The Family of Divine Innocence

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Theological Clarifications of Father Jobert OSB. Solesmes Abbey, France.

 

 

This is a selection of some of the papers Father Jobert has written about the different areas of the Message of Divine Innocence, his complete work is available from the foundation house, surbiton.

 

1.    Personal witness of Father Philippe Jobert, OSB. Monk and

theologian of St. Peters Abbey, Solesmes, France

2.  Terminology

3.   How to understand the small cross of the Crucified Innocence

4.   The Mystery of the Child Jesus

 

5.   Covenant

6.   The Novitiate of the Holy Family for our time

7.   The New Order of the human family

8.     Origin of the roles of Mary and Joseph in the

Novitiate of the Holy Family

9.   Our Lady of the Hidden and Mystical Wounds

10.   Crucified innocence and Divine Innocence –

 the case of aborted children

11. Holy Innocents in our times

Post scriptum

12. Theological arguments for the martyrdom of children killed before birth

13. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the claiming of

the slaughtered children

14.  Virgin Souls

15.  Kings, Priests, Prophets - aborted children's participation in Christ's threefold office

16.  Limbo, no

17.  Brief explanations of key theological themes in relation to the children

18.  The Philosophy of Divine Love

 

 

 

 

 

1.       Personal witness of Father Philippe Jobert, OSB. Monk and theologian of St. Peters Abbey, Solesmes, France.

                                                                                                

28th June 2000.

 

In Nazareth House, between the 16th and the 28th of June a theological investigation into the doctrine of Divine Innocence brought important progress in understanding the truths which are contained in the terminology of the Messages.  The conclusions of this investigation will be useful in order to write a document to present Divine Innocence to the authorities of the Church and to the theologians.  We need to show to them through theology how the doctrine of the Messages is already contained implicitly in divine Revelation and in the teaching of the Church.  A theological explanation of Divine Innocence will make explicit the immediate link between divine Revelation given to the Church and the doctrine of the Messages.

            

For instance, a list of the themes, which are treated in the Messages, arranged in an alphabetical order, led to a systematic ordering of these themes according to theological regulations.  The result was that the Novitiate of the Holy Family appeared as the organic and complete Plan of Salvation, with all the relations between the Holy Trinity [the common work of the three divine Persons], through the Mystery of the Incarnation in the Holy Family and mankind. The Novitiate is a new expression of this eternal Plan, which is to be fulfilled in our times; at the same time, it is clearly expressed in proper words, and personified in the persons of the Holy Family, so that it can be easily understood, and put into practice by everybody.

            

Another result was that the Claiming of aborted children found its important place in this plan of salvation. The most recent messages manifest the notion of the “Baptism of Love”, which proves to be a key to the full doctrine of baptism which, from the Baptism of Christ in the Jordan, flows from the pierced Heart of Jesus on the Cross to the unborn children, as well as to the Sacrament of Baptism for everyone else.

             These two examples concerning the most important themes of Divine Innocence are the main discoveries of our work, among many other clarifications.

            

                                                                                                                   Fr. Philippe Jobert

 

Also, with regard to the overall content of this inspiration and the instrument God has chosen to communicate this message to the Church and to the world, Father Philippe has stated:

 

“I am not issuing a statement about the authenticity of her messages, but about what is contained within them, from a theological point of view.  However, I can say that they not only contain nothing contrary, nor alien to the teaching of the Church, but what they say is a far deeper theology than everything I know, either in classical theology, or in modern researches…There are no books from which she (Patricia de Menezes) could have taken ideas and formulas.  There are no theologians, in the present time, who could have inspired her writings.  My conclusion is that there is no natural explanation of so deep and so strong a doctrine, which may be called without exaggeration, the “Logic of Love”.

                                                                                                     

 Fr. Philippe Jobert

 

2.       Terminology.

 

 

Just as Holy Scripture is the source of theology, the messages from the inspiration are, in their wording, the source of their own theological explanation.  So it is necessary to explain each expression proper to the message, and, inversely to go back to the actual terminology of the messages to grasp all that is contained within them.

 

1)     Divine Innocence:

This is a divine attribute, which means the divine Perfection as opposed to any evil, any sin; the divine Will is perfect as being identical to infinite Good, and ordering everything to this infinite Good.  God enjoys all that is good, and hates all that is bad and opposed to His Goodness.  All that is good shares in His Goodness, and in the same measure, in His Divine Innocence.

 

2)     Christ’s Crucified Innocence:

The Son of God Incarnate communicates His Divine Innocence to His human nature.  When, as a man, He is crucified by the forces of evil, His Innocence is crucified: that means that these forces of evil which crucify Him, are absolutely opposed to His Innocence.  Because His Innocence is infinite Love, this Love is Mercy for the sinners’ misery, and Justice against their sins in His Heart.

 

3)     The crucified innocence of the children (killed before birth) and of people: 

All those who share in Divine Innocence are innocent, in as much as they seek good and refuse sin.  The children are innocent in that they have no actual sin, because they do not enjoy the use of their freewill.  When innocent people are victims of the forces of evil, their innocence is crucified.

 

 

4)     Divine Innocence triumphant in human crucified innocence:

As members of Christ, who lives in them through faith and grace, it is Christ who is crucified in their crucified innocence.  Because Christ’s Crucified Innocence is Triumphant, having defeated the forces of evil, the devil, sin, and death by His Passion and His Resurrection, His Divine Innocence Crucified is triumphant in our crucified innocence in as much as we share in His Love, Mercy, and Justice.

 

5)     The Novitiate of the Holy Family: 

The primitive order of the family, created by God in our first parents and destroyed by their sin, is restored in the Holy Family by the Son of God Incarnate,  Jesus, Mary His Mother and Joseph, Mary’s spouse. All mankind is contained in Jesus who redeems it from sin and death through His Cross, who sanctifies it through grace, and will raise it at the end of time.  Mary personifies the primitive role of Eve as a female person, restored in herself, and Joseph personifies the primitive role of Adam as a male person, restored in himself.  Both of them are God’s instruments in their genders and roles, motherly and fatherly, to help families and single men and women to live according to the original order of things: in union in their complimentary roles of man and woman, for the birth and education of their children to the good.

 

Furthermore, they are associated with Christ in His powers: prophetic, priestly, kingly, to attract people, to bring people to Christ, and to help them live according to the Gospel, in faith, hope, and charity, and in all the virtues. The action of Mary and Joseph as instruments is real, dependant upon Christ’s sanctifying action, as intercessors to obtain grace and all necessary assistance from Him on a human level.  Their action is mainly ordered to the personification of their roles, the fatherly role and fatherhood, the motherly role and motherhood, not only in families, but in every vocation: even priests and religious are under their influence in this way.

 

The foundation of this influence must be considered in a comparison with human society.  The family is the source of civil society.  The Holy Family is the source of the Church, and also her perfection: there is no distinction between the Church and the Holy Family.  What the Holy Family is invisibly in heaven, the Church is visibly on earth.  Every member of the Church is a member of the Holy Family.

 

Thus, the Novitiate of the Holy Family is a modern expression of the eternal plan of Salvation.  Because our life on earth is a novitiate of the eternal life, the Novitiate of the Holy Family is a training for eternal life under the influence of the Holy Family: it is an ordered Christian life, according to the Gospel, the teaching of the Church: the study of the faith, liturgical prayer, Mass, Eucharistic Adoration, the Sacraments, the Rosary, etc.  and in particular divine Wisdom and Truth.  It is a fully Christ-centred life under the care of Our Lady and St. Joseph through a commitment to the Holy Family.

 

The Novitiate does not add anything to the normal Christian life and to membership in the Church but tends to the perfection of this Christian life to which all the faithful are called.  Because the Holy Family perfectly shares in the Trinitarian life, through their commitment to the Holy Family, through their perfect fulfilment of the roles of Mary and Joseph as women and men, the faithful pursue the best way of sharing more and more fully in the Trinitarian life and of reaching the perfection of charity in the Novitiate.

 

In this way, people in every state of life, married, single, priests, religious etc., may, through the Novitiate, root their life more deeply in the Church, when they commit themselves, without any change in their kind of existence, to the Holy Family which is the heavenly summit of the Church.  In doing so, they become one Holy Family.

 

6)     Nazareth universal:

“Rabbi, where do you live?” “Come and see.” (Jn 1:38,39).  Even in our age, Christ lives in the Holy Family.  He lives in the Blessed Sacrament on earth and Our Lady and St. Joseph are always with Him to adore Him.  He lives in the Blessed Sacrament to pour down His grace on mankind.  Mary and Joseph are with Him, united to His sanctifying action; they are instruments of Christ to gather all mankind and to bring them to Christ through their influence upon each gender, male and female, extending their roles to all men and women in the world.  Thus mankind becomes the Holy Family, and the world becomes a universal Nazareth in which Our Lord lives.

 

7)   Mother of the Hidden and Mystical Wounds: 

According to Simeon’s prophecy, the Heart of Our Lady was pierced by a sword of pain, when her Son died on the Cross (Lk 2:35).  Her Heart contained all mankind, because it was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, who as Creator, contains all men as objects of God’s Love.  Thus her wounded Heart contains all human suffering and wounds in a mystical way (‘mystic’ is human life as transformed by the Holy Spirit). 

 

Just as the wound of Our Lady’s Heart is hidden, so all these mystical wounds are hidden: she offers them to her Son to be healed by His Mercy.  Our Lord’s wounds in His Heart and body are the ransom of our sins, which in this way are the cause of Our Lady’s hidden wound.  Her wound is a sharing in Christ’s wounds, as well as all human wounds which are mystically contained in hers.  Through this sharing, she is united to Christ’s Passion, and with her the whole Church, first as redeemed, then as instrument of the fulfilment of Redemption in the whole of mankind.

 

8)     Eucharistic Heart of Jesus:

In the Blessed Sacrament, in Christ’s sacramental Body, Christ’s Heart is really present, and His Divine Love, as well as His human mercy, is present through concomitance, in His Heart.  In heaven, Our Lady is, with her glorious body, associated with her risen Son, she is also united to His sacramental Presence through the union of her Heart with Christ’s Eucharistic Heart.  This union is sealed by the Holy Spirit who fills their Hearts.  So her Heart is also Eucharistic.  St. Joseph, through his marriage with Our Lady is united to her by the Holy Spirit, in a spiritual union of hearts. 

 

This union makes the heart of St. Joseph a Eucharistic Heart: Joseph and Mary are united in their adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, by the Holy Spirit uniting their Hearts.  Since the beginning of the Incarnation, they have always been with Jesus and continue to be up to the present time, when He is present in the Holy Eucharist.  Associated with Christ’s Eucharistic Heart by the Holy Spirit, their Hearts are acting on mankind through charity, to bring all hearts, male hearts and female hearts, in their separate and complimentary roles, to the centre of the Holy Family, Christ: so all hearts become eucharistic with theirs.

 

9)     The Eucharistic University:

Christ is a living and acting divine Person in the Blessed Sacrament.  To the people who submit themselves to His action, He gives light for their intelligence; so that, when they study before the Blessed Sacrament, whatever the subject of their study, they receive knowledge at a higher level because they share in Christ’s Wisdom in the submission of their intelligence to His Love.

 

10)  Philosophy of Divine Love:

All philosophies are the result of human research into various things to discover their ultimate causes.  When philosophers submit their intelligence to reality, God, acting through the being of things, gives them a share in His truth; but when they substitute their own ideas for the objective knowledge which is given to them by God through these particular things, their intelligence becomes independent and subjective, and they wander into the domain of error.  An error cannot cope with reality, because it does not come from an experience of reality.  Objective truth is not complete, when the subjective experience of one’s self is not integrated into it.  Objective knowledge of subjectivity through experience is the refutation of subjectivism which is the cause of all errors through its independence from experience.  Even when a philosophy is true, it remains incomplete, because it does not discover the ultimate cause of being: it is a limited sharing in God’s Wisdom.

