The grace of combat
No enemies[1]
You have no enemies, you say?
Alas! my friend, the boast is poor;
He who has mingled in the fray
Of duty, that the brave endure,
Must have made foes! If you have none,
Small is the work that you have done.
You’ve hit no traitor on the hip,
You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip,
You’ve never turned the wrong to right,
You’ve been a coward in the fight.
It is said that Margaret Thatcher kept this poem in her desk. Recently, this detail of the life of the former British Prime Minster came to light when, in a contemporary TV series she recited the poem to Queen Elizabeth II after the Queen expressed her concern that the government was creating enemies due to the reforms that they were implementing.
Leaving aside the popularity that the poem has these days thanks to the media, as well as the person of the prime minister who recited it, the verses express a truth, and it is the fact that the mediocre, preferring to coast on the waves of popularity and to avoid any type of inconveniences, choose to negotiate with the spirit of the world and its followers. While on the other hand, it is the valiant, those who have gotten their hands dirty in the fight for doing what is just, who create enemies: “If you have none, small is the work that you have done.”
Therefore, being simply accepted, without any opposition, is often a sign of mediocrity (or of cowardice, in the words of the poet), while being persecuted, on the other hand, is a show of compliment. It is in this sense that Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen said that our “persecutors pay us the beautiful tribute of hostility, the fine compliment of opposition.”[2] It is the mystery of persecution. Such mystery, when unjust or for Christ, implies one of the Gospel beatitudes.
1. Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness
For this reason, one day these profound words were found on the lips of our Lord: Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.[3]
“For Matthew, for his readers and listeners, the expression those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness had a prophetic meaning. For them, it was about a previous allusion that our Lord had made about the situation of the Church in which they were living. The Church had become a persecuted Church, persecuted for righteousness’ sake. In the terminology proper of the Old Testament, ‘justice’ expressed fidelity to the Torah, fidelity to the word of God, as the prophets had always cried out. It meant persevering on the straight path pointed out by God, a path which was centered around the Ten Commandments. In the New Testament the concept equivalent to the Old Testament justice is that of faith: he who believes is the ‘just one,’[4] who follows the ways of God. Because faith means walking with Christ, by which one fulfills the whole Law; faith unites us to the justice of Christ himself.”[5]
Pope Benedict explains that the persecuted of whom Christ speaks: “are those who live according to the justice of God, who live by faith. As man’s aspirations tend to emancipate him from the will of God and lead him to follow man’s own ways, faith will always appear as something which contradicts the ‘world’—the dominating powers of the particular moment—and for this very reason there will be persecution for the sake of righteousness at all times throughout history. […] In its lack of power and its suffering, the Church is conscious that it finds itself there, where the Kingdom of God is.”[6] Therefore, those of us who follow Christ will never be popular, so to speak, nor will we be comfortable, because inconformity with evil is a form of resistance that the world does not put up with because the spirit of the world demands collaboration[7], it asks you to work in unison with it, with a sort of “united mind.” And this can even happen to religious and the clergy when they become worldly, because more than being persecuted, these are often the ones who are the persecutors. It happened to Jesus!
Let´s suppose for a minute that our Religious Family no longer had any external difficulty, no persecution. That would most certainly be very pleasant, but it could also be at the same time a sign that our salt had lost its flavor and that our flame had been extinguished. For this reason, as our proper law says so well, “the greatest grace that God can grant our small Religious Family is that of persecution.”[8]
We must realize that the world, which dislikes zeal for God’s justice, first hated it in Him. It was His zeal that brought Him to the Cross. The world loves the indifferent, the mediocre, the ordinary, but it hates two classes of people: those who are too good, and those who are too bad. […] Some go to the cross because they are too good for the majority or for the system, and others go to the cross because they are too bad for it.
The world hates the zealous, such as Our Lord, because they are a reproach to its mediocrity; it hates also the wicked, such as the thieves, because they are an annoyance to its self-complacency.
