In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen
My dearly beloved in Our Lord,
In today’s Gospel we have heard the terrible story, a parable of a servant whose huge debt is canceled. That same servant is unwilling to cancel his fellow servant’s small debt.
Today we also commemorate Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque. She has been the instrument chosen by Our Lord to establish devotion to his Sacred Heart in the Church, firmly and universally. She has had to pay a dire price for obeying Our Lord. Her life was similar to that of all Saints, and also to that of true mystics to whom Our Lord grants great favors. To Bernadette Soubirous, the seer of Lourdes, Our Lady said: “I do not promise you a happy life on earth, but I promise you eternal glory in Heaven.”
During these last Sundays of the liturgical year, the Church directs our thoughts, prayers and meditations to the last things, the last ends: death, judgment, Hell, Purgatory and Heaven.
“In all thy works remember thy last end, and thou shalt never sin.” (Sir 7:40) The consideration of the end of our life also means that we must consider its goal. Either we accomplish that for which God has made and created us, or we fail. If we succeed, we will spend eternity participating in divine bliss, seeing God face to face. If we fail, we will continue to exist, but in the most miserable of conditions, being definitely excluded from seeing God and even from any possibility of ever seeing Him.
The consideration of the goal of our life also means that we must draw conclusions for how we lead our life here on earth, “in this valley of tears” (Salve, Regina). The tears are many, necessarily, because the earthly paradise, the garden of Eden with the tree of life has been lost and will not come back. With it the ease and facility to make our way to Heaven have been lost. We are left, luckily not to our own devices, but to an arduous and tearful journey.
St Paul speaks of re-establishing all things in Christ (Eph 1:10), and the last canonized Pope, Pius X, had chosen these words for his episcopal motto: “Omnia instaurare in Christo”.
True Catholics today must busy themselves with participating in this true restoration of all things in Christ. Certainly the restoration of all things in Christ will only be definitively accomplished with and after Christ’s last coming to judge the living and the dead. Still, we are not meant to sit back and relax while waiting for it to happen – be it only because it just might not happen while we are alive. “Man liegt, wie man sich bettet.” – “You sleep according to how you have made your bed.” One dies as one has lived. We need to practice the “ars moriendi – the art of dying”, as the Christian ages have put it. We must live virtuously, imitating Our Lord and living from his redeeming grace.
True restoration therefore does not consist in the attempt to re-establish some kind of Catholic life, ancient or recent. Most “traditionalists” have been, and are misled by this kind of concept or idea.
“We must live like the Apostles, or the early Christians.” Well – start breeding lions for the arena…
“I would have liked to live in the Middle Ages.” Fine – get rid of electricity, of your car, of the 100.000 other things which you find so pleasant, then we shall talk about it…
“All was well in the Church under Pope Pius XII.” He himself would have told you otherwise… Vatican2 did not fall out of the sky on a blue morning (except maybe in the mind of Roncalli).
Only last Sunday St Paul has told us: “See therefore, brethren, how you walk circumspectly: not as unwise, but as wise: redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” (Eph 5:15-16) He was not speaking about the coronavirus and the great reset, to be sure. He knew and wrote that “the days are evil”. They are evil because the evil of sin, of disobeying God, is in us as a consequence of sin, both original and personal. That evil does not go away for as long as we live. In another place the same Apostle writes: “I so fight, not as one beating the air” (1Cor 9:26). St Paul certainly was not a day-dreamer or someone thinking he was born into the wrong epoch or century. He knew that time is one of God’s precious gifts to us, His creatures. We have to redeem the time, “re-emere – to buy back”. If we do not make good use of our time, if we do not make all efforts possible to restore all things in Christ in the time and age where God has put us – then we shall certainly miss out on God’s promise of timeless, unending happiness.
Why do I put these thoughts to you? Because there are many “traditionalists” who have some vague idea of how necessary it is to restore all things in Christ. But they do not get their starting point right because they fail to properly assess and understand the nature of the times we are living in. There is a broad spectrum of errors. It reaches from those who believe that things are just slightly off their “normal” course, to those who are convinced that the end of times must be imminent. Both are right and wrong, depending on what point of view we consider. The problem is that even in whatever they are right, they are right for the wrong reason!
It is true that the state of the Church is abnormal, in just one point. But they get that point wrong, believing that “the authorities” are malfunctioning or permitting abuses to happen. They do not understand that the Church is deprived of her Authority because there is no Pope, formally speaking. The practical consequences of what they do, and of what we do, could not be greater.
It is true that we are approaching the end of times. But they get that point wrong because they believe that the coming of Christ must be imminent. The Thessalonians believed the same thing at the time of St Paul who set them right (cf. 2Thes 2:2). Each one of us gets closer to his grave at a ratio of 24 hours per day. The same is true for the end of times and the General Judgment. It is getting closer one day at a time. This is self-evident. Christ, at the same time as he invites us to discern the signs of the times, clearly tells us, though, that no-one knows the moment of the end of times. We may think that the world will end soon – but we cannot be sure about it. Therefore it is certainly wrong and perverse to act upon such an assumption.
There is no Catholic panic-button! I have mentioned this several times, and I think it is very important. As Catholics we should not panic, not even in our greatest trials, particularly not in our last agony; but recommend ourselves to God who is in charge in a sovereign manner, at all times and everywhere. This is the necessary consequence of our belief in divine Providence. Too many have convinced themselves that “they” - the Freemasons… the enemies of the Church… Klaus Schwab… or whoever or whatever - are in charge. This erroneous stance reflects the deep-seated ignorance and pride of the fallen human nature: I amin charge, I need to control my life, and if possible also the lives of those around me.
Poor them! Poor us! How difficult it is for us to acquire the spirit of Our Lord, the spirit of the Beatitudes. “See therefore, brethren, how you walk circumspectly: not as unwise, but as wise.“
At the same time as the devil’s helpers, the enemies of Christ’s Cross, do according to their diminished intelligence and sick will, God does His work, mostly ignored by the world and undetected. Again and again we witness today how Our Lord really means what he says: “And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham for our father. For I tell you that God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” (Mt 3:9) Persons of all walks of life are coming to the true faith. Again, remember what Our Lord told the Jews when the Roman centurion humbly asked him to heal his servant, but that he was not worthy that Jesus enter under his roof: “And I say to you that many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.” (Mt 8:11)
We need to convince ourselves that God does not need our goods: “I have said to the Lord, thou art my God, for thou hast no need of my goods.” (Ps 15:2) God does not need us! But He honors us if He wants to make use of us for His glory and for the coming of His kingdom – “Thy kingdom come…” If we forfeit our place and role in the divine plan, God has no trouble finding a replacement. God has nothing to gain, nothing to lose. In His infinite bounty He desires to let us participate in His eternal and unalterable glory and bliss. We have everything to gain if we act according to our demand: “Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven”. If we act otherwise, if we do as we will, we lose everything.
Let us therefore learn to discern that which essential or formal in all things. Let us learn to remit the other one’s debt because we also have been forgiven a lot, by fellow human beings, and above all by God! “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.” Let us learn to serve God here and now, and not in a mirage of the past or of the future! Only if we detach ourselves from the world and from our own self-will and self-love, can we be fit and apt instruments for the true restoration of all things in Christ. This is the example given to us by Our Lady, the Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, the Mother of God.
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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