By James Larson
Below is linked a new article: Fear of the Lord and The Beatitude of Poverty of Spirit. The five-page Introduction to this proposed series of articles on the Gifts of the Holy Spirit and The Beatitudes should be read
first, if the reader has not already done so. It is also linked below. We believe these two articles to be of such importance that all readers should consider forwarding them to anyone and everyone who might possibly be
interested.
Fear of the Lord
And the Beatitude of Poverty of Spirit
“And He shall be filled with the spirit of the fear of the Lord.” (Isaias 11: 3).
The above-quoted prophesy of Isaias refers to the human soul of the Sacred Humanity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in Whom there never was, or ever could be, even the slightest stain of sin. We are therefore left to wonder in what possible way we might consider Jesus to be “filled with the spirit of fear of the Lord”.
The mystery deepens when we also consider the following words of St. John: “Fear is not in charity, but perfect charity casteth out fear….” The human Soul of Jesus was always in possession of the Beatific Vision, and therefore certainly in possession of “perfect charity”. And yet, He was still “filled with the spirit of the fear of the Lord”.
Obviously, there is a deeper mystery present here concerning this Gift which is not present in our common understand of the notion of “fear”. We shall only be able to penetrate to some understanding of this mystery if we begin by attempting to see how this Gift is absolutely essential for fallen man. And in so doing, we shall also come to see that fear of the Lord is not only “the beginning of wisdom”, but fully present at its End. And we can only do this through coming to a deeper understanding of the nature of original sin and its relationship to all the subsequent sins of man in his fallen state.
The Relationship between Original and Actual Sin
“Every best gift, and every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration.” (James 1: 17).St. Thomas teaches that “all actual sins virtually pre-exist in original sin, as in a principle”. (ST, I-II, Q. 82, A.2).
What is this “principle”?
The temptation offered by Satan to Eve (and through her to Adam) was that by rising up against God, “You shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil.” St. Thomas therefore teaches that the special sin of Adam which we call Original Sin consisted in an act of intellectual pride (an act of the will) by which man desired an excellence above his nature in which he sought, of himself and independently of God, to be the determiner of what is good and evil. In other words, such an act of pride consisted in a very precise rebellion against the truth formulated by St. James above, which well deserves repeating: “Every best gift, and every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration.”
But St. Thomas, in commenting on the passage from Ecclesiasticus 10:15 which states, “The beginning of the pride of man is apostasy”, also says that in consideration of the sin of pride itself, we encounter an even deeper causative root. He writes:
“Apostasy from God is stated to be the beginning of pride, in so far as it denotes a turning away from God, because from the fact that man wishes not to be subject to God, it follows that he desires inordinately his own excellence in temporal things.” (ST, I-II, Q.84, A.2).
Thomas of course wrote before the existence of the Douay-Rheims Bible, in which we find the following translation of Ecclesiasticus 10: 14-15
:
“The beginning of the pride of man, is to fall off from God: Because his heart is departed from him that made him: for pride is the beginning of all sin.”
The word “apostasy”, which Thomas uses, has now come to signify a very specific mortal sin: the complete rejection of the Christian faith. But clearly in the meaning given to it by Thomas and the Book of Ecclesiasticus, it denotes a deeper and more ancient usage – the fundamental movement –turning away from – God in the deepest part of the human soul which immerses us in that pride which is the beginning of any sin – mortal or venial.
The Greek word from which the English word apostasy is derived is ȧpŏstȧsĭa. It is composed of two roots: apo (away from), and stēnai (standing). It therefore signifies that departure of the human heart “away from” standing in the presence of God with that total submission of both mind and heart which acknowledges that, in the words of St. James, “every best gift, and every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration.” Such “apostasy” is at the root of all sin. It is here where we come to understand, as Thomas says, that “all actual sins virtually pre-exist in original sin, as in a principle”. All sin is a departure of the human heart from standing upright in the presence of God and acknowledging in the depths of our souls that everything is received from God.
We are now also in a position to understand how Jesus, in his Humanity, was “filled with the spirit of the fear of the Lord”. Fear of the Lord denotes the Gift of the Holy Spirit through which any created spiritual being, including the human soul of Our Lord, stands in righteousness before God. As the Book of Acts relates concerning the speech of Stephen when he was brought before the council of the Jews:
“But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looking up steadfastly to heaven, saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God. And he said: Behold I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man, standing on the right hand of God.” (Acts 7: 55).