Do you get it? The good go down to death because they are good; the wicked go to death because they are wicked—the mediocre survive. “The mediocre are those who ‘fit it,’ who seek to take on roles of authority that are beyond their capacities, they long for and abuse power, and without any scruples they exercise that power against those who want to do things well. As Our Lord put it: The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth: because I give testimony of it, that the works thereof are evil.[9] And if this was true of Our Lord, it must be true of us. The servant is not above the master.”[10]
So, those who calumniate us or unjustly attack us do nothing other than profess that they take seriously our resolution and that, if evil wants to triumph, they must eliminate the cause that we defend. The same thing happened to Jesus with his worldly contemporaries; it is here that we find the theological foundation of persecution: If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you. Remember the word that I spoke to you, ‘No slave is greater than his master.’…and they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know the one who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin; but as it is they have no excuse for their sin.[11]
It is because of this that persecution is the law of the Church—as Fr. Castellani rightly pointed out—and it is the burden that we must carry, and today we must look at it head on.
Throughout history the persecution of the good has always been a reality; although, certainly, not all Christians have been persecuted. For example, those who are Christians by name alone, who not only do not suffer, but at times even serve as useful idiots to the impious. For as St. Paul says: In fact, all who want to live religiously in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.[12] He did not say “all the baptized”; he said all who want to live religiously.[13]
To prove our point we can mention the martyrdom of the Apostles, who were martyred in different parts of the world, after which the ten bloody persecutions of Rome followed, where thousands of Christians from different walks of life were killed, almost always through cruel and terrible torments. One can also call to mind the innumerable persecutions that are carried out today against the good, to the point that it seems like “Here on earth Jesus does not grant us Christians more than one right, that of persecution and the curse of men.”[14]
But persecution from within also exists. Without going too far, as we said, it is what happened to Christ himself on the part of Judas. That is why he warned us: one’s enemies will be those of his household.[15] It was this type of underhand and traitorous persecution that Saint Paul complained of when he said that he underwent dangers among false brothers.[16] That type of persecution is most likely the worst type, because it is full of hypocrisy and often enough cruelty. Such did St. Peter Julian Eymard express: “There is above all one class of that causes the most suffering, that that is the persecution and the calumnies of the [supposedly] devoted. Nothing hurts so deeply because their [supposed] virtue gives room to believing that they are right and that it is God himself who is irritated. It allows for the [apparently] better people to not see well and to persecute someone, regardless of his innocence, to better purify him.”[17] As such, it must be considered as a grace.
If in our zeal to remain faithful to the will of God expressed in our Constitutions,[18] we are overtaken by unfounded attacks, Blessed be God! Because “this cross prepares us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison”[19] Sometimes we complain because our persecutors or “false brothers” harass us with false accusations, just as they accused Christ of being a glutton and a drunkard.[20] Sometimes we protest because there are some who question everything we do, not because they want an answer, but precisely because they don’t want one; but attention! not before telling us that they want to hear our opinion, that they are interested in what we think. In the face of all of this scheming, deep down we must know how to say: Blessed be God!
If we didn’t pray, if we had a more relaxed formation, if we had a light spirituality rather than a serious spirituality (thought not “rigid”), if we didn’t have vocations, if we didn’t fight tooth and nail to defend the charism of the Institute, if we were tributaries, they would never harass us. They would leave us completely in peace.
In any case, one can validly ask oneself why so much opposition? To which Venerable Fulton Sheen responds: “They ridicule you and harass you because you have something that they don’t have, and because your faith is a reproach to their malice. In the depths of their souls they wish they had your peace; they would like to have your certainty in the place of their doubts; your joy in place of their fears, your trust in God rather than their confusion. They are jealous of you and of what you have, but they want all of that at their own price, not that of Christ. In one word, they want your faith, but without the Cross.”[21] Such to the extent that they seem to fulfill, against their will, that which the Psalm says: Repaying me evil for good, accusing me for pursuing good.[22]
Fulton Sheen affirms that “It used to be that the character of people was known by those who loved them; today characters are better known by those who hate them.”[23] So, in a certain sense, having enemies proclaims to the world that those who are being persecuted for the sake of righteousness possess the spirit of a prince, for, they are those who “know at every instant what one must die for,”[24] “they do not demand freedom but hierarchy,” [25]and “they feel honor as life itself.”[26] And as all of those values go against the spirit of the world, the world seeks to eliminate them; that is why they seek to destroy our unity and to disperse us.
