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The
Honor of God
The
admirable Ruysbroeck said, "to desire the honor of
God, to seek it and love it, this is the whole of eternal
life; at the same time it is what God requires of us as
our first and highest offering to him." The Church
has no other mission than to place souls, even in this life,
within this supernatural perspective, reminding them incessantly
that the natural life and the supernatural life are inseparable.
True, their interpenetration is not easy, but it is part
and parcel of faith's battle; indeed, it is perhaps the
most important part. Our wounds and failings are beyond
counting, but, by the power of divine grace, they can become
a ladder leading us to the vision of God in eternity.
Laicism,
the Grave of the Masses
Nowadays
the mass of the people, while they are the beneficiaries
of material progress, are nonetheless alienated from spiritual
goods thanks to modern institutions which have deprived
revealed truth of its authority in order to impose the totalitarian
demands of an invasive laicism. According to this, it is
not necessary for man to know that he comes from a thought
in God's mind, nor that eternal life is his ultimate end.
The only realities which should concern him are this life
here and now, his freedom, his person and society. Nothing
is spared to impose this view on the entire planet; every
means is used to make the victim accept this lying indoctrination
and be a willing accomplice in it. The ideological bombardment
is so insidious and persistent that only a small minority
are prepared to risk escaping from it and resisting it.
Of
course, the imposed lie can produce only an artificial and
forced unity; but it takes time for souls, duly conditioned,
to notice this. It seems that the confusion of ideas and
the aggravation of situations of conflict have to reach
a certain degree of intensity before man is able to turn
back and learn that his strength is principally it prayer.
Hell
Is Our “I”
Theologians
tell us that hell is an inextinguishable and devouring fire,
accompanied by the torments of remorse. It is not necessary,
surely, to emphasize that this refers to the prolongation
of our obstinate egocentrism, of which we refused to free
ourselves during our life on earth. To this is added an
eternal resentment against this defeated "I" which
is the author of our misfortune, and the memory of the dazzling
Divinity which we glimpsed before losing it forever. This
shows us the falsehood of the verdict that "hell is
other people." No. Hell is first and foremost the “I”
which refused God. The other damned souls comes second.
Liturgy
and Living Languages
The
use, on a massive scale, of vernacular languages in the
Catholic liturgy, has introduced into the liturgy the sad
procession of the human passions. It could not be otherwise,
for every language is primarily the expression and explosion
of the "I." It always tries to put itself on a
pedestal instead of being the servant of revealed Truth.
The same can be said of those musical compositions which
are all too human. None of these hasty innovations contribute
solidly to the unity and peace of Christianity. History
makes it abundantly clear: heresies and schisms have found
particular nourishment in analogous linguistic trends, even
if the latter were not the principal cause of the continuing
doctrinal splintering.
I
do not want to be accused of wishing the disappearance of
the languages which human beings are accustomed to use.
Every spoken form of expression is a practically indispensable
language. But if it is to be used at the level of liturgical
prayer and in the propagation of the Faith, where it performs
a priceless service, language must operate at a higher,
universal level, and be the fruit of humility, prayer, and
divine transcendence; these are the components of a sacred
language. This "added value" is only fully understood,
of course, when it has been abandoned through weakness,
impiety or some other unworthy motive; the result is an
accelerated loss of the sense of the Divine.
Sedevacantism
A
strange theory! Certainly, the confused, vacillating behavior
of recent Popes provokes comments without number. But, among
the accusers, who has ever been able to demonstrate conclusively
that these popes were "absent" from their
See? It remains true and it is grotesque fact, still very
much in evidence – that there is an intolerable contradiction
between their vacillating, ambiguous behavior, and the perfectly
clear mission which the Savior assigned to Peter and his
successors. Each time ambiguity has prevailed over the limpid
clarity which this peerless function requires, great evils
have descended upon souls and upon the Church. We only need
to recall St. Paul's reaction when he saw the first instance
of such behavior; this lent a firmness to the bark of Simon
Peter for centuries.
In
periods of great confusion in the Church, it is good to
cling to the data of faith and to facts, and to be very
suspicious of opinion, the favorite playground of the "I"
which does not hesitate, when required, to move from a hard
position to the opposite, soft position.
Human
Solidarity and Divine Transcendence
The
problems posed by human solidarity are complex and recurrent,
but they are not insoluble: the human spirit is adequate
to deal with them. Things are different, however, with Divine
Transcendence: we are radically incapable of approaching
it unless the divine initiative comes to assist our efforts
and to help us in the encounter.
Right
from the start, the creature's reaction varies: some accept
this dependence with humility, love, and even gratitude
(Abel); others resent it, rebel against it and reject all
sovereignty (Cain). Our age tries a third tactic, which
it no doubt thinks to be cleverer: man fraternizes with
God, addresses Him familiarly, "manipulates" Him.
This new fashion, this affectation, also applies to churchmen:
they may appropriate to themselves the sacred goods entrusted
to them; but they have no right to alter them or alienate
them. This affectation is not unknown - strangely enough
- even to atheists and deists, who think that they can merit
Heaven's kindness while behaving with the uttermost nonchalance
in the face of the divine demands, of which, for the most
part, they are ignorant. We are faced with a misleading
and irreligious euphoria in attitudes towards the Divine
Transcendence. No doubt we should include this euphoria
among the "precepts and commandments of men" stigmatized
by the Divine Master (Mt.15:9). Nevertheless, this attitude,
deliberately promoted for 30 years, considers itself to
be irreversible because everything is organized to prevent
its "turning back." One is lost in conjecture
in trying to explain such recalcitrance, such a refusal
to say "mea culpa," such an attempt to
justify the unjustifiable simply on the basis of authority.
