Catholic during the Great Apostasy

Two gospels are fighting for the future: the gospel of the modern superhuman and the gospel of the holy man.Between these two the battle will be decided.The modern superhuman wants to be an eagle, a star in the firmament, a satellite of the sun.He wants, as gods, to be omniscient and omnipotent.In his heart he says: I want to reach up to the heavens.Above the divine stars place my throne. Above the clouds become equal to God.

This is the beginning of Lucifer’s gospel.His credo is short.It consists of one article of faith: I believe only in myself. Modern man pretends to the crown, he wants to rule. The age of democracy has not changed anything in this.Kings are removed, because everyone wants to sit on the throne, and even his footstool to call his property.

The second gospel is the gospel of the eighth of December. The beginning of it: Gratia plena! Dominus tecum! Grace full, the Lord with you, the gospel of the supernatural world! St. John describes it in Revelation: And there appeared a great sign in heaven, A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet.And on her head a crown of twelve stars.

Between these two gospels we have to choose: between the gospel of Lucifer, the gospel of the madness of greatness, ending in the fall, and the gospel of the Immaculate, the gospel of humility, whose end is the ascension. The lust for greatness in our blood flows. The question is whether we want to achieve the goal through the path of law or lawlessness, through rebellion or obedience, through pride or grace. The eighth of December shows us the way. The eighth of December is a day of grace, a day of supernatural greatness, gained through supernatural means.

You must become a child of grace, a supernatural being! In the day of glory of the One who crushed the head of the serpent, I could say: you must be like that mother of yours: uniform, with character, impeccable and resolute.But that would not be enough. I have no right to demand less of you than God demands. And it is God’s will that you be holy! You must become like that mother of yours: you must become holy, you must live a supernatural life completely. That is the Catholic way.

Christianity is a religion, leading mankind to a supernatural purpose and supernatural life. We are human beings. Human beings are made up of body and soul. Beings without a body are not human beings. Beings without a soul are not human beings. So one without the other does not exist. Body and soul together is only a human being, a natural man, coming into the world.

But that is not all. Having been born once, we are born a second time. We are born of water and the Holy Spirit. We are baptized. We become Christians. What is a Christian, a saint, a scholar said: a Christian is a soul in the body, and in this soul God resides. As the body without a soul is not a man, but a rotting and decaying corpse, so the soul without God is not Christian. The second life is missing. It will lack God. The soul without God has the first, natural life. But the second life, beginning with baptism, it has lost. When God leaves the soul, there is death, yes, the second death, supernatural: godlessness, sin.Such a being can be called a man, but it cannot be called a Christian in the true sense of the word.

Let us remember: a Christian is more than an ordinary person not only in degree, but in essence. A Christian is more than a good person. A Christian is a being who has risen above nature, he is someone substantially new, unspeakably great. There is something supernatural and divine in a Christian. This is a dogma. “To all who received him, he gave power to become children of God.”

This is the whole meaning of the work of redemption. St. Augustine says: the Son of God became man so that man might become God. The Son of God became a partaker of human nature so that we might become partakers of the divine nature.

Whoever, when speaking of Christianity, speaks only insofar as it has contributed to the elevation of art, science, the earthly prosperity of nations, and is silent about the divine life in the soul, which we call sanctifying grace, takes things superficially and does not know what the Church is.

If Christianity turned the world into a paradise, and did not bring God into the soul, it would be an empty sound. Christianity is a religion of supernatural life. A Christian is a soul in the body, and God in the soul!

So a Christian is a being in whom the Most Holy God dwells. What does holy mean? A saint is a Christian who lives a full supernatural life. A Christian who lives with God, in God and for God. A Christian is a person who is thoroughly permeated by a stream of supernatural life, light and strength. And so one who resembles the Mother of God: full of grace! full of God! poor.clothed in the sun, with the moon under his feet.Son of the Immaculate.

Let’s be honest, let’s not be hypocritical! Either we are playing a comedy in the church, or the Church is a school of holiness for us, a school of supernatural Christianity. Why should we hesitate to say it openly? We must be saints! Not freaks, not posing as extraordinary, but I repeat: Saints!

Cardinal Mermillod once said in a select company: the earth exists for the purpose of bearing saints.The world lives for the purpose of giving saints. Centuries pass in order to create saints, to fashion souls for whom God is everything. If God on poor earth no longer found saints, do you know what he would do? He would smash the world like a useless vessel.