Now, we would not be realists if we were to say that the attacks are not of any weight to us. But we have to convince ourselves, in faith, that God can draw out good from evil and therefore, that the most adverse events contribute to our good. They will be used, by God’s good grace, for personal growth as well as that of the Institute, as well as tokens of the good fight.
Let us listen to the advice that Saint Peter Julian Eymard gave to a group of religious: “God permits saints be calumniated, despised, and persecuted. Our Lord himself, and it is an honor for all of you to be treated the same way.”[27]
So, for example, Saint John of the Cross was envied by Diego Evangelista, who at some point felt humiliated by a correction made by the saint. It was in great part this resentful religious who was responsible for putting in motion the last great persecution that the Mystic of Fontiveros suffered. Saint Mary MacKillop was excommunicated by her bishop after being accused of insubordination. We can cite many, many other similar cases. Fulton Sheen, who had millions of followers on TV, who converted thousands of souls, and under whose leadership Propaganda Fide gathered great sums of money for the missions, was falsely accused of misuse of those funds. Another example: Blessed Marie Anne Blondin, the founder and general superior of the Sister of Saint Anne, was greatly persecuted by the chaplain assigned to her community, who, exercising a dictatorial control over the community called for the election of a new superior, but not before advising Marie Anne to not accept any position of authority, even if she were elected by the sisters. Marie Anne spent the rest of her days carrying out domestic tasks, and was not even counted among the list of the sisters. Then there’s Saint Joseph Calasanz, Saint Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer. Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina… the list is endless. This was the path that the saints followed, plagued by stones, intricate accusations, in constant conflict with their enemies who breathed cruelty on them, but all of this was useful to them to purify their faith and to unite them more closely to God. It is with that noble spirit of bravery that we should not only accept but also embrace the tribulations that God is pleased to send us, or at least permit.
Disloyal murmuring, calumnies, false judgments: all of this, in one way or another, springs from envy. In this sense, the venerable American archbishop noted: “Every envious word is based on a false judgment of our own moral superiority. To sit in judgment makes us feel as if we are above those who are judged and more righteous and more innocent than they.”[28] That is why accusing other is like saying, in part: “I am not like them,” or like saying “they have stolen that which is mine.” “Envy thus becomes the denial of all justice and love. In individuals, it develops a cynicism that destroys all moral values, for by bankrupting others (destroying entirely their good reputation, for example), we ourselves become bankrupt.”[29] There are members of the Church who reach the point of affirming that having a lot of vocations is cause for suspicion of something malicious…and one is led to ask oneself if vocations might be that which they don’t have.
In other words: those who speak ill of others through calumny, often times, speak ill of themselves, ultimately. When envy is planted in a group of people, it produces deceit and such a lie that it leads the group to welcome with open arms anyone who defects, for example from a religious congregation, without any concern for their resume, as long as they are willing to take up the fight, until the latter becomes too powerful, and as such, an annoyance, so he is kicked out because he is no longer useful to the cause. We have seen this too often!
Fulton Sheen advises that “Since envy is so rampant in the world today, it is extremely good counsel to disbelieve 99 to 100 percent of the wicked statements we hear about others. Think of how much the thief on the right hand had to discount to arrive at the truth. He had to disbelieve the judgment of four envious judges, the raillery of envious scribes and ancients, the blasphemous utterances of curious onlookers who loved murders, and the envious taunts of the thief on the left, who was willing to lose his soul if only he could keep his fingers nimble for more thefts.
The chances are that there is a bit of jealousy, a bit of envy, behind every cutting remark and barbed whispering we hear about our neighbor…There should be some consolation for those who are so unjustly attacked to remember that it is a physical impossibility for any man to get ahead of us who stays behind to kick us.”[30]
2. Christ had enemies
Christ had enemies. The Sadducees and the Pharisees, Judas and the Sanhedrin, Rome and the priests of the Temple, Pilate, Herod, all of whom had a certain enmity amongst themselves, were united in great hostility to confront Christ. Let’s consider the case of the Pharisees.
