Saturday, November 20, 2004

On November 20, 1849...
Venerable John Henry Newman, C.O., gave some catechetical instructions, of which the following notes survive:

Mortuus, Sepultus—XII
1. INTROD.—'Dead and buried; He descended into hell.'

2. Dead. He died for our sins—but also because He came subject to the laws of our fallen nature; man, though not naturally immortal, was not to die. 'Dust thou art,' etc.—even our Blessed Lady, Enoch, Elias, and so Christ.

3. Hypostatic union preserved even in blood, which after the Resurrection was all gathered up.

4. Buried. This mentioned to show He was dead.

5. Hell eternal prison; purgatory; Limbo Patrum.

6. He went there, not as the others, but to triumph and take them out.

7. And so on the third day He rose again.

8. Even the instruments of the Passion a triumph; the cross—its meaning changed: He sanctified it. History of its finding.

9. The goodness of God not only in saving us, but in condescending to our weakness in religion; difficult to form spiritual ideas of God—the populace and [the] philosophers. Hence He has deigned [firstly] to take a body, [and secondly], with [it] a (personal] history . And this is perpetuated in the two great devotions of the Blessed Sacrament and of our Lady.




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