We have seen that Christianity is the religion of a supernatural goal, of humanity, to which by our own strength we can never be raised by the eagle-like ascents of reason and will. We have seen that it is the religion of a supernatural life already here on earth, a life whose beginning is called sanctifying grace and whose end is called holiness.

Christianity is also a religion, having the means of supernatural life.Supernatural life no man can arouse. To create life is a privilege that God has preserved for Himself.All attempts by scholars to artificially induce the simplest phenomenon of life have failed and will not succeed.God creates each soul individually. This is all the more true of the higher life of souls. Man has no way or means to induce this life. No talent, no crassness, no power or wealth will accomplish this.Only one God can do this. Man’s only task is to serve God as an instrument, to be that channel through which the outpourings of grace flow for others.

We baptize.Through baptism, divine life enters the soul.But let’s not imagine that we are the source of this life.It is Jesus.We absolve.Through absolution, divine life is renewed in the soul.It would be crazy to attribute this to the words of man.Jesus does this. We consecrate.We turn bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. But we don’t do it by our own power.Jesus does it.We preach. When we preach, we have the conviction that it’s something different than when others speak. There is divine power in our words.We also know that never any sermon by itself will evoke a supernatural resolve in anyone.Jesus makes it happen.

He is the vine, We are the branches.All the juices of grace flow from Jesus, Without Him we can do nothing supernatural.Nothing. Neither much, nor little, nothing! Jesus only, Jesus everything, without Jesus nothing. The clergyman who is not deeply convinced of this basic Christian truth is a heretic. But not only clergymen must believe it.We all must believe it. We must be supernaturalists. We must have a deep conviction that the world will be renewed only by supernatural means and supernatural works, These supernatural forces and means are the sacraments and prayer.

The modern world believes only in natural things, in genius, in talent, in energy, in work in the industrial, technical, commercial fields, in scientific political and social work.No century worked so much for the temporal fields of life as the 19th century. But also no century more strongly undermined the belief in the supernatural power of grace than this century of liberalism. The idea of the supernatural disappeared more and more from the fields of scientific, political, social and economic activity.Worked as if Christ had never said “without me you can do nothing.” There were many Catholics, scholars, diplomats, entrepreneurs, craftsmen, but few truly Catholic scholars, diplomats, entrepreneurs and doctors.

What happened.We are looking at it from I-August 1914.Talent went bankrupt. Energy went bankrupt.Everything pure, inherent went bankrupt.Industry, commerce, politics and knowledge followed the wrong path.They failed. As Aggeus once prophesied, “You sowed much, but did not reap much. You have eaten, and you have not eaten; You have covered yourselves, and you have not cooled yourselves; And he who reaped profits has put them in a hole in the bellows. You have brought them home, and I have blown them, says the Lord of Hosts.’* Natural means are not enough to improve mankind. They cannot even make it happier.

Since 1914, God has been teaching people humility. He wants to remind them of the simile of the vine and the mother vine.Without Christ, you can do nothing.You will be like the vine cut off, rejected, withered and burned.

This wounds our cursed modern pride. But science is necessary.

The most splendid scientific and social activity without sanctifying grace is worthless in the eyes of God. There is no reward for it in eternity.God does not need it.At most as fertilizer for the good. The most splendid deeds of even a Christian, when they are not aroused by auxiliary grace, when they are not accompanied by grace, are not spiritualized, enlightened and sanctified by grace – they are meaningless for eternity. Augustine would write of such deeds: Grandes passus, sed extra viam! Great progress, but not on the right path. Bernard, in a letter to Pope Eugenius III, speaking of this mercantile activity that ruins religious life, uses a harsh expression: He calls it occupationes maledictae! Cursed work!

We are Christians.We are supernatural . We are them insofar as grace is in us.We are to work, but this work is not to be an end unto itself, not to be idolatry, but to be a service to God.  A Catholic institute, in which temporal things would have more importance than supernatural things, has no raison d’etre.

This is the mission of the eighth of December. The mission of grace, the mission of the supernatural, the sacred, the divine.Through them we become full of grace, like Mary! By the power of the Holy Spirit, by the power of Jesus.

In Russia, one often encounters an image of the Mother of God from the 6th century. Mary in a sea of rays! Inside on the breast, like the sun, like a glowing Host, Jesus lives in Mary.Jesus is her center and life.As if Mary does not have a heart and soul like other people.Her heart and soul is Jesus, She is a living His monstrance, His tabernacle.Outside Mary, inside Jesus.Here is a faithful image of our Mother.It should be the image and her sons.

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Ks. Robert Mäder – Katolikiem jestem!. Księgarnia Świętego Wojciecha w Poznaniu. 1929.