 

The Philosophy of Divine Love is the perfect philosophy.  When we speak of God’s philosophy, the word does not mean the research of Truth, but the identity of Love and Truth in God.  Out of His Love, God gave a gratuitous participation in His Wisdom through faith, and in His Truth through Revelation: in this way the human mind is elevated on both sides: subjective and objective.  Using its own philosophy, the human mind tries to discover more and more the divine Truth which is contained in Revelation; in this theological work the necessary condition to better perceive this content is a submission of reason to faith: this act of obedience is love, and a participation in Divine Love.

 

A deeper participation in Divine Love, under the motion of the Holy Spirit, leads to a deeper sharing in Divine Wisdom. Human intelligence discovers new meanings within Divine Revelation, through a perception of the Divine Love Himself by mystical experience.  In such a way, the Holy Spirit communicates the Philosophy of Divine Love itself, which is complete and perfect truth.  However, this communication is given in the obscurity of faith, and remains always limited by the limits of human intelligence, as well as by the measure of the gift of God.  Coming from an experience of God, this philosophy is superior to all philosophies which come only from an experience of things.

 

11) Song of Divine Love:

Praise is an act of intelligence, which, under an impulse of love, expresses its admiration.  When the object of the knowledge transcends the capacity of its comprehension, from its own knowledge it tries to express this transcendence.  This link between knowledge and praise is similar to the link between the shared philosophy of Divine Love and the Song of Love.  This Song is a pure praise which expresses, through a symbolic language, that which transcends the creature’s capacity in its experience of Divine Love.  This praise of all divine perfections, all divine works, as experienced by the creature, is admiration, thanksgiving, joy, because God alone is its object.  Reparation concerns human sins, even though it is a result of love.  All that God has done for mankind, salvation, sanctification, glorification, is a cause of praise and is the source of the Song of Love.

 

12) Enlightenment:

The submission of all knowledge, drawn from an experience of things, to Christ’s light in the Eucharistic University, leads to a new age of enlightenment, the ultimate cause of which is Divine Love.

 

 

3.    How to understand the small cross of the Crucified Innocence. 

 

This cross is symbolic, and it must not be looked at as an historical representation of Christ Crucified.  Christian doctrine explains the connection between both sides of the small cross. The little cross is the symbol of two successive states of mankind; on the one side mankind as slave of sin and death and on the other side mankind which Christ redeems and raises.  The crucified child on the first side is a symbol of human crucified innocence.  We must not forget that mankind was created by God in the state of original innocence; the perfect order of humanity as an image of God, through grace.  Original sin has crucified this original innocence, and all sins, which follow original sin, cause innumerable disorders and sufferings in mankind throughout the ages.  Original innocence is crucified in mankind all over the world by our sins and by the sins of others in our times.

 

Christ as Creator contains, pre-existent in Himself, all men of all times, who subsist with Him in His individual human nature.  In such a way, Christ takes upon Himself all their pains, which are the punishment of their sins.  Through His obedience unto the Cross and death, in Him they expiate their sins, and through His Resurrection, their original innocence is restored in a participation of eternal life, which is grace (Rom 5:23).  The triumphant child on the second side of the cross is the symbol of this restoration.

 

Thus Christ’s Crucified Innocence is Triumphant in their crucified innocence.  Now, as St. Paul says: “It makes me happy to be suffering for you now and in my own body, to make up all the hardships that still have to be undergone by Christ for the sake of His Body, the Church” (Col 1:24).  Each Christian must freely share in Christ’s Redemption through faith, baptism, and all the sacraments; and being a member of the Mystical Body of Christ, he must apply in his life, under the Holy Spirit’s impulse, through abnegation, obedience and trials of all kinds, the restoration of his personal original innocence.  More precisely, it is Christ who operates in him through grace this transformation into the likeness of His Divine Crucified Innocence, since the work has already been fulfilled by Him on the Cross.  What was virtually completed by Christ on the Cross, is actually completed by every Christian who takes up his own cross until the end of time.  Through conversion from sin to faith, hope, and charity, Christ takes us into His Divine Crucified Innocence and He is triumphant in our crucified innocence.  Thus the passage from one side of the small cross, to the other side is explained on scriptural and theological grounds.

 

Childhood is the symbol of innocence.  Because we really are children of God, and children before God, because to be admitted into the kingdom of heaven, we must become like children in the Child Jesus.  The little cross represents Christ’s Triumph as His Childhood’s triumph, and our crucified innocence in the Divine Innocence Crucified, is represented  as Triumphant in the Child Jesus.

 

So the small cross symbolises a complete synthesis of the Way of Divine Innocence.

 

 

 

4.       The Mystery of the Child Jesus.

 

 

At the time of the birth of Jesus (Lk 2:10), the angels announced to the Shepherds a great joy: a Saviour was born to them.  Like all men, the Shepherds were sinners with an unhappy conscience, yearning for salvation.  They went and found a child laid in a manger.  A child’s property is innocence: that is the reason why sinners are attracted by childhood.  They love in a child this innocence which they have lost, and which they secretly hope to recover.  The Child Jesus is a Saviour, because He is not only innocent, but Divine Innocence Incarnate, coming to this world to save sinners from their sins, as it was said to St. Joseph (Mt 1:21).

 

Divine Innocence is God’s Goodness itself, considered as opposed to every evil.  It adds to the notion of perfect Goodness a negation excluding any evil.  As God is absolute Goodness, making only good, Innocence implies a comparison with creation, from only which every evil comes.  Because the creature is made from nothing, it keeps an intrinsic potentiality to go back to nothing, to lose its given being, and to lose in acting, the perfect being to which it is ordained: this loss is evil corrupting actuality and activity.  For a man, it is death and sin, which is the fate of mankind from the original sin committed by our first parents.  Divine Innocence, being opposed to evil in creation, is the principle of Divine Mercy, which wants to liberate mankind from its subjection to death and sin.

 

The Divine Act of Being is Divine Innocence and also Divine Love.  Mercy is an extension of Love, which properly wants Good, consequently wanting to suppress misery, because misery is a deprivation of good in the creature.  Perfect mercy consists in taking upon oneself another’s misery, to liberate him from his misery. Divine Mercy in Incarnation consists for Christ to take upon Himself the misery of the death of mankind; furthermore He takes upon Himself the spiritual misery of mankind, which is deprivation of beatific vision; when He becomes a man, He deprives Himself from His divine glory, which consists in being recognised as the Son of God.  The Incarnation is for Him an infinite humiliation.  St. Paul writes: “Though He was in a divine state, He did not vindicate His equality with God, but He annihilated Himself, assuming the state of a slave, becoming like men and recognised as a man through everything which was seen of Him; He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:7).

 

Being the Creator, Christ contains pre-existing in Him all creatures, and among them, all men.  As He subsists in an individual human nature, all men subsist also in this human nature.  When Christ acts, suffers, dies and rises in His human nature, all men in Him act, suffer, die and rise.  In Christ, they undergo the pain of their sins, death for their disobedience, humiliation for their pride willing to be equal to God.

 

Just as Divine Innocence is the principle of Love as Mercy, it is the principle of Love as Justice.  According to this Love as Justice, Christ justifies sinners in Himself and destroys their sins through His act of obedience and His act of humility.  So His Love as Justice is identified with His Love as Mercy, because it frees sinners from their misery of guilt.  Likewise his Mercy is Justice, when He pays for them the debt of death and humiliation.

 

Christ is a Divine Person subsisting in an individual human nature.  Being God who is His Act of Being, Christ exercises His Divine Act of Being in His human nature.  All states of His human life, all acts and sufferings, are eternalised by His Divine Act of Being, even though they have historically passed.  So, although Christ is an adult and no more a child according to His human history, He is actually the Child Jesus according to His Divine Act of Being.  Though Christ’s sacrifice as offered on the Cross was ended by His death according to His human history, it remains actual according to His eternal Act of Being.  It is “perpetuated along centuries, until Christ returns” in the Eucharist, as the Second Vatican Council teaches (Const, Sacro. Sanctum Concilium n.47).

 

The Divine Act of Being, as “the power of the Most High, overshadowed the Virgin Mary” (Lk 1:35), so that she conceived Christ and became the Mother of God.  According to the divine command given to Joseph by the Angel, the Divine Act of Being made him Mary’s spouse for ever, through his consent to receive her as his wife (Mt 1:20).  Thus Christ’s Divine Act of Being constitutes the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary, Joseph; the Holy Family is the source of the Church, invisibly living in the Church, and acting in her members for their salvation.

 

By His Divine Act of Being Christ builds His Church on Peter as her foundation.  He teaches His Gospel, gives His grace, and leads the people of God through her; through her visible hierarchy and her visible sacraments, communicating the remission of sins and eternal life, the fruit of His Passion and Resurrection.

 

Meanwhile, invisibly, the Child Jesus attracts all men, through Mary and Joseph as His instruments, to share in His Divine Innocence, which is His uncreated grace.  The eternal Child Jesus, eternally crucified, is Divine Innocence Crucified.  If people commit themselves to His Divine Innocence Crucified, through the mediation of Mary and Joseph, in the Novitiate of the Holy Family, He unites them to Himself, overshadows them with His Divine Innocence, and gives them a sharing in His Divine Innocence Crucified and Triumphant.

 

Nobody is more like the Child Jesus’ Crucified Innocence than the children who are killed before birth through abortion and embryo experiments.  Because of their likeness to His Divine Innocence Crucified and because Divine Innocence is the principle of Divine Mercy and Divine Justice, Christ Crucified gratuitously unites these Innocents with His own eternal Sacrifice.  He involves them in His offering to the Father, as He does in the Holy Eucharist, and justifies them at the moment of their violent death, through the merciful gift of His sanctifying grace, making them martyrs in Himself.  In them, like in the Mass, He actualises His own martyrdom.  His Divine Innocence Crucified is triumphant in their martyrdom.

 

Such is the mystery of Divine Innocence, Incarnate in the Child Jesus, and Crucified in Christ’s Passion, as well as in the suffering members of His Mystical Body, even in the smallest ones, the children killed before birth, the little brothers and sisters of the Child Jesus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

5.       Covenant.

 

‘This cup is the new Covenant in my blood, poured out for you’ [Lk.22: 20]

 

A covenant is an exchange of loves.  The New Covenant is situated in Christ Himself.   In Him God’s Love is given to human nature: as a man Christ receives the Divine Being; and when He gives his life in sacrifice on the Cross, He gives His human love to the Father.   Thus the original Covenant between God and mankind, broken by the original sin of our first parents, is restored in Christ’s blood, because all men of all times are included in Christ, for they pre-exist in Him as their Creator, and subsist with Him in His human nature. 

 

Even though in the original Covenant, mankind refused love to God, God’s Love is faithful to His Covenant and continues to keep mankind within Himself, who created and who maintains in being the whole universe.   The Old Covenant is an act of God’s Love, choosing a people from mankind to start again with Him in an exchange of love.   The love that is required from the Jewish people is a human love because mankind is deprived of the original justice, which is grace.   The gifts which are promised by God’s Love in the Old Covenant are on a human level, to which mankind is reduced by original sin.   However, within the promise of a descendance was included the birth of Christ in whom the original exchange of love, where God offered man a share in His Divine Life, would be restored.

 

Mary is at the same time the summit and the last fruit of the Old Covenant.   In her womb Christ was conceived by the operation of the Holy Spirit.   The New Covenant, which is the union of the divine and human natures in the Person of the Son of God, starts in her and from her.   Since the Holy Spirit as the Creator, contains pre-existing in Himself, all men as objects of the Divine Love, and because the Holy Spirit is present in Mary’s heart and moves it, she gave for all mankind’s sake through her ‘Fiat’, the consent of love which makes her the Mother of the Savior.   Thus Mary is the link between the Old and the New Covenants, and the human origin of the New Covenant.   This New Covenant begins in Mary’s womb and is achieved completely on the Cross, by the supreme act of love for God and for all men through which Christ gave His life for them.  