Fr. Castellani says that the entire biography of Jesus, as man, can be summed up in the following words: “He was the Messiah and he fought against the Pharisees.”[31] Without the Pharisees, Christ’s story would not be the same, as neither would the history of the Church.
Pharisaism is religious pride: it is the most subtle and most dangerous corruption of the greatest truth: the truth that religious truths are the first truths. But, at the very moment that we claim them as our own, we lose them; at the moment when we make ours that which is proper of God, it ends up belonging to no one, if not becoming property of the devil.
The pharisee is the experienced and willful man. It is true that the pharisee is not like other men; the only thing is that he is not better, as he believes, but worse. Christ called them hypocrites[32], because they are those who preach, but do not practice.[33] We can say with Saint Paul that the Pharisees, enemies of Jesus, are those who claiming to be wise, became fools.[34]
Hypocrite, of itself, means being an actor; but he who continuously behaves as an actor runs the risk of becoming a farse, because the concern for appearance is accompanied by the lack of concern for what one really is. Such an attitude ends up leading to blindness and senselessness. They deceive others, by first deceiving themselves. And in their blindness they can even proclaim to be opposed to pharisaism and denounce it, fooling even more so those who heed him. According to Fr. Castellani, pharisaism “is a radically irreligious attitude, and even anti-religious, which appears to be religious.”[35] Because hypocrites live on appearances, they know how to put on a good face, they show themselves as just,[36] they paint themselves as good,[37] they repeat themselves until they’re tired that they want to help you, they present themselves as having a ‘saving’ attitude, and as if they were the masters of that which is contingent they promise you a future full of sunshine if only you would agree with them and unite yourself to them…that is, only until they come out “seemingly” victorious, because when you are no longer useful to them, they will discard you. One can rightly apply the words of the Psalm which speaks of those who do wrong, who speak peace to their neighbors, though evil is in their hearts.[38]
To achieve his objective the pharisee uses the technique of a hypocrite[39]: he flatters you, he makes you think he likes you, he deceives you with his “pious manners” of doing things, but deep down he acts with malicious intentions because he hides his secret ambition. Centuries ago Saint John of the Cross already pointed out this way of acting when he said: “the calced are affected by the vice of ambition, and so all that they do, they color and tint with good, such that they are uncorrectable…” of which words Fr. Castellani says: “Ambition among religious, which often times becomes a passion stronger than lust among the laity, is one of the finest parts of pharisaism: Loving places of honor…loving the vain honors that men can give”[40] It becomes a “way of life”[41] for them.
That is why pharisaism is a vice which is a hundred times worse than other vices. Because pharisaism is a spiritual vice, that is, it is diabolic, because the corruption of that which is spiritual is worse than the corruption of the things of the flesh.
