The Church in the Wilderness
Recently, the American commentator Tucker Carlson said in his weekly column: “Is God dead? That’s the question that Time Magazine famously asked way back in 1966 when Time Magazine mattered. The answer then and now is no, God is not dead, but a lot of the people who believed in him are dead. Turns out not so long ago this was an enthusiastically Christian country. As recently as 2009, 77% of Americans told pollsters they consider themselves to be believing Christians. Then in just 10 years, over the course of the Obama administration, that number dropped by 12 points. Over the same period, the number of atheists and self-identified non-religious people in America jumped dramatically. And that was before COVID. Politicians used the pandemic across the country to close thousands of churches and throw Christians in prison for practicing their faith. […] But that does not mean, and this is the critical point, that does not mean this has become a secular country. There are no secular countries, just as there are no secular people. Everybody believes in something. All of us are born with the need to worship. The question is what?”[1] The commentator continues, “So, no, America has not lost its religion. It’s just replaced its religion. What’s dying is the faith that created Western civilization, Christianity. In its place is a new creed, and like all religions, it has its own sacraments, its own sacred texts.”[2]
Carlson uses this introductory paragraph to state that some American politicians promote the “cult of the coronavirus” making it “the new religion.”[3] This not only gives us a glimpse of the situation of the Church in the United States, but can be applied –to a greater or lesser degree– to the current situation of the Church in the world. In many countries the situation is becoming even more radical, not because of the ‘coronavirus,’ but due to the ‘virus of worldly immanence’ that some of its members try to implant by sacrificing the prophetic spirit of the Church, making a pact or compromising with the spirit of the world in their eagerness to be ‘accepted’ by it. This is the reality in which we live today and the battlefield on which we must currently fight.
Father Martin denounced something very similar in a video published on September 24th of this year entitled “The new Church has failed.”[4] Martin pointed out that “a study affirms that only 12% of Germans consider religion to be something good for humanity. This percentage includes Catholics, Protestants and Jews. This clearly indicates that after all they have been doing to adapt to the world, they have failed. If only 12% perceive religion as something positive for humanity, it means that those who are promoting change –in favor of the new Church– and who say that everything begins from the present, and that it is necessary to break with all that has come before (the Word of God and Tradition), have failed. […]
“The churches are emptier and emptier, and the idea that making things easy, adapting to the worldly order, accepting what they ask us to accept (the whole package, from abortion to gender ideology), that surrendering what we are and what we believe will bring people closer to the Church, is simply a lie. Reality proves it. […]
“Today it is not a matter of whether we interpret the Second Vatican Council in terms of rupture or continuity, it is that the vast majority of the baptized simply do not care. A few years ago, the Catholic Church was a minority, today the Catholic Church is irrelevant. Not everywhere in the world, of course, but in Germany, for example. If 12% of people consider religion to be something positive for mankind, that means that 88% consider religion to be useless. Similar cases occur, although not as radically, in other parts of the world; even in the USA where the percentage of atheists is proportionally equal to the number of believers. Likewise, in Latin America, where young people have fallen away en masse.
“This shows that the ‘new church’ has failed, that they have not succeeded even by tolerating to implement mitigations; they have not succeeded in halting the decline that the Church was already in, but rather this watering down has accelerated it. There is only one solution: unity, which cannot be achieved except centered on the Truth (in the Word of God and Tradition).”[5]
As members of the Institute of the Incarnate Word and of the Church, we are not strangers to this reality. We have been called to unite under the banner of the Incarnate Word for “the mission of prophetically opposing the idolatry of power, possessions and pleasure.”[6] For it is Christ himself who “fulfills His prophetic office until the complete manifestation of glory… through the hierarchy who teaches in His name and with His authority.”[7]
Given that our Institute is “a clerical Institute”[8] we are conscious that we participate “in the prophetic function of Christ”[9] and are completely dedicated “to the building up of the Church and the salvation of the world.”[10] Thus, it seemed appropriate to devote the following words to address in some way the reality of the Church at present, in order to try to understand what our attitude and conduct should be in this regard.
At the same time, it is important to clarify that our purpose is neither to criticize nor to adopt a contentious attitude, like some who profess sentire cum Ecclesia but practice agere contra Ecclesiam. They live the hierarchical communion dialectically and therefore do not live it. Opposing the “official or hierarchical Church” with the “Church of the people of God”[11] they promote dissident attitudes, disguised as prophetic denunciations, which are so harmful to the ecclesial communion. We want to be prophets of light and hope offering an explicit witness, following Saint John Paul II’s exhortation: “We are obliged to proclaim our beliefs ‘in the light of day’ and ‘from the housetops’[12], without fear or compromise.”[13]
1. The Church in the Wilderness
We have entitled this text “The Church in the Wilderness” because it seems that –following an idea of Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen– “the Church of today is like the Church in the wilderness.”[14] By the expression ‘Church in the wilderness’ we refer to the ‘church of the Israelites,’ the People of God when, after 400 years of slavery in Egypt, began their march towards the Promised Land of Canaan.