 

This New Covenant in Christ’s Blood is continued until the end of the world by the Holy Eucharist which perpetuates and actualizes it everyday.   Since His visible presence on earth ended with his Ascension, Christ now gives His sacramental Body and Blood to the Church as a source of divine life.   In the Eucharistic communion, the New Covenant is fulfilled in each of the faithful who is united with Christ by it.  

 

This personal union is part of a collective union with Christ who created the Church by the gift of the Holy Spirit to His Apostles, gathered with Mary on the day of Pentecost.   The Church is a new People of God, united to Him by the New Covenant through the Holy Spirit who gives birth in baptism to adoptive sons of God.  The Holy Spirit realises in each baptized person the New Covenant achieved by Christ on the Cross for all men pre-existing in Himself.  The Church becomes the Mother of the sons of God on earth, continuing the motherly mission of Mary who engendered them pre-existing in Christ.

 

The source and perfection of the Church is in the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.   The original Covenant of God with the first couple instituted the perfect order of things on a human level.   This first couple lived, united by Divine Love and shared through grace, the complimentary roles of man and woman.   This original order is restored and elevated in the Holy Family, who shares in Christ the life of the Holy Trinity: this sharing achieves the new Covenant between God and mankind at its highest level.   It is a transformation of the whole human society in Christ.   This transformation in Christ of the whole human society is made on two levels, according to two levels of life: human life in the family and civil society, supernatural life in the Church.   On both levels the Holy Family is the source and model of Christian life, because the New Covenant through the Holy Family reaches all human persons as members of the Church, and as members of the human family and civil society.   The Holy Trinity lives in the Holy Family.  Jesus lives in those who agree to receive this Trinitarian grace through the Holy Family.  Thus the New Covenant reaches human families through the Holy Family, giving to all men the role of Joseph, to all women the role of Mary, and to all their members the life of Jesus, Son of God and Son of man, source of unity.

 

The Novitiate of the Holy Family is the Christian life at all levels, lived according to the Gospel, in the dependence of the Holy Family.   It is a training of progress in virtue to reach the perfection of the New Covenant, which is the reign of Divine Love in the Church, in the family, in civil society. It sanctifies all roles, from the hierarchy of the Church to fatherhood and motherhood in families, in Christ’s Unity. 

 

Since Our Lord said that those who are last on earth would be the first in heaven, we may consider the children killed by abortion to have their place at the highest level of participation in the New Covenant.  They are perfectly conformed to Christ’s Crucified Innocence by their crucified innocence; being the most helpless; the most despised; the most forgotten; the least among all men.   God’s Mercy is everything in them and reigns perfectly: in their martyrdom they reach the summit of the Novitiate of the Holy Family and they are the preferred children of Mary and Joseph since they are completely identified with Jesus.

 

Note: God is the Prime Lover in the Covenant, the first effect of the Covenant is prevenient grace:            In our first parents

In the Immaculate Conception.

In the martyrdom of unborn children.

 

The theory of limbo forgets and neglects the Covenant.  Through abortion the devil tries to undermine the Covenant.

 

 

6.       The Novitiate of the Holy Family for our time.

 

 

The Pope, John Paul II, looking at our times, spoke about the role of the Church in relation to globalisation.  This phenomenon is generally considered firstly from an economic, and secondly from a political point of view; in such a way however that the dignity of the human person is forgotten and will eventually be destroyed, although it is of the highest value.  The Church is obliged to vigorously defend the original order which God established when He created the human person; that is to say its supreme dignity of being made in the image of the Holy Trinity.

 

The commentary given by Cardinal Ratzinger about the secret of Fatima encourages us when he speaks precisely and positively of the place of private revelations in the life of the Church.   There exists a private revelation which seems particularly accurate for the salvation of souls and for the defense of the dignity of the human person in our time of globalisation.   It proposes a way of Christian life, which is called the Novitiate of the Holy Family, to meet the present situation in the world.

 

The human person has its origin in the family.  The original order of the family, wounded by original sin, was restored in its perfection in the Holy Family as in an individual family.  Starting from the individual Holy Family, Jesus, Mary and St. Joseph, God expands it to every individual family, and finally to the universal family of mankind: Nazareth becomes universal. Every individual, married or single, is called to take up the perfection of their roles; the motherly, fatherly and priestly roles according to gender and vocation within the original Holy Family. Our membership of the Holy Family brings about God’s salvific Will to include the whole of humanity, making us One Holy Family and People of God. In this way Nazareth thus becomes universal.

 

Christ came in this world to fulfill His Father’s Will, which is the original order of the family: that is the reason why He was obedient to His human parents.  He was conceived, born, educated, at Nazareth, and after thirty years, He was ready for His mission of salvation.  We have to follow the same process.  We start with the will of the Father, the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit on the Mother Church.  Christ is conceived in us in baptism.  He grows in stature and wisdom in us in our vocations, roles, and genders.   When Christ is sufficiently formed in us, we are prepared for a mission in the world. Through His Way of Divine Innocence, the life of Christ may be born in all areas of society in the motherly, fatherly and priestly roles, and thus in education, law, science, art, business.   Then the globalisation which men speak of at this moment will be incarnational, redemptive and salvific, according to Christ’s Divine Innocence and the divine order of things.

 

This development is called the Novitiate of the Holy Family, because it is a progressive learning of the divine order for men, women and priests, which is personified in Jesus, Mary and St. Joseph. It begins with the individuals Mary and St. Joseph.  The Holy Family is Christ-centred and all men and women are called to participate in the life of the Holy Family, for Christ said: “Follow me” (Mt 19:21).   It is the practical way to attain through the Christian order of the family, one family of mankind.

 

 

7.       The New Order of the human family.

 

 

The mystery of the Incarnation is first a mystery of humility.  The Holy Trinity used its divine power, which had made the whole universe out of nothing, to reduce the Son of God to the lowest state of mankind, childhood.  The Divine Act of Being makes Him at the same time Infinite God and a powerless Child.

 

For this purpose of humility to be fulfilled, the Son of God chose a virgin from the people of Israel to become His Mother.  Through the creative power of His Holy Spirit, which is His Divine Act of Being, He took from her womb an individual human nature, and received human life from her in the humble state of a child who needs to be carried, to be borne, to be fed, to receive all that is necessary to keep, to develop, to maintain human life at its beginning.

 

In the same way, the Son of God chose a man from the kingly stem of Israel to be first the Spouse of the Virgin Mary.  His Divine Act of Being united them in a marriage which is as permanent as its cause.  This marriage is centred on the Child Jesus as the Saviour of mankind.  Joseph has to watch over Him, to protect Him from every threat against His life, to help Him in all the necessities of life.  God delegated to him the human care of His Son as a child.

 

Thus the Holy Family is formed by the Divine Act of Being which makes Jesus a Divine Person Incarnate, which makes Mary His Mother, which makes Joseph His Guardian.  Such is the divine order established forever by the eternal Act of Being whose name is: ‘I Am’.

 

Because Jesus is, as God, the Creator of mankind, He contains within Himself, eternally pre-existing in Him, all men of all times.  As pre-existing in Him, they subsist with Him in His individual human nature.  They are born in Him from the Virgin Mary, who becomes their Mother in Christ.  For the same reason, they are entrusted to the care of Joseph, in Christ.

 

Because Christ is, as God, His Divine Act of Being, which He exercises in both His natures, all states of His life, all acts humanly done during His historical passage on earth, are eternalised by His Divine Act of Being.  So His Childhood is eternalised, even though historically Jesus is no more a child.

 

Because the motherly mission of Mary, and the fatherly mission of Joseph rely upon the Divine Act of Being operating through them as its instruments, they are united with the mission of Jesus as the Saviour.  A unique operation of salvation is operated by Christ, the One Saviour, with the co-operation of Mary and Joseph.  The permanent order of salvation is the permanent mission of the Holy Family.  No salvation is realised, outside this order.  The whole of mankind is engendered by Mary and set under the care of Joseph forever, as contained in the eternal Child Jesus.  All humanity are, in Christ, members of the Holy Family.

 

In such a way, all humans suffer in Christ’s Passion, die in Him on the Cross, are raised in Him, and introduced with Him in glory.  After His Ascension, when all mankind pre-exists in Him in glory, Christ sends His Holy Spirit to the Church.  This Divine Act of Being henceforth is present in Peter and in the Apostles, whom He previously chose as instruments of His prophetic, priestly and kingly power.  They will continue Christ’s mission of Salvation among men of all times and everywhere.

They will actualise in each person what has been achieved by Christ for this person pre-existing in Him through predication, the sacraments and the government of the Church.  The same Divine Act of Being is operating through these persons as its visible instruments of salvation, and through the invisible Holy Family.

 

Just as families are the source of society, and live in society, the Holy Family is the source of the Church, and lives in the Church really, though invisibly.  The Church starts in the Child Jesus, since all men pre-exist in Him.  Mary and Joseph are the first actual members of the Church as united with Christ by their divine Mission, as well as redeemed by Him with all pre-existing mankind.  The Holy Family is active in the Church now as it was in Nazareth.  Christ operates in giving eternal life, which is sanctifying grace, through the hierarchy, which shares in His Priesthood.  Mary, who has engendered mankind in the Child Jesus, with Joseph, take care of all men as instruments of the Divine Act of Being of Christ, our first parents.  They co-operate in their motherly and fatherly role to the proper salvific role of Christ.  They form human persons to become subjects of Christ’s grace, each one in its gender and in its way of life.  They attract them to the Child Jesus from inside, so that each one submits their self to the sanctifying power of Christ.  They take care of them as of the Child Jesus in whom they pre-exist, so that the Child Jesus may actually live in them through His gift of grace in all the activities, sufferings and events of their human life.

 

The power of Mary and Joseph in the Church is complementary to the sanctifying power of the hierarchy, because it comes from the same Divine Act of Being of Christ.  It disposes from inside, through the personal holiness of the motherly and fatherly roles of Mary and Joseph, and through the daily life of every human person, to be transformed by Christ’s grace into a living member of His Mystical Body.

 

Mary and Joseph take care of the Mystical Body of Christ as a continuation of their care of the body of the Child Jesus, because the Church is the continuation of the Holy Family.  What the Holy Family does invisibly, the Church does visibly: one life, and one principle of this life, the Divine Act of Being of Christ, operating differently in each one according to his proper mission.  This is the real and permanent New Order of the human family forever.

 

The Holy Family is not an optional devotion.  The Child Jesus is not a reality of the past.  The Holy Family has not finished its mission on earth.  This mission constitutes the inner part of the public mission of the Church until the end of time.  It is necessary for everybody to become conscious of this presence of the Holy Family in the Church, to become a member of the Holy Family, because the Holy Family really transforms every one into the image of the Son of God.  Every man is a child compared to God. Nobody can be saved if he does not become like a child (Mt 15:3). That is the reason why the Holy Family transforms us into the living Child Jesus.  We do not live in independence but the Child Jesus lives in us, teaches us, leads us from inside, when Mary and Joseph take care of His life in us.  The Child Jesus is the beginning and He is the end (cf. Rev 1:8).

