Posted on 02/06/2020 9:17:14 AM PST by Salvation
There is a remarkable statement at the end of the eleventh chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews. It speaks to the unity of the mystical Body of Christ and to the treasury of merit, which extends both backward and forward in time. Hebrews 11 is devoted to reciting the glory of many Old Testament saints. That litany concludes with the following verses:
These were all commended for their faith, yet they did not receive what was promised. Since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect (Heb 11:39-40).
It is astonishing to think that we who live now might have had anything to do with the sanctity and heroism of the saints who came before us, but the text says that without us they would not have been perfected.
How can this be? Simply put, it is because we are all members of the Body of Christ, and Christ transcends time. What we do today touches both the past and the future, for to Christ all things are present in the “eternal now.”
Therefore, consider well that whenever you offer your sufferings or prayers or good works, you are contributing to the treasury of merit from which people of all time may draw. Whatever we do to contribute to this treasury of merit has always been known to the Lord and is always present to Him.
Of this treasury, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches,
The ‘treasury of the Church’ is the infinite value, which can never be exhausted, which Christ’s merits have before God. They were offered so that the whole of mankind could be set free from sin and attain communion with the Father. In Christ, the Redeemer himself, the satisfactions and merits of his Redemption exist and find their efficacy.
This treasury includes as well the prayers and good works of the Blessed Virgin Mary. They are truly immense, unfathomable, and even pristine in their value before God.
In the treasury, too, are the prayers and good works of all the saints, all those who have followed in the footsteps of Christ the Lord and by his grace have made their lives holy and carried out the mission the Father entrusted to them. In this way they attained their own salvation and at the same time cooperated in saving their brothers in the unity of the Mystical Body [CCC 1476-1477].
Is it possible that I, even if in a tiny way, contributed to the holiness of my patron, St. Charles Borromeo, or of my heroine, St. Catherine of Sienna? Yes, albeit in a small way. My contribution to the treasury of merit is but a drop in the ocean compared to what Christ has provided and the saints have deposited. Yet without us and our contributions they would not be perfect. We all contribute, by the grace of Jesus, to one another’s sanctification.
Ponder, then, the sweeping effect of your contributions to the treasury of merit! Whenever you offer your sufferings to the Lord, whenever you pray, whenever you perform good works, you make available to Christians of every age an additional store of grace on which they have drawn or may draw. All of this is solely by the grace of God, and because of that grace it is a reality.
St. Paul also speaks to this:
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you (Col 1:24-25).
Of course, there is nothing intrinsically lacking in the once-for-all, perfect sacrifice of Christ. It is only imperfect (or incomplete) from our perspective in time, in which each of us, as a member of the Body of Christ, “waits” to bear our sliver of the passion and cross. The Lord, however, isn’t waiting for anything. What we have done, are doing now, or will do in the future has always been present to Him. While our contributions extend forward in our chronological time, they also go backward and are part of the perfect and full treasure of merit on which the members of the Body of Christ have always drawn.
It is awe-inspiring to ponder how we all affect one another over time!
All this said, we ought also to be aware that if we can contribute to one another’s growth in holiness, we can also detract from it and harm others through our sins. It matters whether or not we pray, whether or not we offer our sufferings to the Lord, whether or not we strive for holiness.
We are one Body in Christ. Consider well your role in helping others to be holy. Did your contributions to the treasury of merit help the saints of old to become saints? Even if in a small way and only by the grace of God, the answer is yes, for apart from us they should not be made perfect.
In the video below, one woman’s laughter is infectious, affecting everyone around her. Let’s pray the same for holiness.
Monsignor Pope Ping!
No. Those who have gone before us are what they are. There is nothing we can do to help or hurt them.
The Gospel of Matthew, 18:15-17 comes to mind:
Matt 18:15 “If your brother* sins [against you], go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother. Matt 18:16 If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ Matt 18:17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church.* If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector. In the National Prayer Breakfast, refers to those who sin such as saying "I am praying for you." The Gospel of Matthew comes to mind: Matthew 18:15-17
Article on the Prayer Breakfast this morning
Trump: I Don’t Like ‘People Who Say I Pray for You When They Know That That’s Not So’
Anticipatory grace.
SMH.
It's such a narrow, tiny view of His eternal grace, in which -- by His magnanimity --- we so richly participate.
No. But Roman Catholicism attributes way more to this issue tha allowed by scripture. There’s nothing you can do for your great great great grandparents. Their eternal destiny was decided when they died.
Padre Pio reminds us that it is never too late to pray, whether a person died recently or long ago: “For the Lord, …everything is an eternal present. Those prayers had already been taken into account so that even now I can pray for the happy death of my great-grandfather!”