Similarly, the contemporary Church resembles the ancient ‘church of the wilderness’ in three ways:
▪ Contempt of Hierarchy, Manna or the Eucharist: The Church up until the Vatican Council was more separated from the spirit of the world than now. But since a rightful emphasis on being more involved with the world and its needs was made, there began to be a yearning for the fleshpots of modern Egypt,[15] that is, for the mundane. Some priests and religious feel increasingly uncomfortable being called “conservative” (because they associate it with its negative connotation of rigidity) or being identified with someone at the “top” (because they only see hierarchy as oppression) and from this followed a decline in reverence for the Eucharist just as there was a rejection of the Manna among the Israelites: the Israelites started wailing and said, “If only we had meat to eat!” … now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!”[16] In the Church began a yearning for the lusts of the world. “We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost, also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic!”[17] Abortion, homosexuality, repudiation of religious vows, certain esoteric practices and many worldly cares that ‘belonged to Egypt’ are now accepted and even promoted and defended by some, even within the Church itself. No longer is there a solid moral phalanx[18] thrown up against the spirit of the world. Now it is no longer important what the Church believes or the Holy Father teaches or what the Word of God cautions, the individual conscience of and by itself has become the sole standard of right and wrong. Each of us doing what he pleases.[19] And thus we have a few members of the hierarchy of the Church itself who dissent on crucial aspects of our faith, while others live excessively preoccupied with irrelevant or culturally fashionable topics while the Mystical Body of Christ bleeds out. So many people are busy diluting the holy doctrine of the Church and disregarding the Word of God and Tradition claiming that ‘the times are changing.’ There are also quite a few who, in their eagerness to relate to the world, to ‘fit in’ with the people, always under the appearance of ‘good,’ do everything to eradicate whatever has the slightest shadow of tradition, to which they associate a negative connotation of ‘conservative’ or ‘sectarian mentality’: religious congregations, missions, the preaching of the four last things, fidelity to the rule and patrimony of an Institute, etc., to name but a few examples. Such people end up blindly embracing the culture of the world, ceasing to imbue it with the Gospel, and evidently, they expect others to do the same. This is the way of life of many Christians, and penetrates all levels of the life of the Church.
▪ A second reason why we are like the Church of the wilderness is that in both there is a rebellion against authority. The Israelites believed they were all equal despite any call from God. Authority became repugnant either because there was jealousy or because the ego became a god and would suffer no gods above it. The people of God protested against the authority of Moses and Aaron. You take too much upon yourselves. Every member of the community is holy and the Lord is among them all. Why do you set yourselves up above the assembly of the Lord?[20] The Pope, bishops, pastors, religious superiors and priests are challenged because the general feeling is that those who represent authority are not holy enough. It is true that in both the old and the new People of God: Not all the descendants of Israel are truly Israel,[21] that is, not all in the Church are truly of the Church.[22] Today just as yesterday they look to diminish the authority or credibility of the superiors or those of moral authority, for example, in a religious congregation, to make it impossible for them to be heard so that they cannot lead.[23]
▪ Finally, Fulton Sheen points out, the Church of today is like Israel in transition. As Israel stood between Egypt and the Promised Land so the Church stands in this present wilderness wandering between what she is and what she will eventually become. Thus, just as the Israelites were brought out of Egypt, but not brought at once into Canaan, so the Church today is in between. This middle state does not mean that when the Church recovers from this secularism and reigning atheism that she will be perfect. When the Israelites passed into Canaan, they had seven battles to fight. Canaan in not heaven.
The Church today is undergoing her wanderings too. Nothing seems to be fixed except that God is leading His Church. As the Israelites in transitu from Egypt to Canaan, were frequently discouraged when faced with difficulties, so the new Israel, the Church, tends to become discouraged. Thus God from on high repeats to us today: take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord, and work! For I am with you, says the Lord of hosts. This is the pact that I made with you when you came out of Egypt, and my spirit continues in your midst; do not fear![24]
It seems important to mention this observation of the Venerable American archbishop: “The Church is a dying thing that is constantly coming to life again.”[25] Because the law of the Body is the law of the Head, namely, Crucifixion and the Empty Tomb: Resurrection.[26]
2. Worldliness
There have been and still are many who predict the end of Christianity, given the alarming circumstances through which the Church has gone or is going through. Carlson himself made this point in the commentary we quoted at the beginning of this article. What is certain is that the Church has had four great deaths in history, one about every five hundred years. The first was the Fall of Rome that so disturbed Saint Jerome that he thought the end of the world had come. Saint Augustine spent eighteen years writing his City of God explaining why Rome had fallen. The second death was the advance of the Muslims which destroyed the Church in Northern Africa and also that of the Eastern Schism. The third death was at the time of the Reformation, when reformers reformed dogmas when it was really morals that needed to be changed. We are in the fourth death of the Church where the enemy is not the Huns, schismatics, or heretics, but the spirit of the world which has infiltrated the Church.[27]
