(LifeSiteNews) — There are very serious concerns in the world today. The world governments are colluding to push the Great Reset, population control, and abortion on demand. They are lying to us, injecting us with poison, stealing elections, and no one is EVER punished.
The Church is forcing ecumenism and synodality on the faithful, and abandoning 2,000 years of tradition. Our communities are forcing BLM, CRT, LGBTQ+, gender theory, and legalized drugs on our children. And the people are being told that marriage is a useless social construct, that children are a burden, the sick and elderly need to be euthanized, and that families are not allowed to decide what is best for themselves anymore.
It seems like the evil one is winning, and that we will all be in his clutches soon. It is more than one can take. It is more than enough to push you to the edge of despair. But that is exactly what the devil wants.
Bishop Thomas Olmstead once said that “discouragement, is the most diabolical of the devil’s temptations.” The devil wants you to give up, and to turn to the world for distraction. But Jesus wants so much more for us. The one message that he repeats most often in the bible, more than anything else… is “do not be afraid.” We must be strong and bold, and fearsome in the face of all this evil, we must not bury our heads in the sand, or walk around singing like Pollyanna. We must find peace and balance, and from that foundation, we will wage war against this madness.
I believe I have found a way to do this, and I want to share it with you this Christmas.
We start by remembering that all this pain and suffering is temporary. AS St. Paul said, the “Eye has not seen, and ear has not heard what God has planned for those who love him.” This message speaks loudly to me in the storm of this troubled time. But hope for eternity is not enough, we must also find peace and balance in this moment, right here and right now. There is an old hymn that I have been thinking about a lot lately, and the refrain goes like this:
No storm can shake my inmost calm, while to that rock I’m clinging.
Since love is lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?
So how do we find that inmost calm? Where do we go to get that peace that Paul talks about… “The peace that surpasses all understanding?”
In a word… God! This peace is only attainable by aligning our will with the will that God has for our lives. St. Augustine said that “peace is the tranquility that come from order.” This peace is the peace that comes from living according to the order that God has put into the world — the natural law — and from submitting to His divine will for your life.
It means doing the right thing no matter what the cost. It means studying his Word so that you know what that right thing is in the first place. It means staying close to the sacraments… If you sin, get to confession, if it is Sunday, go to Mass, if you are in a state of grace, then partake in the Eucharist. It means offering up your suffering for the greater glory of God, and it means praying without ceasing, and fasting so that you can weaponize your prayer in the battle against sin. It means turning yourself into a finely tuned weapon against evil, and then placing yourself in the hands of the Lord, to do with as He sees fit.
In Matthew 7 the Lord speaks of building on the foundations of rock, not sand.
Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.
The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock.
If you stay close to the Lord, and the sacraments, if you do good, and resist evil, then it will be as if we have built our lives on the foundation of rock, and you will not be damaged by the storms. This does not mean that the storms will not come, no one can escape that, but when our lives are built on the foundation of God, then these storms will not destroy us.
But there is also simultaneously another aspect to this battle as well. This peace that we are discussing, and I assume we all want, can so easily be eroded, if we don’t know where the storms are coming from. If you believe that you are being persecuted by people you love, or governments that you should trust…, If you believe that the world and all its trouble are simply the result of evil men, and greed, and lust for power, then it is easy to become discouraged, and to see these problems as hopeless. But these people are not the source of all of this evil, and they are not the true enemy. When you understand this fact, then it becomes much easier to fight this war.
People are not the enemy… sin is, as is temptation, and the lies of the evil one are the cause of all the world’s pain. When you look at the war from this perspective, then the battle lines become crystal clear, and the war suddenly becomes winnable.
St. John the Apostle tells us in the book of Revelation that the serpent is destroyed, Our Lady crushes his head, and God is ultimately victorious in the end. So, we are fighting a war where the result is already known, and the only thing that matters today is how we fight the day-to-day battle, and who we can save from the clutches of the evil one along the way.
If you are fighting a battle in a war that is already over, it does not mean that soldiers cannot still be lost, or prisoners taken. That is where we are with the devil. We must fight today to prevent the loss of our fellow man on the battlefield of sin, regardless of our knowledge that the devil will be destroyed in the end.
My parish priest once told me about a 30-day silent retreat he went on. During this retreat, one of the ideas that he was told to ponder in the silence, was this beautiful reflection: When God created the universe he said, “let there be light” and it came to be. He spoke into the darkness, and his word created everything. God’s word created every plant, animal, mountain, and star, just by saying so, and as a result, those things sprang into being. When He created your soul, He spoke a word as well. My priest was told to reflect on what that word was for him? I want you too, to now reflect on the same question.
