An Ascension Quartet



IT would be a terrible shame if we failed to honor the grand mystery of Our Lord’s Ascension on this Thursday and the remaining days of Paschaltide that follow it, which are, in fact, called Ascensiontide. We may rightly (and literally) consider this the most “uplifting” of all of the Mysteries of the Liturgical Year, for none of them so clearly fixes our gaze on that upward ascent towards Heaven that our souls (and yes, our bodies) are to take if we are to achieve the final purpose of our lives, that is, our salvation.

For this great feast, then, I offer a quartet. (And I don’t mean these guys, either.) The quartet I offer is a series of four reflections on the mystery following something that has become an idée fixe with me lately, the quadriga. Accordingly, each of the four parts of this “quartet” is dedicated respectively to the literal, allegorical, tropological, and anagogical senses of the Ascension.

Literal. The Epistle for the feast is taken from Acts (1:1-11), which gives us Saint Luke’s account of the event (that same Evangelist also gives us a shorter account at the end of his Gospel). The Gospel for the Mass of Ascension Thursday is the account of Saint Mark (16:14-20). Saints Matthew and John are silent on the mystery in their respective Gospels.

The literal sense, also called the historical sense, is the simple narrative of what happened. It is true, that is, historically accurate; it is also plain from the scriptural accounts. Here, I would like to point out only a couple of things that form the historical narrative. First, the occasion was not one of unalloyed joy. The Apostles had to endure being taken to task by Our Lord just before He ascended: “He upbraided them with their incredulity and hardness of heart, because they did not believe them who had seen him after he was risen again” (Mark 16:14). This last mortification was imposed, no doubt, to humble these men to whom He was about to give the most important mandate ever given, that of evangelizing the entire world.

Second, after they watched Jesus go up till a cloud took Him out of their sight, the Apostles were told by two angels that Jesus would return the same way He had come. This is interpreted by many commentators to mean that Our Lord’s Second Coming will take place on the Mount of Olives (whither He ascended), and that there, He will judge mankind, who will be assembled in that place overlooked by the Mount, the Valley of Josaphat. Saint Thomas, for one, defends the thesis that the General Judgment will take place there, and he cites the Prophecy of Joel to this effect. True, the Scriptures do not say explicitly that Jesus ascended from Mount of Olives, but Saint Luke does tell us that the disciples, “returned to Jerusalem from the mount that is called Olivet” after the event (Acts 1:12), which is fairly definitive. In his Gospel (24:50) Luke also says that Jesus led them “as far as Bethania,” which we know to be “at the base of the southwestern slope of the Mount of Olives,” and so tradition has consecrated Olivet as the place.

Allegorical. Aside from a direct prophesy of the Ascension in Psalms 67:19 (Saint Paul certainly seems to take this as a literal prophecy, anyway), there are various types of this mystery in the Old Testament. Old-Testament types are allegories of Jesus Christ and mysteries closely related to Him. Henoch was mysteriously taken by God. Much more exciting — even divinely pyrotechnic, if you will! — was the going up of Holy Elias. Significantly, these two ascended figures of the Old Testament are named by many commentators as the “two witnesses” of the Apocalypse, of whom such stupendous things are related in that last book of the Bible.

The act of encountering God is frequently portrayed in the Old Testament as a “going up,” or an ascent. This is part of a sacred cosmology — by no means childish or primitive — which has Heaven being “up there,” as Hell is “down there.” Old-Testament pilgrims to Jerusalem recited the “Gradual Psalms,” which are also called “songs of ascent,” because, Biblically, one always “goes up” to Jerusalem. The act of worship itself is frequently portrayed as a going up, as in, “Exalt ye the Lord our God, and adore at his holy mountain: for the Lord our God is holy” (Ps. 98:9). We still begin our Masses with “Send forth thy light and thy truth: they have conducted me, and brought me unto thy holy hill (montem sanctum tuum), and into thy tabernacles” (Ps. 42:3). Saint John of the Cross describes the spiritual life as the “Ascent of Mount Carmel.” Mountains are places where earth rises up to meet Heaven, so they fit in quite nicely with that sacred cosmology already mentioned. Notable encounters with God took place on Mounts Ararat, Sinai, Carmel, Moriah, Zion, and Calvary. Truly, it seems that God loves mountains.

Tropological. Broadly speaking, when we apply what is related in Holy Scripture to ourselves, it is called “tropology,” or the “tropological sense” of the Bible. More narrowly, we call this the “moral sense,” when it is limited to matters of right behavior. How do we apply this mystery to ourselves? As members of Christ’s Mystical Body, we are called, even in this life, to ascend with Him into Heaven. How? The collect for the feast states the case eloquently:

Grant, we beseech thee, O almighty God, that we, who believe that thy only-begotten Son, our Redeemer, ascended this day into heaven, may also dwell there in desire….

Besides this longing for the life of Heaven — to be fulfilled in anagogy, the subject of the last part of our quartet — we may make the sentiments of the Apostles our own. We loved to have Jesus with us during this Paschaltide, when He was so near us in the liturgical texts that speak of His Resurrected life. The symbol of that presence has been the Paschal candle, whose light is dramatically extinguished after the Gospel of the feast is sung. Hence, a hint (just a hint, mind you!) of sadness comes into the feast, as it entails the departure of a loved One. The sadness, though, should be superseded by the joyful hope of an eventual reunion.

Aside from elevating our minds to where our Beloved has gone to prepare a place for us (cf. John 14:2), the mystery also carries with it a sobering challenge. Before He ascended, Jesus gave the Apostles the mandate above mentioned, of evangelizing the world. What that imposes upon us is what it also imposed on the Church: the mission of converting the entire world to the Catholic Faith — not to heresy, not to schism, not to mere monotheism, not to liberal democracy; not to anything short of the Catholic Faith, “whole and undefiled,” to quote the Athanasian Creed.

As long as churchmen put other projects ahead of this divine mandate, the Church will never get out of the present mess. Not only does this mandate of Christ extend to evangelizing the unbaptized peoples of the world and to ending schism and heresy, but it also reaches out to that deeper conversion that is necessary to bring Christian nations to the genuine rule of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King, so that public morals, laws, and customs are brought into line with the supernaturally revealed Faith and morals entrusted to the Church. Our family and social life, even our politics, must be baptized so that we might become a sacral society.

In short, the mission of the Church is to work for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. That is the “tropology” of Our Lord’s command to bring the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

Anagogical. As this word is formed by two Greek words that mean a “leading up,” or “ascent,” we cannot have a more literally anagogical mystery than Our Lord’s Ascension. One might say that this is the anagogical mystery par excellence.

It was the great Dom Marmion who wrote that “in His mysteries, Christ makes but one with us.” He was explaining the “deeper” sense in which, “The mysteries of Jesus have this characteristic, that they are ours as much as they are His.” As baptized members of the Mystical Body, we are part of “the Whole Christ” (Saint Augustine) — “members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones” (Eph. 5:30), in the trenchant words of Saint Paul. Because that is so, we ascend with Jesus Christ. With this in mind, we can make sense of those paradoxical words of Jesus to Nicodemus:

“And no man hath ascended into heaven, but he that descended from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven.” —John 3:13

In the Incarnation, the Logos descended from Heaven to dwell corporally on earth (cf. Col. 2:9; 2 Cor. 5:19). At the end of His temporal mission, the Man-God ascended into Heaven. Yet the whole time, both as a divine Person who is one of the Trinity and as Man partaking of the Beatific Vision, He can properly be said to be in Heaven. Applied to us, His members, this mystery of Christ’s Ascension continues in time, and will continue till the very consummation of all things — for He is Jacob’s Ladder, and we ascend to Heaven by this divine conduit.

Those challenging words to Nicodemus came in the same conversation where Our Lord had earlier instructed that “master in Israel” about the necessity of Baptism: “Amen, amen I say to thee, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (John 3:5).

Do you get it? Our ultimate anagogy is to be lead up to Heaven as members of Christ.

And thus ends our quartet. Happy Ascensiontide!

In the Immaculate Heart of Mary,
Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M.

May the Lord have mercy on his soul and may your family find solace and consolation.

Priestly Celibacy: Apostolic Tradition, not a ‘Mere Discipline’

There are numerous indicators that the October 6-27 Synod on the Amazon will have as one of its effects the dismantling or mitigating of the Latin Church’s ancient discipline of priestly celibacy. At least that is what is being claimed in numerous quarters. Proposed as an ad hoc remedy to the pastoral situation in the Amazon — so the thinking goes — the camel’s nose of a married priesthood will securely place itself under the tent and eventually undo the bi-millennial tradition of priestly celibacy in the Church.

Exceptions, whatever their reasons, have a way of becoming the “new normal” to progressivist clerics.

That tradition, make no mistake, is not a matter of mere discipline. A discipline it is, yes, but it is also a tradition of apostolic origin. Very weighty scholarship supports this claim (cf. Alfons Cardinal Stickler, The Case for Clerical Celibacy, and Christian Cochini, S.J., The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy.) Therefore, it is not a matter of indifference, for it is a thing that touches at the very heart of the Christian priesthood.

Those who argue against the celibate priesthood speak of the absence of written laws on the matter in the early Church, and then, when laws do come about to address the question, mention is made of married deacons, priests, and even bishops. Case closed.

Or is it?

The fact is that custom was the Church’s first canon law. Being an institution steeped in tradition from her earliest days (cf. II Thess. 2:14), she simply went on doing what she always did. Such customs had the force of law. Legal historians will acknowledge that this description of custom as law conforms to the Roman legal traditions that the Church herself inherited and used for her own sacred purposes. English common law and modern legal positivism are alien to the Church’s legal tradition, and are therefore a poor lens through which to view these matters.

When laws actually begin to be codified concerning the priesthood, marriage, and celibacy, what do we see? Evidence that completely overturns the arguments of the enemies of the celibate priesthood. There is no doubt, for it is a matter of historical fact, that married men were ordained to the priesthood in the early Church. Such was the case with some of the Apostles, including Saint Peter (an old joke has it that the Catholic Church was founded on Peter while Protestant sects were founded on Peter’s Mother-in-Law). The question is not whether they were married, but whether they continued to live more uxorio with their wives. And the answer to that question is a resounding no. When regional councils in Spain (Elvira) and Roman Africa (Hippo and Carthage) addressed the issue, the inflexible rule laid down was that once a man was ordained to the diaconate (some extended it down to the sub-diaconate), a married man could no longer have children or live in marital intimacy with his wife. His wife would be provided for by the Church — sometimes entering a convent, sometimes, not — but nevermore could the couple avail themselves of the use of matrimony. The same discipline was explicitly laid down by a succession of contemporary popes.

In other words, while the men were still married sacramentally and were not previously celibate, they were now required, first by the law of custom and then by written law dating at least from the late fourth century, to live a life of absolute continence, i.e., celibacy. Call that a “married priesthood” if you will, but it is certainly not what is generally meant by those words today.

Interestingly, in these early texts of popes and councils, aside from the apologia that priestly celibacy was apostolic in origin, the explanation as to why deacons, priests, and bishops ought to be completely continent was that they served at the altar — and therefore “handled” the sacred Mysteries, i.e., the Body and Blood of Our Lord, in the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar. And it is this that gives us the beginnings of a theology of priestly celibacy, which itself follows on the ancient praxis.

But before I explore that question a bit further — the theology of priestly celibacy — let me address another objection of an historical nature to celibacy: While the Western discipline and canonical tradition concerning celibacy is easy to document as continuous, there is a contrary tradition that began in the Christian East, and that tradition eventually received the force of law in 692. Therefore, so the argument goes, priestly celibacy is merely a discipline that can be changed by positive law.