And we must then further understand that this standing in the fullness of the first Gift of the Holy Spirit was perfected to an infinite degree in Our Lord’s living of the first Beatitude:
“Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man. He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross.” (Phil. 2: 6-8).
Christ’s obedience unto the Cross entailed that fullness of the Gift of fear of the Lord which was lived in an equally infinite poverty of spirit.
Verse five, which immediately precedes the above quote reads: “For let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus…..” For Jesus, the Gift of Fear of the Lord and the Beatitude of Poverty of Spirit were fulfilled in simplicity and purity of Heart, standing in complete innocence before God. And such is also true of Our Blessed Mother. For the rest of us, however, this Gift and its corresponding Beatitude involve a path through an enormous tangle of human self-deceits in order that we might arrive at that simplicity of heart which is true spiritual childhood. It is in this warfare that Fear of the Lord takes on those additional connotations that we associate with the word “fear”. This entails not only fear of God and His just punishments, but also a deep fear of our own self-deceit. Such fear is the absolutely essential foundation at any point of our spiritual life in order that we may stand before God. And such standing in Truth before God is the pre-requisite for all true charity.
This warfare must be conducted in all the various faculties of our being. We shall begin with the intellect and its standing in the Light of God’s Truth. Jesus declared to Pilate: “For this was I born, and for this came I into this world; that I should give testimony to the truth. Everyone that is of the truth, heareth my voice.” (John 18: 37). The greatest victim of accommodation of the Catholic Church to the spirit of the world in modern times is the loss of faith in the power and radiance of Truth upon the human soul. This departure of the collective Catholic heart from the Life and Light of Christ has been growing at an increasing pace, and at what now appears an exponential rate, for centuries. It is here where we shall encounter the depths of that impurity of mixture (please read the Introduction to this series of articles) with the modern world which St. Thomas gives as the reason for the fact that the final purification of the world is to be accomplished through Fire because our charity has grown tepid.
Grieving the Holy Spirit in the Depths of Human Nature
“Therefore I say to you: Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven man, but the blasphemy of the Spirit shall not be forgiven.” (Mt. 12: 30).
St. Thomas defines evil as “the privation of right order towards the divine good”. He further teaches that no being is capable of willing evil in itself, but rather that evil consists in seeking to obtain some good through means that are contrary to God’s will and established order. This is true in regards to all of man’s activities: spiritual and physical. We can of course easily understand this in regard to things of the flesh. There is no sin, for instance in sexual desire itself, but only in the means which might be use to satisfy such desire.Things get much more complicated, however, when we enter into consideration of man’s highest, and most important faculty: the intellect. St. John teaches that “the life [of Christ] is the light of man.” (John 1:4). Jesus Christ is of course the Word of Truth eternally generated from the Father. It is therefore fully natural that any man should respond in the depths of his mind and heart to the truths of Christ. Jesus flatly declared, “Every one that is of the truth, heareth my voice.” There is therefore no area of man’s complex nature where the falling away from standing (apostasy) in righteousness before God is more destructive to both his own soul and the souls of all other human beings than the failure to stand in the Truth of Christ.
There is of course a certain prudence to be exercised in our witness of God’s Truth to others. But there is also a false and evil prudence – what both scripture and Thomas call the “wisdom of the flesh”. It consists of silence in the face of evil. In regard to the necessity for external profession of our Faith, St. Thomas writes:
“Thus then it is not necessary for salvation to confess one’s faith at all times and in all places, but in certain places and at certain times, when, namely, by omitting to do so, we would deprive God of due honor, or our neighbor of a service that we ought to render him….The end of faith, even as of the other virtues, must be referred to the end of charity, which is the love of God and our neighbor. Consequently when God’s honor and our neighbor’s good demand, man should not be contented with being united by faith to God’s truth, but ought to confess his faith outwardly.” (II-II, Q.3, A.3).
In the Introduction to this series of articles, we examined St. Thomas’s teaching concerning what he terms “The Final Conflagration” which precedes the Final Judgment of the world. Thomas taught that it is singularly appropriate that this final purification should be accomplished through Fire because of the “impurity of mixture” of truth with error in souls at the end of time which had led to that tepidity and lukewarmness in which “the charity of many shall grow cold.” In a world which now waxes old in its betrayal of Christian civilization, and which is immersed in the pluralism, relativism, and false freedoms of “messianic” democracy, it is the overriding temptation of Satan for Catholics to be silent in terms of essential Catholic doctrines in order to accomplish partial agendas which they have convinced themselves are in the service of God, but which in reality mask dissembling and double-mindedness in their attempt to be both a friend of God and a friend of this world.
