The Hope of Glory

"It is Christ in you, the hope of glory!"

We need a resurgence in American Catholicism. We need Scripture to be consumed by the laity and the clergy. We need to embrace the transformative power of the Holy Spirit and let Him radically re-orient the way we experience our Catholic Faith, setting the whole congregation on fire with divine charity. We need a spiritual revolution, overthrowing the current weak-sauce status quo institutionalism that offers little more than watered down Christianity, or as Archbishop Fulton Sheen put it, "A Christ without a cross" and we need to serve up real deal Christianity.

We don't need to wonder what such a fiery Catholicism would look like. We need simply to look into the past and reclaim our spiritual heritage. This return to the sources alone can equip the saints for these dark times like it did our elder brothers and sisters 2,000 years ago.

The World as it Was
Catholicism swept through the whole ancient world like a flood, growing around 40% every decade without the aid of the internet and mass marketing campaigns, and by being counter-cultural. Imagine a world like the Roman Empire; filled with institutionalized lust, gluttony, villianous politicians, unprecended greed and power grabs at every turn. Then take a message about total self-denial, chastity, holiness, poverty, and unconditional love and try to sell it in a such a hostile climate and you will find yourself with your head cut off (if you were lucky).

These people were not extraordinary individuals, unique in their courage or intellect among the previous or post generations of man. We often give ourselves over to calling someone "extraordinary" in order to exempt ourselves from responsibility. It was the times that were extraordinarily evil, violent, perverted and hostile. They were pagan to a fault.

In the midst of this world filled lust, greed and power was the impoverished preachers, the little priests of the poor, the monks of desert sands and nuns of caves, the popes of the prisons, the chains and martyrdom. Entering straight into the violence, their voices yelled "Blessed are the meek!" Entering into promiscuity, their lives shouted, "Blessed are the pure of heart!" Entering into the Senate, the Palace, the Praetorium, their very souls screamed, "Blessed are the poor!"

And so that world sought to silence their message. They shut their mouths, but it was their hearts that were on fire. So they marched all those who would not pinch incense to Caesar from the Praetorium into the Coliseum, into the Circus Maximus, and when they draw out the Christians last drop of blood, they heard the full force of a lion whispering with its final breath, "Blessed are the persecuted."

They were ordinary people who believed an extraordinary Faith, a Faith that converted the very murderers who took their lives. They believed and they lived as if what they believed was true. And in the end the Roman Empire fell, but the Catholic Church remained, and has remained.

The Dog Returns to His Vomit
This age has returned. Western Civilization is returning to the gutter of the vomitorium that spawned it 2,200 years ago. We have moved into a new age of violence, mass marketed with all the appeal that Madison Ave can contribute. We entered into a new age of sexual perversion, Photoshop'd and enhanced into illusion and fantasy prisons where pornography is substituting itself for intimacy. The average age of hardcore porn contact is 11, for both boys and girls. Think about how that effects people when they get into real relationships with real people!

The new Roman Empire is still obsessed with the same thing: sex, money, and power. As the ever-pessimistic author of Ecclesiastes said, "There is nothing new under the sun." We just do it with more efficiency and greater frequency. We just have more addicts with more access.

So what do we do?

How shall we now live?
Do we make our mega-church compromises with the world, removing crosses, hushing political speech when it has its moral implications because it may offend, and reducing the gospel to a series of cliches that form quaint soundbites, easily memorized but quickly forgotten?

Do we print t-shirts and bumper stickers like we are at a rally for some pathetic cause that no one really cares about? Do we scream and yell on street corners, turning our voices into the shrill cries of the American protester, playing some absurd role in this absurd game we call "the Process?"

Have we stripped our altars enough, thrown away enough rosaries, habits and clerics in order to blend in with the world around us yet? How long will we pretend to be a church without a past in order to wed the Spirit of the Age, only to be widowed again and again and again?

The reality is, my brothers and sisters, that the night is only just now upon us as the golden sun is beginning to set upon the Western World yet again, casting deep shadows over new and dying empires. We Christians have seen this all before. We have watched the pyramids wither, the Imperial Senate be conquered, and kingdoms become States. We have seen with our ancient eyes worlds build up and worlds collapse. We are going nowhere.

So what do we do now as the new Dark Ages of immorality + technology snuff out life and limb? We do what we have always done. We carry about in our very bodies the death of our Lord and in our hearts His resurrection. Christendom is dead. Long live Christianity!

Praise Him, even in the dust, even in the dusk.
Mike
AMDG