But the matter is not so cut-and-dried, and that for several reasons.

The break in continuity with the apostolic tradition of the celibate priesthood in the East was an abuse. The earlier Eastern tradition, the same as the West because sharing the same apostolic origin, was powerfully witnessed by many Eastern Fathers, including Saint Epiphanius of Salamis (310-404). Canon law in the Eastern Church was slower to develop and the abuse was never corrected (as abuses were corrected in the West, hence the above mentioned councils). In fact, the abuse eventually became enshrined in law in a regional council of the East that was never approved by the Pope, the famous Quinisext Council, or Trullan Council in 692. Those names deserve explanation: The first is owning to its being a sort of canonical follow-up to the fifth (quintus) and sixth (sextus) Ecumenical councils, which did not promulgate disciplinary canons; the second name comes from the fact that it met in the massive domed hall (troulos) of the Byzantine Imperial Palace in Constantinople.

While this council was a mixed bag of good and bad, it was rejected by the pope of the day, Saint Sergius I (reigned 687-701), who was himself an Easterner, being of Syrian origin brought up in Palermo, Sicily, long part of “magna Graecia,” greater Greece, and was therefore Greek in its culture and liturgy (even today there are Byzantine Catholics in these areas of the Italo-Albanian Greek Rite). Saint Sergius said of the Council in Trullo that he preferred “to die rather than consent to erroneous novelties.” Quite the kerfuffle ensued when the Pope rejected certain of the Trullan canons; the Emperor Justinian II ordered him arrested. But the plan was, thank God, thwarted, thanks to the good men of the militia of the Exarchate of Ravenna, who probably did not want the Exarch to repeat the folly of the martyrdom of Pope St. Martin I (649-654), which took place roughly forty years earlier.

But it is a matter of history that the Papacy tolerated this altered discipline in the East, and I do not contest that fact. It is noteworthy though that the Trullan discipline in the matter is not what modern advocates of a married priesthood would want. And to the degree that this is so, the mitigated discipline of Quinisext is a confirmation, in broad contours anyway, of the traditional argument for priestly celibacy.

According to the Quinisext Council, a bishop cannot be married — or at least he cannot live as a married man more uxorio. Today, in Uniate Eastern Churches as well as the separated Orthodox communions, this is still respected, and bishops are selected from the monastic (celibate) clergy, or else from married priests whose wives have died or been put away. This is important because it tells us that in the bishop, the man who possesses “the fullness of the priesthood,” absolute continence — celibacy — is strictly obligatory.

Further, a priest may not serve the Divine Liturgy (Byzantine language for “say Mass”) the day after he has had intimate relations with his wife. In other words, the Old-Testament discipline that, as long as a man was serving his turn at the altar he was to keep away from his wife, was made the norm in the Christian East. This Old-Testament discipline had explicitly been rejected in the West, and by popes, owing to the fact that the priest of the New Testament is to offer the divine sacrifice daily, while the priests of the Old Testament served short terms at the altar, there being many priests and only one Temple. This discipline governing their use of matrimony is why married priests of the East often do not celebrate the divine Mysteries daily.

What modernist advocate of Episcopalian-style “married priests” wants that? It might be argued that continence in marriage is more difficult than outright celibacy.

So we see that on these two counts — absolute celibacy for bishops and temporal continence for priests of the second rank — the mitigated discipline of the Eastern Churches points to the apostolic discipline of a priesthood that abstains from marriage.

Given what was said earlier about deacons, it is very clear that what Pope Paul VI did in instituting a permanent diaconate that includes married men living more uxorio was not a “revival,” but a new thing. The respected Canon Law professor, Dr. Edward Peters, insists that married deacons are canonically obliged to continence. (Many object to his thesis, I know, but Dr. Peters at least highlights an inconsistency between accepted practice and ecclesiastical legislation, something that reflects the actual break in historical continuity with tradition.) Deacons, be it remembered, are major clerics who handle the sacred Mysteries. They touch the chalice at the traditional solemn Mass. The arguments given at Elvira, Hippo, Carthage, and elsewhere would therefore apply equally to them.

Because my words will likely be scrutinized by many and twisted by some, let me be clear: I am not in a position to judge married deacons who disagree with Mr. Peters and who live accordingly, and I do not judge them. The Church must address the issue at some point. Neither do I look askance at Eastern Rite priests who are married, nor any other analogous clerics (such as Anglican Ordinariate clergy). In defending the venerable apostolic tradition, I have no intention to cast aspersions on anyone — excepting only those who want to dismantle that tradition which in the Latin Church has been so faithfully kept. These men are doing the work of Satan; they should be opposed.

Theologically, the priest stands in persona Christi. This is especially so when he stands at the altar to confect the Eucharist, uttering the words of institution not in his own name, but in Christ’s: “This is MY Body… This is MY Blood.” All men are in the image of God; all the baptized are in the image of Christ; but the priest is in persona Christi Capitis, in the person of Christ the Head, the Divine Bridegroom who is chastely espoused to His Church. Not only that, but he is a man given over full-time to the work of prayer and sanctification. A common argument of an a fortiori variety used in defense of priestly celibacy is that if Saint Paul recommends (I Cor. 7:5) that the married lay faithful practice periodic continence that they may “give themselves to prayer,” how much more ought the priest be continent — he who daily serves at the altar, prays the divine office, frequently baptizes and shrives sinners.

A priest’s “fatherhood” is real, and it is totally spiritual in character. This is why he must have an “undivided heart,” so that he may, like Saint Paul, beget children in Christ by the Gospel (by contrast, the Apostle says of the married man that “he is divided”). The priest begets offspring in his own chaste espousals to the Church, which he has espoused as one uniquely configured to Christ the Head, who Himself sanctifies His Bride, the Church in a chaste sacramental union. As Christ the Bridegroom is joined in a spiritual wedlock with His Bride, so too is the ministerial priest; it therefore behoves him to live in perpetual continence and chastity.

Just as the Church has four marks, heretical and schismatic sects have certain marks. One of them is a hatred for purity and celibacy. The sixteenth-century revolutionaries jettisoned celibacy to marry, as Luther simulated matrimony with the Cistercian nun, Katharina von Bora (the marriage was invalid owing to his vows as a friar, her vows as a nun, and his priesthood!). The Anglican schismatics similarly did away with priestly celibacy. In the nineteenth century, both the Polish Nationals and the Old Catholics did the same. The list could be lengthened, but the point is made.

Let us who belong to the true Church hold fast to this certain apostolic tradition of priestly celibacy. And may Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Eternal High Priest, have mercy on the Church!

Most devotedly yours in the Hearts of Jesus and Mary,
Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M.

But Only One Church is ‘One’

There are many Christian confessions that recite, as part of their official worship, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, which professes faith in “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.” But only one of those that confess this creed is, in reality, the Church so described by the fathers of the first two ecumenical councils.

These four marks — “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic” — are attributes of the true Church of Jesus Christ. They are not mere external attributes, but intrinsic attributes. If, per impossible the Church ceased having all four marks or even any one of them, she would cease being the Church. Moreover, in Catholic theology, the four marks are also considered to be “notes,” that is — in the parlance of scholasticism — knowable attributes of an object. To be a note, an attribute has to be clearly manifest, for it helps us to know the object itself. When we say, for instance, that man is a rational, sentient, living, material substance, each of these five italicized terms is a note that identifies man. Lacking any of these, the object under consideration would not be a man (for instance, if the object lacked “rational” but had the other four notes, it would be a beast), but we see clearly that an object possessed of all five notes is a man, regardless of its size, shape, sex, color, etc. The humanity of the object is made known by these five notes.

To what purpose does the Church have these notes of oneness, sanctity, catholicity, and apostolicity? It is so that she may be recognized for what she is, as Vatican I tells us in its decree “On Faith”:

Since, then, without faith it is impossible to please God and reach the fellowship of his sons and daughters, it follows that no one can ever achieve justification without it, neither can anyone attain eternal life unless he or she perseveres in it to the end. So that we could fulfil our duty of embracing the true faith and of persevering unwaveringly in it, God, through his only begotten Son, founded the church, and he endowed his institution with clear notes to the end that she might be recognised by all as the guardian and teacher of the revealed word. To the catholic church alone belong all those things, so many and so marvellous, which have been divinely ordained to make for the manifest credibility of the christian faith.

In this Ad Rem, I would like to consider the first of these marks, that of oneness, as a unique note of the Catholic Church. In these days when various new forms of unity are aggressively propagated, it is necessary for us to understand in what the unity of the Church consists, and how it is sharply contrasted with any number of humanly contrived “unities” such as religious ecumenism or political globalism.

The first thing we should say, both to define the unity of the Church and to contrast it with these other unities, is that it is divinely authored. This unity is something that came to the Church not through human effort but by the grace of her Founder. Says Pope Leo XIII (Satis cognitum, 6):

But He, indeed, Who made this one Church, also gave it unity, that is, He made it such that all who are to belong to it must be united by the closest bonds, so as to form one society, one kingdom, one body — ‘one body and one spirit as you are called in one hope of your calling’ (Eph. iv., 4).

Here is how the BAC Sacrae Theologiae Summa treatise “On the Church of Christ” explains the note of oneness:

Unity is the property by which something is undivided in itself and divided from everything else. Therefore unity excludes the inner division of the thing and does not allow it to be a part of some other whole thing.

Social unity, which we are considering, is the working together of several persons for an end, under a supreme social power.

In the Church a threefold social unity is distinguished: of faith, government, and worship, “of minds, wills and things to do,” as Leo XIII says in the Encyclical “Satis cognitum”: D 3305.

Unity of faith is the agreement of minds in the same profession of faith under the supreme Magisterium of the Church.

Unity of government is the agreement of wills working for the same social end under the supreme power of the Church of ruling.

Unity of worship is harmony in the celebration of sacrifice and in the use of the sacraments and of liturgical acts, under the supreme power of the Church of sanctifying.

Notice that the first paragraph of this excerpt says that unity constitutes something as undivided in itself yet divided from everything else. This unity is what I like to call “ontological one” as contrasted from “mathematical one.” Mathematical one is a number; it is divisible, and is so to a virtual infinity, for it can be divided by any number, producing long strings of numbers with a decimal point in front of them. By contrast, ontological unity is a oneness of being which is by its very nature indivisible.

The Jesuit author of that BAC treatise above cited, Rev. Joachim Salaverri, tells us that the note of unity also divides an object from everything else. This means that the Catholic Church must, by virtue of her unity, necessarily be divided from all Churches that are not her. Otherwise, she is not truly one in herself, but subsists as part of a larger whole: a crazy idea that has in fact entered into Modernist ecclesiology. From this “divisive” aspect of Church unity, which is not sufficiently taught in our day, we may conclude that those who engage in ecumenical endeavors to achieve a generic, non-Catholic “unity” of Christians are actually obscuring the oneness of the Church. That, of course, is simply evil.

Catholic unity embraces the threefold unity of faith, of government, and of worship that correspond to the three munera (offices) of the bishops: teaching, governing, and sanctifying. Taken together, these things keep the Church one in herself and divide her from all that is not the Catholic Church. I say “taken together” because it is possible for one to have the faith of the Church, and even the worship of the Church, while being in schism. An authentic schismatic, as distinguished from someone who is merely disobedient or even unjustly marginalized by the hierarchy, is one who rejects the governing authority of the pope or the bishops in communion with him. His is a sin not against faith, but against charity (cf. The Contradiction of Core).

