Another Day On the Pope's Lenten Retreat

I posted yesterday a article on what the Pope is hearing on his Lenten Retreat here at What Does Pope Benedict Hear on His Lenten Retreat? .

Thanks again to The Ratzinger Forum that has translated the Vatican Radio article on the lastest retreat going ons.

The sacrifice of Christ, and the role of the Holy Spirit in the Paschal Mystery were the meditations proposed this morning by Cardinal Albert VanHoye on the fifth day of the Lenten spiritual exercises for the Holy Father and the Roman Curia. The meditation yesterday evening was on Christ as the mediator of the New Alliance at the Last Supper. The retreat began Sunday evening at the Redemptoris Mater chapel of the Apostolic Palace, and will end on Saturday morning. Roberta Gisotti reports:

Cardinal Van Hoye today meditated on 'the sacrifice of Christ' through St. Paul's Letter to the Hebrews. If in today's language, sacrifice has taken on a negative meaning, he said, it has a very positive significance in religion. "To sacrifice does not mean to deprive, but to make sacred, just as to sanctify means to make holy and simplify means to make simple.

Thus, sacrifice is a very positive and fruitful act which enhances the value of an offering." The sacrifice of Christ encompasses the whole Paschal Mystery, from his passion and death to his glorification: "Without the glorification, it would have been incomplete, it would not have established the New Alliance because Christ would not have 'reached' God and actualized the link between human misery and God's sanctity."

The cardinal recalled that in the Old Testament, the purpose of sacrifice was to change God's disposition, to obtain his favor, in exchange for ritual offerings. Something else takes place in the Christian sacrifice, as the Letter to the Hebrews explains: "Its author says that the purpose of sacrifice is to change the disposition of man, not of God.

Its purpose is to make perfect the conscience of the one who offers the sacrifice, to give him a pure heart that is obedient to God." But, VanHoye said, religious aspiration alone does not suffice to change the conscience of the sinner: "It requires an effective mediation. The sinner has to be helped by a mediator who is himself not a sinner, and who opens the way to contact, to communion with God - and that is the meaning of the New Alliance."

In the second meditation, Cardinal VanHoye examined the role of the Holy Spirit in 'the oblation [solemn offering] of Christ' which opens the way to God: "Jesus was a worthy sacrificial victim and the right priest. Worthy victim because he had perfect moral and religious integrity, he was spotless, as St. Paul says, he was holy, innocent, immaculate. And he was the right priest because he was filled with the power of the Holy Spirit."

In yesterday's third and last meditation, the Cardinal had spoken about Christ as the mediator of the New Alliance. He pointed out that Jesus already knew he was going to be betrayed, denied, killed - he anticipated all these events and transformed them into a victory of love: "When we celebrate the Eucharist and we take Communion, we receive in ourselves this intense dynamism of love, which is capable of transforming all events into a victory."