The Gates Of Hell Shall Not Prevail - Homily

 

Matthew 16:18 "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

Following Peter's magnificent confession of faith, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God," Jesus prophecies, the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church which is built on the rock of apostolic faith. But we have to ask, has this prophecy been fulfilled or do we wait for a later date? At first glance it seems that we do, because the infernal gates seem most prevalent. Some stats via The Esther Project:

Some 70 million Christians have been killed since the foundation of the Church. Half of these were killed in the 20th century alone. Between 100,000 - 160,000 Christians are killed every year in this century, our own, which saw over a million martyrs (killed) between 2000 and 2010. In the meanwhile 217 churches are destroyed every month. And the response of the religious leaders in the West, in what was once Christendom? Silence or worse.

Witness the ersatz diversity hire Archbishop of Canterbury wandering around Africa, offering to pay them 100 million GBP in reparations for slavery. Don't say bribe. Or Pope Leo, wafting around North Africa on a "we apologize to Muslims" tour, All this while the head chopping Jihad savages are literally killing our people. So it looks as though we're waiting for a future fulfillment of Christ's prophecy because the gates of hell seem pretty prevalent, right about now. But not so fast, the problem with this point of view is that it's completely wrong.

Gates, per the above, aren't actively offensive, they're not demonic combined arms battlegroups which sally forth from the fastness of hell to wreak havoc on the Church. On the contrary, they're defensive, designed to keep the damned in and the Church out, to lock in death and prevent life. They're designed to withstand the charge of the Church and her Head, Christ. Have they succeeded or prevailed? 

No. They have not, do not and will not. From the moment of Our Lord's sacrifice on the Cross the hellish gates are shattered as Christ defeats death. Hell is harrowed, it has no more power over Christ, the true rock on which the apostolic rock of faith is founded. The same gates which have no power over the Church today and every day, over the Church that is the Body of Christ and lifts the faithful up to life, the very ark of salvation. Those gates which, at the end of time, will be consigned to the lake of fire.

So we see that Jesus' words have, are, and will be fulfilled. Does this mean that the faithful won't be killed by the devils and the people they inhabit? No, they killed Christ. Does it mean that Christians, people who live in Christ, won't be mocked, imprisoned and tortured on account of their Petrine faith?  No, they did the same to Christ. But it does mean this, that in Jesus we have life, victory over the iron gates of hell itself, victory over death.

Turn, then, with renewed faith to Peter's confession, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God," and in that confession find life.

In Nom.,

LSP

Resist Antichrist

 

Pope Benedict XVI feared the Antichrist was expanding his power and wrote this in a letter in 2015, “As one sees the power of Antichrist spreading, one can only pray that the Lord will give us mighty shepherds to defend His Church against the power of evil in this hour of need.”

Mighty shepherds to defend His Church. Yes indeed. Benedict also wrote this, via Rod Dreher:

The true threat for the Church, and thus for the Petrine service, does not come from this sort of episode: It comes instead from the universal dictatorship of apparently humanistic ideologies. Anyone who contradicts this dictatorship is excluded from the basic consensus of society. One hundred years ago, anyone would have thought it absurd to speak of homosexual matrimony. Today those who oppose it are socially excommunicated. The same holds true for abortion and the production of human beings in the laboratory. Modern society intends to formulate an anti-Christian creed: Whoever contests it is punished with social excommunication. Being afraid of this spiritual power of the Antichrist is all too natural, and what is truly needed is that the prayers of entire dioceses and of the world Church come to the rescue to resist it.

 

Imagine, if you can, any leader of Western Christianity, whether Protestant or Catholic, saying such a thing with such force. Was Benedict forced into retirement? Picture the roiling of the rainbow-hued snakes as he ascended to the pontificate. Yes indeed, a problem, and the solution?

Being afraid of this spiritual power of the Antichrist is all too natural, and what is truly needed is that the prayers of entire dioceses and of the world Church come to the rescue to resist it.

Do not fear,

LSP

Europe And The Faith And Brexit

Hillaire Belloc famously wrote that "Europe is the Faith." He had a point, the ethics, philosophy and culture of Europe, its way of life, was shaped by Christianity. 

Enter the European Union, the continent's bold postwar attempt to reinvent itself as a pan-national superstate governed by... what? Certainly not Belloc's Faith, there's no mention, for example, of Christianity much less Catholicism in the EU Constitution.

Instead we find a utopian vision of unprecedented personal freedom seen in terms of radical autonomy, of Crowley's do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. The fulfillment, if you like, of the liberal project which takes the Enlightenment as its start line only to be ruled over, ironically enough, by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels.