If the kind of unity that we describe as ontological and also as divinely authored is something possessed by the Catholic Church, then it is necessarily lacking in every other Christian body claiming the name Church — whether Protestants, Anglicans, or the Eastern Orthodox. None of these have unity in themselves, as seen by their historical “multiplication by division,” giving us not only the various sects, but even distinct synodal confessions within those sects (e.g., the Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Baptists, each of which has multiple permutations with differing professions of faith). Moreover, many of these sects are only insufficiently distinguished from each other, hence the history of sectarian amalgamation among these bodies, so that new, hyphenated sects sometimes arise that combine the old ones (e.g., the Unitarian-Universalists, the United Church of Christ, and various “federated congregations”). The Orthodox, of course, aside from having the seven sacraments and adhering to a greater number of Catholic doctrines, also have a greater cohesiveness among themselves. Yet, the fact that they do not accept any ecumenical councils after the first seven and are constitutionally incapable of holding one (even though these bodies have undergone the kind of historical crises that would call for ecumenical councils) is a sufficient indicator that they, too, are essentially divided from one another. The symbolic respect shown to the Patriarch of Constantinople does not prevent Moscow from frequently opposing and upstaging the older yet much smaller Orthodox body. It seems that the Third Rome often still thinks she has superseded the Second Rome. (For a glimpse at the state of unity among the Orthodox Churches, consider the so-called Pan-Orthodox Council and recent events in Ukraine.) The only way they can come into a genuine unity is if they come together under the pope and bishop of the first Rome, or “elder Rome,” as the city on the Tiber has been called by at least one ecumenical council (Constantinople III, cf., Roberto de Mattei, “The Heretic Pope”).

One practical way the note of unity is manifested is the moral and political opposition that the Catholic Church suffers from all that is not Catholic. While we might not like being opposed, persecuted, or hated, this does serve to distinguish the one Church from what is not the one Church; it also fulfills the words of Our Lord about being hated like Him. For an interesting little study of this aspect of the Church’s oneness, see “Hatred Converted Me To Catholicism,” by the Catholic convert, Laramie Hirsch.

To remind ourselves of the supernatural character of the Church’s oneness, we should meditate on the Scriptural proofs of this doctrine, including these passages:

Matthew 12:25: “Every kingdom divided against itself shall be made desolate: and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.”
John 10:16: “And other sheep I have, that are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd.”
I Cor. 12:12: “For as the body is one, and hath many members; and all the members of the body, whereas they are many, yet are one body, so also is Christ.”
And we cannot omit to mention the High Priestly Prayer of Our Lord recorded in John 17, especially verse 21, or Saint Paul’s lengthy and deep encomium of Church unity in Ephesians 4:1-16.

This unity that Our Lord gave to His Church is found in our one faith taught by the Magisterium, our one government via the pope and the bishops in communion with him, and our unity of worship, which is manifested in the Church’s sacramental and liturgical rites, most especially the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the great Sacrament of Unity itself, the Holy Eucharist.

It is fitting if I close out these lines with a tribute to this great Mystery of the Altar; Saint Paul, in I Corinthians (10:16-17), explains the supernatural unity of the Church in terms of Its very matter:

The chalice of benediction which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? And the bread we break, is it not the partaking of the body of the Lord? For we, being many, are one bread, one body: all that partake of one bread.

And I will happily give the last word to Saint Augustine, who comments on this passage in his Sermon 272 (cited in Emile Mersch, S.J., The Whole Christ, pp. 426-427):

But why is this mystery accomplished with bread? Let us offer no reason of our own invention, but listen to the Apostle speak of this sacrament, ‘We are one bread, one body.’ Understand this and rejoice. Unity, truth, piety, charity. ‘One bread.’ What is this one bread? It is one body formed of many. Remember that bread is not made of one wheat; at baptism water was poured over you, as flour is mingled with water, and the Holy Spirit entered into you like the fire which bakes the bread. Be what you see, and receive what you are.

This is what the Apostle teaches concerning the bread. Though he does not say what we are to understand of the chalice, his meaning is easily seen. … Recall, my brothers, how wine is made. Many grapes hang from the vine, but the juice of all the grapes is fused into unity.

Thus did the Lord Christ manifest us in Himself. He willed that we should belong to Him, and He has consecrated on His altar the mystery of our peace and unity.

Most devotedly yours in the Hearts of Jesus and Mary,
Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M.

Holiness Becometh Thy House, O Lord


During a performance by a local amateur opera company in a small Italian town, an amusing thing happened. These were amateurs in the true sense, they performed out of love for the art, and not for pay. Now, love and virtuosity do not always coincide in the same person. And Italians do like their opera to be done well. Hence, the local baritone having botched his aria quite splendidly, he was met with a chorus of boos from the raucous audience. Inserting a dramatic aside not included in the score, he addressed his audience thus:

“If you think that was bad, wait till you hear the Tenor!”

This story came to mind when I was considering the subject at hand, which is the holiness of the Church, one of the four “marks” or “notes” of the Church mentioned in the Creed (see But Only One Church is ‘One’ for an explanation of what a “note” is). This note seems more concealed in our times than in others, owing to numerous scandals and crises, but we cannot be like the baritone and say, “If you think we’re bad, just look at the Unitarians! Compared to them, we’re saints!”

No, that won’t do. The Church’s four marks are essential to Her, and must be manifest to those who are not Catholic. How, then, do we explain that the Church is holy even when many of her own priests and bishops have shown themselves to be particularly vile and unholy?

That question will be answered as we proceed to explain the Church’s mark of holiness.

Holiness is proper to God, of whom the books of Isaias and the Apocalypse say that He is “Holy, Holy, Holy,” a providentially trinitarian affirmation in a language (Hebrew) that lacks the comparative and superlative degrees of adjectives, thus necessitating this tripling to intensify the word “holy.” In God, holiness signifies two things, one negative and one positive: The complete absence in Him of all that is imperfect or creaturely (the Hebrew word for holy, qadosh, means separate or set apart), and His total, perfect adherence to His own goodness. (To see this idea developed, see Abbot Marmion’s Christ the Life of the Soul, pp. 14-16).

In creatures, sanctity is a participated holiness, and is therefore radically contingent on God’s own holiness.

We speak of creatures being holy in two distinct ways: ontologically and morally. In general things are said to be ontologically holy, while persons are said to be morally holy. Things that are set aside for the divine use are ontologically holy: such are holy rituals, scriptures, oblations, sacrifices, temples, churches, sacraments, offices (e.g., the priesthood, the episcopacy), etc. Persons are said to be morally holy by virtue of a twofold character: first, the negative quality of absence of sin or evil, and second, the positive quality of benevolent union with God Himself, who sanctifies the soul by the infusion of sanctifying grace, the theological and moral virtues, the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and actual grace so that the child of God may increase in sanctity by performing meritorious good works.

As holiness differs from person to person, moral holiness is sometimes spoken of in three ascending gradations: ordinary (or “common”) holiness, perfect holiness, and heroic holiness. These degrees correspond to the descending gradations mentioned by Our Lord Himself, in the Parable of the Sower: “But he that received the seed upon good ground, is he that heareth the word, and understandeth, and beareth fruit, and yieldeth the one an hundredfold, and another sixty, and another thirty” (Matt. 13:23).

Now, the Church is said to be holy in all these ways. She is ontologically holy as an institution for several reasons: by virtue of her union both with Christ who is her Head and Founder, and with the Holy Ghost, who is her Soul; by virtue of her purpose, which is the glory of God and the eternal salvation of souls; by virtue of her faith, morals, sacrifice, and sacraments; and, finally, by the fruits of all these things, which is grace, virtue, and charisms in her children.

The Church is also morally holy in her children, and that in all three degrees. It is easy to prove her ordinary moral holiness when we consider her ontological holiness; the Church is that “good tree” (ontological) which must bear the “good fruit” of moral holiness in her children (Cf. Matt. 7:17-19). But Holy Scripture also speaks more directly of the moral holiness of the Church:

To the church of God that is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that invoke the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, in every place of theirs and ours. (1 Cor. 1:2)

And such some of you were [effeminates, nor liers with mankind, thieves, covetous, drunkards, railers, extortioners]; but you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Spirit of our God. (1 Cor. 6:11)

Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and might cleanse to himself a people acceptable, a pursuer of good works. (Titus 2:14)

The Catholic faithful who remain in the state of grace are holy by at least ordinary moral holiness. They practice the commandments and the virtues, and avoid mortal sin. In short, they conform themselves to the New Law of Christ, whose purpose it to sanctify; therefore, they are holy.

The BAC Sacrae Theologiae Summa tells us that “The proper end of the New Law, as contrasted with the Old, is perfect moral holiness. But such an end must be obtained unfailingly. Therefore the Church unavailingly will be holy also with perfect moral holiness.” To prove the major premise of that syllogism, the author, Father Salaverri, cites the exalted moral character of the Gospel as taught by Our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount, where we find multiple “elevations” of the moral standards of the New Law over the Old, including those clearly stated in six distinct phrases that follow a format like this: “You have heard that it was said to them of old… But I say to you….” (See this article for more detail, including the citation of all six of these verses.)

Jesus offered the possibility of perfection to the rich young man when He challenged him in these words: “Jesus saith to him: If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come follow me” (Matt. 19:21). We know that the rich young man went away sad, but we also know that generations of consecrated persons, beginning with the Apostles themselves (cf. Matt 19:27-29), went on to follow Our Lord in the life of the evangelical counsels, those “counsels of perfection” which are added to the observance of the commandments in order to live a life of perfect moral holiness. Not that moral perfection is exclusive to the religious state (neither do all religious achieve it), but that is its end: perfect moral holiness resulting from the free and voluntary embrace of the evangelical counsels, which, according to Saint Thomas, remove the chief obstacles to the observance of the commandments.

This challenging Law taught by Jesus on the Mount of Beatitudes is something that the Apostles were commanded to teach, and did: “And Jesus coming, spoke to them, saying: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world” (Matt. 28:18-20).

Based upon these promises, Father Salaverri argues, “Therefore the power will never be lacking efficaciously to obtain the moral perfection, which Christ willed and commanded to be observed in the Church; and consequently perfect holiness will also be found unfailingly in the Church.”

Finally, we come to the third and highest tier of moral holiness, that described as “heroic.” Christ willed the Church as a Spouse worthy of Himself, as Saint Paul lucidly teaches in Ephesians 5:23-30, of which verse twenty-seven describes the Church as “a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy, and without blemish.”

From this passage, it follows that there must be those in the Church who actually are worthy of Christ by rising to what Christ intended His Church to be; such practice virtue to the heroic degree with the help of grace. They follow the precept and example of heroic charity given to the Church by Christ Himself, heeding the words of Saint John the Beloved:

In this we have known the charity of God, because he hath laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” (1 John 3:16).

Indeed, they heed the words of the Word Himself:

A new commandment I give unto you: That you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another. (John 13:34)

This is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:12-13)

It was Tertullian who wrote, in his Apology:

“Look,” they [the pagans] say, “how they love one another” (for they themselves hate one another); “and how they are ready to die for each other” (for they themselves are readier to kill each other).

In that passage the African father shows that there were then living in North Africa Christians so heroic that they would follow the words of Christ and lay down their lives for their brethren in imitation of Him. Christ Our Lord promised that such things would happen, and the Apostles exhorted their own disciples in the same fashion (cf. Matt. 10:17-28; John 15:9-20; John 16:1-4, 20, and 33; and I Peter 2:21).

