Maybe it sounds “crazy,” but I am actually grateful that our spiritual enemies are revealing themselves so clearly. Can you imagine having those foot soldiers in the army of Satan be invisible to us? with their same antagonisms to the Deposit of Faith and to the Church’s moral teaching? publicly giving idolatrous worship? deeply engaged in the raging sexual sin within the hierarchy? and, yet, not having been outed so we can defend ourselves?
We know this dissembling of the Church began years ago with Communist infiltration, incipient socialism, and slow destruction of the European bastion of faith. We need not look far to see the perpetuation of such injury to the universal Church, through serious damage to the Chinese Catholic Church, and by the unleashing of idolatrous worship under the disguised Amazonian evangelization. What has been accomplished against the Church should be obvious even to the spiritually blind.
But disclosing the identity of the perpetrators is a great mercy by God to the Faithful, priest and laity alike. Why is the enemy exposing itself? Partly, one might say, because it can’t help itself. It is driven by pride, and by taking public credit for each and every offense against the people of God. It was probably a disappointment to the army of Satan that it didn’t appear until Chapter 3 of Genesis. And Our Blessed Lord allows such bragging as a gift and warning to us. If we were not wracked by the presence of such sin, we might never think to defend ourselves, especially through prayer. At the Last Judgment, very few will have an acceptable excuse that they didn’t and couldn’t have known the breadth of evil.
Should the Jews have recognized Christ as the promised Messiah and individually acted in their own consciences? Or should they have just taken the position to wait for the leaders to decide and give them directions? Before answering, consider Matthew 16:2-3: “…when it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather; for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.” Does it not sound like we are being called to take a position for God? Does it not sound like we must consider ALL that God is revealing to us?
Today, Thanksgiving Day, I am grateful that we know where the battle lines are drawn.
|