These Wretched Times Apocalypse or New Dawn?
“See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, Redeeming the time, because the days are evil” - Ephesians 5:15
“O temporal! O mores!” — Cicero
Certain grumblings of some Catholics should shock good Catholics. None more than when a Catholic whines that these atrocious days in which we live are signs of the ‘end-times.’ Those despairing Catholics are guilty of three sins. In the first place, pride, for they are claiming a knowledge that not even Our Savior claimed, “But of that day or hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only” (Mt. 24:36).
In the second place. presumption, assuming that our scant intellects can plumb the impenetrable Providential arrangements of our Triune God (cf. “O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are his judgments, and how inscrutable his ways! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been his counsellor?") (Rom 11:33).
Finally. despair, believing that the times are beyond redemption, while refusing to believe that God grants us the grace to vanquish any obstacle in attaining our true good here on earth or the perfect happiness of Heaven. When we pray Psalm 118, “This is the day the Lord has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it” we are affirming the doctrinal truth that God in His wisdom has placed us in this time as the best time for us to achieve our sanctification and accomplish His glory. Not yesterday, not tomorrow; not there, rather than here; not later but not now.
Jean-Pierre de Caussade fittingly names this divine truth “the sacrament of the present moment” and enjoins us to an “abandonment to Divine Providence.” This great eighteenth century spiritual master writes:
Thus when we thirst for holiness, curiosity for theoretical knowledge of it can only drive it further from us. We must put speculation on one side, and with simplicity drink everything that God’s designs present to us in actions and sufferings. What happens to us each moment by God’s design is for us the holiest, best, and most divine thing.
With signature clarity Venerable Fulton Sheen augments Caussade:
The inscrutable will of God (is something) which we cannot understand, anymore than a mouse
in a piano can understand why a musician disturbs him by playing.
Our joy is in the doctrinal truth that God has placed us in the time and place most propitious for both our happiness and our sanctification. Imperfect understanding of this truth leaves us prey to the varied impairments delivered by the devil. One instance of his artifice is the aching wish for a better time or place; to live in a more felicitous past or future. Tempting indeed, but damning. When the Vandals were making their hellish march to Hippo (present day Algeria), Saint Augustine lay dying in his bed. The people were succumbing to hysteria. Some made their way to the residence of the failing Bishop, moaning; “O Bishop, these times! These times!” To which Saint Augustine sternly replied, “Who made these times? Who placed you in these times? When you change yourselves, the times will change!”
Augustine was merely repeating the words of Saint Paul, “Redeem the time.” No doubt our treacherous times are fraught with danger because they are scorched with Satan’s fire. Airbrushing that fact is lunacy, and lunacy is never a program for faithful Catholics. Any attempt to sideline the invisible powers behind all of it demean Saint Paul’s chilling warning, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Eph. 6:12).
Equally parlous is overreaction. Good Catholics cannot consume their days ransacking books and websites for special prayers of ‘deliverance.’ The Catholic response to this spectacle of civilizational and ecclesial collapse must always a be traditional one: the Holy Rosary and Saint Michael the Archangel. Otherwise we sink into the quicksand of delirium.
Take Our Lord’s own words seriously: “Unless ye become converted and become like little children, ye shall not enter the Kingdom of heaven” (Mt. 18:3); and “Consider the lilies of the field how they grow; they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was never thus arrayed” (Lk. 12:27).
No ‘toiling’: with exertions of worry and idle chatter. Rather ‘childlikeness’ — which is following the example of the saints. The Word Made Flesh gave us the road to heaven and peace. Why must we insist that we have a better idea? Alas, here are the marching orders of Catholics. Here stands the action plan for us. With each prayer in these wretched times, there must be a corresponding apostolic action. The eyes of Faith permit us to see the errors, but the virtue of fortitude inspires us to attack the errors. The enemies of Christ in the Church have mightily struggled for decades to persuade us that there is no enemy. All are our friends. Even if we should recognize an enemy, he ought never to be fought, only ‘accompanied” and ‘listened to.” This etiolated position calls to mind the unsettling words of Hilaire Belloc:
We sit by and watch the barbarian, we tolerate him. In the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence. His cosmic inversion of our old certitudes and fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond; and on these faces, there is no smile.
The stench of this suicidal attitude is epitomized in the trope, “the altar rail is not a battlefield.” This is a flagrant violation of the Savior’s teaching, “Think not that I come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword” (Mt. 10:34). Or, “And from the days of John the Baptist until now the Kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force” (Mt. 11:12).
These words of Christ do not recommend bellicosity; they demand strength in fighting the enemy. False irenicism is a mockery of this divine injunction, and faithful Catholics have every obligation to resist it no matter who says it or what they wear. When analyzing the virtue of fortitude (a varied, rich, and polyvalent virtue), Saint Thomas Aquinas speaks of the obligation it imposes, “to pounce upon evil.”
This is our vocation. To stand with the heroism of our martyrs. To unloosen our tongues. We have been given the fire of the Holy Spirit to cast a fire upon the earth. Woe to those who befriend the shadows.
But what of Saint Paul’s injunction: ‘circumspection” and “be not unwise”? Simply put, consider each action carefully before it is made. Courage is marching fearlessly against the enemy, but each march is designed for a particular enemy. Moreover, each soldier of Christ marches with a slightly different step. For each Catholic this response of fortitude varies with circumstance and state in life. For each it requires deploying all God’s gifts and talents, intellectual and otherwise, to enter the fray. Be sure the action be strategic, smart, and tactical, without being brash or counterproductive. Here the faithful Catholic is guided by prudence. Recall that prudence does not counsel pusillanimity; its object is effectiveness. Wars are lost by stupid and overly zealous soldiers; so are supernatural ones.
The overarching key to Saint Paul is found in the words of Chesterton in his Lunacy and Letters: “Christianity establishes a rule and an order. The chief aim of that order is to give room for good things to run wild.”
Now, that sounds like a plan.
Father John A. Perricone is Professor of Philosophy at Saint Francis College (Brooklyn, NY). He received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Fordham University (Bronx, New York). Numerous talks by Father Perricone can be found on our website www.KeepTheFaith.org. Father Perricone offers the Tridentine Mass each Sunday at 9:00 am at Our Lady of Sorrows Church, Jersey City.
(Article was originally published in The Latin Mass Magazine: These Wretched Times Apocalypse or New Dawn?, Summer 2022)
[ Image credit: The Seventh Plague of Egypt by John Martin, 1823]
