Why do the ungodly hate believers so much? Because anyone who asserts that there was a Man who came back from the dead, and that following and obeying Him will lead us out of the grave, is a rebuke to them.
Sometimes the Bible is useful for more than just incensing at Mass.
In his homily on Ps. 63 that is set as the reading for the second Nocturn of Matins for Good Friday, St. Augustine tells us the reason the Pharisees and leaders of the Temple hated Jesus and wanted him dead.
“Hail Cross! Thou only hope of man. During this Passiontide increase the grace of the pious and purge sinners from their guilt.” (Vexilla Regis.)
The first four weeks of Lent were but a preparation for the intense grief of the Church during the final two. She knows that the enemies of Jesus seek His death and will lay their sacrilegious hands upon Him within twelve days. She asks us to climb the hill of Calvary with Him; to witness His Passion and death; to see the stone placed against the Sepulcher where His lifeless body is laid.
The CONSECRATION: Last Supper and Calvary
In Nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
The “Lord’s Supper” was a Biblical term adopted during the Protestant ‘De’-formation of the Church to deny the Sacrificial nature of the Mass and to replace it with a simple “memorial.” Protestants and Modernists* endeavor to separate the Christ-centered Sacrifice at Calvary from the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, turning a solemn event into a community-centered “happy meal.” However, Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition both affirm that Calvary was omnipresent in the very First Mass ever offered. That First Mass in the Upper Room was the Last Supper in which Our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, anticipated His Salvific Death on Calvary. [*See the Encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis (39) where Pope Saint Pius X defines Modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies.”]
Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference, has just publisheda previously unpublished interview of Benedict XVI in October of last year by the liberal Jesuit theologian (forgive the redundancy) Jacques Servais, a leading exponent of the Nouvelle Théologie once suppressed by Rome. Servais is an avid promoter of Hans Urs (“Dare We Hope that All Men Be Saved?”) von Balthasar, who dropped dead days before John Paul II could accomplish the indignity of making him a cardinal.