No. 10

Of course there's no room for God in the above equation, how could there be? How dare a so-called deity set limits on my self-expression? And so we find ourselves faced with "bake the cake or go to jail" in the US or "better get trans or lose your job" in the UK. Tolerance, it seems, is a one way street and the Paris Statement makes the point. Read it here.

The UK voted against this, whether deliberately or not. It said no to the secularist, antichrist, false Europe and yes to national sovereignty. Will England realize this in a return to the Faith?

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby

Probably not if the Church of England has anything to do with it; you see, they took the wrong step years ago. Let's pray something will fill the vacuum other than Islam.

Your Pal,

LSP 

Can't Think Won't Think

So it's a good thing we have Cardinal Ratzinger doing the heavy lifting for us, from Truth and Freedom, 1996:

"Ye shall be as gods." This promise is quite clearly behind modernity's radical demand for freedom. Although Ernst Topitsch believed he could safely say that today no reasonable man still wants to be like or equal to God, if we look more closely we must assert the exact opposite: the implicit goal of all of modernity's struggles for freedom is to be at last like a god who depends on nothing and no one, and whose own freedom is not restricted by that of another. 

"Once we glimpse this hidden theological core of the radical will to freedom, we can also discern the fundamental error which still spreads its influence even where such radical conclusions are not directly willed or are even rejected. To be totally free, without the competing freedom of others, without a "from" and a "for"—this desire presupposes not an image of God, but an idol.

"The primal error of such a radicalized will to freedom lies in the idea of a divinity conceived as a pure egoism. The god thought of in this way is not a God, but an idol. Indeed, it is the image of what the Christian tradition would call the devil—the anti-God—because it harbors exactly the radical antithesis to the real God. 

"The real God is by his very nature entirely being-for (Father), being-from (Son), and being-with (Holy Spirit). Man, for his part, is God's image precisely insofar as the "from," "with," and "for" constitute the fundamental anthropological pattern. 

"Whenever there is an attempt to free ourselves from this pattern, we are not on our way to divinity, but to dehumanization, to the destruction of being itself through the destruction of the truth. The Jacobin variant of the idea of liberation (let us call the radicalisms of modernity by this name) is a rebellion against man's very being, a rebellion against truth, which consequently leads man—as Sartre penetratingly saw—into a self-contradictory existence which we call hell."

Because I'm a nuanced commentator I'll just say this, nails it.

Best,

LSP

Woman At The Well

In tomorrow's Gospel we hear the remarkable story of the Samaritan woman at the well. Consider the narrative's apocalyptic aspect.

At the sixth hour Christ meets the Harlot at the well and confronts her infidelity with truth. Likewise, at the sixth hour, Pilate condemns Christ, and the followers of the False Prophet Caiaphas write the mark of the Beast on their foreheads saying, "We have no king but Caesar!" Again, at the sixth hour, darkness fell over the land as Jesus was crucified and Antichrist triumphs, for a time.

The woman at the well, curiously, is venerated as a saint in the Eastern Church and is believed to have witnessed before Nero, a type of the Antichrist, before her eventual martyrdom. 

God bless,

LSP

Mark Of The Beast II

Following alarmist end-times reporting on the turbulent state of the market and with the caveat that "numerology is a mrk (sic) of the truly loopy!" I feel it's only right to point out that the Bank of Italy believes it can bear an 8% yield. Many would argue that this absurd and superstitious obsession with so-called "mystical numbers" is little short of insane.

But an Ontario reader has this to say:

"Worth remembering though – it wasn’t long ago that no Government could borrow for as LITTLE as 8%. The modern era of low interest rates is quite a recent phenomenon, and it’s one of the things that made the huge superboom from 1992-2008 possible. No-one would have borrowed money for sub-primes at historic interest rates. Ironically low IRs followed from low inflation... and everyone borrowed, Texas consumers to Italian politicians alike..."

Interesting. Perhaps our worship of Mammon has destroyed the West's collective memory? Still, as the annoying phrase runs, that was then, this is now...

God bless,

LSP

Good Friday

I was struck by the following, from Rebirth of Images, by Farrer:

"On the sixth day of the week, and the sixth hour, says St. John (Jn. 19: 13-22; cf. Rev. 13: 16-14:1), the kingdoms of Christ and Antichrist looked one another in the face in Pilate's court, and the adherents of the False Prophet (Caiaphas) firmly wrote on their foreheads the mark of the Beast, when they said, 'We have no King but Caesar.' Presently they saw the Lamb uplifted with his true Name over his head, 'King of the Jews': and for all they could do, they could not get it erased: 'What I have written,' said Pilate, 'I have written.' Christ's Friday victory is the supreme manifestation also of Antichrist."

Do note that Antichrist is captain of the losing team.

Have a blessed Good Friday!

LSP