The Venerable American Archbishop continues, “during these five-hundred-year cycles, the Church was attacked in different ways. During the first cycle of five centuries, the Church had to combat heresies centering around the Historical Christ: His Person, His Nature, intellect and will. In the second cycle it was His Visible Head who was denied. In the third cycle it was the Church or the Mystical Body of Christ that was split up into sections or sects. In our day, the attack is secularism and is directed against holiness, sacrifice and self-denial and kenosis. The new enemy of the Church is ecological; it pertains to the environment in which she lives. The challenge hurled now to the faithful is ‘Are you with it?’; ‘it’ always remaining anonymous and undefined. For that reason, it is closely related to the demonic. For God defines Himself as ‘I am Who am.’ The Devil defines himself as ‘I am who am not.’”[28]
Fulton Sheen concludes saying something which we have already quoted on other occasions but that we think is appropriate to recall: “We are living at the end of Christendom, not the end of Christianity. By Christendom is meant the political, economic and social order pervaded by the Gospel ethic. We no longer live in a Christian civilization. Christendom refers only to the world and its institutions; Christianity refers to Christ and His Mystical Body in its evident outreach to the world. The era of Faith was succeeded by the era of Reason, which, in turn, has given way to our Sensate Age. Christianity is considered off the reservation… But Christianity is not dead; on the contrary, it is very much alive. Forty or fifty years ago it was easy to be Christian; the air we breathed, the family atmosphere in which we grew up, were not alien to the Sermon on the Mount. Now Christianity is under attack. That means that these are wonderful days in which to be alive. Now we have to stand up and be counted. It is easy to float downstream in the current. Dead bodies float downstream. But it takes live bodies to resist the current.”[29]
That is why the Holy Father Francis warned in one of his sermons, paraphrasing Father De Lubac: “[worldliness] is the worst of evils that can befall the Church; and he is not exaggerating, because then he talks about some terrible evils. And this is the worst: worldly spirituality, because it is a way of interpreting life, it is a way of life, even a way of living Christianity. And to survive in the face of the preaching of the Gospel, the person hates, kills.”[30] And the Holy Father continues: “Nothing about worldliness is superficial! It has deep roots, deep roots. It is like a chameleon, it changes, it comes and goes according to circumstances, but the substance is the same: a style of life that enters everywhere, including in the Church. Worldliness, the worldly hermeneutic, maquillage, everything can be made up to appear a certain way.”[31]
“Worldliness is a culture. It is a culture of the transitory, a culture of appearances, of maquillage, a culture of ‘today yes, tomorrow no; tomorrow yes and today no’. It has superficial values. A culture that does not know fidelity, because it always changes according to circumstances, everything is negotiable. This is the worldly culture, the culture of worldliness. And Jesus insists on defending us from this and He prays that the Father might defend us from this culture of worldliness. It is a ‘use it and throw it away’ culture according to whatever suits you. It is a culture without faithfulness, it has no roots. But it is a way of life, even a way of life for many who say that they are Christians. They are Christians, but they are worldly.”[32]
In fact, this worldliness is “infinitely more disastrous than any other worldliness which is simply moral.”[33]
3. The Church, a Prophetic Community
For this reason, Saint John Paul II strictly affirms: “The Church’s mission is first and foremost prophetic. She proclaims Christ to all nations and conveys to them the message of salvation. […] The world today is searching everywhere, perhaps ambiguously, for consecrated lives which proclaim Christ and his Gospel more in deed than in word.”[34]
“Christ, we remember, forced his teaching on no one. He presented it to all without exclusion, but left each one free to respond to his invitation. This is the pattern which we, his disciples, follow. We claim that all men and women have the right to hear the saving message which he left with us; and we claim for them the right to embrace it if it convinces them. Far from feeling any obligation to apologize for putting Christ’s message at the disposal of all, we claim with full conviction that it is our right and obligation to do no less.”[35]
When the Church loses sight of this prophetic mission, she distances herself from her Christlike ideal by ‘making a pact’ with the world. How does she do this? By diluting or cutting back the message of our Lord, by conceding things that are inadmissible, or by calling good or morally right something that the fashion of the time considers ‘good or right.’ By getting caught up in the slogans of ‘inclusion’ (at any costs) instead of proclaiming with firm confidence, the Gospel truth assumes a sort of submissive posture at the feet of the world and its maxims. She makes a pact with the world also when with a type of ‘guilt-complex’ she asks forgiveness for concrete decisions or measures taken by the hierarchy of the Church in the past, simply because they do not adapt to the pluralistic and pseudo-philanthropic mentality of our day, making the enemies of the Church feel justified in their defamation. Also when she considers herself ‘courageous’ for trying to give the impression of being pacifist, humanitarian and ‘open-minded’ by negotiating everything, rather than for contradicting or refuting the message of the world with the truth of Christ and his cross in the face of corrupt political or economic powers,[36] or for being ardent in her missionary zeal and wanting to fulfill Christ’s desire: I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already burning![37] This produces serious scandal for souls. It is worldly to love being right more than to love the truth. Those who act in this way are not friends of the truth which is Christ himself.
