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What is the “Passion of the Church”?

In order to understand why everything is the way it is in the World today, and especially in the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church , outside of which no one can be saved, one must first understand what is called: the “Passion of the Church”.  For the Church is nothing other than the Mystical Body of Christ, and just as his physical body suffered the Passion so too must His Mystical Body suffer the Passion as well.  But whereas Christ suffered His Physical Passion at one point in time, and which is re-presented for us each day at Holy Mass, the Passion of His Mystical Body is something that has and is playing out over time.  Christ’s Mystical Body and it’s Passion are most ably explicated by Venerable Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi, which states in paragraph 106:

For although our Savior’s cruel passion and death merited for His Church an infinite treasure of graces, God’s inscrutable providence has decreed that these graces should not be granted to us all at once; but their greater or lesser abundance will depend in no small part on our good works, which draw down on the souls of men a rain of heavenly gifts freely bestowed by God. These heavenly gifts will surely flow more abundantly if we not only pray fervently to God, especially by participating every day if possible in the Eucharistic Sacrifice; if we not only try to relieve the distress of the needy and of the sick by works of Christian charity, but if we also set our hearts on the good things of eternity rather than on the passing things of this world; if we restrain this mortal body by voluntary mortification, denying it what is forbidden, and forcing it to do what is hard and distasteful; and finally, if we humbly accept as from God’s hands the burdens and sorrows of this present life. Thus, according to the Apostle, “we shall fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ in our flesh for his Body, which is the Church.” (Col 1:24)

The whole of this very important subject of the Passion of the Church was dealt with at length in a wonderful Lenten Mission preached in 2009 which you can listen to here:

  • The Passion of the Church: Introduction
  • The Passion of the Church: Part 1
  • The Passion of the Church: Part 2
  • The Passion of the Church: Part 3
  • The Passion of the Church: Part 4
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