MISERENTISSIMUS REDEMPTOR. - Opening of the encyclical of Pius XI (May 9, 1928) on the duty of reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus (AAS, 20 [1928], pp. 165-78).
The Pope affirms that devotion to the Sacred Heart has two principal forms: consecration (the total offering of one's own being and one's possessions to God) and reparation (expiation of the offenses brought against Uncreated Love). Of the first, Pius XI recalls that he treated in the encyclical Quas Primas (1925), with which he established the feast of Christ the King, as a complement to the consecration of the human race to the Sacred Heart made by Leo XIII in 1900 (cf. the encyclical Annum Sacrum of 1899). Of the duty of the second, the Pontiff points out, with a wealth of doctrine, the profound reasons in the laws of justice and of love, and concludes that the whole human race must make reparation for sin and for the offenses brought against God, in union with the one Mediator (solidarity with Christ): a) because of the request made for it by Jesus himself in the revelations to St. Margaret Mary, b) because of the repercussion of our acts of amends upon what took place in the agony of the Head and upon the Passion prolonged through the centuries in the Mystical Body, c) because of the present conditions of society, which seems to have conspired against the rights of God. The distinguished document ends by exhorting all the faithful to cultivate the spirit of reparation, already spread by various congregations and religious families.
The devout and learned encyclical, which marks a glorious stage in the centuries-old movement of devotion to the Sacred Heart, contains affirmations and insights particularly interesting for dogmatic theology: the intimate meaning or the mutual relationship of consecration and reparation, the supernatural solidarity of men in Christ, the Church as the mystical prolongation of the Redeemer, the two moments of the Redemption (objective and subjective), the regale sacerdotium of all the faithful and their participation in the sacrifice of the Mass, the spirit of penance proper to the baptized. On this last subject Pius XI offered ample and profound developments in the subsequent encyclical Caritate Christi compulsi, issued on May 3, 1932 (AAS, 24 [1932], pp. 177-94).
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Antonio Piolanti