 

The consequence of this divine order, established in the Holy Family, and living in it, is that everybody must introduce himself into this divine order.  The Novitiate of the Holy Family is the way of this introduction, because it restores the perfect natural order of the family through the respective roles of men and women according to the roles of Mary and Joseph between each other, and towards the Child Jesus.  As Jesus makes, through His own grace, every willing person a child of God, by the power of His Divine Act of Being operating through His own human nature, Mary and Joseph are also active to bring the same person to Christ, disposing them to receive grace from Him, as instruments of His Divine Act of Being in a different way.  As Mary and Joseph inseparably co-operate to Christ’s action giving sanctifying grace and as the Divine Act of Being is the unique principle and end of their associated different operations, everybody ought to commit himself to the Holy Family, to become an actual member of the Holy Family; since he was already a member of the Holy Family, as pre-existing in Christ, engendered by Mary in Christ, and entrusted to Joseph in Christ.  Our life in the Church is an actualisation of what has been already achieved for all of us in the Holy Family, and what is presently realised in us by the living Holy Family, and which requires our commitment to it in every state of life, every vocation, springing from the knowledge and consciousness of the divine order incarnated by God in the Holy Family.

 

Our first parents, originally were ordered to transmit under the action of prevenient grace, a justified human nature, preserved from natural defects.  The soul immediately submitted to grace, and the body perfectly submitted to the soul, and through it, to the influence of grace: consequently their offspring would have been conceived in prevenient grace, and also immortal and immune from covetousness.

 

As a result of original sin, they transmit a corruptible human nature, deprived of sanctifying grace, of immortality and mastery over passions.  Through Mary and Joseph, Jesus remedies to the natural defects in the inferior parts of the person, whereas He remedies to the deprivation of grace in the superior part by the communication of His personal grace to the spiritual soul.

 

Mary and Joseph, under the motion of Christ’s Divine Act of Being of which they are instruments, operate in human persons to suppress the obstacles to their reception of grace, resulting from original sin, i.e. death and covetousness.  Christ, operating by His Divine Act of Being through Mary and Joseph, transmits to these human persons the human likeness of Mary as the Lord’s Maid (Lk 1:38) and of Joseph as the just man (Mt 1:19), which submits them to His gift of grace.  Likewise, He perpetuates in these persons the respective roles of Mary and Joseph between each other and towards the Child Jesus; these roles make them instruments of Divine Love.  Such is the subordinate and auxiliary mediation of Mary and Joseph: to dispose subjects to the reception of Christ’s grace and to its action.

 

Through this system of mediation, Jesus remedies, not only to human covetousness, but also to death as an obstacle to the reception of Christ’s grace.  Children who die in the womb of their mothers are necessarily deprived of baptism and seemingly salvation.  But under the motion of Christ’s Divine Act of Being, Mary and Joseph take care of dying children and submit them to the justifying power of Christ so that they can be saved.

 

 

 

8.       Origin of the roles of Mary and Joseph in the Novitiate of the Holy Family.

 

When God created mankind, He was present in the first two persons, through prevenient sanctifying grace.  He was present in their souls, and through their souls, in their body: the sanctifying prevenient grace penetrated the whole human nature, from the spiritual soul to the body: so they shared in the divine life.  God was present in them, not only as a principle of human life, but even as a principle of a participation in the divine life.  God was present in their generative power, not only for the procreation of human persons, but also to make their children His children, through the gift of a seed of eternal life, which is grace.

 

After original sin, mankind was separated from God and deprived of grace.  God, whose Love is permanent, and who wants to give eternal life to mankind, although mankind refused it, sent His Son to become a man, and to save mankind from death and sin.

 

The Son of God became a man like all men, being conceived and born of a woman, Mary.  The principle of His Conception is the Holy Spirit.  In the Incarnation, God is again present in a human person, Mary, not only through grace, but in Himself.  In her Immaculate Conception Mary was previously prepared to receive this new presence of the Son of God in herself, by prevenient grace.

 

This grace had the same effects as original grace had in our first parents: it preserved her from original sin, from concupiscence especially.  Her plenitude of grace penetrates and moves her whole activity under the divine guidance.  The Son of God is present in her generative power to become, as a man, principle of grace for all mankind.  Her motherhood is completely overshadowed by the Holy Spirit.  Her role as a mother is an effect of grace, which orders her perfectly to Christ through charity.

 

St. Joseph is united to Mary by marriage.  This natural link is sanctified by a special grace, when Joseph obeys the divine mission of receiving as his wife the Mother of the Son of God.  From this time, all his activity as a spouse, and as a foster father to Christ, is under the guidance of God through grace, although he remains submitted to concupiscence like all other men.  His fatherhood is perfectly ordered to Christ through charity, because, from the first moment of His Incarnation, Christ is the source of charity, first for Mary and Joseph.  His role is sanctified immediately by Christ.  St. Paul says, “the plenitude of the Godhead lives in Christ bodily” (Col 2:9).  As well as the Holy Trinity living in Christ, giving divine Being to His humanity, the Holy Trinity, through Christ’s humanity, lives in Mary and Joseph, sanctifying their motherly and fatherly roles by grace.

 

The role of Mary and the role of Joseph are effects of grace in the ordinary activity of a woman and a man as subjects of this gratuitous gift, which is a participation in the life of the Holy Trinity.

 

These roles are effects of grace in the Church for persons who submit themselves through the Sacraments to Christ’s grace, relying upon Mary’s and Joseph’s intercession, especially in their motherhood and fatherhood.  The result is that the roles of Mary and Joseph are personified in such persons as subjects of Christ’s grace.  These persons are within the communion of the Holy Family and are united with the Holy Trinity, since they are Christ’s members.  Thus, the origin of the roles of Mary and Joseph in the Novitiate of the Holy Family is Divine Love transforming motherhood and the motherly role, and fatherhood and the fatherly role, into Himself.

 

 

9.       Our Lady of the Hidden and Mystical Wounds.

 

I.    Our Lady is always linked to the Church as Mother: each time she is wounded, the Church is wounded.  The motherhood of women and the fatherhood of men are wounded and when their roles are disordered children are wounded, their innocence crucified especially in abortion.  Our Lady comes close to her children, to their crosses, which are the Cross of Christ.  She instinctively knows that every wound can be healed by the power of Christ's Wounds: this healing which flows from Christ through the Sacraments of the Church.  The awareness of the dignity of their roles stops the wounding.  Each time the divine order of things is distorted by sin, the result is crucified innocence and many wounds: which effect the whole body of Christ. Our Lady delights when she sees our progress because it is our progression in her Son's Divine Innocence.  Because of her continual intercession down the centuries for us, her Son orders us to honor her Hidden and Mystical Wounds (Mystical is intimately united with the Mystical Body, the Mother Church).

 

II.   The eternal divine purpose was that all things be subjected to God, so that He may be all in all (1Cor 15:28): which means a union between God and His human creatures.  In creation, our first parents were subjected to God by sanctifying grace, and united to Him through faith, hope, and charity.  Being created in the image of God, they were free in their love of God just as God loved them freely.  There was an operative alliance between God and mankind.  It was operative as an exchange of mutual love.  However, our first parents broke this alliance, rejecting subjection to God’s Wisdom and Will, and they preferred to seek independently their good according to their own thought and desire.

God’s Love, being unchanged, wants the restoration of the primitive alliance, but at a higher level.  This new alliance would be, not only operative, but entitative: which means that in One Divine Person, the Son, divine nature and human nature would be united by one Divine Act of Being.  However mankind’s consent is required to draw up this new alliance.

 

As a partner in this new alliance, God chose a Virgin from Israel, to become the Mother of His Son in human nature.  Her own Conception was Immaculate, as preserved from original sin by a plenitude of prevenient grace.  Her answer to this first divine gift was the consecration of her whole person to God in remaining Virgin.  So she was perfectly subjected to God.  The mystery of the Incarnation was revealed to her by the Angel: because Incarnation will be realised through her and from her as the Mother of the Son of God Incarnate, God, who respects human freedom, waits for her consent.  However, her consent is not only personal, but also given in the name of the whole of mankind.  The aim of the Incarnation is the salvation of all mankind, the union of all men with God.  In her Immaculate Conception, she had been made adoptive daughter of God in a personal gift of the Holy Spirit.  Now she will receive the Holy Spirit at the same time as a personal gift making her the Mother of God, and also, as a universal gift making her consent, the whole consent of mankind. 

 

The Holy Spirit is identical to the Divine Act of Being, common to the Three Divine Persons.  In the Divine Act of Being, all men are contained as creatures pre-existing in their Creator.  Mary also is contained in the Divine Act of Being, and she is one with all men as such.  When the Holy Spirit comes upon her (Lk 1:35), first uniting her will to Himself, her free consent is made as one with all mankind’s will to accept the Incarnation.  Thus, when she says: “Let what you have said be done onto me” the new alliance between God and mankind is prepared, through Mary’s mediation, on the side of mankind.  Then, the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father and the Son, actualises the generative faculty of Mary, when the Son takes her as His mother, through that same Divine Act of Being.  From her, He assumes into His Divine Person an individual human nature; when Mary conceives the Son of God as her Son in human nature, the new alliance of divine nature and human nature is completed.

 

The Son of God Incarnate, Jesus Christ, subsists in His individual human nature, which is a part of His Person.  He exercises His Divine Act of Being in it and through it.  All men pre-existing and contained in this Divine Act of Being, subsist and operate with Christ, in it and through it.  When Christ acts, suffers, dies, rises, they act, suffer, die and rise in Him and with Him.

 

Mary, being the Mother of Christ, is the Mother of all men contained in Christ.  As the Holy Spirit remains united to her operating love in her Heart, she is united to all men by the same motherly love, which unites her to Christ.  Old Simeon foretold her that a sword of sorrow would pierce her Heart (Lk 2:35): which was the prophecy of Christ’s Passion, but also of all sufferings of mankind, her children, through the centuries.  Her Compassion wounds her Heart: being the Mother of Christ, who is Divine Mercy, she is the Mother of Mercy, wholly and perfectly merciful.  She is united to her Son in His work of Mercy by the Holy Spirit.  She bears in her Heart all the wounds of her children especially in our times when the plague of abortion breaks all bounds, her Heart is wounded by the millions and millions of children killed before birth.

 

Mary is subjected and ordered by the Holy Spirit to Christ, not only as her Son, but also as the Word, in whom she will see God.  After the Assumption, being glorified in soul and body, she sees in the Word all men, her sons, actually living and suffering.  At the time of Christ’s Passion, the object of her Compassion was, not only Christ, but all men contained as pre-existing in Christ.  Then, her Heart was wounded, not only by Christ’s sufferings, but also by the sufferings of all mankind in all times.

 

Historically, her Compassion is ended and replaced by a sharing in Divine beatitude.  Christ who, through the Holy Spirit, was the principle of her Merciful Compassion at the time of His Passion, now uses her as His instrument to apply, to actually suffering men, the effects of her affective mercy: His Divine Act of Being, being eternal and co-existing for all times, joins her historical Compassion as an instrumental cause to its present effects.  This explains why Our Lady appears sometimes weeping and expressing her sorrows as present, showing her Heart as wounded by mankind’s sins and sufferings.  That is a presence as a cause to its actual effects.  Being the result of the mystery of Christ’s Divine Act of Being operating through her, this presence is mysterious: that is the reason why Mary is called the Mother of the Hidden and Mystical Wounds.

 

 

10.      Crucified innocence and Divine Innocence – the case of aborted children.

 

Christ is Divine and Crucified Innocence, because innocence means the state of somebody who has no fault, no sin, no defect in his will.  Christ’s Crucified Innocence is shared by those who suffer and die in Him and for Him, and above all by those who have not committed any actual sin, that is to say children killed in the wombs of their mothers.  They pre-existed in Christ dying for them and for all mankind on the Cross, and Christ did not lose any of those who were given to Him by His Father, except Judas and all those who refuse His Salvation.

