Ven. Fulton J. Sheen - God Never Intended Us To Live In A World of Constant Hemorrhage
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(Photo©Michael Seagriff)
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During His earthly life, He solicited us to avail ourselves of Redemption by seeing what sin cost. The evil of sin is the Crucifixion of the God-man. The worst thing that sin can do is not to bomb cities or kill children, but to crucify Goodness. No man. is ever conscious of sin, when he thinks of it as merely breaking a law. He never sees the full intensity of sin until he realizes what he does to a person. Many an alcoholic does not know the evil of his sin until, driving while drunk, he kills a child. So when we look, not to a broken law, but at the broken Person of Christ on the Cross, we begin to see the full gravity of sin. We see it in the nails and in the crown of thorns, but we also see the love of God Who goes on loving us despite our sins.
On
the Cross, Our Lord poured out His Life's Blood, not because bloodshed pleased
His Father, but because the sinner deserved to die, and Christ, willing to be
one with sinners, chose to bear pain as they should have borne it. He bore all
of the iniquity of evil because He deigned to come into the world disorganized
by evil.
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Photo©Michael Seagriff
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If
we would see the world at its worst, look at the Cross on Good Friday! The
world will never do anything quite as evil as it did that day! There was
darkness over the earth then, the sun refusing to shed its light on the crime
that would extinguish the Light of the World! There is darkness over the world
today as there was then, and for the same reason, because Christ is
re-crucified in those who believe and confess His Name. Giant curtains
are pulled over the Light of the World: Iron Curtains, Bamboo Curtains, and Plush Curtains. Iron
curtains are pulled down in Eastern Europe
where in Stygian night, hammers and sickles beat and cut. But a day will come when He will lay hold of
that hammer, hold it aloft in His Resurrected, Scarred Hand, make it look like
a Cross, and the sickle will appear as the moon under Our Lady's Feet. Bamboo
curtains have been pulled in China,
where in the night, missionaries are ridiculed before other Pilates, slapped
before other Caaphases, and beaten in other Praetoria. But as hundreds and thousands of Chinese suffer in His Name, and
in union with His Cross, they prepare a day when the sun will rise again in the
East - a sun that will be Light of the World! Plush curtains too, of American and Western
civilization have been pulled over Christ, until we work in the murky mist of
self-sufficiency, of plenty, of confused ideals and deflated morality.
What
do we see written across the map of the world but blood! Soldiers' blood poured
out on Korean rocks; martyrs' blood crimsoning Chinese earth; Jewish blood but
recently dried from Nazi persecutions in Buchenwalds and now dampened again by
Christian blood in the Communist persecution; pagan blood poured charitably
into blood banks to aid soldiers wounded in the bloody business of war. God
never intended us to live in a world of constant hemorrhage.
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Photo©Michael Seagriff
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We
know the answer! Neither animal blood in sacrifice, nor human blood were meant
to cataract and cascade over this globe. His Blood alone paid the debt of our
sins! It is because we invoke not the Blood of Christ that we shed one
another's blood in war. When we see His Death as Redemption, believe in Him as the Son
of God Who made amends for our sins, then will this crimson scourge cease!
(From The Life of Christ by Venerable Fulton J. Sheen)