To that point, Christ said to Saint Catherine of Siena: “Therefore I tell you, if all the other sins these people have committed were put on one side and this one sin on the other, the one would weigh more in my sight than all the others.”[42] This is so because pharisaism is like a compendium of all the spiritual vices: greed, ambition, vainglory, pride, obstinacy, hardness of heart, cruelty, which has reached the point of emptying out in a diabolical manner the three theological virtues, constituting, thus, a sin against the Holy Spirit. But the “flower” of pharisaism is cruelty: cruelty, which is devious, cautious, contemplated, prudent and underground, putting to death, thinking they are doing service to God. Everything is done in silence, in darkness, by means of privacy and complicated combinations, behind the curtain of a pretentious goodness and Gospel spirit. But “hypocrisy destroys, hypocrisy kills, it kills people, even stripping people of their personality and their souls. It kills communities. When there are hypocrites [‘false brothers’] in a community, there is a very big danger, a very ugly danger.”[43] One could even come to the point of approving “the illegal, cruel and innocuous death of a man,” as Father Castellani points out, which “is decided in meetings where the Law is invoked with book in hand, in serious religious conclaves, dialogues, phrases where hardly any language other than the words of Sacred Scripture is spoken, using the holiest words which have ever existed on the face of the earth. Amen, I say to you, if someone risen from the dead was sent to then, they wouldn’t believe.[44]”[45]
And as everything can be useful to the pharisee, “every means is a good means as long as they are stealthy: calumny, bribery, fraud, manipulation, false witness, threats,”[46] dropping big names in their discourses as one who boasts of the endorsement received from those persons, and the impunity they think they enjoy. “Caiaphas killed Christ with a summary of the prophecy of Isaiah and with the dogma of Redemption. It is better that one man should die rather than the people.”[47]
If we pay close attention observing the case of Christ, for example, He was judged as a heretic for having broken the sabbath and as such his fate was sealed. Afterwards, successively, as the wrath and jealousy for his success grew, there came the accusations of being crazy, a magician, possessed by demons, then he was called blasphemous, seditious, and finally as a conspirator before Caesar. As we said above: everything is useful. It is one accusation that grows as time passes, without ever asking for statements or explanations on the part of the accused, rather, each statement that the latter makes ends up being turned into a new charge against him. The process is secret. When the judges intervene in public, it is no longer an accusation, but a sentence. They calumniously affirm and try to trap the defendant in a resignation so as to give credit to their calumnies.[48] That is why the pharisees secretly take pleasure in the slow fermentation of calumny among the peoples.
That was Christ’s drama. Thus did the Savior die. All of his meekness, he most adorable sweetness, his benefits, his tears, his Precious Blood, his counsels, his prophetic threats would all clash with the hardness of heart of the Pharisees. This continues to be the drama of the Church.
Christ, to Saint Catherine of Siena, complained of the wounds that this movement of internal persecution of the Church caused his Mystical Body: “I spoke the truth when I told you that they are persecuting me. So far as their intention is concerned, they persecute me in whatever way they can. Not that I in myself can be harmed or persecuted by them, for I am like the rock that is not hurt by what is thrown at it, but glances it back at the one who threw it. Just so, the impact of the filthy sins they hurl can do me no harm, but their arrows glance back at them poisoned with guilt. This guilt deprives them of grace in this life because they lose the fruit of the blood, and in the end, unless they change their ways through heartfelt contrition and holy confession, they will come to eternal damnation, cut off from me and bound over to the devil.
[…] This chain binds the persecutors of the blood one with the other, and as members bound up with the devil they have taken on the function of the devils. […] The links of this chain are pride and self-importance, along with the slavish fear that makes them lose grace rather than risk losing their temporal powers. […] Their chain is welded with the seal of darkness, so that they do not recognize into what great trouble and wretchedness they have falling and are making other fall.
[…] O dearest daughter, grieve without measure at the sight of such wretched blindness in those who, like you, have been washed in the blood, have nursed and been nourished with this blood at the breast of holy Church! Now like rebels they have pulled away from that breast out of fear and under the pretext of correcting the faults of my ministers—something I have forbidden them to do, for I do not want [my anointed ones] touched by them. […] And worse still, they want to take cover under the cloak of my ministers’ sins so as to cover up their own sins. They forget that no cloak can hide anything from my sight. They might well be able to hide from creatures, but not from me, for nothing present nor anything at all can be hidden from me.
[…] And this is one reason the wicked of the world do not change their ways: they do not believe in truth, by the light of living faith, that I see them. For if they believed in truth that I see them and their sins, and that every sin is punished and every good rewarded, they would not commit such evil but would turn away from what they have done and humbly ask for my mercy. […] But no fault on the part of the ministers of the blood can justify such persecution.”[49]
It is clear that pharisaism is not something of the past, but we find it in our days, as well, because it is a particular vice and a grave illness of true religion.[50] “The chair of Moses continues being the chair of Moses. One must do what they say and not what they do; and say a whole bunch of things that they keep silent, but that they should be saying, and which will make them jump like snakes: give witness to the truth.”[51]
“If over the course of history an immense amount of sufferings and even bloodshed were not endured by other Christs, in resistance to the pharisees, the Church would not be around. Pharisaism is the greatest evil that exists on the face of the earth.”[52] And in our days, more than in the past, “we have need of someone to remind the modern Pilates that there is another power from above.”[53]