The lives of the saints from every age since Apostolic times provide us with “so great a cloud of witnesses” (Heb. 12:1) to the holiness of the Church. The martyrs most readily come to mind: many millions of them date from the early centuries of persecution, but many millions of them also from modern times, thanks to the anti-Christian -isms of modernity going back to the French Revolution. As Christians were killed for their Faith in the early centuries, the Church continued to spread, such that Tertullian famously said, “the blood of Christians is seed.” That seed still germinates.

But in addition to her millions of martyrs ancient and new, the Catholic Church shows her heroic sanctity in numerous confessors, virgins, ascetics, anchorites, monks, canons regular, nuns, friars, clerks regular, and lay faithful in every age. Many a pagan has been converted over the years by witnessing the holy lives of the missionaries the Church sent them. Our American Indians were shocked at the sanctity manifested by the missionaries of the Society of Jesus, especially as manifested by their celibate chastity, which seemed superhuman to the natives. “Savages” could see the sanctity of the Church as manifested in her missionaries. That is what a “note” is!

And what of our own day, when scandals abound? Such scandals — and so many! Wherever the seed of the Faith has taken root in good soil it manifests at least “ordinary” sanctity. We see it — and sometimes more than it — in large Catholic families whose parents avoid the sin of onanism, are committed to raising their children properly, and put God’s holy will above the consumerism that surrounds them, opting out of the government indoctrination centers we call public schools, and instead teaching their children at home or stretching their means to send them to schools that are Catholic in fact (if not in law: cf. Can. 803 §3), passing on to their precious offspring that pearl of great price that they value above all else. There are many such people quietly going about the duties of their state in life. To encounter them is to be edified. There are those who wrestle with the vices so liberally advocated by the popular culture, who, having been seduced by their allurements, now do penance and bewail their former sins, living the life of grace. In our midst are new Augustines and Monicas, Magdalens and Margarets of Cortona. There yet remain those who flee the world to embrace the evangelical counsels, some in the most penitential of monastic communities, others in those congregations that show the sanctity of the Church is performing works of mercy. While the numbers are hardly proportioned to the general population (owing to a lack of generosity on our part, not God’s), the seeds of reform are present now in the Church. What produced a Thebaid, a Cluny, a Citeaux, a Grande Chartreuse, a Camoldoli, etc., still remains in the Church because Christ is Her Spouse and the Holy Ghost Her Soul.

Today, we see many good priests persecuted for their fidelity to the priesthood. They suffer, and it is edifying to see them being conformed to Christ the Victim-Priest by their sufferings. If the corruption infecting the Mystical Body today has produced many Herods, Annases and Caiphases in the episcopacy, it is also occasioning the rise of new heroic imitators of Jesus and the Apostles in the priesthood.

We were created and subsequently redeemed by the good God for His glory. Regardless of their state in life, those who see, love, and seek the Triune God in all things are possessed of piety; they glorify Him. His glory radiating into them through holy things — especially the Blessed Eucharist — makes them holy, and manifests itself excellently in the life of the Beatitudes. Such Catholics, by their holy lives, sing a canticle to the glory of God for all to hear (no matter how good or bad their voices are!): “Thy testimonies are become exceedingly credible: holiness becometh thy house, O Lord, unto length of days” (Ps. 92:5).

Most devotedly yours in the Hearts of Jesus and Mary,
Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M.

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This post has been edited by yeeck: Sep 29 2019, 10:51 AM

Devotion to the Angels
by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.

I do not hesitate to say that devotion to the angels is one of the hallmarks of being a true Christian. It was an angel who first appeared to our Lady to announce her conception of Jesus Christ at Nazareth. It was an angel who appeared to the shepherds at Bethlehem to tell them that the Messiah had been born. It was an angel who consoled our Lord in His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. It was an angel who told the women who visited the tomb in which Christ had been buried, that the Savior was risen from the dead. It was angels who told the disciples staring into the sky at Christ’s ascension that He would return from heaven to earth even as He had ascended from earth to heaven. It was an angel who delivered Peter from prison where he was chained for his proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah. It will be angels who will announce the coming of Christ on the last day of time and the first day of eternity to judge the living and the dead.

Our focus in this conference is on Devotion to the Angels. Before we go any further, I would like to identify what devotion to the angel means.

Devotion to the angels means venerating the angels.

Devotion to the angels means praying to the angels.

Devotion to the angels means promoting the apostolate to the angels.

Devotion to the angels means imitating the angels.
My purpose in this conference will be to explain each of these four forms of angelic devotion, and apply our explanation to the practical, day by day, living of our Catholic faith.


Veneration of the Angels
To venerate the angels means two things. It means to know who the angels are and to respond to this faith knowledge with our love.

If anyone still wonders why we should be giving so many conferences on the angels, let me assure him that it is positively necessary in our day. Literally hundreds of books, periodicals, movies, and television programs, are flooding today’s market with so much angelism that we better understand what the Catholic Church teaches about the angels.

There are two obvious sources for authentic knowledge about the angels. They are divine revelation and the teaching of the Church’s tradition over the centuries.

One of the surprises for lay Catholics today is the preoccupation with the angels which characterized the life of Catholics in the believing centuries of the Middle Ages. There were Church definitions in angelology; there were papal and episcopal documents; there were extensive treatises in theology dealing with the faithful and fallen angels. St. Thomas Aquinas is called the angelic doctor mainly because he published tens of thousands of words on the nature, and function, and role of the angels in the life of the human race.

One of the heartening signs of a conversion in materialistic countries like America is the rising avalanche of print and the media on the angels.

We are asking: “Who are the angels?” The angels are persons, created by God, who have a mind and a will, but do not have the limitations of a material body.

Like the human race, the angels had to prove their fidelity to God by submitting their free wills to His divine Majesty.

Our concentration in this conference is on the good angels who remained faithful in their obedience to God. These angels are constantly adoring the Holy Trinity, even as they are enjoying the vision of the Triune God.

However, they are angels because they are messengers of God’s providence in our lives. They are His angels to enlighten our minds and inspire our wills. Why? So that they might bring us to that celestial Jerusalem where they are waiting for us to join them.

Venerating the angels, we must remind ourselves, is not only believing in their existence and generous service in our favor. We venerate the angels by responding to the graces which they bring from God to us. They are channels of God’s love to us. We are to use these graces and thus show our grateful love for God in return.


Praying to the Angels
Until the sixteenth century when Protestantism broke with Catholic unity, prayer to the angels was part of the staple diet of Catholic piety. Living in a culture which has been so deeply protestantized, we must brace ourselves and not be misled by the errors of those who deny that we should pray to the angels.

Praying to the angels means talking with the angels; telling them how we admire their nearness to God and look forward to joining them after we finish our trial here on earth. Praying to the angels is thanking them for the many favors they have done for us over the years and how much we appreciate their angelic care for our needs. Praying to the angels is asking them for what we need. Certainly we could go directly to God with our petitions. But we know what sinners we are and how close the angels are to the all holy One. We are therefore sure that their nearness to God makes them powerful intercessors on our behalf. Praying to the angels is begging them to plead for us at the throne of the merciful God whom we have offended and from whom we hope to obtain His forgiving mercy.

All of this is locked up in the single phrase, “Praying to the angels”. You might change the preposition if you wish, and say that we pray through the angels to God, being assured that their nearness to Him makes their influence with Him greater than would be our addressing God by ourselves. If Christ in His agony was strengthened by an angel of the Lord, who are we to think we can dispense with angelic assistance in our lives?


The Angelic Apostolate
I can honestly tell you that the conferences that we are having on the angels is unembarrasingly an angelic apostolate. I sincerely believe that what the world today needs is a deeper, clearer, stronger and more zealous devotion to the angels than ever before since the time of Christ.

Why do I say this? Because the angels are such a powerful militia for protecting a world that is being widely seduced by the fallen angels.

In our next two conferences we shall deal at length with Christian Faith and Demonology and The Devil in the Modern World. For the present we wish to examine more carefully into what the angelic apostolate really means.

By definition, an apostolate is the zealous effort to bring God’s grace to others through the practice of the corporal and the spiritual works of mercy.

You might ask “What do the angels have to do with the corporal and spiritual works of mercy?” The answer is, everything!

The seven corporal works of mercy are: to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to clothe the naked, to shelter the homeless, to visit the sick, to visit those in prison, and to bury the dead.

These works of mercy are the seven conditions on which Christ prophesied our salvation would depend. It is not coincidental that, on the last day He will tell those who are lost, “ Depart from me, accursed ones, into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels”(Matthew 25:41).

Why will human beings be lost? Because during their life on earth they had allowed themselves to be seduced by the devil into selfishness and failed to practice the works of mercy.

The good angels are especially chosen by God to protect us from the self-idolatry which ignores the needs of others and thus paves the way for the eternal loss of a heavenly destiny.

The good angels protect us from the selfishness of the devil, so we might practice the corporal works of mercy. But the good angels also inspire us to practice the spiritual works of mercy. They are: converting the sinner, instructing the ignorant, counseling the doubtful, comforting the sorrowful, bearing wrongs patiently, forgiving injuries, and praying for the living and the dead.

As twenty centuries of Christianity tell us, our salvation also depends on our practice of the spiritual works of mercy. If anything, the devil is more anxious to prevent us from practicing the spiritual than the corporal works of mercy. We need the help of the good angels to protect us from the devil’s instigation on both levels.

I spent last week in Haiti, giving instructions to the Missionaries of Charity. While there, I visited one of the five homes for the dying conducted by the Sisters. I administered more infant baptisms, more anointings of the dying, and gave more absolutions in a few hours than I had given in the past five years. Here is a nation dreadfully in need of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, and there are so few dedicated Catholics available to meet what I can only call superhuman needs, in a subhuman society, literally dying for lack of Christian charity. Do not tell me this is not the work of the evil spirit. Do not tell me that we do not need to promote the angelic apostolate among the faithful.

We said that devotion to the angels includes the apostolate to the angels. This should be taken literally. Of course we must first develop our own deep veneration for the angels and frequent prayer to the angels. But we dare not stop there. We are to do everything in our power to inspire others to follow our example. The apostolate to the angels, I sincerely believe, is one of the most gravely needed in contemporary Christianity.

The angels are sent by God to us. We in turn are being sent by the angels to others to bring to everyone whose life we touch a deeper veneration of the angels, a more fervent prayer to the angels, and a more zealous dependence on the angels to protect a world that is immersed in self-adoration to the rejection of the most elemental laws of God.


Imitation of the Angels
Humanly speaking the last persons you would expect to imitate are the angels. There are people, good Catholics that I know, who do not even realize that the angels are persons. How could you imitate someone who was not even an individual intelligent being, which is the standard definition of a person.

Moreover, angels do not have bodies. They do not have bodily emotions. They do not have eyes or ears or lips or hands or feet. The angels in heaven do not have temptations. They cannot sin. They have no inordinate passions or sinful urges.

Can we still say that the angels are imitable? Is there any intelligible sense in which we not only can but should follow their example?

Here we enter an area as wide as the ocean and as high as the stars. Yet, there is more than passing value in understanding something, no matter how little, of what it means to imitate the angels and how this imitation should be put into practice.

Angels as Contemplatives. All that our faith tells us about the angels is that they constantly behold the face of God. They are contemplating the Holy Trinity.

In the vocabulary of Catholic Christianity, contemplation is the enjoyable admiration of perceived truth (St. Augustine). Contemplation is the elevation of the mind resting on God (St. Bernard). Contemplation is the simple intuition of divine truth that produces love (St. Thomas).

On all these terms, the angels are certainly living a life of intense contemplation. They are not only always thinking of God, they are always loving God with the full intensity of their being. More still, they are seeing God with an intuitive vision in which God is so close to their minds that not even angelic thoughts stand between themselves and the most Holy Trinity. Needless to say, this vision of God’s infinity fills them with a joy for which no words in the human vocabulary can describe.