So many members of the Church today –even among the high-ranking in the Church– write books, promote ideas, and openly advocate topics explicitly condemned by the Magisterium of the Church, simply to ‘accommodate’ to the way people live; so many by their behavior and even by their practices induce souls to ‘faith’ in astrology or other forms of markedly pagan practices. So many feel like they are so broadminded with ‘liberty of spirit’ (while demeaning what they consider ‘rigid’ or ‘fanaticism’) that they identify tolerance with indifference between what is right and what is wrong, between truth and error. Many speak of doing away with the ‘old paradigm,’ an expression used to refer to the eternal truth taught by the Church of all times, in order to suggest, or rather to impose with sophisms, a ‘new paradigm,’ a broader one that accepts and adjusts itself to the ‘new norms.’ So many, instead of supporting, fostering and guarding Religious Institutes faithful to their identity and mission within the Church, seek to destroy precisely that which defines them in the Church, namely, their charism, rules, patrimony, way of doing apostolate, their founder, etc., arguing that these Institutes foster a ‘sectarian mentality’ in their members, promoting to be ‘introspective’ or to have ‘one way of thinking,’ when in reality these Institutes only seek to be faithful to their mission, not “taking up the space in the Church”[38] nor displaying a “self-absorbed promethean neopelagianism of those who ultimately trust only in their own powers and feel superior to others because they observe certain rules or remain intransigently faithful to a particular Catholic style from the past.”[39]
So many others live agitated by the causes of ecology, environmental pollution, equality, the cult of health (which has nothing to do with the pastoral care of health as the Church understands it), immigrants, etc. –all things that are valid and need to be addressed by imbuing them with the spirit of the Gospel– and meanwhile nothing or almost nothing is heard about missionary promotion or vocational ministry. We do not hear of the need for the reception of the sacraments, the four last things, and the Cross of Christ, topics which were solidly and consistently preached for centuries. We do not hear open and clear preaching of the Truth of Christ regarding so many controversial topics that even among priests cause much confusion and havoc in souls. Moreover, there are those who invoke religion in order to destroy religion, for they even speak of Christ but not of his Cross, simply because worldliness cannot tolerate the scandal of the Cross.
The truth is that when souls perceive this duplicity, when they sense this ‘negotiation’ with the spirit of the world, when in church they no longer hear the proclamation of the immutable truths of our faith, when they only hear opinions, when instead of ‘teachers’ they find ‘commentators,’ when instead of receiving principles they only receive statistics, or hear about nature alone instead of nature and grace, when they are asked to sell their freedom in exchange for security (like the bread that becomes a political weapon so that only those who are likeminded may eat), when the faithful hear ‘brotherhood’ promoted but with no mention of the ‘Fatherhood’ of God, when they see high ranking members of the Church surrender to Caesar even the things that belong to God… when all these things happen, souls lose confidence in ‘the people of the Church,’ some are scandalized, others decide to leave the faith and what is worse, countless others join them by embracing worldliness.
After all of this, who would be surprised that vocations to the priesthood are scarce, that churches are empty or almost empty, that religious houses and monasteries are closing at incomparable rates, that souls do not seek the sacraments, that euthanasia is chosen almost ‘naturally,’ that for many –including Christians– homosexuality is a ‘way of life,’ and that so many countries establish structures far removed from the common good? And “all anti-testimony, all incoherence between expressing values or ideals and living them, all looking out for oneself and not for the Kingdom of God and its justice,[40] all falsification of the word of God[41] ‘are often stumbling blocks for those who feel the call of Christ: Come and follow me.’[42]”[43]
Truly, people everywhere expect bishops, cardinals, priests, monks and religious to be witnesses to Christ, coherent with the truth they preach. They do not go to church to be told the same things they hear on the news, nor to be told about some ecclesial scandal. Souls thirst for Christ, they want the message of Christ to be presented to them in an accessible way, without mutilation, without dilution, but rather in all its luminosity and clarity.
We must not be naïve but rather discern and comprehend that today as in the past, there are those in the Church, even within the hierarchy, who behave like false prophets.