3. What must we do?
We have no intention in trying to provide a sort of recipe to solve the problem. But, certainly, one this is for sure: we should not be pharisees. God forbid that we end up like those who were on Calvary, but on the wrong side. They dedicated a great portion of their time and energies to the study and observance of the Law, but nevertheless, they missed the Messiah. We should be free, integral people, not tributaries,[54] and we should conduct ourselves according to the circumstances that Providence disposes in our lives always with the spirit of a prince.[55] Ours are times of great struggles, thus, we must have our priorities in order and remain faithful even if we are wounded in battle. These are magnificent times to stay faithful to the Incarnate Word, to his Church and to the Institute in which we have consecrated our life to the Lord as well as to the Church, for both speak of one and the same reality.
We must call to mind the fact that if there was even an innocent person who had the right to protest against an injustice, it was our Lord. And nevertheless, he forgave. He ignored the insults directed at his Person. Did not the Incarnate Word preach meekness? Should we not practice it ourselves?
Certainly, seeing ourselves attacked, when it is an injustice, causes us pain. Certainly, recognizing that those who should be our friends are actually our enemies, causes hurt as well as a feeling of great helplessness. Of course seeing some of our ‘brothers’ secretively ally to fight against their own Family is unpleasant, fills us with powerlessness, and deeply wounds. But at the same time, the lesson is clear: our pain does not make us any better,[56] but it makes us apt to suffer worse things. Who has not experienced, during moments of intense suffering, the feeling that one cannot put up with another minute of it. But that minute passes and we realize that we are touching new levels of resistance. Nevertheless, pain never becomes pleasant. But, we must continue onwards, with our gaze fixed on heaven where our Recompense awaits. Everything depends on whether or not we unite our pain to Him who, for the sake of the joy that lay before him he endured the cross, despising its shame.[57]
Ultimately, we ought to rejoice if we are persecuted. Because if our faith must be “perfected be persecutions,”[58] those same persecutions will harm our pride, but not our character; they will cauterize our arrogance, but not blemish our soul—for the very insult of the world is the consecration of our goodness.[59]
We know that it is not of this world to pray for those who nail us to the Cross. But that is precisely the point: our faith its not worldly; our faith completely overturns the values of the world.
We know that it is not in keeping with “common sense” to love our enemies, because loving our enemies would mean hating ourselves (according to the worldly way of thinking); but that is the intention of Christianity. Often times our executioners are our allies; those who crucify us are our greatest benefactors.
Thus did Saint Thomas More write in the margins of his breviary when he was imprisoned in the Tower of London: “Give me the grace, Good Lord…to set the mind firmly on You and not to hang upon the words of men’s mouths. To be content to be solitary…to be joyful in tribulations…to think my worst enemies my best friends, for the brethren of Joseph could never have done him so much good with their love and favor as they did him with their malice and hatred.”[60]
Such was the attitude of the noble Christians of all times who with great pride died in the hands of their enemies for the glory of God and of his Church.
Think, for example of the martyr Tomás de la Mora, who died on August 15, 1927 in Colima, Mexico, victim of the unleashed persecution of Plutarco Calles. Tomás, who had been a seminarian, wrote a year earlier: “We must no longer ask God for the persecution to end, but rather that in each Catholic there be found a hero as in the times of Nero.” After having been arrested for the crime of being a Christian, and coming to know his sentence he asked that it be carried out immediately: “The wait bothers me,” he said. Upon seeing the tree where Benito Juárez had rested[61], he asked the chief of his escort to hang him there: “That is a place of ignominy; hang me here so that this accursed place might become a place of blessing.” With the cry of Viva Cristo Rey! he was lifted up at midnight on a Saturday. He was only 18 years old.
