Friday, March 20, 2020

Our Gethsemane

From Mark Mallet:
There is a palpable sense of abandonment spreading, especially when the faithful are being deprived of “private” Sacraments such as Confession or Communion to the sick. In Belgium, even Baptism is being denied to small gatherings. All of this seems unfathomable to a Church whose saints once boldly walked among the sick to comfort and help them, rather than “self-isolate.” Indeed, it would seem that the Pope has heard the lament of the lambs as he addressed the shepherds recently:
In the epidemic of fear that all of us are living because of the pandemic of the coronavirus, we risk acting like hired hands and not like shepherds… Think of all the souls who feel terrified and abandoned because we pastors follow the instructions of civil authorities — which is right in these circumstances to avoid contagion — while we risk putting aside divine instructions — which is a sin. We think as men think and not as God. —POPE FRANCIS, March 15th, 2020; Brietbart.com
Thus, many souls are making their way to Gethsemane where the Vigil of Sorrows has begun. In fact, as Christ handed over His liberty to the authorities through the “kiss of Judas,” so too, the Church is subjecting nearly all her freedom to the government and those who “know best.” But this has been long in the making ever since the “separation of Church and State” has, little by little, removed the Church from influence in the public sphere. While this is not necessarily related to the coronavirus, it is relevant, as we see clearly now that the Church is hardly autonomous today.
When we have cast ourselves upon the world and depend for protection upon it, and have given up our independence and our strength, then [Antichrist] will burst upon us in fury as far as God allows him. —St. John Henry Newman, Sermon IV: The Persecution of Antichrist
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