Time is part of creation. It didn’t exist before the first day. There is no earth-time in Heaven.
God is not trapped in time. Creation does not constrain the Creator. Eternity is not trillions of years, infinite time. Eternity is the absence of time.
very well stated!
Time is part of creation. It didn’t exist before the first day. There is no earth-time in Heaven.
God is not trapped in time. Creation does not constrain the Creator. Eternity is not trillions of years, infinite time. Eternity is the absence of time.
The problem with this line of thinking is that it means God is going to do something or allows something contrary to what He had revealed to us in His word.
*****
23Therefore it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be cleansed with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.
24For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us;
25nor was it that He would offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the holy place year by year with blood that is not his own.
26Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.
27And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment,
28so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.
Hebrews 9:23-28 NASB
However, I think you don't quite get --- maybe none of us quite get ---the idea of timelessness.
All sequencing --- whether it's before-and-after, impetus-and-act, yesterday-today-tomorrow, cause and effect --- is based in time. Step out of time and it's all there before you at once: a God's-eye view.
The prophets, too, are granted this vision, if only for a moment. St. Benedict of Nursia was permitted to see the world in a beam of light. In Hebrews, speaking of the heroes of the OT, he Epistle tells us (11:13):
"All these people died in faith, without having received the things they were promised. However, they saw them and welcomed them from afar. And they acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. Now those who say such things show that they are seeking a country of their own.."
This is also shown in that Jesus Christ died for our salvation at a locatable historic time and geographic place: on a hill called Calvary, outside of Jerusalem, on or about 3:00 pm on Friday, April 3, A.D. 33 (others have proposed other exact dates,but they're all anchored in actual historic contexts within a very narrow possible time-frame.)
And Yet... Scripture says that God the Son is "the Lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev. 13:8), a truth which Peter repeats with these words:(1 Peter 1:19-20) ...Christ, a Lamb without blemish or spot, Who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world, but was manifested in these last times for your sake..."
So you've got things happening in time, but simultaneously in the all-times-timelessness of the Eternal "I AM" in the Eternal Now: Eternity.
In spiritual matters, in Christ, we are quite capable of jumping in at any moment to share spiritul gifts with anybody.
That's what "in Christ" means. The same yesterday, today and forever. I think Msgr. Pope's Scriptural explanation is actually quite good. How vast, how unimaginably intricate and effective is this Body of Christ --- in Whom we live and move and have our being.
His misunderstanding of this passage leads him into all kinds of false belief.
More training in Bible would help him.
Hebrews 11:39–40 commentary:
“... the great heroes of faith he had spoken of had not yet realized their eschatological hopes.
This fact shows that God had planned something better for them and us. It is indeed “better for us” that the future hopes they strove toward be delayed, since only thus could believers enjoy the present experience of becoming companions of the Messiah who leads them to glory.
As a result, the perfecting (cf. 10:14; 12:23) of the Old Testament worthies—that is, the realization of their hopes—awaits that of all believers.”
And he has a metaphysics.
I'm not saying you should agree.
But we tend to hold that God embraces all of time in, as Monsignor Pope says (and he is by no means the first to say it) God's eternal now.
We all agree,don't we, that any good we do, any holiness we enjoy is not ours but God's. So if any benefit, any goodness follows from his goodness exercised on us, why must it be limited to our creaturely sequential experience of before, now, after? To him all time is now. We are conduits for his good now in February of 2020, and such good things as follow are applied now in 1218.
...
I can see an argument against the idea that good things God does through me might be of any use to anyone. But I think the time and space problems are a slam dunk.
It's almost an argument for karma.
Our praying for a deceased loved one may make us feel good but it has zero impact on where they are.
Rome's error on this is driven by their acceptance of 2 Maccabees as Scripture and further compounded by how they understand the book.
2 Maccabees contradicts the New Testament and is rejected as part of the Christian canon.
Scripture is clear that once you die, your eternal destination is set.
No amount of praying for the person can get them out of Hell and into Heaven.
No amount of praying for a person will shorten their time in purgatory because purgatory doesn't exist.
Now, do we pray for each other while here on earth? Absolutely. That is 100% supported by Scripture.
Nonsense.
We cannot "tap" into Paul or Peter or anyone else who is deceased nor can they "tap" into us.
You've gone way, way off the road on this one, Mrs.d. Almost New Age mysticism in some ways.
Where is Pope getting his interpretation of Hebrews 11:39-40?
Even the Haydock Catholic Commentary has no traditional Catholic interpretation of these specific verses.
I’m not convinced that the author of this article is providing a Catholic interpretation of these verses.
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