Clara Order, Franciscan, who lived, died and was beatified in Rome. Jesus fulfilled the wish of this Sister, who fervently desired to know something about the unrecorded sufferings which He endured during the night while in the custody of the Jews, and awaiting His Trial before Pilate. Jesus related: 

The Heroism of Our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane

Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

What is Catholic heroism?

The supreme example of Catholic heroism is Our Lord Jesus Christ. He is not only the model of every form of virtue and holiness, He is their source, because from Him emanates the graces to attain holiness.

An Invitation to Love the Holy Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ

An Invitation to Love the Holy Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ

Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

While commemorating the forty days Our Lord fasted in the desert, we should remember a great and supreme truth that should illuminate all Lenten meditations.
The holy Gospels clearly show how much our merciful Savior pitied our spiritual and physical pains. Hence, He performed spectacular miracles to mitigate them. However, let us not imagine that these healings were the greatest gift He gave mankind.

Reflections on the Royal Road to Victory: The Via Crucis 

SOURCE

Our Lord walked the Via Dolorosa, the Way of Sorrows, on Good Friday as He carried that Cross that our sins had imposed so unjust upon Him. He willingly embraced His Cross so as to pay back in His Sacred Humanity the debt that was owed to Him in His Infinity as God, to re-open the Gates of Heaven that had been closed by Adam’s sin and to stretch out His arms on the horizontal beam of the Cross so as to embrace all men for all time to lift them up on the vertical beam to the Father in Heaven in Spirit and in Truth. Whether any one human being cooperates with the graces won for his immortal soul on the wood of the Holy Cross is up to the free will of that person. We do know, however, that God wants us to cooperate with the graces, made possible for us by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces, and to be conscious of the fact that our lives might very well be demanded of us this very night. Are we ready to make an accounting of our lives at the moment of our Particular Judgments?

“Barrabas” actor says Passion filming led to his conversion

“Barrabas” actor says Passion filming led to his conversion

SOURCE

The Archdiocese of Madrid’s publication “Alpha and Omega” publised an article in its latest edition on the testimony of the actor who played Barrabas in Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” who says he experienced a profound conversion while making the movie.

The Sadness of Christ by St Thomas More

The Sadness of Christ by St Thomas More

SOURCE 

The Sadness of Christ is the last and unfinished work of St Thomas More. He had written many works, mainly fighting the new heresies that were rampant and were causing huge damage within Catholic Europe. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London between April 17, 1534 to July 6, 1535, the day he was taken to the block and executed for high treason. And what was his treason? Refusing to accept Henry VIII as the supreme head of the Church.

Marie Julie Jahenny & Litany of the Passion

Litany of the Passion: A Prayer of Reparation before the Blessed Sacrament

Our Lord requested this prayer to be said to console Him on Thursday mornings at 9 AM before the Blessed Sacrament, and on Fridays in the afternoon. He promised to those who would recite this prayer as a great mark of their love for Him, He would grant them a solemn happiness. Our Lord: “They will say passing over in their heart (meditating on) all that I have done for them for love.  As a reward, at their death, I will almost immediately attract them in the eternal sojourn.” (The soul will be immediately attracted to Him and draw upon themselves all the necessary graces for salvation at that critical moment.)  Our Lord said: “Burn with love for Me, I will let escape from My Heart the last stream that will set you ablaze.  My Love comes to search for your prayers to soften the pain caused by all the offenses.” (i.e. offenses committed against Him in the Blessed Sacrament.)  Our Lord also promised: “I will bless those who say this prayer at least once a day, I will give them a solemn benediction.”  When Marie-Julie passed on the litany He taught her, she asked: “Lord, will You be willing to remain with us until the end of time?” (i.e. in the Blessed Sacrament.)  He answered. “This is Love.”

The Cross Catalyst: Turn Away From The World

The Cross Catalyst: Turn Away From The World

By: Eric Gajewski

Those who find their eyes fixated upon this world are in great danger.  The worldly do not think of the next world, death in general nor are they interested in attempting to please God.  We know from the Word that a friend of this world is the enemy of God therefore He grants the world a gift, the Cross.  Without your daily Cross you would be continually allured and deceived by the world.  Without your daily Cross it would not be possible for you to grow in Selfless Love.  The Cross is given as counter measure to the haughty self which so seeks to ruin souls and yet we still complain over the least bit of suffering.  Yea, the Cross is a Catalyst into the Divine Life and yet men still want to remain living in the natural alone.

The Greatest Sorrow of Jesus

The Greatest Sorrow of Jesus

EXTRACT FROM The Incarnation, Birth and Infancy of Jesus, St. Alphonsus Liguori with Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur 

Quæ utilitas in sanguine meo, dum descendo in corruptionem?

"What profit is there in My Blood, whilst I go down to corruption?"-----Ps. 29:10

 

<>  Jesus Christ revealed to the Venerable Agatha of the Cross that whilst He was in his Mother's womb, that which afflicted Him more than any other sorrow was the hardness of the hearts of men, who should, after His Redemption, despise the graces which He came into the world to diffuse. And He had expressed this sentiment before, by the mouth of David, in the words just quoted, which are generally thus understood by the holy Fathers: What profit is there in My blood, whilst I go down to corruption? St. Isidore explains whilst I descend into corruption, "whilst I descend to take the nature of man, so corrupted by vices and sins;" as if He had said, "O my Father, I am indeed going to clothe Myself with human flesh, in order to shed My Blood for men; but what profit is there in My Blood?-----the greater part of the world will set no value on My Blood, and will go on offending Me, as if I had done nothing for the love of them."
 

