Tuesday of the Third Week of Lent – 10 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Doctor of the Church
Tuesday of the Third Week
Christ is Truly our Redeemer
“You were redeemed with the Precious Blood of Christ, as of a Lamb unspotted and undefiled.”
I Peter 1. 19
By the sin of our first parents, the whole human race was alienated from God, as is taught in the 2nd Chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians.
It was not from God’s Power that we were thereby severed but from that Sight of God’s Face to which His children and His servants are admitted.
Then again, we descended beneath the usurped power of the devil. Man had consented to the devil’s will and, thereby, had made himself subject to the devil; subject, that is to say, as far as lies in man’s power, for since he was not his own property but the property of Another, he could not really give himself away to the devil.
By His Passion then, Christ achieved two vital elements.
He freed us from the power of the enemy, conquering him by virtues which were the very opposite to the vices by which he had conquered man – by humility, namely, by obedience and by an austerity of suffering which was in direct opposition to the enjoyment of forbidden food.
Furthermore, by making satisfaction for the sin committed, Christ joined man to God and made him the child and servant of God.
This emancipation had about it two features which make it a type of trade or purchase.
Christ is said to have bought us back or to have Redeemed us, inasmuch as He snatched us from the power of the devil, by hard-fought battles, to Redeem His Kingdom which the enemy had occupied.
Christ is again said to have Redeemed us, inasmuch as He placated God on our behalf, paying as it were, the price of His satisfaction that we might be freed, both from the penalty and from the sin.
This Price, His Precious Blood, He paid that He might make satisfaction for us not to the devil but to God.
Again, by the Victory of His Passion was, He took us away from the devil.
The devil had indeed had dominion over us but unjustly, since what power he had was usurped.
Nevertheless, it was but just that we should fall under his yoke, as it was by him that we were overcome.
This is why it was necessary that the devil should be overcome by the very opposite of the forces by which he had himself overcome.
For he had not overcome by violence but by a lying persuasion to sin.
ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568
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