In order to have that fortitude and integrity of soul we must pray, and pray a lot, asking for the grace to remain faithful, while maintaining our consciences intact and to persevere in the holy vocation that God has granted us. And we must also pray for our Institute, as did, for example Saint Peter Julian Eymard for the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament: “Keep far from your Eucharistic family vocations that are false, deceptive, impure; do not permit this poor and humble family to fall into the hands of the proud, nor anyone who is ambitious, nor any man who is hardened and irate. Do not give over to filthy and perverse beasts the souls that believe and hope in you. Preserve your Eucharistic family from all scandal, conserve it in its purity from all vice, free from all earthly slavery, a stranger to the times, so that it might place all its joy in serving you holy and free, with peace and tranquility.”[62]
And when the fighting gets tougher than it is we can put into practice the advice that Saint John of Avila once gave to a woman: “It is not convenient, ma’am, to faint at the greatness of one’s enemies, nor for their astuteness, nor the torments that they cause; as it will be all the more pleasing to your Lord the more that you persevered in greater torments for His sake. Staying on the Cross is the best place to be until we give our spirit over to the Father; and we shall not come down from the cross alive, no matter how many learned men and pharisees tell us to come down and promising all the benefits if we were to do so, as they said to our Lord.[63] This Cross was taken up for Him, and He has helped you carry it until now; and if at any point it becomes so heavy that it brings you to your knees, remember that the same happened to our Lord; and he will not marvel when our weakness falls to its knees, because his great fortitude also knelt; He wanted it such so that the weak would not faint, when with the weight of certain works it seems to them that, unable to suffer anything more, they end up stuck in sadness, with a certain distrust, lacking that joy amidst suffering that they otherwise experienced. Our Lord knows well what we are made of, he knows well our [sinful] stain; it is written on our foreheads; he is not surprised by out weaknesses, and he loves our humble confession of our faults more than our smugness with justice.”[64]
More so, we must “pray much for the Church of Jesus Christ, so tried and persecuted, so that God might defend her from her enemies, who are at the same time, her children, so that their hearts might be touched, that they might convert and be lead humbly and repentant to the foot of the throne of mercy and justice.”[65]
When our hours seem overcome by darkness and the file of helplessness is felt more strongly, let us give ourselves over to trust. Every act of trust implies that one cannot see. If we were to see, if we had certainty, there would be no place for trust. Now, trusting in God means clinging to the truth that his designs are good and holy, not because we see them clearly, but rather despite all appearances of the contrary.[66] It is the practice of the theological virtue of hope, which looks at the omnipotence and the infinite goodness of God, at his providence! This attitude of soul is fundamental in the Christian life and it is a part of that non-negotiable element of our charism which should characterize us and which we consider as “having a providential vision of life.” All tribulations, with their most minute details, enter in the framework of that cloak of holiness which our Lord wants to grant to us who believe in Him. Let us be “willing to sacrifice everything without reservation, convinced that nothing is as advantageous as abandoning ourselves into the hands of God, in anything He may deign to order.”[67] Finally, let us give thanks to God who has found us worthy to suffer something for the sake of his Kingdom.
In this month, in which we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, let us grave in our souls the thought that “the Heart of Jesus guards us…to defend us from our enemies, as a mother who, seeking to free her son from danger, presses him close to her heart, such that nothing will harm the son without also harming the mother.”[68]
May the Virgin Mother embrace us all united under her mantle and bring us safely to port. She is our hope because she is the Mother of Hope.
[1] Charles Mackay (1814-1889), Scottish writer and journalist.
[2] See The Rock Plunged into Eternity, Chpt. 1.
[3] Mt 5:10.
[4] See Ps 1:1, Jer 17:58.
[5] Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Part I, Ch. 1.
[6] Ibidem.
[7] See Ibidem.
[8] Directory of Spirituality, 37.
[9] Jn 7:7.
[10] Ven. Fulton Sheen, The Cries of Jesus from the Cross—An Anthology, 231.
[11] Jn 15:18-22.
[12] 2 Tim 3:12.
[13] See Leonardo Castellani, Domingueras Prédicas, II, p. 148.
[14] St. Peter Julian Eymard, Obras Eucarísticas, Parte I, 1ª Serie, 115. [Our translation]
[15] Mt 10:36.
