This statement was given graciously in answer to one of JJ's questions at our last bible study with Fr. Naples this summer. The question was "How does our offering up sufferings to Christ help anything?"
"I make up for my sufferings that which is lacking in the sufferings of Christ." - St. Paul
What more could be added? The merits of Christ are 'infinite'. He is The Source of all Grace. What could possible be lacking? Primarily and essentially, ourselves. Our conformity to Christ does not produce more, but it adds to His mystical body. Our entrance into and embrace of, His passion and death, results in our own salvation, and only in an indirect and much less necessary way, perhaps the salvation of others. But this has one exception: if it is true that our being united to Jesus in His passion primarily and essentially results in our own salvation, it is not so with the Blessed Mother. She experienced salvation from the first instance of her Conception, long before she stood on Calvary to be united with her son in His passion. If not her own salvation, what then was the result when she did this? Ours. Co-Redemptrix. Every grace we receive by the passion and death of Christ comes to us through her hands.
God Bless
Benny