That is why we want to mention here certain characteristics that the Spiritual Father of our Religious Family gave us in order to distinguish false prophets from true one and thus understand what our attitude must be. He says:
– “In Israel’s contacts with neighboring peoples, there was no lack of manifestations of false prophetism, which led to the formation of groups of fanatics, who substituted with music and gesticulations the spirit coming from God and even adhered to the cult of Baal. Elijah engaged in a decisive battle against these prophets,[44] standing alone in true greatness.”[45] Here we have the first attitude for confronting the times in which we live if we truly want to be faithful to our vocation and, ultimately, faithful to the Incarnate Word: the firm and steadfast determination (that is, with conviction) not to enter into compromises with the world, not to replace the truth with fashionable opinions, not to adhere –out of fear of threats or in exchange for passing goods– to anything that compromises the integrity of our faith, our religious and missionary commitment, or the loyalty that we owe to our God. In a word, it is to know “at every instant what one must die for.”[46] And this for love of men, that is, precisely for love of the ‘world’ of men, understood as the reality created good by God, yet in need of salvation and elevation in the order of grace. Since, “what is not assumed is not redeemed.”[47]
– “In the genuine biblical tradition, the true idea of the prophet is defended and vindicated as a man of the word of God, instituted by God, like Moses and those that came after him.[48]”[49] If a religious, a priest, bishop or cardinal does not conduct himself in conformity with his condition and with the authentic prophetic witness that is expected of us all, and moreover does not penetrate deeply into the Word of God ‘within the Church,’[50] namely, with the same Spirit with which it was written[51], then his apostolic work languishes or worse; it does harm and destroys instead of building up. Likewise, if our missionary work within the Church does not find its source, its message, its criteria for judging realities, and the nourishment for our own sanctification in the Word of God, we could not speak of evangelization of culture. In the best of cases, we would only be beating the air. “Our feeble breath is only fertile and irresistible when it communes with the Wind of Pentecost,”[52] for it is precisely the Word of God that is the strength of our Institute.[53]
– Another aspect of this criterion of judgment is fidelity to the doctrine given by God to Israel, in resistance to the seductions of idolatry (cf. Deuteronomy 1:2 ff.). This explains the hostility against the false prophets.[54] The task of the prophet, as a man of the Word of God, is to combat the ‘spirit of falsehood’ that is found in the mouth of the false prophets[55] in order to protect the people from their influence. This is very clearly stated in one of our documents:
“The Christian [and even more so the religious] may pass through a thousand trials, but he must never be in any doubt about the Word of God… The Word of God must not be silenced: the Antichrist will come when the Word of God is silenced. The devil himself comes when the Word of God is silenced: The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful.[56] The Word of God must not be peddled: Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, as those sent from God.[57] The Word of God must not be counterfeited: … rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God.[58]”[59]
– The Prophet, a man of the Word, must also be a “man of the spirit,” as Hosea calls him: he must have the spirit of God, and not only his own spirit, if he is to speak in God’s name…[60] To speak in God’s name requires the presence of the spirit of God in the prophet.[61] This is why Saint Gregory the Great recommended that: “they should take heed to punish their own faults by bewailings, and then denounce what calls for punishment in others; and that, before they give voice to words of exhortation, they should proclaim in their deeds all that they are about to speak.”[62]
Moreover, fidelity to God and firm adherence to his Word also produce certain effects[63] in those who receive the message, and these effects help us to judge whether our own or another’s apostolic works are fulfilling the prophetic mission that is expected of us:
– Incomprehension: you are seeking to kill Me, because My word has no place in you;[64] His disciples did not understand at the first.[65]
– Contradiction: some were saying, “He is a good man”; others were saying, “No, on the contrary, He is misleading the people.”[66]
– Hate: the world… hates me, because I testify to it that its works are evil.[67]
– Contempt: all the people who listened, including the tax collectors, and who were baptized with the baptism of John, acknowledged the righteousness of God; but the Pharisees and scholars of the law, who were not baptized by him, rejected the plan of God for themselves.[68]
– Scandal: the Jews tried all the more to kill him, because… he called God his own father.[69]
– Repugnance: many of his disciples who were listening said, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?”[70]
“To be tolerated [or accepted] sometimes is a sign of weakness; to be persecuted is a compliment. The mediocre survive,”[71] said Fulton Sheen.
4. Pilgrimage through the desert
Therefore, even though humanly speaking this whole situation in the Church (which is doubly incumbent upon us as baptized persons and as members of a religious Institute) can overwhelm us, worry us and even cause us to lose confidence in certain men in the Church, should really be an opportunity for us to raise our eyes to God who governs his Church from heaven above and who directs history, in order to be able to say with the psalmist: To you they cried out and were saved; in you they trusted and were not put to shame. [72]
This Psalm that we have just cited presents “the figure of an innocent man, persecuted and surrounded by adversaries who clamor for his death; and he turns to God with a sorrowful lament which, in the certainty of his faith, opens mysteriously to praise. The anguishing reality of the present and the consoling memory of the past alternate in his prayer in an agonized awareness of his own desperate situation in which, however, he does not want to give up hope.”[73] Although the Psalm has strong Christological implications, it does not seem unreasonable to us that it can be applied to the Mystical Body of Christ on pilgrimage in the wilderness and even more so to our own Institute.
Pope Benedict explains in his catechesis: “The God who appears today to be so remote to the Psalmist, is nonetheless the merciful Lord whom Israel experienced throughout its history. The People to whom the praying person belongs is the object of God’s love and can witness to his fidelity to him. Starting with the Patriarchs, then in Egypt and on the long pilgrimage through the wilderness, in the stay in the promised land in contact with aggressive and hostile peoples, to the night of the exile, the whole of biblical history is a history of a cry for help on the part of the People and of saving answers on the part of God. And the Psalmist refers to the steadfast faith of his ancestors who ‘trusted’ –this word is repeated three times– without ever being disappointed. Then, however, it seems that this chain of trusting invocations and divine answers has been broken; the Psalmist’s situation seems to deny the entire history of salvation, making the present reality even more painful.