 

The aborted children were created by God’s Love and God loves His image in them:  He wants to elevate these images of Himself by grace to be His children in the Son, who is His Divine image, because He loves man like He loves Himself.  When they are killed by their parents contrary to the divine truth of life, they share in Christ’s Crucifixion, and thus they have an external likeness to Christ Crucified, which is the sacrament opening their souls to grace and uniting them to Him.  Their crucified innocence becomes triumphant in Christ’s Divine Innocence, and in Christ they have the Father as their Father.

 

Abortion tries to suppress the filiation of the child, which is the image of the Divine Filiation.  Christ is at the same time Son of God and Son of man; when the children are killed Christ is wounded, because He loves them as Himself; His human filiation is wounded and His Mother Mary is wounded in her Motherhood (the Mother Church and natural parents are also wounded).  The children are united to Christ as the Crucified Son of God, and so they receive the adoptive filiation in Christ.  It is a baptism of love in Christ’s Divine Innocence, which includes not only the Sacrament of Baptism but also the Sacrament of Confirmation, making them martyrs who witness to the truth of Christ, Son of God and Son of man.

 

In the first order of creation, fatherhood and motherhood were chosen by God to be instruments of His Divine Fatherhood in grace.  They continue this mission after original sin, on the human level only; but God continues giving His grace to mankind in His Divine Son’s Incarnation; He replaces the parents of the children when they deny them as their children, and when they suppress the human filiation, making them images of His Crucified Son, united to them by His Fatherly Love.  Afterwards the children draw their parents to this adoptive filiation which they enjoy in the Kingdom of heaven, in the Communion of Saints.

 

 

 

11.      Holy Innocents in our times.

 

A paper written by Dom. Philippe Jobert  O.S.B., monk of Solesmes Abbey France, on the question "Can the Magisterium of the Church acknowledge children killed in abortion as companions of the Holy Innocents, and therefore as martyrs?"

 

In his Encyclical Letter "EVANGELIUM VITAE" (n.99) John-Paul II writes "Your child lives in the Lord".  With these words he asserts the glory of the children slain in the wombs of their mothers.

 

 

 

A.     Glory:

 

We must find arguments, which demonstrate how this glory is applicable to these children.

1.     They are images of God, having a spiritual soul from the first moment of their conception.

2.     They are innocent, not having committed any actual sin.  They are deprived of supernatural justice only by original sin.  Their natural will is not ordered to the beatific vision.

3.     They are violently deprived of human birth, and then of baptism, the ordinary means of salvation.

4.     In glory they are innumerable living praises to the gratuitous Mercy of God, and intercessors for their slaughterers and for all sinners.

 

This glory is acceptable to God because:

1.     Holy Scripture reveals His universal salvific Will (Mt. 18,14; 1 Tim: 2,4; 2 Pet: 3,9), to which there is no obstacle in the souls of the slain children.

 

2.     The cases of Jeremiah (Jer: 1,5) and of St John the Baptist (Lk: 1,15) show that God can freely sanctify by grace a child in the womb of His mother.  The similar case of Mary is a dogma of faith: viz. the Immaculate Conception.

 

3.     Christ poured out His blood and gave His life on the Cross for all men to be saved.  Being the Creator, He contains, pre-existing in Himself, all creatures.  With Christ, who is a Divine Person subsisting in an individual human nature, all men, pre-existing in this Divine Person, subsist in His individual human nature.  Therefore, when Christ operates, suffers and dies, all men operate, suffer and die with Him.   Among them the unborn infants are virtually saved: to be actually saved, it is necessary only that God's grace be granted to them before their actual death, since they have already died virtually in Christ on the Cross.

 

4.     Christ said several times that the smallest ones and children are dearest to His heart.  Since this power of salvation is not limited to the Sacraments, He anticipates for these preferred ones the gift of grace, which they cannot otherwise receive.

 

However, the strongest argument for the glory of aborted children seems to be the Divine Logic of Love.  Notwithstanding God's supreme freedom and the gratuitous nature of salvation, there is an extremely deep connection between the mystery of Divine Love and the glory of slain children according to the three levels of God's Love which are distinguished by their effects:

1.     Love of charity: through which God wills that all men become members of Christ, united to Him, conformed by adoptive filiation to His image as God's Son in glory.

 

2.     Love of justice: through which God wants the glory of all men as due in justice to the Blood poured out by Christ for them.  Love of justice also for the children, cruelly deprived of the ordinary means of salvation.

 

3.     Love of mercy: through which God has given His Son as a ransom to sin and death for the liberation of all men ... and who has a greater misery than these children?   Even the greatest sinners, and among them the abortionists, can at any moment until the last second before death, be converted from their sins by grace changing their free will; but these innocents, not having the exercise of free will, are deprived even of this possibility.

 

God, who is Love, created mankind with the gift of natural life to be the matter for the gift of eternal life.  There is no necessity within human nature to receive grace, which is eternal life.  Nor is there any disposition to receive grace.  There is simply a spiritual ability to be gratuitously elevated to share in the Life of the Holy Trinity, which infinitely transcends human nature.

 

If human life is supernaturally ordered towards eternal life, this comes only from the divine purpose of Love, which attracts human life to Itself.  This purpose can neither be frustrated nor thwarted.  If the forces of evil try to obstruct the divine plan by killing the unborn, these forces of evil are overcome by the Logic of Love, anticipating the gift of grace before the death of the unborn.  We must not fear exaggeration when we speak of the infinity of God's Love transcending our knowledge (Eph: 3,19), and of the power of His desire for universal salvation, especially in favour of the innumerable innocents killed through abortion.

 

B.     Martyrdom:

 

Since they are killed, is it possible to call them martyrs?  Martyrdom means witness to Jesus Christ, God and Man, borne at the price of human life.  It is the most heroic act of faith, hope and charity, implying a voluntary preference for eternal life, and a renunciation of earthly life.  The martyrs are perfectly similar to Christ, the King of martyrs, who was condemned to death and crucified for His witness to the truth of His Divinity.  This likeness to Christ is the reason for an extension of the title of martyr to those who were killed for their relationship to Christ, even if they were not free to choose Him.  The Holy Innocents were slaughtered by Herod, who wanted to kill Christ: formally Christ was martyred in each of them.  They were witnesses to Christ as Messiah by their blood, without any possibility of willing it.

 

We now wish to compare the case of unborn children to that of the Holy Innocents; but is there a relationship between them and Christ as regards their death?  Their murderers try to suppress their filiation to a father and a mother.  This filiation is an image of the divine Filiation of Christ.  Furthermore it is similar to the human filiation of Christ, who called Himself the Son of man.  However, the slaughter of the unborn is not aimed at the suppression of Christ’s filiation as such, and so, from this point of view, the victims of abortion cannot be considered martyrs.

 

The same answer can be opposed to the argument based on life.  Christ said: "I am the Life" (Jn 14,6).  The life of the unborn is an image of, and participation - if remote - in Christ as Life, but this relationship is extraneous to the intention of abortionists.

 

We cannot therefore use only the subjective likeness to Christ of these children as innocent persons as proof of martyrdom.  This proof must be looked for elsewhere to be objective.  St Augustine wrote (PLS2,425):  "If Christ is Truth, whoever is condemned for truth suffers for Christ, and a crown is due to him." These words concern St. John the Baptist, who was beheaded for the divine truth about marriage.  More recently St. Maria Goretti and several other virgins were canonised as martyrs for chastity.

 

Aborted children are martyrs for the divine truth about life.  "Thou shalt not kill." This commandment of God is revealed in Holy Scripture (Ex: 20,13); it is also written in the heart of every human person, as a part of natural law. Those who terminate the life of the unborn willingly transgress this divine law; and so objectively the unborn are rendered victims, although they do not have any opportunity of choosing to die for the truth about life.  This objectively confers on their death the formal notion (ratio formalis) of martyrdom.

 

Some may wonder how God can consider so important something as tenuous, as frail and as insignificant (in the sight of many people) as a human embryo at the time of its conception.  However, it must be remembered that Christ poured out His Blood for the soul, which gives the embryo its spiritual and corporal life.  Furthermore, to understand the seriousness of the precept "Thou shalt not kill", it must not be forgotten that human life is the necessary matter for the reception of the gratuitous gift of eternal life.  To suppress human life is to prevent God from giving grace.  In the light of the Logic of Love, no crime is worse than to render impossible the connection between earthly and eternal life, a connection which is established gratuitously by God's Will.

 

According to His universal Will of salvation, God prevents the break of this connection by the precious gift of sanctifying grace, at the very moment of the murder of the unborn children.  Indeed, these children belong to the Love of God who created them.  They belong to the Love of Christ who saved them on the Cross, when they pre-existed and subsisted in His Crucified Humanity.  They belong especially to Christ as embryos because, not having the use of their free will, they have no self-determination.  They have only human nature, and God's Providence rules immediately over every created nature.  Furthermore, they are the closest image of Christ, who reduced Himself to nothing, when He entered the world as an embryo.  The Mother of Christ loves unborn children because, when she gave birth to her Divine Son, simultaneously she gave birth to them as pre-existing and subsisting in Christ.  When they die, Christ, acting according to His Divine Logic of Love, takes them as members of His Mystical Body, for He lives in them through His grace, which flows from His Heart.  His Divine Innocence is crucified, when they are killed.  Thus is fulfilled what Our Lord said : "Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of my brethren, you did it to me” (Mt: 25,40).

 

Christ Himself gives a witness to His divine truth about life through their death, because this death continues His own death on the Cross.  Mary, the Mother of the Hidden and Mystical Wounds, becomes actually their mother.  Because Christ is a martyr in them, while assuming their death as His own death, they are actually martyrs in Christ.  The Church, as Mystical Body of Christ, gives a voice to their witness when she proclaims them as martyrs and as her children.

 

In this way, the Victory of Christ over sin and death is complete and fully manifested by this innumerable crowd of martyrs.  Likewise, the grandeur of the plan of salvation, the power of Christ's Blood, and the infinity of the Mercy of God who conceived it, are proclaimed.

 

Thus God who created the universe and mankind for the glory of His Mercy, reveals supremely this Mercy, not only in giving grace to the unborn before they are deprived of life, but above all in giving them the glory of martyrdom, since their death is configured to Christ's death as a witness to divine Truth.

 

Through their death as martyrs, they become members of the Mystical Body of Christ who sanctifies them.  They are sanctified, not outside, but inside the Church.  She is their mother, not through the Sacrament of Baptism, but in claiming them as her glorious sons through a baptism of blood.  She gives their blood a voice proclaiming the divine truth of life, the glory of Divine Mercy, and the power of Christ’s Blood.

 

Christ Himself, as God's Word living in the glorified children, speaks through their blood as a witness to the divine Truth about life. Furthermore Christ lives in the Church as God's Word when the Church speaks.  He proclaims the children as members of the Church when she, recognising them as martyrs, identifies their witness with Christ's witness.

 

God the Father generates His Son when He expresses Himself in His Word.  The world was created by the Word of God (Jn: 1,3), who became a man through Mary's "Fiat".  The Word of God gives birth to the slain children in the Church, their Virgin Mother, when she proclaims them as her glorious sons: it is a generation by word.  As in Baptism there is a sacred word joined to water (Eph: 5,26), which gives birth to God's adoptive sons.  As the parents, in the name of their child, confess their faith and renounce the deeds of Satan, Mother Church, when proclaiming slain children as martyrs, confesses her faith in the divine truth about life and condemns the crime of abortion.

 

Thus, immediate justification of the children in their mother's womb does not in any way deprive the Church of her saving mission, because this proclamation is itself a necessary act of the Church in making their witness heard by all people.  Although they already live in the Lord (EV. n.99), they are not yet born in glory, so long as the Church has not asserted this glory.  Through this assertion, which gives them birth in glory, she becomes their Mother.

 

This proclamation is not only a glory for the children, but above all for God, for Christ Crucified, and for the Church.  Their witness glorifies the absolute gratuitousness of their salvation by God because they cannot freely co-operate with that salvation.

