TOKENS ADMIT 60 AT CATHEDRAL, HOLY WATER AT A FULL ST ANTHONY'S SSPX

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More than this at St Anthony's today - at just one of six Masses

This morning it took Father a good 5 minutes just to tell us about the activities planned for the parish this week, then another 15 to deliver a stunning sermon on fear - how to capitalise on the passion of fear to our eternal advantage.

St Anthony's Whanganui was full up. Everyone genuflected - the  multiple altar boys, many times. Babies squawked, a little. The C word was never mentioned. Instead of masks the men wore sober expressions and the women, chapel veils.

Father couldn't be persuaded to part with his sermon notes. A sermon, he said, comes with graces attached for its hearers but not for the hoi polloi - i.e. anyone not blessed to be present. A summary would be okay, he said - but fear of scandalising people by being thought to be Facebooking meant notes were not taken. 

Ah, but - in the little church foyer by the large holy water urn were copies of a letter written by Fr Daniel Themann, District Superior, to the SSPX in Australia and New Zealand. It will surely give new heart to people saddened by the freakish, diabolical aspects of their return to the Novus Ordo Mass in some parishes. 

At the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit in Palmerston North, for instance, each parishioner was issued with a sterilised token as their Mass ticket (not till after they'd signed in and sterilised their hands). When 100 tokens were taken, that was it.  The door was closed.

A reader of this blog has a comment to offer. 

"The last time this was tried, Christ picked up a whip and ended it. 

This is literally the same as the Jewish temple admins agreeing with the money lenders to accept only temple coin as an offering to God. No coin, no offering - meaning you had to go to the money lenders and get the specially-minted temple coin (at an inflated price as supply was restricted, hence the need for a market in the temple so the faithful Jews could see their produce to buy temple coins in order to fulfill their duty to worship).

"Now it's no token, no worship of God. A limit of 100. How is this not placing a barrier between the people and God?"

It's the Novus Ordo effect.

So, from the gor' blimey to the sublime:

"We have many sorrows and many opportunities" Fr Themann writes, " and sorrows which can be opportunities. ... Our heavenly Mother has been a Catholic as we are, suffered with the Church as we do, but she suffered with a confidence and a firmness of purpose that made the demons tremble.

"There is no doubt that we live in dark times - though not so dark as many moments in our Mother's life. Because we have faith, we suffer from the restrictions placed upon access to the Mass and the sacraments. Because we have faith, we take seriously our Mother's warning at Fatima and have long-since noticed that Russia's errors are continually spreading.  

And don't we know it, we who must live with the errors of Stalinda Ardern?   

COVID did not begin that process although there is no denying the increase in power which anti-Christian governments have gained during the last 18 months ... anyone with faith can be alarmed by the greater influence over daily life now enjoyed by governments which are hostile to the ideals of Christ.

Especially when said governments are aided and abetted by those who have committed themselves to Christ in priestly ordination. 

But if this was all that our faith gave us eyes to see, what a tragedy that would be! ... Faith is meant to be the source of divine activity within man - the beginning of man's living God's life and wielding God's power.

The devil does not fear our emotions. So let us try to push aside fear, anger and sadness. ... Precisely because these are serious times, only thought and action driven by faith, hope and charity will do.  The devil certainly does fear these divine powers within us as he feared the actions of Our Lady on earth, so saturated with divine life was her slightest thought or deed.

 

Our Lady of Mt Carmel, detail, by Tiepolo 

 

If we see ourselves merely as helpless victims of powers beyond our control, then we see less than half the truth. Victims we may be, to some degreee, but nothing could be more essential to our religion than the truth that victims are not helpless - they are powerful. 

If we are going to understand this power and wield it, we must grasp that it firstly gains victories of grace and, only secondarily, changes in the natural order.

If our churches are closed, but grace nevertheless converts souls more abundantly than ever before, this is the real victory which overthrows the devil's kingdom. If political rights are suppressed, but more people deepen their spiritual lives and overcome years of bad habits, then the devil will remember what it means to fear. However much we may wish and act for better things at every level in this chaotic situation, let us not be blind to the priorities which even the devil can see. 

With our priorities in order, then we can renew our confidence in the fivine acts which bring about these changes. Whenever we act by faith, hope and charity, we add a divine element to the reality of the world. In the concrete, we usually do this through prayer and sacrifice.

"Prayer is a more powerful force than all physical energies taken together ... It is essential to trust in this force which is of divine origin - to keep in mind from whence it comes and where it goes" (Fr Garrigou-Lagrange). 

 

Fr Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange

We may bring the power of sacrifice to bear upon the world in many ways. Besides sacrificing our will when then are constantly contradicted by the present circumstances, there are also the sacrifices which come with doing our duty of state well. These were the very sacrifices which Our Lady of Fatima emphasized as being most important.

We each have a place in the battleline assigned to us by our King. We each have a role - parent, child, priest, religious, boss, employee, teacher, student, friend. It is a completely personal and exclusive role. Christ literally entrusts us with it for there is no one in the world who can carry the fight from our place in the line of battle. If each of us made just one serious improvement in performing our personal duty, consider the damage we would collectively infl/ict upont he enemy and the mercy we would merit fo the world by this legion of purposeful sacrifices. 

Dear friends ... our enemy can do nothing to neutralize our supernatural powers if we are determined to wield them. We can make him rue the day he ever thought to close our churches and interfere with our schools. ...

October will conclude on the Feast of Christ the King. If we suffer now from leaders who do not recognize Him, let us show that we truly want "this Man to rule over us". Having tasted the bitternness of life under a different regime, let us submit ourselves wholeheartedly to His benevolent reigh in our personal lives, The more we yield to Him, the more powerful we become. 

... I will give a short talk approximately each week which will be available on our websites: https://sspx.com.au/en and https://sspx.org.nz/en.

I close for now with a reminder of Our Lady of Sorrows and her militantly maternal dispositions when her children are in danger. 

"Over the iron forest, he saw Our Lady stand. Her eyes were sad withouten art, and seven swords were in her heart - but one was in her hand."*

In the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, 

Fr Daniel Themann, District Superior."

 

Fr Daniel Themann, District Superior."

*The Ballad of the White Horse, G K Chesterton

https://sspx.com.au/sites/sspx/files/media/anz-district/pub-letter/newsletter.pdf