The world, it seems, is falling to pieces. Each day brings ever worsening reports of war, violence and devastation. Protests, riots, bombings, beheadings, rapes, kidnappings, persecutions – the list goes on and on. Last week, yet another horror unfolded in Paris, one of the most devastating yet in the Western world, and we feel with foreboding that it likely will not be the last such act of terror.
The weight of such tragedies weighs heavily on us. It is hard not to be downcast when we see evil engulfing all we hold dear like a great and ominous storm cloud, its lightnings and blackness overwhelming all. Neither is it a wonder that a growing number of Americans are on anti-depressants and anxiety medication.
What should we do then? How should we respond? I will leave the difficult answers of a public response to those wiser than myself. But faced with a world broken and bleeding, a world in the throes of a great crisis at once moral, social and spiritual, I want to issue a call to true, personal conversion, a call to sincere repentance.
What should we do? We should fall on our knees and cry out in the words of the psalmist, "Miserere nostri, Domine, miserere nostri" ("Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us"). We should turn from our sins and toward the living God, the God who loves mankind and who is full of mercy and pardon.
WHOM THE LORD LOVES, HE CHASTENS
Throughout the Scriptures and the earthly sojourn of the Church, it is undeniable that God permitted times of great suffering frequently to chasten the people He loves. While God is never the direct cause of evil (we are, through our sin and disobedience), He permits it as a remedy to drive His forgetful people back to Himself. And forgotten Him we have. For decades now, perhaps even centuries, modern man has been on a quest to throw off the yoke of Christ's authority. We have systematically driven Him from the public square, from our schools, our families and even, tragically, from our Church. We have replaced the crucified Lord with a veritable anti-Christ – a Jesus of our own making, one who asks nothing of us, who demands no obedience nor conversion, but rather accommodates us in our sins.
Faced with a people whose hearts have gone cold and who have rejected His gentle rule, Our Lord allows us to face the consequences of our rebellion toward Him full on. Put another way, He allows us to reap what we have sown, and the harvest is rarely pleasant. Yet, Our Lord permits this calamity for our good and ultimately because He loves us. As St. Paul tells us in his letter to the Hebrews, "It is where He loves that He bestows correction; there is no recognition for any child of His, without chastisement. Be patient, then, while correction lasts; God is treating you as His children.... He does it for our good, to give us a share in that holiness which is His."
BE CONVERTED
Faced with a world in the convulsions of great crisis, then, we must not despair or doubt. Rather, we must turn back to our Father who loves us, full of contrition for our sins and with a heart submissive to His will, no matter the cost. In the words of St. Peter, our first pope, "Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord."
Have you been far from God? Be converted with a sincere heart and confess your sins. Hear the words of absolution and be at peace.
Have you perhaps been receiving your Eucharistic Lord with a heart cold and devoid of love? Meditate on the goodness of Jesus to you, His self-emptying on the cross to save you, and stir again the fading coals of love.
Have you failed to pray, to heed the longing that you feel for God? Make time for Our Lord intentionally. Give Him the best of your day, rising early if you must to call on Him.
Have you been in love with the comforts and things of the world, filled with materialism and worldliness? Shed this vain pursuit and return to your good Savior.
Have you been enslaved by lust and hedonism? Reject these empty lies of the devil and seek the love that lasts forever.
Have the cares of this world choked the life of God in your soul? Remember the one needful thing: love of God from whom all good things come.
In short, renew once again your baptismal promises in which you vowed to serve Christ the King and be true to Him 'til death. Do not wait any longer. Answer the call of your confirmation and do battle for the Lord who loves you. Turn from this broken world to Our Lord and His merciful mother, whose infinite compassion will reject no one and from whom alone you can find true healing. Shake off the coldheartedness and apathy that so easily sets in, and once again with fervor determine to follow Christ with your whole heart.
HAVE HOPE
Finally, never lose hope, for the Lord's mercy is endless, and He has promised us that the Woman, our Immaculate Mother Mary, will crush the head of the serpent and seal Our Lord's eternal victory. When the canker of doubt begins to gnaw at you, when you are tempted to despair by both your own sins and the sins of the world, remember the words of Jeremiah the prophet: "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is Thy faithfulness. 'The Lord is my portion,' says my soul, 'therefore I will hope in Him.'"
When you feel the palpitations of fear and of anxiety besetting you, remember too the words of St. Paul, a man who knew the meaning of suffering: "Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction, or distress, or persecution, or hunger, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? For Thy sake, says the scripture, we face death at every moment, reckoned no better than sheep marked down for slaughter. Yet in all this we are conquerors, through Him who has granted us His love. Of this I am fully persuaded; neither death nor life, no angels or principalities or powers, neither what is present nor what is to come, no force whatever, neither the height above us nor the depth beneath us, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which comes to us in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.
Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.
Sam Guzman is founder and editor of the Catholic Gentleman, a website aimed at Catholic man who want to grow in their faith, online at www.catholicgentleman.net. This blog was originally published Nov. 14. Besides writing, blogging and public speaking, he serves as the communications director for Pro-Life Wisconsin.
What we think is the right road
It is the height of arrogance to think that we know right from wrong and good from evil. We may know right from wrong, for us; but we do not know it for others. We have no right to try to tell others what is virtuous and what is vicious, for those things depend upon the group involved or the time of the event. The only thing we can be sure of is that we don't know anything for sure. Everything depends upon time and space, and nothing is certain – except for death and taxes, of course!
But it's the wrong road
Once upon a time in U.S. history, the Know Nothing Movement comprised a group of 19th-century anti-Catholics who said they knew nothing about their aims and policies. Their descendants are evidently back in force. On many campuses today, one may easily find professors who claim not only that they know nothing – that appears to be a credible claim – but that nothing can be known. It gets worse, though: moral relativists are powerless in the face of evil, for they refuse to call it what it is.
As St. John Paul II told us in the encyclical "Evangelium Vitae": "We need now more than ever to have the courage to look the truth in the eye and to call things by their proper name." As the prophet Isaiah wrote: "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness" (5:20). Philosopher J. Budziszewski of the University of Texas contends that there some things we cannot not know. In other words, there are some things written on our hearts (see, for example, Romans 2:14). The point is that atheism means not only that one denies God but that one denies Ultimate Truth, Ultimate Goodness and Ultimate Beauty. To the extent that anything holy exists, the practical atheist insists, he defines it, he determines it, he delimits it.
Ultimately, Catholic philosophers tell us, there is an Ultimate. If and when we reject God – who is the Ultimate – distinguishing between the sacred and the profane is up to us. It is the original sin, on steroids. And the belief only in the grand, imperial self is the beginning and end of much ethical reasoning today in the secular world. For us, as Catholics, the alpha and the omega of all that is noble and decent and kind and lovely is Christ (see Phil 4:8).
One can reasonably argue that the most important verse in the Bible lies in Job's soul-stirring declaration: "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that in the last day I shall arise out of the earth" (19:25 DRB). With Job, we know that we are sinners in need of redemption which comes to us through the grace of a merciful God; with Job, we know that we live in and through Him; with Job, we know that we are destined for eternity; and, with Job, we know that God has defeated death. In the Bible, only a few pages after Job, we read in the Psalms about the evil man who "rejects God and does not have reverence for Him. Because he thinks so highly of himself, he thinks God will not discover his sin and condemn it. His speech is wicked and full of lies; he no longer does what is wise and good. He makes evil plans ... (and) nothing he does is good, and he never rejects anything evil" (36:1-4 GNB).
Get it wrong about a merciful and just God; get it wrong that we are called to obey His divine will; get it wrong that our peace is the fruit of conforming to His commands – and we destined to a life of moral chaos. So much around us today is the work not of light, but of darkness, because the Light of Christ has been rejected and ridiculed.
In the Extraordinary Form of the Holy Mass, there is almost always a reading of the "Last Gospel" in addition to an Epistle (or Lesson) and the Proper Gospel (a selection from Matthew, Mark, Luke or John). Right after the last blessing, there is a reading from St. John 1:1-14, which powerfully reminds us that the saving grace of Christ is our light, but "the world knew Him not." The "Last Gospel" testifies that Christ is full of grace and of truth. He is, as St. John Paul II once said, "the answer to the question that is every human life."
Job 19:25 points to John 1:1-14. Indeed, all of history points to John 1:1-14. Our own lives testify to the meaning and the nobility of John 1:1-14. St. John tells us that those who receive Christ become His sons and daughters – and they are not saved and they will not flourish because of secular power or because of their own will (1:13), but because God was born, suffered, died and was resurrected for us. One of the reasons we Catholics honor the cross and have a crucifix in our homes is to always remind us that there is a point to what we think and say and do; there is a purpose to our life and to our death; and ultimately, that there is an Ultimate who does not leave us morally rudderless, ethically bewildered or religiously uncertain.
We know something because we know Someone. The first thing we know is that our Redeemer liveth. Deo gratias!
Deacon James H. Toner serves at Our Lady of Grace Church in Greensboro.