In order to understand the destructiveness which ensues upon such “impurity of mixture”, it will help to examine one specific issue.
There is no area where such duplicity has caused Catholics to violate the charity due to both God and neighbor than the Pro-Life movement and its silence in regard to contraception.
In the realm of moral truths, there is no evil which is more vicious and contrary to the charity owed to both God and man than abortion. There is therefore no moral truth more “necessary for our salvation” (St.Thomas’ words above) than that we stand before God and our fellow human beings in the full, integral truth concerning the horrendous evil of killing unborn children created by God in His own image. There is therefore no purposeful silence in regard to this issue, especially when exercised on a political level, which does not immerse us in evil, or endanger our own salvation.
All those who consider themselves orthodox, conservative, or traditional Catholics would of course declare that they believe in the equal dignity and sacredness of all human life from conception until natural death. But these same Catholics are silent in the realm of “Pro-Life” political activity (and of course also in any social discourse with those who are not like-minded) in regard to contraception.
Eternal Life Publishing (distributor of Fr. Hardon’s writings, etc.) publishes a booklet titled Infant Homicides Through Contraceptives, written by Dr. Bogomir M. Kuhar, PharmD., BS.Pharm, FASCP, in cooperation with the moral theologian William J. Smith, and with strong endorsements by people such as Fr. Hardon and Dr. Charles Rice. It was first published in 1994, and has since gone through 8 printings, including a revision in 2009. Following is from the Introduction by Dr. Bogomir:
“Infant Homicides Through Contraceptives is not meant to be a detailed, exhaustive treatise on the subject, but rather a survey review of research and literature clearly and unequivocally providing the conclusion that all steroid-based so-called ‘contraceptives’ and many other products are abortifacient in some instances, often more than has been surmised previously. Using statistics from the pharmaceutical manufacturers of these abhorrent chemicals and the U.S. federal government’s own agencies, it conservatively estimates the horrific numbers of preborn children silently slaughtered in their most early days.”
We need add that although Dr. Bogomir states that his study is not detailed or exhaustive, this will not be the reader’s impression. There is a great deal of research here covering what appear to be all the specific brands of oral abortifacients and their modes of action. We need also add that included within the abortifacient research are the various forms of intrauterine devices, Depo-Provera injections, and Norplant implants. Anything new in the last 10 years is of course not included in this study. The Contraception industry is ever claiming the development of more effective contraceptives, and more efficient and widespread use of them. (especially due to educational efforts).
We must note in the beginning of the following analysis the degree to which language itself is used by the “pro-contraceptive” establishment in the service of the Father of Lies. This begins with the very words “contraception” or “contraceptive” themselves, which in their etymology (root derivations) simply mean “against (stop) conception”. The substances and devices which we will be examining below, although they may sometimes stop conception through preventing ovulation, all kill conceived human beings after ovulation and fertilization. They therefore all fully deserve the name of either “baby-killing substances” or “baby-killing devices”. We ask the reader to keep this in mind during all that follows.
Dr. Bogomir offers us both low range and high range estimates in regard to his “conservative” estimates concerning the infant homicides caused by the different major types of contraceptives. The low range totals out at 6,555,000 annually: the high ranges total out as 11,625,000 annually.
For the year 2016, the CDC estimated 623,471 surgical abortions in this country. If we contrast this figure with Dr. Bogomir’s low range estimate, we are left with there being over 10 times the number of babies slaughtered by contraceptives as there are by surgical abortion. If we use his high range estimate, we come up with a slaughter rate of the unborn which is over 18 times that of surgical abortions.
Clearly, in refusing to unite the issue of contraceptive infant homicide with that of surgical abortion in the public and political arena, the vast majority of “Pro-Lifers” do not really believe what they say they believe – the equal right and dignity of all human beings from conception until natural death. In fact one is led to the logical conclusion that they do not really believe that these “littlest ones” are as much human persons as those they can make baby models of or see clearly in ultrasound images. They simply are unable to stand before God or man in the fullness of God’s Truth. They are profoundly immersed in that very “impurity of mixture” with the world which has little faith in the radiance and power of the Truths of Christ, and instead are placing their faith in the politics of man and in the so-called democratic process. We ask that those who do not understand the heretical nature of the fundamental principles of democracy, or the way in which involvement with these principles over hundreds of years has served to profoundly immerse man in the spirit of Antichrist, to read our article Democracy and the Spirit of Antichrist.