 

It is a glory also for us; since in the Holy Eucharist we are in communion with all who are contained in Christ, not least with the glorious martyred children.

 

 

Post scriptum:   “Can the Magisterium of the Church acknowledge children killed in abortion as companions of the Holy Innocents and therefore as martyrs?”

 

The whole argument of this cause is founded on the basis of the universality of the Salvific Will of God.  It implies two main consequences:

 

1.     Salvation is considered in its principle, which is the Mercy of God, and the justification which Christ achieves on the Cross: it is God’s work.

2.     Thus, this work of God has no limits: it is universal in itself, offered to all men. The limits come only from men who resist the salvific power of Christ’s Blood.

 

It is under the light of this universal salvific power, that the case of unborn children must be considered.  Not having the use of their freewill, they do not resist or limit the effects of the universality of Christ’s power of salvation.  Christ does everything to suppress the power of sin, which He has defeated on the Cross; His victory over original sin is absolute and definitive.  His victory over death, which is fulfilled by resurrection, begins in the gift of grace, the resurrection of souls, to the children at the moment of their violent death.  The result of this salvific work of Christ for the children is a glory for God’s Mercy and for Christ alone, because nothing can be related to human co-operation in it.

 

The same reason must be invoked for unborn children’s martyrdom.  Martyrdom is a divine grace, which is given to some persons who co-operate with their freedom; so it becomes a personal act of the highest charity.  In the case of the children, there is no personal co-operation, for they have not the use of their freedom.  Martyrdom is exclusively a gratuitous gift of Christ, giving of Himself as the King of martyrs, to continue His witness to divine Truth, through all unborn children.   There is no place for an exception, either on the part of Christ, or on the part of the children, who conform to His likeness in death to bear witness to the truth about life.  This martyrdom is universal in itself, for it is a participation of all children in Christ’s martyrdom.

 

This universality of salvation and martyrdom in the case of unborn children is so essential, that to look for an individual case of martyrdom in one child who is killed in abortion “in odium fidei”, would completely miss the point.[1] For in such a case, the universal salvific Will of God and Christ’s martyrdom are not taken into account.  The charism of martyrdom is reduced to the human level, and to the exceptional human conditions of the violent death of one person only: and the glory of martyrdom would be received by this person, not by God’s Mercy and Christ Crucified alone.

 

In the interpretation of the evangelical revelation of the universal salvific Will of God, there is a continued tradition of progression from St. Augustine, through the Second Council of Orange and the Council of Trent, from a restricted number of the predestined, to a wider and more merciful teaching of the Church.  For unborn children, the Church would have to take a step in this direction; and the same is to be said for the definition of martyrdom, according to the traditional lines of the development of Christian doctrine.

 

12.      Theological arguments for the martyrdom of children killed

            before birth.

 

 

With regard to the salvation for unbaptised persons in general, the Second Vatican Council says:  “Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and moved by grace, try in their actions to do His Will as they know it, through the dictates of their conscience, those too may achieve eternal salvation.  Nor shall divine Providence deny the assistance necessary for salvation to those who, without any fault of theirs, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God, and who, not without grace, strive to lead a good life.  Whatever good or truth is found amongst them, is considered by the Church to be a preparation for the Gospel, and given by Him who enlightens all men that they may at length have life” (Lumen Gentium n.16)

 

Concerning children killed by abortion, the Encyclical Evangelium Vitae, according to the Latin translation (AAS. T.87-1995-f.515) says: “You can commend your child to the Father and to His Mercy with hope”. These pronouncements have a divine source in Holy Scripture, where God expresses His desire for the salvation of all men:

 

Mat. 18:14:  “So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.”

1 Tim.2:3-44:  “This is good, and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, who desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.”

2 Pet.3:9:  “The Lord is not slow about His promise as some count slowness, but is forbearing towards you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”(RSV)

 

From these words we grasp that, in the eternal thought and Will of God, the creation of every human person, and the gift of human life, is ordered to eternal life.  Because of God’s transcendence, this divine design is fulfilled by the gratuitous gift of a sharing in the divine nature, which is sanctifying grace: 2 Pet 1:4, “You are to share the divine nature”.

 

In the divine design, the children killed by abortion pre-exist[2] in the divine Word, to be created and to be assimilated into Him by grace, becoming children of God and seeing Him: 1  John 3:2. “We are sons of God even now, and what we shall be hereafter has not been made known as yet.  But we know that, when He comes, we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is”.

 

When the Word becomes a man, and subsists in an individual human nature, the children, pre-existing and subsisting in Him, subsist with Him in His individual nature.  Everything done and suffered by Christ is also done and suffered by them, who are contained in Him.  Thus, they are redeemed and justified in advance, in the death of Christ on the Cross.

 

All these conclusions are certainties, resulting directly from public Revelation, the teaching of the Church and classical theology. However, they cannot be considered as the ultimate truths about the state of the children killed by abortion, for the Holy Spirit always leads the Church to a deeper understanding of the Divine Truth, once and for all revealed by Christ and His Apostles.  The Second Vatican Council says: “The perception of the things and of the words which the tradition conveys, increases either through contemplation and study of the believers who meditate on them in their heart or by interior intelligence of the experience of spiritual realities”. (Dei Verbum n.8)

 

Private revelations are such experiences. According to the deep and precise commentary of Cardinal Ratzinger about the Secret of Fatima, which gives rules of interpretation on private revelations, we are authorised to consider that these revelations can make certain truths more explicit, which are contained implicitly in public Revelation. They add nothing to public Revelation, which is complete and definitive (Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 67), but they draw our attention to some points of Christ’s teaching, which are more useful in our times. The criterion of the value of private revelations is that they point to the salvation of souls in Christ.

 

Precisely in our times, the plague of abortion, which devastates many countries in the world, and especially the most ancient Christian ones in Europe, endangers the salvation of souls; for abortion is a “heinous crime” (Gaudium et Spes, n. 51). A private revelation shows the way to restrain, and even to stop this plague.   If the Church declares that all the children killed by abortion are martyrs, she will have in heaven a countless crowd of intercessors, who have the power to obtain from Divine Mercy the conversion of their murderers.  At the same time, through the voice of their Mother the Church, they will be an eloquent witness to the Divine Truth about life for which they died, from every nation in the world.

 

This private revelation calls Our Lord Jesus Christ ‘Divine Innocence Crucified’, and shows the victims of voluntary abortion as crucified innocence. Thus they share in Christ’s Victory over sin and death, as members of His Mystical Body in heaven, since they shared in His Cross.

 

The children have original sin, which is a privation of original justice.  They receive a Baptism of Love, according to this private revelation.  The meaning of this baptism of Love can be discovered under the light of the Divine purpose of universal salvation. God is Love.  God is the prime Lover.  God did everything that was possible and even impossible, such as taking the nature of a slave and dying on the Cross, out of His love for men, to fulfil His purpose of universal salvation.  Baptism of Love is Christ’s Baptism.  Firstly, because Christ, as the Son of God, is Love: “He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (Mat 3:12).  Then, because Christ, as the Son of man, is baptised: “There is a baptism I must needs be baptised with, and how impatient I am for its accomplishment”(Lk.12:50). This baptism, of which John’s baptism was the prefiguration, is Christ’s Passion, which He suffered for all men, pre-existing and subsisting in Him. “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (Jn.15:13).

 

Christ gives a participation in His Love, both divine and human, through His Baptism which washes all sins away, and first of all original sin, and justifies by sanctifying grace: “The Love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom we have received” (Rom.5:5).

 

The Baptism of Love is given by divine Love to every human person who shares in Christ’s Baptism, as He Himself said: “You will be baptised with the baptism I am to be baptised with” (Mk 10:38).  This gift is granted in various ways. First, the sacramental way: “We who were taken up into Christ by baptism, have been taken up, all of us into His death” (Rom.6:3). A second way is the witness of a death suffered for Christ, which unites the martyr to Christ Himself through charity: “Whoever acknowledges me before men, I too will acknowledge him before my Father who is in heaven”. (Mt 10:32)  “It is the man who loses his life for my sake that will save it” (ibid. 39).  If the martyr was not baptised, he receives the Baptism of Love through a baptism of blood.  If somebody dies without baptism of water, but having the desire for this baptism he belongs to Christ through this desire which is an effect of the Holy Spirit: he receives the Baptism of Love through a baptism of desire.

 

The unborn children do not receive the baptism of water. Having only original sin, but no actual sin, since they have not the use of their freewill, there is no obstacle in their soul to the Baptism of Love: their natural desire of happiness is able to receive sanctifying grace and the gift of the Holy Spirit.  God is the Prime Mover of human nature and He orders it to Himself implicitly through this natural desire of happiness. Moreover there is someone who makes up for the children’s inability to desire baptism explicitly: Mary, as Mother of Christ is Mother of all men pre-existing and subsisting in Christ.  The Holy Spirit came upon her (Lk.1:35) to make her not only the Mother of Christ and of all men, but also the intercessor for universal salvation. He dwells in her Heart forever.  As the Creator of all men, He contains them pre-existing within Himself as objects of Divine Love and as subjects of the gift of Himself.  At the foot of the Cross, Mary’s Heart was pierced by a sword of pain (Lk.3:35): She became the Mother of the Hidden and Mystical Wounds, as this private revelation calls her. Being moved by the Holy Spirit, her Heart, moved by the distress of unborn children, prays for their salvation, to obtain from the Father’s Mercy the gift of sanctifying grace: thus, they receive a baptism of desire, through Mary’s desire for them.  The same Spirit moves the Church to continue on earth the motherly mission of Our Lady in Heaven.

 

Above all, they receive the Baptism of Love through a baptism of blood, which unites them to Christ Crucified.  They are killed for the divine Truth about life, which is printed in every human soul, and revealed in the Decalogue: “Thou shalt not kill”. They are martyrs to the Gospel of life; for human life is the necessary receptacle of the gratuitous gift of eternal life, according to the divine purpose of Love for mankind.

 

United to Christ as witnesses to the divine Truth transgressed by their murderers, they are taken by Him as members of His mystical Body, because their innocent death actualises their participation in His own Passion.  Christ Himself bears witness and gives His life for truth within them and through them, moved by the Holy Spirit.  As Christ perpetuates the memorial of His death in the Mass He perpetuates His Martyrdom through theirs.  Thus, their crucified innocence is perfectly integrated in Christ’s Crucified Innocence, because not yet having freewill, they are perfectly moveable in their natural will by God’s Love.  Christ’s Blood “which is more eloquent than Abel’s”. (Heb 12:24) speaks through their blood, which is their visible witness.  Finally, Christ is a martyr in them; “When you refused it to one of the least of my brethren here, you refused it to me” (Mt 25:45).

 

Unborn children are children of God in heaven, but they are not yet born as children of the Church in this world.  The Church becomes their Mother, when She claims them as her children from all nations in the world, whatever the religion of their parents.  When She utters that they are martyrs in Christ, She gives them birth publicly.  Through her voice, their witness reaches the ends of the earth; and they become missionaries, preaching God’s word: “Thou shalt not kill”, for the conversion of their murderers.  Their numberless army will stop the assaults of abortion.

 

In heaven, they praise God’s Mercy, who alone saved them by Christ’s merits. The Word Incarnate, who was their witness at the time of their martyrdom, is now their praise because they are forever members of His Mystical Body.  Their thanksgiving for the Baptism of Love which was granted to them, obtains from Divine Mercy a greater extension of sacramental baptism to children who escaped death before birth, because it is the same Baptism of Love under a visible form, the same purification by Christ’s Blood, signified by water.  The Baptism of Love, source of all baptisms (baptism of water, baptism of desire, baptism of blood) not only does not diminish the importance of the sacramental baptism, but reinforces it in manifesting the necessity for all men to be integrated in Christ’s Crucified Innocence triumphant. Unborn children are the first models of this integration.

