After Mass this past Thursday, instead of my usual DWMoM walk , I embarked to pray and sidewalk counsel outside a nearby city’s Planned Parenthood. I was simply pacing, praying the Rosary, and very gently and non-confrontationally greeting women who would go in to see if they would be willing to talk. To a few I gave evangelization cards.
After praying about 5 decades, Planned Parenthood called the police on me for “kneeling and blocking the doorway.” I know that is what they said because that is what the officer told me they said when he pulled up. Now I am not exactly new to having the police called on me while outside Planned Parenthood, so I was able to calmly explain to him that I was doing nothing of the sort, and he willingly accepted my testimony and drove off without a problem.
But I was amazed at the bald-faced lie Planned Parenthood told the authorities. There was apparently not the slightest hesitation in their hearts to assert something — at the expense of another human’s well being — that had absolutely not the slightest basis in reality. They had no problem accusing me of an actual crime that could have put me behind bars, despite the fact that I wasn’t breaking even one jot or tittle of the law.
Driving home afterward, I turned on the radio to EWTN. The moment I took my hand off the dial, I heard Mother Angelica’s voice saying “…It is from Satan. He is the deceiver. Everything he says is a lie…” She then went on to describe all sorts of lies that you hear coming from those who listen to him. It was an amazingly insightful talk.
This served as a reminder for me of the times in which we are living. Dear Friends, we are now in the midst of (and are about to enter into a massive intensification of) the greatest age of deceit the world has ever seen. The Arian crisis pales in comparison to it for many reasons, not least of which being the fact that the Arian heresy was solely contrary to Divine Law, whereas the current apostasy is directed against both Divine and natural law, and contravening the latter does not bear with it the realistic possibility of a mitigation of culpability from invincible ignorance. The devil, the Father of Lies, knowing his time is short, is in the process of unleashing his lies upon the world in full force. His two favorite things are to lie and to murder (cf. Our Lord Jesus Christ, John 8:44), and he has satiated himself in the latter through abortion and other genocides for these last almost 100 years, but it is not enough. He now wants to destroy more souls than ever before with his other great passion.
As you all know, Ireland just passed gay “marriage” as law by referendum. Not only was it the first ever country to do so by referendum, but it is now the only country that enshrines gay “marriage” explicitly as a right in its very constitution. Now this constitution is dedicated from the onset to the Most Holy Trinity. The preamble begins “In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred…” And I write this on the vigil of Holy Trinity Sunday.
The U.S. might very well follow suit next month judicially. Perhaps this will even occur on the feast of St. Thomas More (June 22nd), or St. John the Baptist (June 24th), both of whom were martyrs for the sanctity of marriage.
The Devil’s ultimate plan with gay “marriage” is not to spread unnatural lust and prevision. Homosexual acts are simply too contrary to our nature for them to ever garner a large percentage of the population as partakers of them. Those caught up in homosexuality are usually wounded and confused people who do not know where else to turn. (This is why approving homosexuality is the greatest act of hatred possible toward those with same-sex attraction: it is like handing a loaded gun to someone with suicidal thoughts.) No-fault divorce has wreaked and continues to wreak far more havoc than gay “marriage” ever directly will.
I am convinced, rather, that the devil’s plan with gay “marriage” is to spread deceit. It is to entice us to “exchange the truth of God for a lie” (Romans 1:25). The problem with gay “marriage” is that merely acknowledging it; merely believing and proclaiming that two men, or two women, can marry, is itself an intrinsic grave evil. The devil doesn’t need to convince the world to become homosexuals. He only needs to convince the world to accept homosexuality as an intrinsically good thing and to give homosexual relationships equal standing as true marriage, thereby rejecting the very first truth God revealed about human persons: that they are created male and female and that their union is holy and unique.
Likewise his plan with gender theory is not to convince the people of the world to attempt to change their sexes; very, very few (as a relative percentage) will ever go that route. His plan is to entice the world to accept gender theory as valid. His plan is to entice the world to refer to people by their “new” sex, after they have an operation, or take a hormone pill, or dress differently. Again, merely the acknowledgement of this as valid is a grave evil.
Similarly, the devil’s plan with the current discord in the Church is not to somehow manage to change Church Teaching; he knows he is about as capable of that as a single ant is of demolishing the solid stone foundation of a castle. The very assertion that the indissolubility of marriage, the immorality of adultery, and the disordered nature of homosexuality and immorality of homosexual acts are tenets of the Church’s moral teaching (and indeed they all are) bears with it the recognition that they are fundamentally incapable of changing. Rather, his plan is to infect enough individual priests, Bishops, and Cardinals with his lies about false and cheap mercy that the souls under their care readily listen to them even when they contradict Church teaching.
The kingdom of the Prince of this World is thriving with enormous and shocking vigor scarcely beneath the surface of the construct that is the modern secular world, and this kingdom is ready to burst forth at a moment’s notice. I can only liken it to a rotting corpse which, though apparently moving, eventually reveals it is merely writhing with hordes of maggots. Sadly most will deny this until the full-grown flies erupt in swarms. At that point it will be too late, but that point is coming soon.
But enough of that. I began this post by describing the morning’s activities this past Thursday. Let me end it by describing the evening’s activities of that same day. My wife, son, and I were blessed to participate in a pro-life Rosary walk lead by our Bishop, Edward Scharfenberger. I would guess there were at least one thousand of us praying the Rosary as we were lead by our shepherd and as we carried a large statue of Our Lady around the New York State Capitol building in Albany. As I looked before me and behind me and saw the breathtaking line of souls like an army marching down the sidewalk in prayer and song, I was reminded of this one simple fact: God Wins.
You do not have to fret about the torrent of lies now spewing forth from the Devil’s mouth, a torrent that will only grow exponentially in the coming time. You are invincible against it if you merely remain in a state of grace and cling to:
- Sacred Scripture
- The Catechism of the Catholic Church
- The Magisterial Documents of the Holy Father, whoever he may be (not remarks the current Pontiff allegedly made but probably didn’t. Always check http://www.vatican.va to see what he actually said)
- Trustworthy private revelations, especially the Divine Mercy Diary of St. Faustina
You don’t have to be a great saint, and you certainly don’t have to be a theologian, to cling to those. You just need trust.
Days as dark as our own are not days of retreat, nor of cowering in a corner; they are days in which the remnant of the Christ’s Faithful must shine ever more brightly, for indeed superabundant grace is available today, and we can become saints more easily now than ever before. We must above all use this grace to spread the Divine Mercy and live in the Divine Will, and pour ourselves out as libations for these ends.
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