Worth mentioning here is what involvement with this specific “impurity of mixture” has done to the integrity of the language we use, and through the misuse of this language, to our emasculated Catholic consciousnesses.
It is very common in the American political realm to distinguish between “Pro-Life” and “Pro-Abortion” politicians.
There is almost certainly no such thing as a Pro-Life politician. All politicians are pro-abortion to one extent or another. And in being Pro-abortion at all, they are Pro- Abortion period. The exception proves both the rule and the language. We would not refuse to call a man who rapes one woman a “rapist”, while at the same time being perfectly at ease calling the same man a “rapist” if he had raped 20. The same is true of someone who is a murderer. All politicians that we know of, in either of the two major parties, support or are silent on the issue of contraception. It would be absolutely impossible for them to be elected if they were not at least silent. They are all therefore politically “Pro-Infanticide” – pro Murder of the Unborn. And, of course, it would be virtually impossible to find a politician from either of the major parties who did not support abortion in the case of rape, incest, or so-called “life of the mother”. The “life of the mother” issue was prominent when I was a boy. It was the scalpel used to cut apart the integrity of Christian consciences, and all else followed in its wake. The fact is that in any truly formed Catholic conscience and heart, there never should have been a moral quagmire involving this issue. A doctor is morally obliged to try to save both, but the bottom line is there can never be justification for intending to kill either baby or mother.
It is equally destructive to the integrity and purity of Catholic consciousness to call one politician “more Pro-Life” than another. We would not call a politician more Pro-Life who promoted the murder of one six year old girl, than another who promoted the murder of 100. Such would be absurd. And yet, in terms of persons created by God living in the womb of their mothers, we do not waffle at doing so.
We are perfectly aware that all that is written above may seem extreme to virtually all Catholics, including those who might identify as traditional Catholics. We simply ask all readers to consider the following fact. In any of the Catholic countries in the middle ages (noticeably under the authority of a Catholic monarchy rather than modern democracy), all that is written above would simply be considered elementary for any faithful Catholic. We ask every reader to truly contemplate this fact, and apply it to their own minds and hearts. What emerges from such contemplation should be the truth that over decades, and even centuries, of surrendering our individual lives to civilizations immersed in an “impurity of mixture” between the Gospel and the world, our minds and hearts have been so altered as not to be able to stand in the full radiance of the Truth of Christ. We have grown tepid and lukewarm, and our charity has grown cold.
In one of the most enigmatic passages from the Gospels, Our Lord declares:
“He that is not with me, is against me: and he that gathereth not with me scattereth. Therefore, I say to you: Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men, but the blasphemy of the Spirit shall not be forgiven. And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but he that shall speak against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in the world to come.” (Mt. 12: 30-32).
St. Thomas, in attempting to understand the unforgivable nature of this “blasphemy of the Spirit”, offers us a survey of the opinions of early Church Fathers and others in regard to this enigma (II-II, Q.14, A.3). For Saints Athanasius, Hillary, Ambrose, Jerome, and Chrysostom this unforgivable sin consists in uttering actual blasphemy against either the Trinity collectively, or one of the Persons of the Trinity. St. Augustine, on the other hand considers this unforgivable sin to refer to final impenitence. And others consider this to be a “sin committed against that good which is appropriated to the Holy Ghost through a vicious habit or contempt.
We first notice that all these views consider the Sin against the Holy Ghost as the sin of an individual. And, of course, all are hard to reconcile with the Gospel truth that all individual men, until their actual death, have open to them the possibility of God’s grace and their own repentance and conversion. Free will is always present, and therefore there is always the possibility of responding to God’s grace. We also, of course, have the witness of Christian history in which great sinners have been converted on their death bed.
We might also therefore consider that this Sin against the Holy Spirit might not refer just to individual sin, but rather to an “impurity of mixture” existing at the End of Time in which the faith and charity of collective mankind has grown so tepid and cold as to make it impossible for the Holy Spirit to any longer dwell with and in mankind.