 

This private revelation[3] shows explicitly the marvels that are implicitly contained within the Father’s Mercy, to whom “Evangelium Vitae” commends unborn children. To understand the Divine Logic of Love which binds Divine Mercy and the martyrdom of unborn children, it is necessary to use the judgement by connaturality, for this logic transcends human reason.  Created charity is a participation in Uncreated Charity, and moves believing intelligence in two ways: first, by a perception of things contained within Divine Love; then by an impulse to join a predicate to a subject, to form a judgement about the perceived things.  Such a judgement introduces us into a deeper meaning of public Revelation, but also to a genuine interpretation of private revelations, manifesting the harmony between each, which leads to a development of doctrine.

 

At this point, it is necessary for an intervention of the third way mentioned by “Dei Verbum, n.8 ”: the charism of authority given to the Successors of the Apostles and particularly to the Successor of St. Peter to utter a pronouncement about this development of Christian doctrine.

 

 

13.      The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the claiming of the slaughtered children.

 

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass perpetuates the Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross.  All the parts of the rite are ordered to this central act, in its sacramental representation, and to its manifestation. 

 

The Liturgy of the Word begins with a penitential act. We regret publicly our sins; not only our personal sins but the sins of all mankind, which have offended God.  Among these sins is the monstrous slaughter of children in the womb of their mothers.  We ask God for His pardon, for His Divine Mercy for us, for all sinners, and for the perpetrators of these crimes of abortion.  Divine Mercy has cleansed the children who were conceived with original sin, in associating them with Christ’s Sacrifice as martyrs; and they are intercessors for the forgiveness of all sins.

 

Kyrie Eleison:  The Mercy of God is proclaimed at the beginning of the Mass as the principle of the total mystery of salvation: the glory of the children is the most perfect

effect of Divine Mercy.

 

The Gloria in excelsis Deo is a hymn of praise and thanksgiving to the Holy Trinity for its work of salvation.  By God’s Love, His good Will towards men brought peace to the world: peace between God and men by the atonement of all sins realised by Christ Crucified.  The children killed before birth, which are a huge part of mankind, are not excluded from this work of salvation.  They enjoy eternal peace in glory with Christ their Savior who took away the sins of the world.

 

The Opening Prayer gathers all the wishes of the members of the liturgical assembly: these wishes converge always to grant eternal life, through grace and the practice of virtue, especially charity for God and for neighbour.  To the children killed before birth, God granted grace at the moment of their death to enable them to be witnesses to the Gospel of life in Christ; they pray for us in the Communion of Saints, so that we might join them in eternal life through the gifts of Divine Mercy.

 

In the Liturgy of the Word we are taught the truth about God’s mysteries, and especially about salvation.  This work of salvation, which Christ achieved on earth, is to be completed with our co-operation during life, because all divine gifts come to us through our earthly life.  The children killed before birth fulfil all this at the moment of their death, when Christ takes them into Himself, to bear witness to truth through their innocence, especially to the truth about life.

 

The profession of faith summarizes this teaching in our assent to truth.  We believe in the Father who in His image created us and the children killed before birth.  We believe in Our Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, Image of God, who became man for our salvation, was crucified, died, and rose again: all men are comprised in this work of salvation, and even the children: Seated at the right hand of the Father, He will judge everyone.  Those who have killed the children will know that which they perpetrated against Christ (Matt 25:40).  We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Giver of life, the earthly life, the eternal life, which the children enjoy forever among all the other martyrs.  The Holy Spirit who has spoken through the prophets, speaks through their prophetic role of witness to Divine Mercy. We believe in the Church, who gives birth to them, as their Mother, through a baptism of blood, which purifies them from original sin.  We look for the resurrection of the dead: the children will be raised for the life of the world to come, among all the saints.

 

In the Liturgy of the Eucharist, we first offer the matter of Christ’s Sacrifice, as a sign of our offering of ourselves with humble and contrite hearts, in order to be received by God, which is the meaning of sacrifice: sacrifice for sins, because we are sinners.  We need the forgiveness of our sins, through Christ’s Sacrifice on the Cross.  Sacrifice of communion, when having been reconciled with God, we share in the sacramental Body and Blood of Christ, which unites us with His offering of Himself to His Father.  Holocaust, when being united with Christ through Love we are consumed by the fire of the Holy Spirit in Christ’s Sacrifice, for the praise and glory of the name of God.  The children are sharers in all these levels of sacrifice, as innocent members of the Body of Christ Crucified and of witnesses to Divine Mercy for them.

 

The prayer over the gifts is a recapitulation of all offerings, in order to please God, and to obtain His grace for the whole Church: which is united with the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving of the children in the heavenly Church.

 

The Preface is the entrance into the Eucharistic Prayer.  It is a praise of all the marvels operated by God, and ends in the angelic praise of the Divine Sanctity.  The children in heaven sing with the angels the praise of Divine Mercy, which made them participants in this divine Sanctity.

 

The Eucharistic Prayer, following the Sanctus, continues this praise of the divine Sanctity.  Uniting the whole Church on earth and in heaven and especially the martyrs, among whom are the children, it prepares for the imminent actualization of Christ’s Sacrifice on the Cross.  This expresses a fervent hope for peace in this life, preservation from damnation, and for admission among those God has chosen as His children in heaven.

 

Then, the account of the Last Supper shows and realizes what Our Lord said and did to perpetuate His Sacrifice, through the transubstantiation of the bread and wine.  In His Sacrifice, all men are contained (cf. Is 53:4-5; Hos 6:1-3), and even the children, who are forgotten because they are not born.  In Christ they offer themselves; in Christ they are consecrated in Truth as His witnesses, and their salvation is operated because they are innocent.  From the actual and sacramental presence of the Sacrifice of the Cross, its power radiates all over the world and throughout all centuries, to unite all children killed before birth to Christ Crucified and Risen, as martyrs.

 

After the Consecration, the Church unites her own offering in thanksgiving for Christ’s Sacrifice, celebrating the memory of the whole paschal mystery, and of all the gifts flowing from it.  To her offering of the Holy and immaculate Victim, she unites the sacrifices of Abel, Abraham, Melchisedec, the co-operation of Angels, and the memory of all the dead, praying for them. 

 

At the end we pray for ourselves, sinners, to be admitted among the Apostles and martyrs: the children are with them, not out of merit, but thanks only to God’s Mercy and Love through Christ.  And they share in the glory, which Christ gives to His Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit forever and ever.

 

The communion rite begins with the prayer which Christ Himself gave us to obtain pardon for our sins: ‘Our Father who art in heaven’: the children are your children and they proclaim holy Your name.  In them, You reign, and Your kingdom has come.  Your will is done in their innocence.  They enjoy in heaven, through the beatific vision, Christ who is the Bread of those who believe on earth.  Having been forgiven, they forgive their murderers, and pray for their repentance and salvation, because God overcomes the crime of the murderers by His Mercy, and calls them to share in the glory of their victims.  No temptation, no evil, can reach these victims, who are free forever, having been saved from original sin and made saints.  Being preserved from all anxiety, they help us to wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior Jesus Christ, for the glory of His kingdom, where they are happy.

 

Being reconciled with God through the gift of His peace through Christ’s Sacrifice, we ask for an extension of this peace flowing from heaven where the children enjoy it, to the whole Church, and to all men, through a communion of love, publicly signified. Thus we are prepared for communion with the Body and Blood of Christ: He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, and who grants peace.  There is no longer an obstacle to our union with Him: one word only from Him is able to heal our sick souls.  Our union with Christ in eucharistic communion is also a communion with all the saints who are members of His Body, especially with the little martyrs, our forerunners in heavenly glory.

 

After communion, in union with the triumphant Church, the faithful, filled with thanksgiving and praise, express these in the final prayer.  Their thanksgiving comprises the glory, which has already been given to all saints and to the children by Divine Mercy.

 

At the end of the Mass, the benediction of the Holy Trinity opens to all the promise of the divine merciful gifts, through which the children have already been united with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

 

Conclusion:

 

When the Mass is celebrated with reference to the claiming of the children, there is a development of doctrine, by making explicit what is implicitly contained in living Tradition, as it is done from Holy Scripture.  Both Scripture and Tradition are the Word of God coming to us in two ways, in complimentarity.  The Holy Spirit gives assistance to the Church to express the Truth in the liturgy and gives the impulse to develop the understanding of the Eucharistic mystery from the liturgical rites and texts, with regard to the children’s involvement in Christ’s Sacrifice.

 

 

 

14.      Virgin Souls.

 

Virginity is sanctity, and a perfect image of God’s sanctity.  God’s simplicity is absolutely pure of any mixture, being a perfect Spirit without any potentiality, any want of anything else, transcending infinitely the whole universe, either spiritual, or material.  This transcendence is His sanctity.  Virginity is incorruption, which means that the spiritual soul, although united with flesh, is not dominated by flesh, and does not yield to the natural desires of flesh.  Voluntary virginity consecrates the whole person to God in order to be united to Him exclusively, to belong to God’s Love only, in soul and in body.

 

The children, before being killed by abortion, were created incorrupted, having only the stain of original sin.  They belonged naturally to God’s Love through their natural desire of happiness: this is their own virginity as images of God’s sanctity.  When they are deprived of their body by violent death, their virginity culminates in martyrdom through a voluntary submission to the Will of God, under an impulse of grace, and is crowned.

 

 

 

15.      Kings, Priests, Prophets - aborted children's participation in Christ's threefold office.

 

 

Apocalypse  1,6: 

"...has made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever."

Apoc.  5,10: 

"... has made them a kingdom and priests to our God and they shall reign on earth".

Apoc.  20,6: 

"...they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and they shall reign with Him..."

 

What is written in the Apocalypse about all saints may be applied in a special way to unborn children:

 

1.  The royal power consists in a dominion of people uniting their work for the achievement of the common good.  Through the acceptance of their martyrdom and of God's gratuitous Love, the children are freed from original sin and from all sins, free of the persecution from those who kill them, free of all obstacles to their desire for eternal life and to their will to serve God only, free of every human power: absolute freedom.  Moreover, being united by charity to Christ the King, they share in His royal power over all men.  Being submitted to His Will of salvation for all men, their will is united with His Will, to achieve this salvation with the co-operation of their prayer.  Having reached the end by the highest act of charity, martyrdom, they will judge all men with Christ and with the Apostles to whom Christ promised thrones of judgement.

 

2.   The priestly power consists in mediation between God and sinners to reconcile them.  It brings to men the gifts of God and it offers to God the sacrifice of men for the repentance and the expiation of their sins.  Christ is the perfect Mediator.  Being God, He gives God's grace, and being a man, He offers Himself on the Cross, through His obedience to His Father and the acceptance of suffering and death, as a Sacrifice for all sinners who are contained in Him as creatures in their Creator.  Being sinless and perfectly innocent, He is loved as a man by His Father, and all men are loved in Him.

 

All those who are members of Christ through baptism share in His priestly power, firstly receiving grace from Christ's plenitude of grace, then obtaining grace for others through the communion of Saints.  Charity is a participation in the Divine Love of Christ who loves every man and wants his salvation.  Accepting the trials of human life, they share in Christ's Passion.  They participate in reparation for their sins and the sins of others to actually apply the atonement once and for all fulfilled by Christ on the Cross.

 

Through their martyrdom, a baptism of blood, unborn children killed before birth have this priestly power.  They are united to Christ Crucified.  They are united with the Heart of Christ, source of grace and forgiveness; they are, by their innocence, privileged intercessors for all sinners and especially for those who have killed them.

