Heroism is needed to live as a Catholic in any age and I suspect that we look back with longing on the Catholics who lived in the 50's. Only, I don't think that it was as easy as it looked because the 50's beget the 60's and the 60's the 70's.
Time is a continuum, not a bunch of separate rooms, so we have to deal with the reality of this lingering crisis of the Church and work for our salvation and those for whom we are responsible.
Fr. Pagliarani highlights three weapons at our disposal!
- Mass
- Rosary
- Immaculate Heart of Mary
P^3
Letter of the Superior General to Friends and Benefactors n. 91
IF GOD ALLOWS, AS NEVER BEFORE, THIS UNIVERSALITY OF EVIL,
THIS NEW PAGAN EMPIRE, IT IS CERTAINLY WITH THE AIM OF
AROUSING CHRISTIAN HEROISM THROUGHOUT THE WORLD.
Dear faithful, friends and benefactors,
It has happened quite often in history that the world has had the sudden impression of waking up as another. In Christian antiquity, for example, at one point the world was “stunned to wake up Arian”, to use the famous expression of Saint Jerome. Similarly, in the 16th century, a third of Europe woke up Protestant. In reality, these phenomena did not occur overnight, but were progressively prepared. Nonetheless, they appeared as a surprise because the contemporaries did not grasp the gravity of the various events that prepared these catastrophes, they did not realize their consequences. In this sense, whole peoples woke up Arians or Protestants and, when they realized it, it was too late.
Unfortunately, we are now in a similar situation. Around us we see things, comments, initiatives that shock us, but we risk not grasping their full scope. Often, these elements are perceived as things that affect others, but that will never affect us. We know them, we hate them, but somehow we ignore them in everyday life. This means that our eyes are not always fully open to grasp the influence and danger of these realities on ourselves, and especially on our children. It must be said clearly: the world is becoming a universal Sodom and Gomorrah. We will not be able to escape it by moving elsewhere, because this transformation is universal. We must remain calm, but prepare ourselves now, with all the means at our disposal, so as not to be surprised when we wake up.
Universal Sodom and Gomorrah
It is always difficult to appear as a prophet of doom, but sometimes it is not possible to avoid it. A diabolical culture is taking root more and more in the world, every day. After rejecting God through apostasy and atheism, contemporary mankind inevitably wants to replace him. And the results are satanic. It is man who claims to determine what is good and what is evil. He asserts his right to choose to live or die, to be this or to be that, to give life or to suppress it... In short, to decide all that God was supposed to decide, and this on a universal scale.
But the worst of all is the manifest will to introduce the innocent to these abominable principles. Special attention is paid to children and the youth, with the aim of introducing them from an early age into this new vision of reality, corrupting them, and teaching them what only adults are supposed to know, and also what even adults should not know in a society that is still human and healthy. Morally speaking, there is a real will to destroy innocence where it is naturally supposed to be. We are at this stage. The problem is not only the sin that invades the world and contaminates everything in its path, but the fact that all this is approved and imposed. This is the sign that God, abandoned by man, has in turn abandoned man to his fate.
The consequences of God’s rejection
In the new Sodom, faith and love have definitively given way to lies and selfishness.
Saint Paul already described in detail the ultimate result of apostasy, in unequivocal terms: “When they knew God, they have not glorified him as God, or given thanks; but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened… Wherefore God gave them up to the desires of their heart, unto uncleanness, to dishonor their own bodies among themselves. Who changed the truth of God into a lie; and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator… For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections… And as they liked not to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not convenient; being filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness, full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity, whisperers, detractors, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, foolish, dissolute, without affection, without fidelity, without mercy. Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things, are worthy of death; and not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them” (Rom. 1:21 ff.)
The weakness of men of the Church
Faced with this state of affairs, the Church that arose from the Council finds itself at an impasse. This was inevitable from the day when dialogue replaced the preaching of truth. The will to conform to the world, to accept it as it is, without condemning its aberrations, without confronting it any more, this will is bearing its ultimate fruits. There are already considerable portions of the Church that openly advocate the acceptance of the abominations mentioned above. Other parts of the Church seem to no longer know how to oppose them. In short, everything is ready for a new Sodom and Gomorrah.
The need for appropriate remedies
The first condition of any possible solution is to open our eyes and understand that this new paradigm affects us all. Being in the dominant culture, it is therefore everywhere: in language, in fashions, in art, in shows, in the street. It is in the messages we constantly receive, because it is the prism of our time and through which everything is filtered and presented. We must be more aware of this: the air we breathe is poisoned, the Internet, with which we are increasingly forced to live and consume, is poisoned and it carries the plague, even to the most remote corners. All this necessarily affects us. And once again, the most vulnerable to this terrible poison are children and young people, starting with our own families.