The angels are constantly praising God, constantly adoring the Creator in a most perfect form of prayer that only the celestial hierarchy can give the Divine Majesty.

Angels Active on Earth. By all human calculation, the ecstatic prayer in which the angels are engaged should preoccupy them so completely that they could not do anything else. We might even say they should not be doing anything else. After all, what is more sublime than prayerful contemplation?

But the angels are not only contemplatives. They are contemplatives in action. As often as we may have heard the expression, “Contemplation in action,” this is a constant reality. Our faith tells us that the very name angel means “messenger.” The angels, as Christ tells us, who constantly behold the face of the Father are also constantly engaged in what we may call the angelic apostolate of serving our human needs.

The Lesson for Us. We are speaking about imitating the angels. We are asking ourselves how the angels are to be models for us to imitate and patterns that we should follow.

The single most important lesson that we should learn from the angels is that union with God in prayer is never to be divorced from our service of others. Among the early Fathers of the Church, St. Clement of Alexandria could not be more clear.

In every place, but not ostensibly and visibly to the multitude, the perfect Christian will pray. While engaged in walking, in conversation, while in silence, while engaged in reading and, in work that needs to be done, in every situation he prays (Stromata, VII, 7).

In other words, so far from serving others being incompatible with prayer, prayer should be the soul of everything we do in our practice of Christian charity.

Another saint tells us that, “Prayer is the uplifting of the soul to God”(St. Nilus, On Prayer, 35). Who would dare say that no matter what we are doing for others, whether engaged in conversation, or preparing a meal, typing at a computer, or teaching a class - we should not be simultaneously lifting our soul to God?

St. Thomas Aquinas explains how union with God through prayer can be combined with the practice of charity to others. When we pray, our minds are united with God. But our prayer deeply influences our will. Our mind can therefore be fixed on the Lord while our wills are choosing whatever actions the Lord wants us to perform.

One more quotation from St. Clement of Alexandria. He lived in the third century, in the height of the persecution of the Church. He knew what it means to combine contemplation and action. He told his contemporaries, “The Christian prays in every situation, in his walks or recreation, in his dealings with others, in silence, in reading, in everything he does where his mind is active.”

Our focus, remember, is the imitation of angels. They are our paradigm, our constant example, of combining union with God in prayer with the service of our neighbor in charity.

How to Imitate the Angels. I have saved the hardest question for last. How are we to imitate the angels in their remarkable ability to pray while working?

Before we say anything else, let us be sure that we are not talking in abstractions. The founder of consecrated life in the Western world was St. Benedict. The motto which he gave his followers and, through them, to the rest of the world, is a simple imperative, Ora et Labora, “Pray and Work.”

Notice what comes first. It is the duty to pray. Notice what comes second. It is the duty to work. Our souls are to be united with God after the example of the angels, and then, but only then, are we ready to serve the needs of the persons that God puts into our lives.

The hard question is how to combine these two. Dare I say that we have no choice. We can be busy in serving others, in fact, we can be preoccupied with what they need. But what is the main reason for our practice of charity towards other people? Is it to perform some chore, or serve some obvious human need? No, as the angels so clearly teach us, our underlying reason is to be channels of grace to the people whom we serve. No matter what else we may do for others, if we are not communicators of God’s grace to those whom we serve, we are not really serving what people mainly need. Their greatest and constant need is to receive light from God for their minds and strength from God for their wills. And our role in life is to be conduits of this grace to every single person who even momentarily touches our lives.

What is the key to being a channel of grace to others? The key is our own union with God in constant prayer.

This statement may be frightening when we first hear it. But it is the formula for living a truly Christian life. We are praying always if our wills are always ready to do the will of God. Everything else follows with simple logic.

Surely the angels are always disposed to do the will of God, whose face they are always beholding in celestial ecstasy. But that is precisely the secret. Our union with God in prayer is the condition for our living an angelic life of service in this valley of tears. We shall do only as much real good for others as our hearts are united in prayerful union with God.


Prayer
Angel of God, my guardian and guide, teach me what it means to be devoted to you and your angel companions in heaven. Teach me to combine constant union with God in prayer with a constant readiness to be of service to others. Show me how I will be only as generous to others and only as effective in meeting their needs as I am united with our Lord in striving to do His will. I need your help to be a contemplative in action. I need your example to learn that no matter how busy I am here on earth, my mind and my heart must always be in heaven with God. Amen.


Copyright © 1996 Inter Mirifica

The Church is Missionary by Her Very Nature

IN FAITHFUL Catholic circles, there is a collective sense of angst and dread on the eve of the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region (October 6-27). Not basing themselves upon rumor or speculation, those concerned point to public statements of the Synod’s organizers and the very content of the instrumentum laboris (working document) that will set the pace of the synod’s proceedings. Alarmingly, in reference to this document, the word “apostasy” has been used by more than one high-ranking churchman.

Only yesterday, it was learned that the progressivist Bishop Mario Grech, of Gozo, Malta, now leads the Synod of Bishops as pro-secretary general, working alongside the very liberal Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri.

Very much has been written on these phenomena, and the news is coming fast and furious as we head into next week’s Synod (coverage of the event can be found at Church Militant, Life Site, and the National Catholic Register); my focus here will be on only one angle, the evident denigration of the Church’s salvific mission which is surrounding the Synod’s preparations.

The Austrian Bishop Erwin Kräutler, who is one of the eighteen official members of the pre-synodal council established by Pope Francis in March of 2018, is a missionary with a decades-long career in the Amazon region. He has made himself infamous for the statement, “I have never in my life baptized an indigenous [person], and I also do not have the intention of ever doing so.” Dr. Maike Hickson writes that, “Different progressivist sources say that Bishop Erwin Kräutler is the author of the synod’s working document.” Whether or not he authored the document, his involvement in the synod is more than concerning, based only on this anti-missionary, anti-baptism, and essentially anti-Christian remark. (It should come as no surprise that Bishop Kräutler wants to keep alive the possibility of women’s ordination.)

As critiques of the instrumentum laboris have shown, consistent with Bishop Kräutler’s deplorable statement, a sinister anti-missionary spirit is entering the Church. This must be condemned and resisted as the work of the Evil One.

That the Church has an exclusive mission and a sacred obligation to evangelize all nations is a matter of Catholic doctrine. The existence of this obligation and the necessity of its being exclusive to the Catholic Church alone can be illustrated from a consideration of the Church’s four marks (one, holy, catholic, and apostolic):

One — The unity of the Church includes a unity of faith, of worship (liturgical cult, including the sacraments), and of government. Unbelief, heresy, and schism exclude people from this unity. Now, it is to the one Church possessed of this unity that Christ gave the mandate both to teach all nations and to bring them into His Mystical Body. Further, this one Church is synonymous with the “Kingdom of God” that Jesus said He came to establish on earth, and which He sent the Apostles to preach (Luke 9:60, Matt. 24:14). No other “kingdom,” then, has a mandate to preach the Gospel, which is “the Gospel of the Kingdom” according to Our Lord’s explicit utterance in the Gospel of Saint Matthew. In his treatise on the unity of the Church, Saint Cyprian of Carthage excludes from salvation all who leave this unity by heresy or schism. If salvation is dependent on being joined to this one Church, then no other ecclesiastical body (or non-denominational movement, or individual person[s]) can possibly have a divine mandate to evangelize the world. See more about the Church’s unity here.

Holy — The Church is holy “in her origin, her purpose, her means, and her fruits” (Ludwig Ott). Of this holiness, Saint Paul writes, “Christ also loved the church, and delivered himself up for it: that he might sanctify it, cleansing it by the laver of water in the word of life: that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy, and without blemish” (Eph. 5:25-27). It is “the Church” that Christ sanctifies in the sacraments; it is not mankind in general, or any mere assembly of men, or individual men independent of the Church. That sanctifying souls is an integral part of the mission of Christ’s followers is evident from the New Testament. Now, if the Church is what Christ sanctified, then to the Church alone is entrusted the mission of bringing others to sanctity in Christ. (Nemo dat quod non habet.) See more about the Church’s sanctity here.

Catholic — By this note (catholicity, or universality), the Church is widely diffused throughout the world while yet remaining one and the same, for spacial extension and local diffusion mean nothing if the body is not one. The Biblical proofs of the Church’s catholicity (e.g., Matt. 28:18-20, Mark 16:15-16, Acts 1:8), are at the same time explicit proofs of her divine mission; such diffusion would not be possible without her proactively laboring to incorporate all men and nations into her bosom. Further, the catholicity of the Church is proof of the exclusivity of that mission, for the mandate to bring “all nations” into the one Church is by a logical necessity an exclusive one. Our Lord could not possibly have told the Apostles, “Bring all nations into my Church — and then I’ll send other churches to preach to certain nations.”

Theologians distinguish “catholicity of right” from “catholicity of fact,” the former being the right the Church has to be the one diffused among all nations, while the latter is her actual extension among all nations. Father Salaverri explains “catholicity of right” in these terms:

Christ committed to one Church the right or office of gathering to herself everywhere all men, with the obligation of men corresponding to this right or office. But the catholicity of right consists in this right or office with the corresponding obligation. Therefore the Church necessarily is catholic with a catholicity of right.

It follows that no other institution or person has a right or a divine mission to preach the Gospel. It is therefore execrable, and even treasonous, when Catholics disparage as “sheep stealing” the noble attempt to convert non-Catholics to the Catholic Faith.

Apostolic — This mark of the Church identifies her as possessing the actual mission that Christ gave to the Apostles. Theologians distinguish apostolicity of origin, of doctrine, and of succession. Christ sent the Apostles to preach to the whole world and promised to give them the Paraclete to “abide with” them “for ever” (John 14:16). These men would all die by the year 100, hence the “for ever” continues in their successors, thus the apostolic succession that links every valid bishop back to the Apostles. It is a material succession if the sacramental lines are valid; it is a lawful (or “formal”) succession if it is traced back through men who maintain ecclesiastical unity. Hence, schismatic sects, even if they retain sacramental validity (not all do), do not enjoy apostolic succession in the full sense of the word. It strictly follows that nobody who is independent of this succession has the mission Christ gave the Apostles.

Given what we have said so far, it is highly distressing to learn that the Vicar of Christ has recently berated a Catholic woman for seeking converts and that, in very high circles, more attention is given to “human fraternity” than to the actual mission Jesus Christ gave to His Church, which is to glorify God and to save souls by uniting all men and all nations in His Mystical Body.