 

3.   The prophetic power consists in speaking in the name of God against all sins, and for the service of God and the salvation of men.  Through their witness, given by their blood, unborn children killed before birth are prophets.  The Divine Word Crucified is speaking through them, through their crucified innocence, uttering a witness to Truth.  Being united to Christ, the Divine Truth, by their blood, they are precursors of the future manifestation of Christ's glory.  Everybody, having truth written in their soul "Thou shall not kill", is able to hear and understand their witness against evil and for righteousness.

 

 

16.       Limbo, no.

 

The theory of limbo ‘limps’ because it relies upon divine Justice only, and not upon Justice and Mercy together.  God is at the same time Justice and Mercy: so there is never divine Justice without Mercy.

 

Ps 88:15:        ‘Justice and equity are the foundation of thy throne, 

Mercy and faithfulness stand in front of thy face.’

 

St. Augustine, in his polemics against Pelagianism, insisted on the absolute necessity of sanctifying grace through baptism to obtain eternal life.  These polemics arose from the custom of baptising children.  As children have not committed actual sins, what is removed by baptism is original sin.  Thus, unbaptised children who die with original sin, cannot receive eternal life.  St. Augustine thought that they were excluded from salvation.  The Council of Carthage (418) followed this position which can be found also in the Councils of Lyons (1274) and Florence (1439).

 

However, many theologians thought that children could not be condemned to hell, because they did not commit any mortal sin.  As they could not be admitted into heaven, the theologians imagined a third place, limbo, where they would be deprived of the beatific vision, but not punished otherwise.  So they would enjoy some natural happiness.

 

This opinion was considered traditional enough to be sustained by the Bull “Auctorem fidei” which condemned the pseudo Council of Pistoia.  Against the Jansenists, who followed the strict opinion of St. Augustine, Pius VI declared (1794) that limbo must be admitted as a place where those who die with original sin only, are deprived of the beatific vision, without any punishment by fire.

 

This position is common among theologians, and is considered as a teaching of the Church, because nothing about the fate of children who die unbaptised is explicitly revealed in the Word of God.

 

However, the concept of limbo is founded upon two negative concepts: no heaven, no hell.  It is possible to found a concept upon a reality, but not a reality upon a concept and all the more so upon negative concepts: so limbo has no more reality than a purely intellectual conception.  What’s more, the reasoning, which leads to the existence of limbo, is a result of human logic.  However, divine mysteries are not connected to each other by human logic, but by divine Logic.  Because ‘God is love’ (1Jn 4:9), we know that the divine Logic is the Logic of Love.

 

-       Inasmuch as divine Love is Charity, God wants the salvation of all men, loving them as Himself, and so He offers sanctifying grace to all those who are not opposed to His love: unborn children are unable to resist.

-       Inasmuch as divine Love is Justice, God is just to His Christ who poured out His Blood for all sinners to be saved, and to atone for all sins: thus the original sin of unborn children is washed out in His Blood.

-       Inasmuch as divine Love is Mercy, Christ is Divine Mercy made flesh to take upon Himself all human miseries and to communicate His plenitude of grace to all who believe in Him and receive His baptism.  What Christ Resurrected operates in His believers through the Sacraments, He operates also in those who die before they are able to believe and to receive the Sacraments.  At the moment of their natural death, Christ appears to them in His glorious human nature, as the vanquisher over death for all men through His Resurrection: spontaneously they adhere to Him through their natural desire for life, and Christ gives them eternal life.  Their death paid the debt of their original sin and Christ’s Mercy made them sons of the Resurrection (Lk 20:36) through His grace, elevating their natural desire.

 

Such is the Logic of divine Love, which is transcendent.  It is out of reach to human reason, but the Holy Spirit, who alone knows it, reveals its conclusions through the gift of wisdom to those who become His instruments through a complete abnegation of their proper wisdom and a perfect submission to Divine Wisdom.

 

There is an analogy with the Holy Eucharist: just as in this Sacrament the risen body of Christ is a food of divine life, so also when Christ Resurrected appears to dying children, He is to their desire a food of divine life, for He said: “I am the resurrection and the life” (Jn 11:25).

 

In the case of children who are killed in abortion, there is a previous action of Christ’s Mercy for them: He unites them to His own Martyrdom, as witnesses for the Gospel of Life.  They are martyrs in Him and are consequently glorified in Him.  In comparison with the Mass, they are united to Christ’s Sacrifice at the moment of Consecration, whereas other children, victims of miscarriage, are united to Christ’s glory at the moment of communion to His glorious Body; the former are intercessors for the latter.

 

 

17.      Brief explanations of key theological themes in relation to the children.

 

Justice:              gives everyone what is due to him.  Unjustly deprived of earthly life through, which God gives to all His means of salvation, the children killed before birth are granted, at the very moment of their violent death, grace and charity in Christ, by Divine Justice which makes them just and worthy of beatific vision and resurrection.

 

Mercy:               removes misery from those who are deprived of the necessary means of living. Christ, on the Cross takes upon Himself the whole misery of death and damnation of mankind to atone for all human sins through His obedience; and His Mercy includes the children who are innocent, but have original sin: they are deprived by violent death of all means of salvation, which is their special misery.  Christ’s Mercy takes upon Himself this misery in uniting their innocent will with His Sacrifice through the gift of His grace.

 

Love:                 wants for another all goods as for oneself.  God’s Charity loves all men as Himself, and will give them a participation in His own life of knowledge and love in the beatific vision.  Only those who do not accept Christ as the way to eternal life are excluded of their own accord from this sharing in God’s beatitude.  The children cannot resist the Divine Love in Christ, who communicates His grace to them in a baptism of Love at the moment of their death.

 

Law:                  orders people to their good. The ancient law was given to the Jews who, like all other people after original sin, are under the bondage of death and deprivation of grace.  This law leads only to an earthly justice: it is external and does not transform a sinner into a child of God.  The new law is the Holy Spirit who leads a person from within through Christ’s grace to eternal life.  The new law changes the sinner into a child of God.  It is a gratuitous gift, which gives an inner justice; through this justice, the child of God is proportioned to his Father in heaven, and receives the beatific vision as a reward of his love.  The children, who are deprived of this justice, and of all means of receiving it, according to the Logic of Divine Love, are introduced into the reign of the new law, by Christ’s Mercy justifying them in His own Sacrifice on the Cross, making their death a sacrifice in His own death, and opening to them the kingdom of heaven.  Not having the use of their freewill, they obey God’s law in natural love, and this natural love is transformed by the Holy Spirit into Charity, the new law.

 

The Word of God:

is a commandment which shows the way to please God through love, and invites all to follow it.  This word is spoken to human freedom and requires obedience, which is true love.  The children have this natural commandment written in their souls, and they obey it in their natural will.  The Word Incarnate takes them up into Himself.  They obey His Mercy which elevates them to share in His own Sacrifice at the moment of their death which is perpetrated against the Word of God; “Thou shall not kill”, and so they become witnesses to the Word of God.

 

The Will of God:

is the divine design of salvation, fulfilled in Christ’s Sacrifice.  The natural will of the children is innocent, although deprived of grace, and conformed by Christ’s Crucified Innocence to the Divine Innocence, at the moment of their death: their will is united to the Will of God by Christ’s grace and Christ’s obedience.

 

Blood:                the blood which flows from Christ’s pierced Heart includes the children in a baptism of blood, which makes them martyrs in Christ’s love for His Father and for all mankind, at the moment of their death.

 

Baptism:            this baptism of blood is first a Baptism of Love.

 

 

 

 

18.      The Philosophy of Divine Love.

 

Preliminary paper.

 

1.     Philosophy of Divine Love means Divine Wisdom as the principle of the free designs of Divine Love.  God’s Wisdom is transcendent, and only through Revelation can we know its statements (Rom 11:33).  The beginning of the Epistle to the Ephesians shows that the divine purpose of calling man to communion with God is a pure object of faith, out of reach of human intellect (Faith and Reason n.7).  The word “Philosophy” here has an analogous sense, not to be confused with human philosophy.  Only theology is able to explain this divine philosophy, and theology relies completely upon faith and Revelation.

 

2.     Human philosophy, and more precisely, metaphysics, is the science of being as being.  Like all sciences, and more than any other, metaphysics has its foundation in the sensitive experience of material being, because we have no other experience of being.  Without this contact with being, metaphysics would only be a game of concepts and words, absolutely empty and meaningless.  Our objective experience of the existence of a spiritual soul in man relies upon the sensitive experience of the effects of intellectual operations, which is possible at the age of reason, not before.  Even the being of an embryo is not a matter of experience.  God being Spirit, creation is not a matter of experience.  Divine Love, which is the principle of creation, is not a matter of experience.  God, God’s Love, creation, the spiritual soul at the moment of conception, all these realities are objects of faith.  All that the Philosophy of Divine Love expresses about the invitation, addressed to man as soon as he comes into being, to converse with God, is an object of faith, revealed in both Testaments, confirmed by Tradition and by the Church.

 

To be recognised as a person, the embryo must have a spiritual soul which would be a matter of experience; being spiritual the soul is not a matter of experience; thus it is not a subject of metaphysics, which is founded upon experience, and which transcends empirical data through abstraction; but empirical data are absolutely necessary to be abstracted and to become metaphysical subjects.  The Philosophy of Divine Love, transcending every human experience, and still more, every material experience, does not replace the lack of an experience which is necessary to prove the presence of a spiritual soul at the moment of conception.

 

The Philosophy of Divine Love proves that God does not leave man without a philosophical way of demonstrating the presence of a spiritual soul at the moment of conception.  This is the way shown in the speech of Pope John Paul II to the Academy for Life in February 1998 (published in Osservatore Romano).  If a man is able to produce intellectual acts at the age of reason, and if no substantial change has been made in him from the moment of conception, the spiritual soul which is the principle of intellectual acts is present in him from the moment of conception.  The proof of no substantial change is the experience of the complete substantial program (DNA genetic code) and of all substantial elements in an initial state in the embryo from the moment of conception, up to the age of reason.  There is a unity of person throughout the years.  In the eyes of God the time between conception and the age of reason is seen as one moment, when in our eyes we see a long passage of time, and God sees each person all at the same time.

The messages of Divine Innocence speak of the Philosophy of Divine Love.  This is a supernatural experience, a fruit of a gift of the Holy Spirit, the gift of intelligence.  This supernatural experience, rooted in the Divine Act of Being, does not replace the natural experience, rooted in the material act of being, known through the five senses.  As well as in Christ, who has two natures, the divine nature does not replace the human nature: both are necessary.  We must not confuse our supernatural experience with our natural one.

 

If human philosophies fall short, there are two reasons:

 

1.     Most of them are false: Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Marse, Nietszche, Whitehead, Wittgenstein, Russell etc…. because they have lost every contact with reality (idealism, subjectivism, agnosticism, etc).  The philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas founded on the act of being, and sensitive experience, which Pope John Paul II recommends in the Encyclical Faith and Reason n. 97 is able to demonstrate the presence of a spiritual soul from the moment of conception, on the natural level.

 

2.   All of these philosophies are limited to this natural level, and are thus unable to show the transcendent end to which man is called by God’s gratuitous Love.  This end is only known through Revelation and faith.  The source of this Revelation is the Philosophy of Divine Love, Divine Wisdom itself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 



[1] The question is about aborted children as such, as considered under the universal formal notion (ratio formalis) of aborted; and therefore about all aborted children and because of abortion.

[2] St. Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica: 1a Q4 a2; Q12 a8; Q13 a2 et ad 2, a4, a5, a6; Q 14 a5, a11; Q 15 a2; Q18 a4 ad 1; Q 19 a3 ad 6, a4; Q 44 a3, Q56 a2; Q 57 a1; Q 93 a8 ad 4; Q 104 a1; Q 105 a3.

[3] Given to Patricia de Menezes, Surbiton England and referred to as the inspiration of Divine Innocence.