“God, however, cannot deny himself, so here the prayer returns to describing the distressing plight of the praying person, to induce the Lord to have pity on him and to intervene, as he always had done in the past. The Psalmist describes himself as ‘a worm, and no man,’ scorned by men, and despised by the people[74]. He was mocked, people made grimaces at him,[75] and wounded in his faith itself. ‘He committed his cause to the Lord; let him deliver him, let him rescue him, for he delights in him!’ (v. 8), they said.”[76] These lines inevitably bring to mind many vicissitudes in the history of our Institute. Nevertheless, God has always been present in our history with unquestionable providence and merciful tenderness. Therefore, our Institute can well remind God along with the psalmist: You are He who brought me forth from the womb; You made me trust when upon my mother’s breasts. I was cast upon You from birth;[77] Notwithstanding the present desolation and within the context of preparation for the celebration of the Birth of our Redeemer, we must acknowledge such radical divine intimacy and love so as to exclaim, in a confession full of faith and life-giving hope: You have been my God from my mother’s womb.[78] And let us confidently implore with the psalmist: Do not be far from me, for trouble is near; For there is no one to help.[79]
It is true that many times almost the only presence we perceive and that fills us with fear is that of our enemies, who surround us and are like strong bulls, like ravening and roaring lions.[80] “Anguish alters his perception of the danger, magnifying it. The adversaries seem invincible, they become ferocious, dangerous animals, while the Psalmist is like a small worm, powerless and defenseless. Yet these images used in the Psalm also serve to describe that when man becomes brutal and attacks his brother, something brutal within him takes the upper hand, he seems to lose any human likeness; violence always has something bestial about it and only God’s saving intervention can restore humanity to human beings. Now, it seems to the Psalmist, the object of so much ferocious aggression, that he no longer has any way out and death begins to take possession of him: ‘I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint… my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaves to my jaws… they divide my garments among them, and for my raiment they cast lots’[81].”[82]
United in prayer, let us once again address our urgent plea for help: But You, Lord, do not be far away;
You who are my help, hurry to my assistance… Save my soul.[83] “This is a cry that opens the Heavens,” explains the Holy Father, “because it proclaims a faith, a certainty that goes beyond all doubt, all darkness and all desolation. And the lament is transformed, it gives way to praise in the acceptance of salvation: “He has heard… I will tell of your name to my brethren; in the midst of the congregation, I will praise you”[84].”[85]
Let us resolve to give thanks, because at all times God has protected the poor and helpless, as at the end of this Psalm. “The Lord went to the rescue; he saved the poor man and showed his merciful face. Death and life are interwoven in an inseparable mystery and life triumphs, the God of salvation shows himself to be the undisputed Lord… It is the victory of faith which can transform death into the gift of life, the abyss of sorrow into a source of hope.”[86]
In this way, by placing all our trust and hope in God the Father, in the present moment of distress we too can pray to him in faith, and our cry for help, if it pleases God, will be transformed into a song of praise.
Convinced that “‘The Church . . . will receive its perfection only in the glory of heaven,’[87] at the time of Christ’s glorious return. Until that day, ‘the Church progresses on her pilgrimage amidst this world’s persecutions and God’s consolations.’[88] Here below she knows that she is in exile far from the Lord,[89] and longs for the full coming of the Kingdom, when she will ‘be united in glory with her king.’[90] The Church, and through her the world, will not be perfected in glory without great trials.”[91]
5. Mary, Mother of the Church
“My blessed Mother is yours to be your attentive and pious Mother” our proper law paternally declares, quoting the Teacher of Avila.[92] Therefore, we must invoke the Blessed Virgin at all times so that she may shine before us more than ever in mercy, power and grace.[93]
Saint Paul VI, desiring that the title of Mary, Mother of the Church, should acquire an ever more important place in the liturgy and in the piety of the People of God on pilgrimage in the wilderness, proclaimed the Blessed Virgin as “Mother of the Church, that is, Mother of all the People of God, both of the faithful and of the shepherds who call her loving Mother”[94] in a memorable speech at the end of the Second Vatican Council. On that occasion, the Vicar of Christ said: “The reality of the Church is not only limited to her hierarchical structure, her liturgy, her sacraments, or her juridical ordinances. Her intimate essence, the principal source of her sanctifying efficacy, is to be sought in her mystical union with Christ; a union which we cannot think of as separate from her who is the Mother of the Incarnate Word, and whom Christ himself willed to be so intimately united to himself for our salvation. Thus must the loving contemplation of the marvels that God has worked in His Holy Mother be framed in the vision of the Church. And knowledge of the true Catholic doctrine on Mary will always be the key to an exact understanding of the mystery of Christ and of the Church.”[95]
In this regard, more recently, the Holy Father has definitively included in the General Roman Calendar the memorial of the “Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church.”[96] Therefore, with a spirit of trustful and filial love, let us raise our eyes to her, despite our unworthiness and weakness; she who gave us in Christ the source of grace will not fail to help the Church and the Institute that bears the name of the most august mystery of her most Adorable Son.