I would like to conclude these lines with a collection of recent magisterial affirmations of the Church’s exclusive and sacred obligation to evangelize all men and all nations (where possible, references to the latest edition of “Denzingers” are given; underlined emphasis mine):

“Consequently, as Jesus Christ came into the world that men ‘may have life and have it abundantly’ [Jn. 10:10], so also has the Church for her end the eternal salvation of souls, and hence she is so constituted as to open wide her arms to all mankind, unhampered by any limit either of time or place. (Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, Nov. 1, 1885, DH 3166)

“The pilgrim Church is missionary by her very nature, since it is from the mission of the Son and the mission of the Holy Spirit that she draws her origin, in accordance with the decree of God the Father.” (Ad Gentes, No. 2)

“Missionary activity is nothing else and nothing less than an epiphany, or a manifesting of God’s decree, and its fulfillment in the world and in world history, in the course of which God, by means of mission, manifestly works out the history of salvation. By the preaching of the word and by the celebration of the sacraments, the center and summit of which is the most holy Eucharist, He brings about the presence of Christ, the author of salvation.” (Ad Gentes, No. 9)

“Since the whole Church is missionary, and the work of evangelization is a basic duty of the People of God, this sacred synod invites all to a deep interior renewal; so that, having a vivid awareness of their own responsibility for spreading the Gospel, they may do their share in missionary work among the nations.” (Ad Gentes, No. 35)

“All men are called to be part of this catholic unity of the people of God which in promoting universal peace presages it. And there belong to or are related to it in various ways, the Catholic faithful, all who believe in Christ, and indeed the whole of mankind, for all men are called by the grace of God to salvation.” (Lumen Gentium, No. 13, DH 4135)

“As the Son was sent by the Father, so He too sent the Apostles, saying: ‘Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And behold I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world.’ The Church has received this solemn mandate of Christ to proclaim the saving truth from the apostles and must carry it out to the very ends of the earth. Wherefore she makes the words of the Apostle her own: ‘Woe to me, if I do not preach the Gospel,’ and continues unceasingly to send heralds of the Gospel until such time as the infant churches are fully established and can themselves continue the work of evangelizing. For the Church is compelled by the Holy Spirit to do her part that God’s plan may be fully realized, whereby He has constituted Christ as the source of salvation for the whole world. By the proclamation of the Gospel she prepares her hearers to receive and profess the faith. She gives them the dispositions necessary for baptism, snatches them from the slavery of error and of idols and incorporates them in Christ so that through charity they may grow up into full maturity in Christ. Through her work, whatever good is in the minds and hearts of men, whatever good lies latent in the religious practices and cultures of diverse peoples, is not only saved from destruction but is also cleansed, raised up and perfected unto the glory of God, the confusion of the devil and the happiness of man. The obligation of spreading the faith is imposed on every disciple of Christ, according to his state. Although, however, all the faithful can baptize, the priest alone can complete the building up of the Body in the eucharistic sacrifice. Thus are fulfilled the words of God, spoken through His prophet: ‘From the rising of the sun until the going down thereof my name is great among the gentiles, and in every place a clean oblation is sacrificed and offered up in my name.’ In this way the Church both prays and labors in order that the entire world may become the People of God, the Body of the Lord and the Temple of the Holy Spirit, and that in Christ, the Head of all, all honor and glory may be rendered to the Creator and Father of the Universe.” (Lumen Gentium, No. 17, DH 4141)

“We believe that this one true religion continues to exist in the Catholic and Apostolic Church, to which the Lord Jesus entrusted the task of spreading it among all people. Thus, he said to the Apostles: ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you’ (Mt 28: 19-20). Especially in those things that concern God and his Church, all persons are required to seek the truth, and when they come to know it, to embrace it and hold fast to it.” (Dominus Iesus, 23, quoting Dignitatis Humanae, 1).

“‘The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ.’ [DV 10 § 2.] This means that the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome.” (CCC 85)

Most devotedly yours in the Hearts of Jesus and Mary,
Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M.

Scandals in the Vatican!

ONE of the institutions most associated with the Renaissance Papacy was the so-called “Cardinal Nephew,” a man related to the reigning Supreme Pontiff who was created Cardinal by the pope, often unworthily and sometimes as an act of naked ecclesiastical nepotism. In fact, the word “nepotism” draws its very origin from this phenomenon, the Latin name of which is cardinalis nepos, nepos meaning nephew. The practice actually stretches back to the Middle Ages and continued until the reforms of Pope Innocent XII in 1682. And for over 100 years — 1566 to 1692 — there was a curial office in the Holy See associated with this institution, namely the Superintendent of the Ecclesiastical State, the occupant of which was generally also known as the “Cardinal Nephew.” This office was done away with in Innocent XII’s reforms, when the Secretary of State’s position was created to assume its responsibilities. Prior to the reforms, the Cardinal Nephew was the de-facto prime minister of the Pope, and often exerted great power. The institution lent itself to incredible corruption at times, including especially financial corruption, and it helped to turn the papacy into the play-thing of several powerful Italian families (e.g., Borgheses, Borgias, de Medicis, della Roveres, Barberinis, and Colonnas).

The list of cardinal-nephews includes at least fifteen, and possibly as many as nineteen popes — that is, men who went from being Cardinal Nephews to becoming the Vicars of Christ.

Of course, if you were Cesare Borgia, you didn’t need to be a nephew of the Pope’s to become a powerful cardinal; you were, rather, lineally descended from him as bastard son, thanks to the sacrilegious infidelities of Pope Alexander VI and his long-term mistress Vannozza dei Cattanei.

Why do I mention this?

Two Cardinal Nephews are canonized saints:

Guarinus of Palestrina (+1158) was created cardinal by Pope Lucius II (1144-1145)
Saint Charles Borromeo (+1584), the cardinal-nephew of Pope Pius IV (1559–1565)
Guarinus, an Augustinian Canon Regular, at first refused to be made a bishop, but was at last compelled to become Archbishop of Palestrina. He was a devout religious who opposed the will of his parents to embrace the clerical state. He was known for his humility and became a great patron of Palestrina’s poor. When his pope-uncle gave him rich gifts worthy of a man of his new station — the gifts included fine horses — Saint Guarinus sold them all and gave the money to the poor.

Better known than Saint Guarinus is Saint Charles Borromeo, the nephew of Pope Pius IV. After having gone on an Ignatian retreat, the young sub-deacon resolved to become a saint. Appointed to the Archdiocese of Milan as its Archbishop, he surprised everyone when he not only took the orders of diaconate, priesthood, and episcopacy, but even took the trouble to live in his Archdiocese and actually minister to his flock. He was the first Archbishop of Milan to do so in eighty years, thus ending the terrible practice of episcopal absenteeism in that see, an abuse that was common in those times, as was the related abuse of multiple benefices, which was the simultaneous holding by one man of more than one, sometimes several, bishoprics, abbacies, priorates, and other ecclesiastical offices — along with the financial benefits attached to them. These abuses are commonly listed among the causes of the Protestant Revolution. They were abuses that were addressed by the Council of Trent and its subsequent reform, known properly as “the Catholic Reformation.”

Speaking of which, most of us know that Saint Charles Borromeo was called “the Soul of the Council of Trent,” and had a large share in the compiling of the Roman Catechism (also known as the Catechism of the Council of Trent). He became a major figure in the reforms of the Catholic Reformation, founding seminaries for the formation of priests, and making his own Archdiocese a model of true reform. In his charity, he expended his personal wealth and even went into debt to help the victims of a plague that had broken out in Milan. He also showed great interests in the plight of persecuted English Catholics, personally hosting Saints Edmund Campion and Ralph Sherwin on their way to England, ministering to English Catholics in exile in Italy, and even carrying on his person an image of the not-yet-even-beatified Saint John Fisher.

A contemporary of Saint Charles Borromeo was Saint Ignatius of Loyola’s disciple, Saint Francis Borja, known more commonly by the Italianized form of his name, Borgia. My earlier mention of the Borja family and especially of the wicked Cesare Borgia was not a gratuitous bit of scandal mongering, but was for a purpose: In celebrating the feast of Saint Francis Borja just yesterday (October 10), the Church celebrated the man who was the fourth Duke of Gandia (in Aragon, Spain), the third Superior General of the Society of Jesus, and another major figure of the Catholic Reformation. He was also the grand-nephew of Cesare Borgia, and the great grandson of Pope Alexander VI.

We must, when coming upon such things in Church history, recall that “parable of the kingdom of heaven” known as the “parable of the wheat and the tares,” something upon which we ought to meditate from time to time.

What does all this have to do with our conference?

For this year’s conference, our speakers have been asked to address the theme, “The Church’s Four Marks: Reflections on These Indelible Divine Signs.” The reason I chose this theme was because I know how deeply afflicted and scandalized many of the faithful are at the goings on in the Church. If you have been following any of the coverage of the current Amazon Synod going on in Rome from October 6 to the 27th, then you know that it is a scandal factory. This is happening in a Church already shaken internationally by the homosexual priest scandal. Additionally, just days ago, big news of horrible financial scandals have come out of Rome, with the Vatican police force dramatically raiding the offices of Holy See’s own Secretariat of State and its Financial Information Authority (AIF). It seems that a four hundred thousand euros went missing. Moreover, the man who was tasked with the Herculean labor of cleaning out the Augean Stables of Vatican finances, Cardinal Pell, is rotting in an Australian prison, victim of a plot hatched by an alliance of his Australian and Italian enemies.

And the scandals multiply, each day’s Catholic news bringing fresh rot to our attention; so, by the time you read this, the paragraph above will be stale news.

Amid such horrors, we need to keep our minds on the supernatural truths of the Faith and to remind ourselves that the Church is a living supernatural organism that has the seeds of reform in herself. Moreover, we ought to see, love, and seek God above all things so as to be the very saints who will help reform the Church, in our own small way, in these times God has given us to live in the Church Militant.

Most devotedly yours in the Hearts of Jesus and Mary,
Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M.

Welcome. Can you introduce yourself and which parish you regularly go to?

Welcome welcome. yeeck from Guadalupe Puchong.

Saint of the Day:

Saint Ursula (383)

When the pagan Saxons started to invade England in the fourth century, with the intention of destroying the Catholic Faith and the purity of all young English virgins, a great group of English girls, numbering ten friends of Saint Ursula, and each having a thousand companions — which made their number in all, 11,011 — fled from England to the Continent. In the year 383, Saint Ursula and her 11,010 companions were all slaughtered for their purity and their Faith. This great martyrdom occurred in Cologne, in Germany. A shrine has been erected to them there, containing as many of their bones as could be rescued. A Religious Order of nuns in the Catholic Church in honor of Saint Ursula was established by Saint Angela Merici in the year 1535. They are known as the Ursulines.

Queen of Heaven
Brian Kelly



As I noted in my article defending Padre Pio’s miraculous stigmata, if the belief is Catholic and traditional, you can bet that my friend, Pastor Joe, a Pentecostal minister, will be against it.

The latest missive I received from him accuses Catholics of idolatry for giving honor to Our Lady under her title “Queen of Heaven.”

Still choking, I hope, on all the camels he has swallowed from my past rebuttals, albeit still in denial, he now finds a new “gnat” to strain out in his obsession to indict the One True Church.

Yes, he finds the condemnation of our honoring Mary as Queen of Heaven in Jeremias.

Indeed, especially in chapter 44, the prophet does excoriate, over and over, the remnant of Jews exiled with him in Egypt, in particular the women, for worship of a queen of heaven. Not all of the exiles were guilty, but a lot of them were. Enough for God to rouse the indignation of Jeremias against them. These Jews had been routed from Jerusalem, along with our prophet, by the Persians in the 6th century B.C. The women, in particular, were “sacrificing” cakes and libations to an Egyptian goddess named Asherah, whom they were worshipping as “queen of heaven.” The same is Isis, their goddess of the moon. Appropriately, the woman carved the cakes into a crescent shape. (Now you know another origin for the word lunatic.) The Moslems, it seems, were not original in their adoption of the crescent moon and star. To be accurate, they did not adopt the symbol until the Turks used it for their Ottoman Empire emblem sometime in the early fifteenth century.

By the same token, shall we, Pastor Joe, refrain from calling God “the Father” because the pagan Romans worshiped the principal deity under that title. Jupiter, literally, means “Zeus Father”? I know, I know, Saint Paul in many places speaks of God the Father. Therefore, the comparison fails because it’s in the Bible. C’est la vie. I withdraw the point — to an extent, that is. What still stands is that the pagans called God “Father” Zeus. And, by Our Lord’s command, Christians call God “ Our Father.” And there is no problem here. So why is there a problem with giving the Mother of God the title “Queen of Heaven” when we have no intention of worshipping Ashera?