[16] 2 Cor 11:26.
[17] Obras Eucarísticas, 5ª Serie,
[18] “The will of God is expressed…specifically for religious, through their own constitutions”, Directory of Consecrated Life, 184, citing CIVCSVA, Directives on Formation in Religious Institutes, 15.
[19] Directory of Spirituality, 141; citing 2 Cor 4:17.
[20] Mt 11:19.
[21] Venerable Fulton Sheen, The Rock Plunged into Eternity, Ch. 1.
[22] Ps 37:21.
[23] Venerable Fulton Sheen, The Rock Plunged into Eternity, Ch. 1.
[24] Directory of Spirituality, 41.
[25] Ibidem.
[26] Ibidem.
[27] Saint Peter Julian Eymard, Obras Eucarísticas, 5ª serie, Ejercicios espirituales dados a las Siervas del Santísimo Sacramento. [Our translation]
[28] Venerable Fulton Sheen, The Cries of Jesus from the Cross—An Anthology, 81.
[29] Ibidem.
[30] Venerable Fulton Sheen, The Cries of Christ from the Cross—An Anthology, 81-82.
[31] Cristo y los fariseos, prologue, p. 11. [All citations from this text are of our own translation]
[32] Mt 26:13; 23:23, et al.
[33] Mt 23:3.
[34] Rom 1:22.
[35] Leonardo Castellani, Domingueras Prédicas II, 234. (Our translation)
[36] See Francis, Meditaciones diarias, 20 May 2017. [All citations from Pope Francis’ daily reflections are of our own translation]
[37] Francis, Meditaciones diarias, 18 March 2014.
[38] Ps 28:3.
[39] See Francis, Meditaciones Diarias, 6 June 2017.
[40] Leonardo Castellani, Cristo y los fariseos.
[41] Francis, Meditaciones diarias, 20 October 2017.
[42] Saint Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, 218.
[43] Francis, Meditaciones diarias, 6 June 2017.
[44] See Lk 16:31.
[45] Cristo y los fariseos, prologue, p. 16.
[46] Ibidem, 17.
[47] Jn 18:14.
[48] See Leonardo Castellani, Cristo y los fariseos, 92-93.
[49] The Dialogue, 219-220.
[50] See Leonardo Castellani, Domingueras Prédicas II, 235.
[51] Leonardo Castellani, Cristo y los fariseos, prologue, p. 14.
[52] Leonardo Castellani, Cristo y los fariseos, prologue, p. 17.
[53] Venerable Fulton Sheen, The Rock Plunged into Eternity, 18.
[54] Constitutions, 214.
[55] Directory of Spirituality, 41.
[56] See Fulton Sheen, The Cries of Jesus from the Cross—An Anthology, 72.
[57] Heb 12:2.
[58] Directory of Spirituality, 121.
[59] Venerable Fulton Sheen, The Cries of Jesus from the Cross—An Anthology, 12.
[60] The Complete Works of St. Thomas More (Yale UP, 1976), 226-227.
[61] Benito Juárez was the first and only president of Mexico of indigenous descent. He remained in office for 5 terms, between 1857 and 1872. He was the one who established the base upon which the lay State and Federal Republic of Mexico were founded.
[62] Saint Peter Julian Eymard, Obras Eucarísticas, Primera Parte, 1ª Serie, p. 49. [Our translation]
[63] See Mk 15:32.
[64] Saint John of Avila, Obras Completas de San Juan de Ávila, IV (BAC Maior), 677-678.
[65] See Saint Peter Julian Eymard, Obras Eucarísticas, Primera Parte, 1ª Serie, 45. [Our translation]
[66] Directory of Spirituality, 67. “We must believe with unyielding steadfastness that even the most adverse advents, those most opposed to our natural view, are arranged by God for our own good, even though we don’t understand His designs, and we ignore the end that He wants to bring us to.”
[67] Directory of Spirituality, 67.
[68] See Saint Peter Julian Eymard, Obras Eucarísticas, Primera Parte, 1ª Serie, 230. [Our translation]