May the Blessed Virgin protect the whole Church and us within the Church from falling into appearances of religiosity and even of love for the Church which seeks human glory and personal wellbeing instead of the glory of the Lord.[97] And may Mary being both Spouse of the Holy Spirit and Mother of the Church, heal the members of the Church from this ‘stifling worldliness’ with the pure breath of the Holy Spirit, which frees us from being self-centered, concealed in a religious appearance devoid of God.[98]
*****
In the midst of the luminous mystery of the Birth of the Son of God, we must rekindle in ourselves an immense trust in the power and aid of our Redeemer. Christmas is therefore the “day of God’s mercies”[99]. “Is there anything,” perhaps, “that can declare more unequivocally the mercy of God than the fact that he has accepted our misery? What is more brimming with mercy than the Word of God made so little for us?”[100]
Thus “Among other things, the birth of the Incarnate Word… urges us to live in joy.”[101] Deep and Spiritual joy even though we are not lacking arduous trials and struggles, trials that God does not want us to be without. It is, therefore, our fervent prayer that this Christmas the Incarnate Word may imbue in the souls of all the members of the Institute the dew of joy that will multiply good works in more graces. May He grant us the joy of freedom in the face of the maxims, mockery and persecutions of the world out of fidelity to God;[102] the joy of our belonging to the Church by faith and Baptism;[103] joy both in the strength of possumus[104] and in the weakness of save us, Lord; we are perishing![105]. May we be joyful when they throw stones at us, beat us and martyr us[106] for the sake of Christ, rejoicing when they consider us “awkward, slow and even mentally weak”[107] because then the greatest grace that God can bestow on our minuscule Religious Family will have fallen to our lot. Joyful in God and with Him alone;[108] joyful in faith and hope, even in the dark;[109] joyful, “living here below like pilgrims, the poor, the exiled, orphans, the thirsty, without a road and without anything, hoping for everything in heaven.”[110]
This is the reality of the Lord’s Nativity! This is the historical event charged with mystery that God has entrusted to his Church. Let us proclaim it unceasingly.
In closing, we offer a poem[111] written by the Most Reverend Archbishop Fulton Sheen to a friend three days before his death:
Our Lord came to this earth to experience
What it is like when we are disappointed…
At not getting a hotel reservation;
At having to bump up against so many stubborn
Donkeys and dumb oxen on our way through life;
For not getting the Birthday gifts we expected…
BUT. He also came to teach us we would never be disappointed…
If we learn to see that, next to His Presence
In the Blessed Sacrament,
our neighbor is the most Christ-like
Object we will ever know;
And if we learn to admit the dirt in the stable of our own lives,
We will have found the first sign of His Presence in us…
Then we would understand that if He would deliver us from all disappointment;
If He gave us only pleasant and new things;
we would forget about Him
And that would take away the joy of longing for each other.
Merry Christmas!
[1] https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-christianity-dying-replaced-cult-coronavirus, (09/28/2021).
[2] Ibidem.
[3] Ibidem.
[4] https://www.religionenlibertad.com/video/134230/nueva-iglesia-fracasado.html [Translated from Spanish]
[5] Cf. Ibidem.
[6] Directory of Fraternal Life, 25.
[7] Cf. Lumen Gentium, 35; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 904.
[8] Constitutions, 258.
[9] Directory of Spirituality, 33.
[10] Constitutions, 23.
[11] Cf. Spanish Episcopal Conference, Teología y secularización en España. A los cuarenta años de la clausura del Concilio Vaticano II, (03/30/2006), 46. On http://www.conferenciaepiscopal.nom.es (visited on the 27th of February 2011). [Translated from Spainsh]
[12] Mt 10:27; Lk 12:3.
[13] Message for the XXVI World Communications Day (05/31/1992).
[14] from this point we freely cite Fulton Sheen, Those Mysterious Priests, chap. 10.
[15] Cf. Fulton Sheen, Those Mysterious Priests, chap. 10.
[16] Numbers 11:4,6.
[17] Numbers 11:5.
[18] According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Phalanx: a body of heavily armed infantry in ancient Greece formed in close deep ranks and files; any arranged mass, whether of persons, animals, or things; a body of people organized in a particular effort.
[19] Deuteronomy 12:8.
[20] Numbers 16:3.
[21] Romans 9:6.
[22] Cf. Fulton Sheen, Those Mysterious Priests, chap. 10.
[23] Cf. Constitutions, 128.
[24] Haggai 2:4,5.
[25] Fulton Sheen, Those Mysterious Priests, chap. 10.
[26] Ibidem.
[27] Cf. Fulton Sheen, Those Mysterious Priests, chap. 10.
[28] Ibidem.
[29] Ibidem.
[30] Pope Francis, Homily in the Chapel of Saint Martha (05/16/2020).
[31] Ibidem.
[32] Ibidem.
[33] Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 93; op. cit. H. de Lubac, Méditation sur l’Église, Paris 1968, 231
[34] To the Sisters of the Congo gathered at the Carmelite Convent of Kinshasa (05/03/1980)
[35] Saint John Paul II, Message for the XXVI World Communications Day (05/31/1992).
