In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen
My dearly beloved in Our Lord,
“Consummatum est – it is consummated” (Jn 19:30). Today it is no longer Our Lord who speaks these words with his last breath before he dies; but it is the Church which he has founded in the solemn instant of his redeeming death on the Cross. For today Holy Church commences its action which will only cease with Christ’s last coming to judge the living and the dead.
For us who are members of the Church militant, things keep changing. But these changes are like the changing backdrops or scenery in the “great world theater”; they are superficial and accidental. The substance of world history remains unchanged since the Incarnation and the Redemption.
The entire history from Creation and after the fall of Adam and Eve is simply the preparation and expectation of Christ’s coming, the great Advent: The Old Testament was pregnant with Christ, St Ambrose of Milan says.
The Incarnation of the Second Divine Person, the Word of God, constitutes the fullness of times.
The New Testament and the Church are the continuation of the divine mission which Christ has taken upon himself. Anyone who thinks otherwise, has not the slightest clue about the true sense of history.
St Thomas Aquinas teaches that the visible creation has the sole goal to fill up the places of the fallen Angels in Heaven. It makes a lot of sense because all of God’s works have a clear goal and sense. His plans cannot fail. He, being almighty, has all the means to reach his goal.
Today Our Lord sends the Holy Ghost to the Apostles and disciples as promised. Thereby he also keeps his promise to be with them, made at the moment of his going away: “and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.” (Mt 28:20) He goes away without leaving them? Yes, by sending his spirit, the Holy Ghost who proceeds from the Father and from the Son (Credo of the Mass), after a few short days.
So there is but one single divine plan, decree or mission for the world, which covers the entire history from creation to the last judgment. This is why the opinion of some who say that now the Church founded by Christ has failed (which is untrue!) there will be a new type of Church, that of the Spirit. It is ludicrous at least, heretical at worst to think or say anything of this kind. You could just as well pretend that God is changing – which He is not: God is “the Father of lights, with whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration.” (Jac 1:17)
Our Lord speaks very clearly about the mission of the Holy Ghost and its nature: “But when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will teach you all truth. For he shall not speak of himself; but what things soever he shall hear, he shall speak (…). He shall glorify me; because he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it to you. All things whatsoever the Father hath, are mine. Therefore I said, that he shall receive of mine, and shew it to you.” (Jn 16:13-15) The Holy Ghost is one in nature with the Father and the Son, He is of the same nature as the Father and the Son, because there is only one divine nature or substance. The only distinction in God, in the eternal life of the Blessed Trinity, is in the relations between the three Divine Persons. That is the life of the Blessed Trinity “ad intra”. But whatever God does by creating and providing for his creatures, “ad extra”, He does through his nature, not through one distinct Person – except of course the Incarnation, where only the Second Divine Person unites to itself a human nature.
For the sake of our better understanding, we can legitimately appropriate certain divine actions to certain divine Persons: the creation to the Father, the Redemption to the Son, our sanctification to the Holy Ghost. But we must always keep in mind that this is an analogical manner of speaking and thinking; and that anything God does “ad extra”, outwardly, is done by God through the divine nature!
Throughout history, and more and more, people get mixed up in their religious ideas because they have lost their solid grounding in metaphysics – the manner in which things are. Therefore modern religion, as Pope St Pius X clearly points out in his Encyclical “Pascendi”, is reduced to sentimentality. The Catholic Faith for present-day nominal Catholics is more by far about “spirituality” than about dogma and putting their lives in accord with dogma. This is not the genuine Catholic religion preached and promulgated by Our Blessed Lord! Rather he tells us today: “If anyone love Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.” A person who attaches his mind and will to do what God wants him to do, thereby shows his love for God. It is not a lip confession, but one in spirit and truth, for deeds speak louder than words. This effective love of God, charity, provokes God to come and make His abode with that person, which is called the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity in the human soul. And in order to be sure that we understand him rightly, he adds in the negative: “He who does not love Me, does not keep My words.” In other words: By their fruits you shall know them! If we offend God’s commandments seriously, only just one of them, we force God to leave our soul, we have turned God’s invisible temple into a cavern of brigands.
Instead of effective charity, which crowns and includes all the other supernatural virtues, “modern man” contents himself with sentimental or passionate affections of love (amor). But this love, just as joy (laetitia) are human passions; whereas charity is a theological (divine) virtue. “Amoris laetitia”, a composite of two passions, is not the same as joy and charity, which St Paul numbers as the first of the twelve Fruits of the Holy Ghost! “But the fruit of the Spirit is, charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, chastity. Against such there is no law.” (Gal 5:22-23) Because there is a definite law containing the inordinate exercise of our human passions which easily get out of control due to the weakening of our fallen nature… NB: It is very similar with the ambiguous title of the Vatican2 document “gaudium et spes” which designate the passions of joy and hope…
While the Church, or rather Our Lord through his Church, perfects the number of the elect, the anti-Church operated by all those who are ungodly or decidedly anti-godly does its work by fishing in the murky waters of human weakness and evilness. If any proof were needed after three centuries of intellectual and moral decay, we find it in the crisis which has been fabricated over the last year! An entangled web of lies and half-truths has been thrown out over the entire globe, and it is next to impossible to escape it, or to see exactly what is the morsel of truth in different, often enough conflicting and contradictory information. The fact that it works so marvelously for the greatest part of mankind, even to the point where many people risk their life through accepting demented “inoculations”, proofs to what extent the unholy spirit has taken hold of, or destroyed, their minds and wills.
Therefore God’s plan, the work commenced by Christ and continued by the Holy Ghost, the soul of the Church, is consummated in its structure and in the unfailing means necessary to complete it during “the little while” running up to Christ’s final coming. Let us realize that this work will be completed with or without us, and that therefore we are the ones who have everything to gain or to lose through our participation or non-participation in God’s merciful plan. “For many are called, but few chosen.” (Mt 20:16; 22:14) “Wherefore, my dearly beloved, (as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but much more now in my absence,) with fear and trembling work out your salvation.” (Phil 2:12)
Let us do this under the protecting mantle of Our Lady, the Queen of May, the Guardian of Faith, the Mother of Holy Hope and of fair love!
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
P. Arnold Trauner (paterarnold@hotmail.com), njemački i engleski
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