Christian heroism: its two essential characteristics
But what then, once we have opened our eyes? If God allows, as never before, this universality of evil, this new pagan empire, it is certainly with the aim of arousing Christian heroism throughout the world. We cannot live outside this empire, but we can live in it without being crushed by it. We can survive it to the extent that we ourselves “discriminate” ourselves, that is, we stand apart.
This heroism, which Christians have already demonstrated in pagan empires, has two characteristic features.
First, it begins, is nourished and develops in the dark. It needs distance to grow. It needs prayer to grow in the love of God and in the most radical hatred of sin. It cannot be done in one day. The great external acts, the expression of this heroism, have always been the result of a hidden constancy and a relentless perseverance over the years. The heroism of the Cross presupposes the obscurity of the Manger and of the house of Nazareth. The final perseverance will be given only to those who, in everyday life, in their most common actions, have been able to protect themselves from evil and to abstain from sin with a heroism that only God – Who tries the reins and the hearts – will know and reward. External declarations and actions, without a pure heart, without a true inner conversion, would risk leaving us in illusion, even hypocrisy. Abraham possessed this pure heart, fixed in God, and it allowed him to keep away from all that Sodom represented. Lot, though himself a just man (2 Peter 2:7-8), nevertheless chose to settle in Sodom and to remain there: this milieu, in spite of everything, pleased him, and his children unfortunately did not escape its bad influences.
The second feature of this heroism, which must also manifest itself over the years, is the radical gift of self. It is the unequivocal sign of love. The profession of faith is effective only if it is accompanied by a true generosity in the gift of self to God, who makes us love all that He loves as He loves it, and hate all that He hates, as He hates it. Without that love, we cannot have that hatred. And without this hatred, we cannot resist a seduction that will become more and more subtle, deep and universal, a seduction from which Lot’s family could not completely escape.
Credidimus caritati: three privileged weapons
Let us open our eyes now, let us open the eyes of our children, before we wake up engulfed in the new Sodom. Let us first teach our children with our example, our love and our hate. Let us not wait to protect them. Let us remove from our homes all that could help to propagate the spirit of the world, without compromise, with a gentle and healthy intransigence. Let us not be naive or weak: no family, nobody may believe that they are safe. Corruption is already much deeper than we think, and its progression is unstoppable.
At the same time, let us not forget that this battle is fundamentally supernatural. We do not confront satanic deceits with purely natural means. There are three main supernatural means, and we must rediscover them continually.
The first is the Holy Mass: it is through it that Our Lord continues to overcome the devil and sin. We will never appreciate this means in all its value and we will never rely too much on it. It is the Precious Blood offered on our altars that will keep, until the end of time, the power to generate purity and virginity, even in the midst of the new Sodom. The Mass is the masterpiece of Our Lord’s love for souls, and it nourishes in them the same love that strengthens them to the point of self-giving.
The second means is the Holy Rosary. This so ordinary means needs to be rediscovered in our families. We must see in it the way to immerse ourselves ever more into the great mysteries of the life of Our Lord and Our Lady. Through this, guided by our Mother, we become able to imitate them in the offering of themselves to God and in their spirit of sacrifice and in their purity. Unfortunately, in some cases, we are unable to find the necessary time to pray together. The Rosary must remain, first of all, a daily family activity. It is around it that we must organize our day. In families where this is the rule, the grace of perseverance of children will not fail.
The third means is certainly the most specific to the present situation to obtain perseverance: it is the Immaculate Heart of Mary. In His Providence, Our Lord wanted to offer us a refuge in the midst of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is into this shelter that we must enter. That is, we must establish between our heart and that of the Virgin such intimacy that we can know and admire the interior life of the Virgin, share her desires, her joys, her sorrows, and her concerns. We must share also, and above all, her willingness to cooperate unreservedly in the work of Redemption.
What will we then discover in this heart that we cannot find elsewhere? Above all, we will find the irresistible charity that makes souls invincible. That is where the secret of victory lies and that is where it must be found. When a soul truly loves, it is ready to face any trial. All legitimate and understandable fears disappear; all weakness vanishes; heroism becomes possible. Indeed, all that we have just mentioned in the few preceding reflections is a question of radical love. True love, the charity that God pours into our hearts, always prevails. When love reigns, it subjugates. The love we are talking about is not synonymous with weakness but with strength. It is the weapon that nothing can resist. Only the love of souls ready for martyrdom can triumph over the empire of selfishness and impurity. And it is in the Virgin’s heart that we will find the example and the source of this love that no longer exists in the world but which must be ours. Credidimus Caritati.
God bless you all!
Menzingen, 3 September 2022,
on the feast of Saint Pius X
Don Davide Pagliarani, Superior General
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