Cardinal Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster (1880-1954)
(…) The Assumption of Mary suggests to me a serious warning to our faithful.
Our mortal body is also destined to rise again and be reunited with the spirit in heaven. That is why, in the Sacrament of Confirmation, the Pope consecrates it with the Chrism of health. But on one condition: that, imitating the Immaculate Virgin, our body remains pure and uncontaminated, as befits the temple of the Lord. A body enslaved by sin, sick with impurity—our St. Philip in Rome smelled its foul odor—cannot enter heaven. Make no mistake, wrote the Apostle to the Corinthians: all those who devote themselves to impure vice: “Regnum Dei non possidebunt” [They will not possess the kingdom of God].
Only those who have kept their bodies as the temple of the Holy Spirit enter heaven: “propter inhabitantem Spiritum Eius in nobis” [Because of his Spirit who dwells in us]. Others do not; so much so that St. Paul himself writes:
“Qui Spiritum Christi non habet, hic non est Eius.”
“Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him.”
With how much pain, in the face of the desolate spectacle of the pagan spirit that increasingly penetrates the veins and organism of today’s civilization, I write these things out of pastoral responsibility, and so that Christians may not delude themselves into thinking they can form a kind of eclectic Christianity, which, however, is no longer that of the Catholic Church, of the Apostles and Martyrs.
May God, through the prayers of His Immaculate Mother, have mercy on us and lead us to penance. “O Timothee, depositum custodi, devitans profanas vocum novitates” [O Timothy, guard the deposit (of faith), avoiding useless and profane conversations – 1 Timothy, 6:20].
Milan, August 15, MCMLIV.
+ ILDEFONSO, Card. Archbiv.
Note: Cardinale Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster, “Al dilettissimo popolo”, Ed. San Paolo, 1996, pag. 378