What word did God speak when He created you? That word represents everything God has ever hoped and willed for your life. The gifts He gave you and his plan for how you would use them to glorify His kingdom. He has a wonderful, beautiful plan for you and your life, and it is up to you to live out that plan. But no matter what, you are a beautiful, loved, creation of God, and He has hoped so much for your life.
Most of us will never know that word that God calls us by, until we get to heaven. Nevertheless, in both the Old and New Testaments God does tell of some of the names He has spoken. In many cases He renames the great figures of the bible, whom he calls to great missions.
Abram was renamed Abraham, which means father of many. Jacob was renamed Israel, which means struggles with God. And Simon was renamed Peter, which means rock.
There are myriad examples, and they all give wonderful insight into understanding these figures from the Bible and what God willed for their lives. Mary’s name in heaven is “full of grace.” Can you think of a more perfect name for her? She was born without stain of sin, because she was a beloved daughter of God. She was espoused to the Holy Spirit and through Him, she conceived. And she became the mother of Jesus and carried the Incarnate Lord in her womb for 9 months. She then raised Him and loved Him and finally sacrificed Him for the salvation of the world. She could not have done any of these things without completely living out her name… and by being completely open to His grace.
When you finally hear that word, that God calls you by, I believe it will be the most incisive examination of conscience that you have ever, or could ever experience, because you will see, in that moment, what God planned for your life, and how close or how far you have fallen from that dream. I wonder if we could somehow come to understand His will for our life right now, would we even think it possible? I fear that most people will view it as an insurmountable task. But as Maimonides said:
We are not all called to complete the task, but we are not allowed to desist from trying.
Have you lived up to the hopes that God has willed for your life? Has anyone? What about people like Biden and Pelosi, or Francis and James Martin? They too, are human beings made in God’s image, they are souls that God willed into existence, and whom God hoped and dreamed would do good and bring the light of Christ into the world. They may today stand as the antithesis to God’s plan for mankind, but they too were created for something more than they are currently achieving. They have gone so far from the plan that God had for them that they are totally lost in the world, and are being dragged into hell by the devil’s minions.
So, we must pray that they discover that word that God spoke to bring them into this world, that they hear God call their name, and that they convert and repent, and ultimately align their will with the will that God has for their lives. If that ever happened, I believe truly miraculous things would come to pass in this world.
But this is not just a call for those that have fallen so far from grace, it is also a call for every one of us. We are all living lives that are far from that plan that God has for us, and so we too need to discover this will and change our lives to this end. It is this realization that has been the most life changing thing that I have come to understand in the last few years, and therefore I believe that I have finally found a way to cling to that rock, and achieve that inmost calm, while at the same time fighting for righteousness. We are all just souls trying to find our highest purpose. That purpose consists of two things, loving God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul and loving your neighbor as yourself.
How do we love our neighbor? Well, that is the hard part, you must put aside all your anger, and pain, and hurt, and you have to love them, you have to fight to save them from the clutches of the evil one. We must call them out, we must teach them the truth, and show them the way into the light. As James says in 5:19-20:
My brothers, if anyone among you should stray from the truth and someone bring him back, he should know that whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
Jesus tells us that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church. But most people miss the nuance here… Gates are not offensive weapons, they are a defensive barrier, and Jesus told us that if we fight side-by-side, in solidarity with the Church, that not even the gates of hell are strong enough to stop us. So, this is our call. We need to fight sin, like soldiers on the beaches of Normandy… we need to look the devil in the eye and laugh at him, as we storm those gates, plunge into hell, and pull those lost souls out of darkness and back into the light. This is what we do every day at LifeSiteNews, and this is what I now call you too as well.
God wants all of us with Him in heaven, not just the ones that like Him. He created us all with great love and care, and it is the devil that is pitting us against each other and trying to separate us. The souls that the devil lies to are not the problem… He, the devil is, and we must all start to recognize that.
If we can do this, if we can focus on the real enemy, satan, then the fear, the anxiety, and the worry will fizzle away and will be replaced with steely resolve. We are fighting a war that is already over so take courage in that, and let’s get started on the rescue mission. Join us in the battle. Pick up your rosary and start fighting and help us preach the truth of Christ to all the world.
This is my wish for all of you this Christmas. Do not be afraid, and I’ll see you on the battlefield.
Deus Vult!