[36] Cf. Saint John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio, 43.
[37] Luke 12:49.
[38] Evangelii Gaudium, 95.
[39] Cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 94.
[40] Cf. Matthew, 6:33.
[41] Cf. 2 Corinthians 4:2.
[42] Saint John Paul II, Letter to the Bishops of the United States of America (02/22/1989); OR (30/04/1989), 14.
[43] Directory of Spirituality, 293.
[44] Cf. 1 Kings 18:25-29.
[45] Saint John Paul II, General Audience (02/14/1990). [Translated from Spanish]
[46] Directory of Spirituality, 41.
[47] On this celebrated patristic axiom: cf. Vatican Council II, Ad Gentes, 3, which cites Saint Athanasius, Ep. ad Epictetum 7: PG 26,1060; Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. 4,9: PG 33,465; Mario Victorino, Adv. Arium 3,3: PL 8,1101; Saint Basil, Epist. 261,2: PG 32,969; Saint Gregory Nazianzus, Epist. 101: PG 37,181; Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Antirreheticus, Adv. Apollin. 17: PG 45,1156; Saint Ambrose, Epist. 48,5: ML 16,1153; Saint Augustine, In Ioan. Ev. tr. 23,6: ML 35,1585; CChr. 36,236.
[48] Cf. Deuteronomy 18:15.
[49] Saint John Paul II, General Audience (02/14/1990).
[50] San Juan Pablo II, Alocución a los obispos de Malí (26/03/1988); OR (24/04/1988), 11; cf. San Juan Pablo II, Renovar la familia a la luz del Evangelio. Discurso al Consejo Internacional de los Equipos de Nuestra Señora (17/09/1979); OR (30/09/1979), 8.
[51] Dei Verbum, 11.
[52] Constitutions, 18.
[53] Cf. Directory of Spirituality, 238.
[54] Cf. 1 Kings 22:6 ff.; 2 Kings 3:13; Jeremiah 2:6; 5:13; 23:9-40; Micah 3:11; Zechariah 13:2.
[55] Cf. 1 Kings 22:23.
[56] Matthew 13:22.
[57] 2 Corinthians 2:17.
[58] 2 Corinthians 4:2.
[59] Directory of the Preaching of the Word, 13-16.
[60] Hosea 9:7.
[61] Cf. Saint John Paul II, General Audience (02/14/1990).
[62] Directory of the Preaching of the Word, 96; op. cit. Saint Gregory the Great, Pastoral Rule, III chapter 40.
[63] Directory of the Preaching of the Word, 28.
[64] John 8:37.
[65] John 12:16.
[66] John 7:12.
[67] John 7:7.
[68] Luke 7:29-30.
[69] John 5:18.
[70] John 6:61.
[71] Fulton Sheen, The Power of Love, chap. 42.
[72] Psalm 22:5.
[73] Benedict XVI, General Audience (09/14/2011).
[74] Psalm 22:6.
[75] Psalm 22:8.
[76] Ibidem.
[77] Psalm 22:9-10a.
[78] Psalm 22:10b.
[79] Psalm 22:11.
[80] Cf. Benedict XVI, General Audience (09/14/2011).
[81] Psalm 22:14.15.18.
[82] Benedict XVI, General Audience (09/14/2011).
[83] Psalm 22:19.
[84] Psalm 22:22c-23.
[85] Ibidem.
[86] Ibidem.
[87] Lumen Gentium, 48.
[88] Saint Augustine, De civitate Dei 18, 51; cf. Lumen Gentium, 8.
[89] Cf. 2 Corinthians 5:6; Lumen Gentium, 6.
[90] Lumen Gentium, 5.
[91] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 769.
[92] Constitutions, 214; op. cit. SAINT JOHN OF AVILA, Letter 20.
[93] Cf. Saint Louis Maria Grignion de Montfort, True Devotion, 50.
[94] Saint Paul VI, Address (11/21/1964).
[95] Ibidem.
[96] Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Notification on the Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church (3/24/2018).
[97] Cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 93.
[98] Cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 97.
[99] Saint John of Avila, Sermon 4.
[100] Saint Bernard, Sermon 1 on the Epiphany of the Lord, 1-2: PI, 133, 141-143.
[101] Directory of Spirituality, 85.
[102] Cf. Directory of Spirituality, 36.
[103] Directory of Spirituality, 227.
[104] Matthew, 20:22.
[105] Matthew, 8:25.
[106] Cf. Directory of Spirituality, 181.
[107] Ibidem.
[108] Cf. Saint John of the Cross, Letter 21 to M. María of Jesus, June 20, 1590.
[109] Saint John of the Cross, Letter 20, To a scrupulous Discalced Carmelite, Pentecost, 1590.
[110] Saint John of the Cross, Complete Works, Letter 19, To Doña Juana de Pedraza in Granada Segovia, October 12, 1589.
[111] Cited from the back cover of the book Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s Saint Therese: A Tresured Loved Story.
