Dear Doug,

While there may be no "official" declaration regarding stigmatas, for the Church regards them mostly as private phenomena, there is good reason to believe they are valid and from God.

I noticed that you are passionate about this issue, and that, to me, is a sign that you may someday become passionately devoted to such phenomena, even though now, you swing against them.

I also noticed that you may have a fundamental notion in error that may affect your judgment on this.

Your statement:

There is no way we can add to the finished work of Calvary.

is often touted by Protestants as a maxim in the Catholic/Protestant debate on salvation.
(Faith versus works etc.) Let me clarify something that Catholics hold to be true, as it is often misunderstood by Protestants.

Catholics believe that Christ is in the center of time but His Sacrifice, though definite in time and space, is eternal. His priesthood is eternal, because His own nature is eternal. Since Christ has become one with us, the members of His body, the Church, He acts within us and through us.

Our works become pleasing and efficacious because it is He who works in us in the Spirit.
The paschal mystery: the Passion, Death, and Resurrection, is eternal in dimension. Christ has willed to subsume all those He "chooses" to enter into that Mystery, not so He could simply save us from afar, but rather to allow us "into" His saving act and be part of it. We become part of His Body and therefore part of The Sacrifice. He does this not because He needs us, but because it is pleasing to Him to do so. It gives God greater glory to make us His children in the most very real sense (through adoption, cf. Galatians 4:4; 1 John 3:1), and therefore it, in fact, demonstrates that He exercises the greatest redemptive power imaginable.

Most Protestants are comfortable only when we speak of God doing all the work and leaving us out of salvation. The fact is, through the Incarnation, God demonstrated His willingness to get messy in human nature, and therefore transform the whole thing into something potentially sublime
(cf. 2 Peter 1:4). In short, God became human so that humanity might become divine. Because
of our interconnected-ness with Christ, our Eternal High Priest, our lives become a sacrifice,
"holy and pleasing to God" (cf. Romans 12:1). Consider Paul who said,

Paul was not "adding" to Calvary, but Christ Himself was living out His Own Paschal Mystery through Paul, making his suffering efficacious. He can do that as He pleases because He is God.

Finally, if Christ chooses to use someone to share His wounds, to the glory of the Father, so be it. God rejoices to allow His children to share the redemptive work of His Son, not because it
"adds by necessity", but because it is His good will to do so and "adds by grace": the grace of
our union in Christ.

We believe in the value or "merit" of works, sufferings, etc. not because they have merit in themselves or because of our own inherent goodness, but rather because Christ, Himself, works in us, He makes these things pleasing to God.

This is where Luther got stuck. In his eyes, nothing we could do was pleasing to God. Even good works were an occasion of sin.

I know that my comments might seem afield from your rather pointed question, but I feel that in talking about the inner workings of salvation, our participation in that act is key to understanding stigmatics. If we view Christ's work as a past, historical event, it makes no sense.

However, if we see Christ's Act at the center of history, like a wheel, with its spokes touching all dimensions of human life:

• saving whomever He wills by His grace;
• operative by being anywhere in history:
• transforming, sanctifying, redeeming, cooperating and involving;
  
  then it makes sense.

In essence, Calvary is "now". That is why Catholics believe the Mass is the act of Christ becoming Eucharist made present. It makes something "eternal": "present". It's not something new or a repeated (event|sacrifice), but the One Event made present in our time.

Finally, the Church has canonized persons whom She feels are worthy of emulation, as good role models. When you examine the lives of these individuals, and their fruits, you discern whether God was active or not. When Christ was being criticized by many as being controlled by satan,
He countered, "the tree is known by its fruit" (Luke 6:44).

• If you believe that these people, by and large, are holy, does it make sense to conclude that they are controlled by satan?

Something to think about.

Peace,

Bob K.