Blessed Martyrs of Rochefort

AN EXCERPT FROM THE ENCYCLICAL “SALVIFICI DOLORIS”
by Pope St John Paul II 6
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The Cross of Christ throws salvific light, in a most penetrating way, on man’s
life and in particular on his suffering. For through faith the Cross reaches
man together with the Resurrection: the mystery of the Passion is contained in the
Paschal Mystery. The witnesses of Christ’s Passion are at the same time witnesses
of his Resurrection. Paul writes: “That I may know him (Christ) and the power of
his Resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that
if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead”. Truly, the Apostle first
experienced the “power of the Resurrection” of Christ, on the road to Damascus,
and only later, in this paschal light, reached that ” sharing in his sufferings”…

The witnesses of the Cross and Resurrection were convinced that “through
many tribulations we must enter the Kingdom of God”… Thus to share in the
sufferings of Christ is, at the same time, to suffer for the Kingdom of God. In the
eyes of the just God, before his judgment, those who share in the suffering of Christ
become worthy of this Kingdom. Through their sufferings… they repay the infinite
price of the Passion and death of Christ, which became the price of our
Redemption: at this price the Kingdom of God has been consolidated anew in
human history, becoming the definitive prospect of man’s earthly existence. Christ
has led us into this Kingdom through his suffering…

To the prospect of the Kingdom of God is linked hope in that glory which has
its beginning in the Cross of Christ… If, in fact, the Cross was to human eyes
Christ’s emptying of himself, at the same time it was in the eyes of God his being
lifted up. On the Cross, Christ attained and fully accomplished his mission: by
fulfilling the will of the Father, he at the same time fully realized himself. In
weakness he manifested his power, and in humiliation he manifested all his
messianic greatness. Are not all the words he uttered during his agony on Golgotha
a proof of this greatness, and especially his words concerning the perpetrators of
his crucifixion: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”? To those
who share in Christ’s sufferings these words present themselves with the power
of a supreme example…

In the Paschal Mystery Christ began the union with man in the community of
the Church. The mystery of the Church is expressed in this: that already in the act
of Baptism, which brings about a configuration with Christ, and then through his
Sacrifice—sacramentally through the Eucharist—the Church is continually being
built up spiritually as the Body of Christ. In this Body, Christ wishes to be united
with every individual, and in a special way he is united with those who suffer…
Christ has in a sense opened his own redemptive suffering to all human suffering.
In so far as man becomes a sharer in Christ’s sufferings—in any part of the world
and at any time in history—to that extent he in his own way completes the suffering
through which Christ accomplished the Redemption of the world… Only within
this radius and dimension of the Church as the Body of Christ, which continually
develops in space and time, can one think and speak of “what is lacking” in the
sufferings of Christ.

6 Pope John Paul II. Salvifici Doloris. Part 21. www.holysee.org. Accessed: August 11, 2023.