St. Thomas teaches that the quantity of both charity and the Holy Spirit, being divinely infused, cannot of themselves decrease or grow cold in a man. They can only cease to be in man through mortal sin. But the degree to which charity actually is present in the human soul can either increase or decrease in accordance as to whether our hearts are either enlarged or diminished (especially through venial sin) in response to this presence. And this is determined through our acts in response to, and in accordance with, the presence of the Holy Spirit and His Gifts.
We need also realize that, although venial sins cannot gradually “turn into” mortal sins, they can “dispose”, as Thomas says, a man to the commission of mortal sins. We can see this very clearly in regard to sins of the flesh, but it becomes much more difficult to discern when we consider sins of the mind and heart which involve that “impurity of mixture” of which Thomas writes. This should become evident when we consider the words of Our Lord which immediately precede His statement regarding the blasphemy of spirit: “He that is not with me, is against me, and he that gatherest not with me, scattereth.” We may of course consider even venial sin as not being “with Christ”, and as something which “scattereth”. But such scattering becomes immensely more serious when it is applied to the truths of the Gospel, which are the Light of Christ revealed to the world. We as human beings cannot judge the heart of any other individual person as to when the prevalence of such failures disposes him to that mortal sin which becomes an “idolatry of this world” which is mortal. Only God can make such a judgment as to what has happened in the deepest recesses of the human heart. But we certainly can make a judgment as to the prevalence of such an “impurity of mixture” – a massive scattering – now engulfing the world. As we have seen this is profoundly manifest in the so-called “Pro-Life” movement. And this mixture has not only been present in this movement from its inception through the forms of silence and complicity which we have detailed above in regard to contraception, etc., but has grown in scope and intensity since Roe vs. Wade. This is especially evident in the March for Life movement in Washington D.C.
When it began shortly after the Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade, the March for Life movement was vehemently against all surgical abortions, and also emphatically for a Constitutional Amendment, not only reversing Roe vs. Wade, but establishing the right of all human life from conception until natural death within the Constitution itself. We must note of course that even at that time, this same movement was silent in regard to the killing of untold millions of God’s children through contraception. But things were only to decay further.
Previous to the 2020 March for Life event, the website March For Life Action ran a video titled America has consensus. A Pro-Life Consensus. As of this writing, it is still on their website. It consists of seven women repeating in what might be considered a hypnotic manner, certain words and phrases. The first of these is that “America has consensus.” In addition to the title of this video, the word “consensus” is repeated five times in this one-minute presentation. This “consensus” consists in the fact that 8 in 10 Americans believe that “abortion should have real legal limits”, evidenced by the fact that “even 6 out of 10 ‘Pro-Choice’ Americans agree that abortion should only happen through the first 3 months, at most”. And after offering us these statistics, two of these ladies repeat in succession, “That’s consensus, that’s consensus!” Finally the video concludes with the statement, “Pro-Choice politicians want abortion right up until birth”, and that it is this “extreme position” which is being rejected by two-thirds of Americans.
Such is the consensus now being supported by the March for Life. We ask the reader to also note carefully the language used in this video. This so-called consensus is being promoted as a “Pro-Life” consensus. On the contrary, as we have shown, there is no Pro-Life position which accepts any killing of the unborn. Such a consensus can only be considered as a Lie of Satan. Secondly, we point out the absolute disingenuousness of speaking of “Pro-Choice politicians”. In the first place, as we have demonstrated, it is almost certain that all politicians support infant homicides in one way or another, and that all are therefore Pro-killing of babies. The so-called “Pro-Choice” politicians pin-pointed for opposition in this video are only distinguished from other politicians because they adamantly support surgical abortions. They might be singled out as being even more barbaric than their political counterparts, but certainly not by using the watered-down euphemism “Pro-Choice”. They are simply “Pro-Infanticide” and “Pro-Murder” in a much more evident and barbaric way.
The extraordinary fact that “Pro-Lifers” have come to accept such language is indicative of an “impurity of mixture” which has so penetrated their minds and hearts as to make us greatly fear for the presence of supernatural charity in their souls. Again, in order to make this more clear, we offer an elementary comparison: Imagine a member of the NAACP giving the name “Pro-Choice” to a politician who is either personally for the killing of some black people, or who claims to be not personally for such killing, but is in support of others who “choose” to do so.