And what of the showy, highly publicized politics? Is this
not perhaps a ploy to perpetuate the illusion, to cover
up the disaster and delay the unmasking of the lie? Let
our present-day authorities rediscover the sense of Divine
Transcendence and understand that, as of now, It judges
all our acts, ours and theirs.
Evolution
and Revolution
In
his time, Pope Leo XIII, no doubt pushed in this direction,
was at pains to smooth over the difficulties with laicism
that had been pointed out to him, by conceding certain "advanced"
practices that could be later neutralized by firm doctrinal
admonitions. This was to fail to grasp human perfidy. Diplomatic
compromises are accepted by revolutionary minds only as
useful springboards, as entirely provisional arrangements.
They are interested only in the total subversion of principles,
institutions and customs (e.g., the revolutions of
1789 and 1917). Hence their successful efforts, for decades,
in assembling competent agents at the highest level of the
Church's government. The consequences of this are before
our very eyes.
Human
Science and Divine Science
A
modern musician in the evening of his life lamented: "What
saddens me in the idea of death is that I shall not be able
to learn any more." Inanities of this kind are not
rare, given the state of ignorance of our age. There was
a time when the humblest Christian knew that in God were
to be found all the treasures of science and wisdom (cf.
the Litany of the Sacred Heart), and that Paradise
(finally!) gives us access to this infinite ocean of knowledge.
Irreligion
and Irrationalism
They
go together, whether in the powers-that-be or in the man-in-the-street.
Very soon the ordinary means of protection will not suffice
to protect honest people, abandoned to every form of evil.
We
and the Future
"Homo
laicus" is saturated with absurdity. He
is proud of his own freedom, but nonetheless does not disdain
to try to penetrate what transcends him. While rejecting
supernatural reality, he embraces the false comforts of
an "illuminism," thus proving Léon Bloy right,
who said that, for every priest who disappears, others would
rise up, ready to offer their services to tell the future.
If we are Christians we must let God have the absolute initiative
in revealing and unfolding the future, without trying foolhardily
to see what is coming, except by using those lights generally
available to us through written Revelation and Tradition.
We
cling totally to the will of God as regards our personal
and social future by sanctifying as best we can the present
moment, in faith, hope and charity. In fact, preferring
this path, a path both ordinary and sublime, makes the Christian
more disposed to accept in full consciousness and simplicity
any extraordinary interventions of Heaven which may take
place.
Tradition
and Fidelity
In
the 16th century the heretical reformers gravely amputated
the revealed doctrine: they accepted Scripture, but rejected
Tradition. This entirely arbitrary action was perfectly
in accord with the principle of "free enquiry":
a written text cannot react to the violence inflicted upon
it. "Sola scriptura et ego cum illa," one
might say – “Scripture alone and myself alone."
It
is a very different matter with sacred Tradition, permanent
and immutable, taught with authority and in an unchanging
meaning under the authority of the infallible Magisterium.
At times the most skillful innovators conceal their rejection
of Tradition, pretending that they are deeply rooted in
the Church. This is how contemporary modernism operates:
it strives to create "another Tradition," and,
having introduced its deformations, it pretends to submit
to the teaching of Popes, Fathers and Doctors down the centuries.
To this end it uses all the ambiguities of modern thought
and the most ambiguous formulas. Once they have become masters
of the Temple, everything is possible. The civil authorities
give their approval. The "passion of the Church"
has begun. Are they also, perhaps, preparing its disappearance
– apparent and temporary – by dissolution or by fusion with
foreign bodies, in the same way that the Passion of Christ
preceded his death on the Cross?
The
Death of God?
Once
it was the case that a few brave minds announced it and
others prepared for it. Today this battle would even seem
obsolete, since the existence of the living God has been
replaced by the simple "idea" of a God who is
flexible enough to be bent in any direction, according to
our whim or imagination. Let us not deceive ourselves! This
is only a new phase of that permanent rebellion, right from
the start, by the creature against his Creator, in a battle
that is continually being re-launched and continually being
lost. Only once in history was deicide able to assume a
concrete form in a violent battle in which no quarter was
given: when the Divine Word was made flesh. Ever since that
manifestation, in the Bethlehem stable, a savage desire
to eliminate Him has made itself felt. The desire grows
more and more acute, the more disturbing His Presence becomes,
and the more clearly His Divinity is revealed (cf. the
resurrection of Lazarus). The first three centuries of Christianity,
marked by bloody persecution, were nothing other than hatred
directed against the Risen One, who had escaped from his
enemies once and for all. The increasing laicism of society
and of that party which governs the Church is only the current
episode of this senseless struggle. It is leading men to
eternal death without God, diverting them from eternal Life
with Him. More and more, things are organized in such a
way as to render God absent from our lives and our chief
concerns.
God,
however, is not going to die. It is we who imagine that
we can make Him disappear, whereas we only exist by virtue
of Him. As we already observed: irrationality and irreligion
are fitting companions.
Ignatius
Courtesy of the Angelus
Press, Kansas City, MO 64109
translated from the Italian
Fr. Du Chalard
Via Madonna degli Angeli, 14
Italia 00049 Velletri (Roma)
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