It is not beyond our scope here to note that the Protestant heresiarchs, Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, all defended the Immaculate Conception and Our Lady’s perpetual virginity. Hear Luther: “The veneration of Mary is inscribed in the very depths of the human heart.” In his last sermon in 1546 Luther said: “This is the woman who crushed the serpent’s head . . . For your Son denies you nothing.” They write nothing against her Queenship, or her bodily Assumption. Can we not assume that they so honored her “Queen of Heaven”?

Let’s take a quick survey of queenship in the Old Testament.

Here are some related passages:
“The daughters of kings have delighted thee in thy glory. The queen stood on thy right hand, in gilded clothing; surrounded with variety” (Psalm 44:10).

The Jews, of course, had their queens, good and bad ones. In the same inspired book that Pastor Joe employs, we read: “After that Jechonias the king, and the queen, and the eunuchs, and the princes of Juda, and of Jerusalem, and the craftsman, and the engravers were departed out of Jerusalem” (Jeremias 29:2).

And, what shall we say of Queen Esther? She was a figure of Our Lady because she saved her people from destruction. Her story is told in the Book of Esther of the Old Testament.

Although Abraham was not a king, he was considered royal by his friendly hosts, the Hethites — a “prince” in fact. And we are defending not only queenship but royalty as we have it throughout the Bible.

And Sara lived a hundred and twenty-seven years. And she died in the city of Arbee which is Hebron, in the land of Chanaan: and Abraham came to mourn and weep for her. And after he rose up from the funeral obsequies, he spoke to the children of Heth, saying: I am a stranger and sojourner among you: give me the right of a burying place with you, that I may bury my dead. The children of Heth answered, saying: ‘My Lord, hear us, thou art a prince of God among us: bury thy dead in our principal sepulchres: and no man shall have power to hinder thee from burying thy dead in his sepulchre’” (Genesis 23, my bold).

Now, let’s return to the subject in question: to Our Lady, Queen of Heaven.

The first thing my pastor friend gets wrong is that he confuses the celestial luminaries above us with the home of the blessed in eternity. The moon is in its place orbiting the earth. And, of course, the stars are high above in the heavens. But the heaven of which Our Lady is Queen is not that of Asherah, but the “Kingdom of Heaven” where Jesus reigns with His saints. What the idolatrous Jewish women were adoring was not the abode of anyone, but a thing that gives us the reflected light of the sun at night. Maybe not as bad as worshiping an idol made by human hands, but still idolatry, giving worship to a piece of rock, a beautiful round rock, but a rock. The moon, however, is symbolic of Our Lady in that she filters the radiance of the Son of God, reflecting His brilliance, and making Him more conformable to our dull intellects. “Who is she that cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in array?” (Canticles 6:9). Saint Louis Marie de Montfort (+1716) applies the verse to Mary: “She is not the sun, which by the brightness of its rays blinds us because of our weakness; but she is fair and gentle as the moon, which receives the light of the sun, and tempers it to make it more suitable to our capacity.”
― Louis de Montfort, True Devotion to Mary:

And where is the moon in Marian iconography? Under her feet. So, she appears in the Book of Apocalypse and so she appeared and still appears on the tilma of Saint Juan Diego in Mexico. This sign, given to the pagan Aztecs, manifested that the holy woman of Guadalupe was greater than the moon or the sun which shines behind her in the Miraculous Image. Their gods were devils.

It would seem to any one without bias that Our Lady’s title of Queen is most fitting. She is the Mother of Christ the King. My pastor friend is quick to assure me that Jesus is certainly our King. And that His reign is forever. This, as he says, is clearly affirmed in the Gospels, even by Our Savior Himself. I asked him why then does he not honor Mary, either as “Blessed Virgin-Mother” or as “Queen” reigning as Queen-Mother with her Son? Our Lady’s Magnificat canticle, particularly the verse “Behold all generations shall call me blessed,” gives Pastor Joe a problem. And that prophecy is ex clara scriptura (clear in scripture). He had no answer for why he refuses to call the Mother of God “Blessed Mary,” but, as I noted, he assumes having a real “Queen of Heaven” is like the idolatry condemned by Jeremais.

I doubt that my Pentecostal friend would accept the authority of Saint Athanasius (or any other father of the Church) but the saint from Alexandria (296 to 373), in Egypt by the way, writes “If the Son is a King, the mother who begot Him is rightly and truly considered a queen and sovereign.” (de Deipera, on the Godbearer). Common sense, right? One would think having a Queen-Mother in Heaven would be a cause of great joy. One would think so.

Saint Ephrem the Syrian (+373) writes in the person of Mary: “‘Let Heaven sustain me in its embrace, because I am honored above it.’ For heaven was not Thy mother, but Thou hast made it Thy throne. How much more honorable and venerable than the throne of a king is his mother.” And in another place he thus prays to her: “. . . Majestic and Heavenly Maid, Lady, Queen, protect and keep me under your wing lest Satan the sower of destruction glory over me, lest my wicked foe be victorious against me.”

Our Lady has always been honored as Queen since apostolic times, especially in the East. In the West, the great hymn Salve Regina (Hail Holy Queen) was composed in the late eleventh century by Blessed Herman the Cripple. It soon became part of the liturgy and was sung in the divine office. Its main promoter in the West was Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (+1153). Over time, popular devotion added it at the end of the Rosary. Pope Leo XIII added it, the prayer to Saint Michael, and the O God Our Refuge to the Prayers after Low Mass

The Kingdom of Heaven is a court royale. We have Christ our King, Mary our Queen, and we also have a Prince of the heavenly host. Who might that be? Saint Michael, of course. It’s in the Book of Daniel, clara scriptura Pastor Joe.

“But I will tell thee what is set down in the scripture of truth: and none is my helper in all these things, but Michael your prince” (Daniel 10:21).

And, again: “But at that time shall Michael rise up, the great prince, who standeth for the children of thy people: and a time shall come such as never was from the time that nations began even until that time. And at that time shall thy people be saved, every one that shall be found written in the book” (Daniel 12:1).

The prophet calls Michael “one of the chief princes.” So, there are others.

Saint Paul, who knew a lot about angels, speaks of thrones, dominions, and principalities in the celestial realm. (Colossians 1:16).

Yes, indeed Heaven is a court royale. Our King would have nothing less in His kingdom. As Saint Paul tells Timothy, “[T]he saying is sure: If we have died with him, we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him” (2 Timothy 2:11-12a, my emphasis). And, as Saint John saw in vision concerning the martyrs “Then I saw thrones” (Apoc. 20:4).

“And a great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Apocalypse 12:1).

I expect that pastor Joe will argue that this verse refers to the Church not to Mary. Indeed it does refer to the Church I will respond. So, say the early fathers of the Church. But the fathers also say that the passage redounds as well to the glory of the Mother of the Church, Mary. Pope Pius XII affirms the same in his encyclical, Munifentissimus Deus, in which he defined the bodily Assumption of Our Lady into Heaven:

“Moreover, the scholastic Doctors have recognized the Assumption of the Virgin Mother of God as something signified, not only in various figures of the Old Testament, but also in that woman clothed with the sun whom John the Apostle contemplated on the Island of Patmos” (#27).

The fathers also point out that this verse from the Apocalypse is preceded by the Apostle’s vision of the temple of the heavenly Jerusalem and the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark, which was hidden by Jeremais over five hundred years before, was considered by the fathers to be a figure of Our Lady, the Ark of God, the Theotokos, in whose womb rested the divine Manna, the Bread of Life. “Arise, O Lord, into thy resting place: thou and the ark, which thou hast sanctified.” (Psalm 131:8).

Note, too, that this is why the passage from the Apocalypse is read at the Mass for the Solemnity of the Assumption on August 15.

Not that our pastor friend will be convinced by anything proclaimed by Pope Pius XII, but, in 1954, he also blessed the Church with an encyclical ad Caeli Reginam honoring Our Lady as Queen of Heaven. That was issued on the feast of the Divine Maternity, October 11:

From the earliest ages of the Catholic Church a Christian people, whether in time of triumph or more especially in time of crisis, has addressed prayers of petition and hymns of praise and veneration to the Queen of Heaven. And never has that hope wavered which they placed in the Mother of the Divine King, Jesus Christ; nor has that faith ever failed by which we are taught that Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, reigns with a mother’s solicitude over the entire world, just as she is crowned in heavenly blessedness with the glory of a Queen.

I also might add that the Second Vatican Council in its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium) taught, “Finally, the Immaculate Virgin preserved free from all stain of Original Sin, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, when her earthly life was over, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords (cf. Rv 19:16) and conqueror of sin and death” (No. 59). In making this statement, the Council referenced the passage from Revelation on the “great sign [that] appeared in heaven.” (my bold emphasis)

Lastly, a word about the feast day for Our Lady Queen of Heaven and Earth. In the old liturgical calendar the feast is celebrated on August 22. Actually, when the feast was established by Pope Pius XII in 1954 he set the date for its celebration on the same day as that of the Divine Maternity, October 11. It was later moved to August 22 in order to enhance the Church’s devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, co-celebrated this day, thereby so wonderfully magnifying her universal Queenship.

According to Pastor Joe the prophet Jeremias was warning about an abuse that would arise in Christian times, namely these latter times. The pastor, I assume, had no clue that the Queenship of Mary was honored throughout Christendom in every age. It is astonishing that he thinks Jeremias had us Catholics in mind, Catholics such as Saint Athanasius of Egypt and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, to mention only two. I can only imagine what he thinks of Pope Pius XII and his definition of the bodily Assumption of Mary (and corresponding Coronation).

So, there you have it. In this year 2019, Pastor Joe has figured out what Jeremias was most worried about back in the sixth century B.C. I say “most” worried about. And it wasn’t the “sacrifices” of the idolatrous Jewish women as much as it was the future cultus of Marian devotees.

Salve Regina

Hail, holy Queen, Mother of mercy, hail, our life, our sweetness and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve: to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears. Turn then, most gracious Advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus, Amen.

This post has been edited by yeeck: Oct 21 2019, 02:55 PM

Fellowship among Catholics and for those who are interested in Catholic Christianity.

Saints of the Day

Saint Ignatius of Constantinople (877)

He was the son of a Byzantine emperor. He was first a monk, then an abbot, and then a patriarch of Constantinople. He suffered much from Photius, who was the father of the Greek Schism that eventually led to the so-called Greek Orthodox Church, which divided people from unity with the Holy Roman Catholic Church, outside of which no one can be saved.



Saint Anthony Mary Claret (1870)

He was born in Catalonia, in Spain, in 1807. He was ordained a priest in 1835. He was a missioner in his own country and in the Canary Islands, which are just off the northwest coast of Africa. He formed a group of priests into an Order known as the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary — also known as the Claretians. He was made Archbishop of Santiago in Cuba, in 1851. He was recalled to Spain in 1857. He was exiled with his queen in the revolution there of 1868. Many attempts were made on his life. He is the one saint so far canonized who was present at the Vatican Council of 1869-1870.

Saint of the Day

Saint Raphael

There are seven special angels who stand before the throne of God. We know the names of three of them. They are: Saint Michael, whose name is a challenge and means Who is like to God?; Saint Gabriel, whose name is a message and means Strength of God (God going the limit by way of grace); and Saint Raphael, whose name is a comfort and means Healer of God or Medicine of God. In some loving way, Saint Michael is the angel of Saint Joseph, Saint Gabriel is the angel of Our Lady, and Saint Raphael is the angel of Our Lord.