St. Alphonsus De Ligouri: The Desire that Jesus Had to Suffer for Us

The Desire that Jesus Had to Suffer for Us

St. Alphonsus De Ligouri

Baptismo habeo baptizari; et quomodo coarctor, usquedum perficiatur?

"I have a baptism wherewith I am to be baptized; and how am I straitened until it be accomplished?" ---Luke, xii. 50.

I. 

Jesus could have saved us without suffering; but He chose rather to embrace a life of sorrow and contempt, deprived of every earthly consolation, and a death of bitterness and desolation, only to make us understand the love which He bore us, and the desire which He had that we should love Him. He passed His whole life in sighing for the hour of His death, which He desired to offer to God, to obtain for us eternal salvation. And it was this desire which made Him exclaim: I have a baptism wherewith I am to be baptized; and how am I straitened until it be accomplished? He desired to be baptized in His Own Blood, to wash out, not, indeed, His Own, but our sins. O infinite Love, how miserable is he who does not know Thee, and does not love Thee!

Importance of the Devotion to the Holy Wounds for our Times

Importance of the Devotion to the Holy Wounds for our Times

MysticsoftheChurch

Although devotion to the Holy Wounds has a long tradition in the Church and in the lives of the saints, never before has it been more important than now. Several mystics have stressed the urgency of this devotion for our times.

The Passion of Christ & His Church

The Passion of Christ & His Church

By: Eric Gajewski

On this Good Friday let us meditate upon this Passion which must become our passion if we any hopes of being saved.  In Love’s great irony we see that His death is our new life.  Therefore can each of us truly say “I am nailed to the Cross with Thee”?  In Lent we are supposed to learn wholly how to deny the self and now our hearts must journey as One with His Suffering Sacred Heart.  Yea, every day there is a cross to carry thus every day to a Christian in a certain sense must be made a Passion (in image of His).  We have no glory outside of the Cross of Christ and thus we too must take this example and apply it to the Church herself (in similarities).

Good Friday: Preparation (Videos)

Good Friday: Preparation

Great Video sermons included!

Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

  

Good Friday is a day of very special graces. Each Church feast day is accompanied by an effusion of graces that corresponds to the graces the saint received or to the mysteries of the lives of Our Lady or Our Lord that the feast commemorates.

Fr. Voigt, "Exultation before Desolation"

Fr. Voigt, "Exultation before Desolation"

Caiaphas stated the obvious:  "It is only right that one man should die in order that the whole nation might live."  The perfidious Jew never changes and always seeks the temporal while neglecting the eternal.  They will plot and conspire to bring this world to its knees rather than lift a hand to bring the people to the peace of God.  The common man recognizes in this miracle worker the words of Truth and they flock to Him crying out:  "Hosanna, to the son of David, blessed is He Who comes in the name of the Lord."  

Embracing Christ and the Cross – Reflections for Holy Week

Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

An authentic piety penetrates every recess of our souls, naturally stirring our most intimate emotions. Piety, however, is far more than feelings. It arises deep within ourselves from our knowledge of the truths that govern an interior life formed in accord with the Faith. To be sure, these life-giving truths are often acquired through diligent and disciplined study, but intelligence, like emotion, is an inadequate foundation for piety, which also resides in the will.

Marie-Julie Jahenny and Shoulder Wound promises

Marie-Julie Jahenny and Shoulder Wound promises

by E.A. Bucchianeri

Our Lord revealed to MARIE-JULIE JAHENNY  (19th century mystic and stigmatist) the following promises to those who were devoted to His Sacred SHOULDER WOUND :

THE FIFTEEN SECRET TORTURES AND SUFFERINGS OF OUR LORD

THE FIFTEEN SECRET TORTURES AND SUFFERINGS OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST

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"I looked for one that would comfort me, and I found none"

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Revealed to the pious, God-loving Sister Mary Magdalen of Sancta Clara Order, Franciscan, who lived, died and was beatified in Rome. Jesus fulfilled the wish of this Sister, who desired to ardently know something about the secret sufferings which He endured the night before His death.

St. Alphonsus Liguori’s Stations of the Cross

Traditional Roman Catholic

Please take time out  to unite your heart to the Passion of Our Lord...

Reflection For The Day- Change Your Life

'Fix your minds on the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. Inflamed with love for us, he came down from heaven to redeem us. For our sake he endured every torment of body and soul and shrank from no bodily pain. He himself gave us an example of perfect patience and love. We, then, are to be patient in adversity. Take pains to refrain from sharp words. Pardon one another so that later on you will not remember the injury. The recollection of an injury is itself wrong. It adds to our anger, nurtures our sins and hates what is good. It is a rusty arrow and poison for the soul. It puts all virtue to flight. Be peace-loving. Peace is a precious treasure to be sought with great zeal. You are well aware that our sins arouse God's anger. You must change your life, therefore, so that God in his mercy will pardon you. What we conceal from men is known to God. Be converted, then, with a sincere heart. Live your life that you may receive the blessing of the Lord. Then the peace of God our Father will be with you always.'

St. Francis of Paola

Hebrews 2:10
For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, who had brought many children into glory, to perfect the author of their salvation, by his passion.

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