We cannot depart from this subject without mentioning President Donald Trump. The “Pro-Life” movement is now in almost rapturous support of Donald Trump as some sort of saviour. In fact some who have fallen into such adoration are now openly saying that those Catholics who do not do likewise are traitors or cowards.
Considering all that is written above, Donald Trump can in no way be considered “Pro-Life”, despite steps he may have taken to stop governmental financing of some surgical abortions, or of words he may have uttered in his speech to the crowd at the recent March for Life. He is not Pro-Life, any more than any other politician. He clearly supports “contraceptive rights” (even though he recognizes the right of those who might refuse for religious reasons financing health care which provides for such), he supports abortion in the cases of rape, incest, and the life of the mother. And further, he has fully accepted the Supreme Court ruling concerning homosexual marriage, and has instituted a world-wide campaign to abolish in all countries laws which criminalize or discriminate against homosexuals. The latter is enormously destructive to the family and a complete perversion of the concepts of love and charity, and therefore represents support of a pagan culture in which abortion must be seen as a “natural” right.
Nor can we be sure that there is any genuine movement in the depths of his soul towards any lasting support of what we have pointed out to be the severely vitiated and double-minded “Pro-Life” movement. He certainly knows full-well that his only chance of re-election depends upon the support of such Evangelical and Catholic “Pro-Lifers”. In light of what will be offered on the other side of this Presidential race by the Democratic Party, it could be considered permissible to vote for him while proverbially” holding our noses”. But the rapturous support of him now circulating among many traditional Catholics can only serve to draw them deeper into that cesspool of American democratic politics which will only intensify and expand that “impurity of mixture” in their minds and hearts which fails to stand in the fullness of Christ’s Truth.
We also need to mention that there seems to be a dominant and growing position among those who consider themselves pro-life to combine the effort to overturn Roe vs. Wade with returning the right for passing legislation concerning this issue to the individual States. However, if there is one individual right that pre-eminently deserves protection in the Constitution of any country, it is the right to life of all citizens from conception until natural death. To promote in any way this “states rights” effort is simply a democratically inspired mask for total deception, a recipe for chaos, and a total negation of any integrity in the Constitution itself. Again, we ask the reader to read our article Democracy and the Spirit of Antichrist in order understand how such a decay could come to be established in the minds and hearts of those who might call themselves Christians.
In the beginning of this article we noted that Our Lord’s standing in the fullness of the Gift of Fear of the Lord was fulfilled in that Beatitude of “the spirit of poverty” which led Him to the obedience of the Cross. Even a tepid tepid and lukewarm possession of the Gift of the Holy Spirit called “fear of the Lord” should now lead us to that poverty of spirit which in some way realizes the extent to which our own souls have been infected with that “impurity of mixture” demonstrated above. It should, in other words, enlighten us with the knowledge that our only hope lies in that refuge which God has provided in these End Times as the source for the graces for our own purification from this apostasy away from standing in the fullness of God’s Light and Truth. This refuge, this place, is the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
It is Mary whose soul was pierced by a sword “that, out of many hearts, thoughts may be revealed.” (Luke 2: 35). It is in the depths of Our Lady’s Heart that our thoughts may be disentangled from error by being bathed in the fullness of the Light of Christ, and our hearts purified from that impurity of mixture with a world that is now in the process of turning us into the likeness of that man who, in the words of St. James, “beheld his countenance in a glass. For he beheld himself, and went his way, and presently forgot what manner of man he was.” (James 1: 23-24). Satan seeks not just the ruin of individual souls, but that fundamental alteration in the depths of the nature of all human minds and hearts which will erase any possibility of our standing in any sort of integrity in the presence of God. Such is the “operation of error” now unfolding before us at an exponential pace.
We ask all who read this article to work hard to implement what is in our Original Proposal. We have just passed by the Feast of the Purification and Presentation, which we believe to be singularly appropriate to this effort. But as we have noted elsewhere, this effort is also very appropriate any time, and especially on other Feast Days. This is especially true of the coming Feast of the Annunciation. St. Louis de Montfort said that the Incarnation (which occurred at the Annunciation) is the greatest of the mysteries of Our Lord’s life because it contains the grace and intention of all the rest. It could contain the grace of our purification. This year it falls on Wednesday, March 25th.
Note: We believe this article to be of such importance that all readers should consider forwarding it, along with our Introductory article, to anyone and everyone who might possibly be interested.
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