Saint Raphael was the angel who came to console Our Lord in His bitter agony in the Garden of Olives, when Jesus sweat blood. Saint Raphael’s name is mentioned in Catholic prayers, including the Litany of the Saints. He is one of our special helpers in times of sickness and the hardships that go with it. His story in the Old Testament makes up nearly all of the Book of Tobias.


Tobias and the Angel Raphael by Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo

Saint of the Day

Saint Crispin and Saint Crispinian (285)

They were shoemakers by trade who, because of the simple holiness and innocence of their lives, were known to be Catholics. They courageously refused to yield to the persecutors of their Faith who wanted them to apostatize. At the beginning of the reign of Diocletian they were both beheaded. Some of their relics are in Rome. Saint Crispin and Saint Crispinian are invoked by Catholic cobblers.



This post has been edited by yeeck: Oct 25 2019, 10:40 AM

Saint of the Day

Saint Simon and Saint Jude (67)
OCT 28

They were Apostles of Our Lord and were brothers. We are let known what eager and ardent apostles of the Faith Saint Simon and Saint Jude were, first by the distance they traveled to preach the Gospel (they went eventually as far as Persia), and also by the names given to them. Saint Simon is called the Zealot, both to distinguish him from Simon Peter and to show his ardor in preaching the true Faith. Saint Jude is called Thaddeus, which means big-heart.

Saint Simon was martyred by being crucified. Saint Jude was martyred by being clubbed to death. Both were killed in the same year. Their relics were brought back and were placed near those of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the Vatican, in Rome. Saint Jude is the author of one of the Epistles in the New Testament. “Keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of Our Lord Jesus Christ unto life everlasting,” Saint Jude writes in his holy Epistle.

Saints of the Day

Saint Narcissus (222)
OCT 29

Saint Narcissus was the Bishop of Jerusalem. He died when he was one hundred and sixteen years old.

He was eighty years old when he was made Bishop of Jerusalem. He was a wonderful and paternal pastor of souls. Once, he miraculously changed water into oil to make lights for the lamps of the church on the vigil of Easter. Once, three men who made false witness against him were struck dead.

Notable centenarians among the saints are: Saint Simon Stock, who died when he was one hundred; Saint Raymond of Pennafort, who died when he was one hundred; Saint Anthony the Abbot, who died when he was one hundred and five; Saint Patrick, who died when he was one hundred and six; Saint Paul the Hermit, who died when he was one hundred and twelve; Saint Eusignius, who died when he was one hundred and ten; and Saint David of Wales, who died when he was one hundred and forty-seven.


“Saint Narcissus, Patriarch of Jerusalem, in a Landscape,” compliments of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco


Saint Linda (595)
OCT 29

Saint Linda (Ermelinda) was a Belgian girl who lived as a solitary, dedicating her whole life to God alone.


Saint Ermelinda of Meldaert

The Antichurch of the Pseudomissionaries, and How it Came to Be

IT'S 2051, and you’re on a top-secret mission to New York City which has been overrun by zombies since The Great Zombification of 2028, caused, as we now know, by a disastrous biological experiment in population control funded by Jeff Bezos and the Ford Foundation. In other parts of the nation and the world, the strange contagion has been contained and eradicated, but the Big Apple has been, to mix a metaphor, a tough nut to crack. The elite Bio-Force Rangers have selected and equipped you and four others to look like zombies, mix with them, and gradually spread the antitoxin that will, it is hoped, heal all the infected New Yorkers. Grueling work, and tense, because you must look like zombies to zombies, but like a healthy human to the newly de-zombified. The work is progressing apace, and your team is creating “missions” that are quarantined and secured, where healthy New Yorkers can now live in safety. The mission is going well, but then … it happens.

One of your fellow elites has lost his mind, cracked under the pressure. He becomes convinced that the zombified state is more in keeping with his Rousseauian philosophy, and uses his advanced training to reverse the work that you all set out to do. His goal is not only to reinfect all of New York, but to send his own zombie agents into uninfected cities all over the world; and his plans are working …

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The above Halloween tribute to the zombie-horror genre, tacky though it be, came to mind while I was thinking of the subject at hand, for the recently concluded Amazon Synod was at least as horrifying as expected: on display were idolatry, syncretism, indifferentism, feminism, modernism, radical environmentalism, and liberation theology, a much more terrifying combination than anything Steven King or John Carpenter could imagine.

It is not mine to give a rundown of the event, but rather to ask a fundamental question: How did we get here? For this was not something that started in 2019 or 2013, but long before.

Let us begin our answer in the Amazon itself. Why is the Catholic Church there? Because, in the sixteenth century, she declared it to be mission territory. What is a mission? It is an effort to extend the Kingdom of Christ — the Catholic Church — by following His command to teach and baptize all nations. But why does the Church do that? Aside from obeying the command of Christ, who has unique authority to bind us to His commands, we do so to give glory to the Holy Trinity and to save souls. This two-fold purpose can be unified into a neater formula: to give glory to God by saving souls. This is the mission of the Church. She is called “catholic” precisely because of this divine mandate to teach “all nations” (Matt. 28:19, Luke 24:47), and even “every creature” (Mark 16:15). To extend the Kingdom of Christ is her divine mission; there is no divine mission to “dialogue.”

Here, then, is a provocative question: what if that mission becomes something the missionaries themselves no longer believe in? What if they “crack” under the pressure of the world and fall prey to false philosophy?

The first missionaries to Brazil arrived with Pedro Álvares Cabral in 1500. Immediately on the heels of Christopher Columbus, that same century would see evangelism all over what we in the Anglosphere call Latin America. The mass conversion of Mexico, largely due to the gracious visit of Our Lady of Guadalupe to those blessed people, happened in that century.

Regarding that same sixteenth century, Pope Benedict XVI said:

If it is true that the great missionaries of the 16th century were still convinced that those who are not baptized are forever lost — and this explains their missionary commitment — in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council that conviction was finally abandoned.

From this came a deep double crisis.

On the one hand this seems to remove any motivation for a future missionary commitment. Why should one try to convince the people to accept the Christian faith when they can be saved even without it?

But also for Christians an issue emerged: the obligatory nature of the faith and its way of life began to seem uncertain and problematic.

If the Church is not necessary for salvation, then the missions do indeed lose their urgency, as Benedict pointed out. The missionaries themselves, all but the ones who haven’t fallen for the heresy, become social workers at best; at worst — and here is what we are seeing now — they become revolutionaries. One of the persistent mantras of the Amazon Synod was the need to listen to and learn from the Amazonians.

To be sure, a good missionary will learn about his people, their language, customs, beliefs, etc., else how can he minister to them effectively, teach them, correct their beliefs and their morals? So, too, he must love them deeply, and be willing to die for them (even by their hands) so as to get them the Faith. Thus the heroism of so many missionaries.

But the new missionary, the social worker or revolutionary, what of him? His Christian heroism is absent. This is the model pseudomissionary that was being promoted in the Synod Hall, and in him we see both sides of the Ratzinterian “deep double crisis”: the actual mission of the Catholic Church is scuttled, and the “obligatory nature of the faith and its way of life” is questioned, altered, and mutilated into something it is not — zombified, if you will. Hence, in this second part of the double crisis, not only do we, contrary to Christ’s command, not need to baptize the natives — as Austrian Bishop Erwin Kräutler boasted — but we now, having “listened to the natives,” know that we must have deaconesses, married priests, an ecclesiastical structure that resembles the vision of condemned and impenitent Marxist liberation theologians, and a host of other novelties that more closely resemble the ecclesiastical vision of European and American Modernists than the ideas of the poor Amazonians themselves, who have been put on display and used as foils by cynical Western progressivists. (Many of the Amazonians, by the way, were flatly ignored by the Synod Fathers.) And speaking of cynical progressivists, the same Bishop Erwin Kräutler, who wants women priests, admitted to Edward Pentin that the Amazonian female deacons he is agitating for “may be a step to” a female priesthood.

Really? What a surprise!

A little over a year ago, I gave a talk to a Fatima Youth Conference on the subject, “In the World, Not of It: Being Catholic amid the New Paganism.” The main thesis I developed in that talk, and around which the practical advice was woven, was this: the members of the Catholic Church are those “called out of” the world, and when we blur the distinction between “the Church” and “the world,” we don’t sanctify the world; rather, we corrupt the Church. “The world,” as I use the term here is Johannine; it is not the world that God made and called “very good” (Gen. 1:31), but the fallen world, or, rather, those rational animals on this earth who make its temporal goods the sole objects of their desire. Concerning these, Dom Prosper Guéranger says, “Men were called after the object of their love. They shut their eyes to the light; they became darkness; God calls them ‘the world.’”

The Amazon Synod was simply a very fast-paced version of this process of corrupting the Church by tearing down the distinction between it and “the world.”

The preposterous notion that Catholic dogma, apostolic tradition, and ecclesiastical discipline must be adapted to those the Church evangelizes is not something the Apostles themselves believed. It contradicts the very notion of “conversion.” Saint Paul did not want to alter the Gospel’s teaching on idolatry, sodomy, or drunkenness in an effort to “listen to” the Corinthians who might find Christian restrictions on this behavior somehow incomprehensible. No, instead he says to them, after their conversion:

Know you not that the unjust shall not possess the kingdom of God? Do not err: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor liers with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners, shall possess the kingdom of God. And such some of you were; but you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Spirit of our God. —1 Cor. 6:9-11

Christian faith and baptism have made the Corinthians different, and they were to live accordingly. It has brought them from the world into the Church. Neither was the Apostle sanguine about the pre-baptismal state of the pagan Ephesians, those former devotees of Artemis, who were the objects of his Apostolic zeal:

For which cause be mindful that you, being heretofore Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by that which is called circumcision in the flesh, made by hands; That you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the conversation of Israel, and strangers to the testament, having no hope of the promise, and without God in this world. But now in Christ Jesus, you, who some time were afar off, are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and breaking down the middle wall of partition, the enmities in his flesh....” —Eph. 2:11-14

But for the last half-century and more, some successors of the Apostles have been freely discussing how Christian Faith is not necessary for salvation, going so far as to say things like this: Because, for the children of the Church, incongruity between believing and living can cause the loss of salvation, for non-Christian a harmony between belief and life can be positively salvific. The italicized is my very accurate paraphrase of something written by a very learned cardinal, who favorably cites this abomination and others from the book, In Ways Known to God: A Theological Investigation on the Ways of Salvation Spoken of in Vatican II, by Dr. Francis Fernandez. There is nothing essentially different between the theories this cardinal favors and Karl Rahner’s heretical “Anonymous Christian.”

Between such so-called “theology” and the madness of the Pan-Amazonian Synod there is a straight line.

Lose track of the purpose of a thing, and eventually you will abuse it. Thus it is with the missions, which have become tools of revolution in the Church, even to the point of grave sins against the first commandment. Hence, the Italian Bishops are now promoting idolatrous prayers to Mother Earth, whereas a zealous laywoman who actually evangelizes is accused of wicked “proselitysm” by the Successor of Saint Peter himself, whose harsh words on the occasion brought to my mind harsher words of the Prophesy of Isaias: “Woe to you that call evil good, and good evil: that put darkness for light, and light for darkness: that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter” (Is. 5:20).

If we had truly Christian hearts, we would weep at such things.

God Himself must cleanse His Church. Meantime, the faster we abandon the novel thinking that has brought all this upon us, the better off the Church will be — looking more like an All Saints’ Day feast, and less like a bad Halloween flick.

Most devotedly yours in the Hearts of Jesus and Mary,
Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M.