On Gaudete Sunday, December 17, 2023

On Gaudete Sunday

Writing in The Liturgical Year, Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., explained that Gaudete Sunday, which we celebrate today, Sunday, December 17, 2023, the Third Sunday of Advent, reminds us of the joy that must be ours because we belong to the Catholic Church, she who can make no terms with error: 

O holy Roman Church, city of our strength! behold us thy children assembled within thy walls, around the tomb of the fisherman, the prince of the apostles, whose sacred relics protect thee from their earthy shrine, and whose unchanging teaching enlightens thee from heaven. Yet, O city of strength: it is by the Saviour, who is coming that thou art strong. He is they wall, for it is He that encircles, with His tender mercy all thy children; He is thy bulwark, for it is by Him that thou art invincible, and that all the powers of hell are powerless to prevail against thee. Open wide thy gates, that all nations may enter thee; for thou art mistress of holiness and the guardian of truth. May the old error, which sets itself against the faith soon disappear, and peace reign over the whole fold! O holy Roman Church ! thou hast for ever put they trust in the Lord; and He, faithful to His promise, has humbled before thee the haughty ones that defied thee, and the proud cities that were against thee. Where now are the Caesars, who boasted that they had drowned thee in thy own blood ? where the emperors, who would ravish the inviolate virginity of thy faith ? where the heretics, who during the past centuries of thine existence, have assailed every article of thy teaching, and denied what they listed ? where the ungrateful princes, who would fain make a slave of thee, who hadst made them what they were ? where the empire of Mahomet, which has so many times raged against thee, for that thou, the defenceless State, didst arrest the pride of its conquests ? where the more modern sophists in whose philosophy thou was sent down as a system that had been tried, and was a failure, and is not a ruin ? and those kings who are acting the tyrant over thee, and those people that will have liberty independently and at the risk of truth, where they will be another hundred years? Gone and forgotten as the noisy anger of a torrent; whilst thou, O holy Church of Rome, built on the immovable rock, wilt be as calm as young, as unwrinkled as ever. Thy path through the ages of this world’s duration, will be right as that of the just man; thou wilt ever be the same unchanging Church, as thou hast been during the eighteen years past, whist everything else under the sun has been but change. Whence is thy stability, but form Him who is very truth and justice? Glory be to Him in thee! Each year, He visits thee; each year, He brings thee new gifts, wherewith thou mayest go happily through thy pilgrimage; and to the end of time, He will visit thee, and renew thee, not only with the power of that look wherewith Peter was renewed, but by filling thee with Himself, as He did the every glorious Virgin, who is the object of thy most tender love, after that which thou bearest to Jesus Himself. We pray with thee, O Church, our mother, and here is our prayer: ‘Coe, Lord Jesus! Thy name and Thy remembrance are the desire of our souls; they have desired Thee in the night, yea, and early in the morning have they watched for Thee.’ (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Volume I, Advent, pp. 201-202.)

Although Dom Prosper Gueranger did not foresee the fact that even worse sophists and heretics would arise within one hundred years of his death on January 30, 1875, his description of the glories of Catholic Church can be applied to the counterfeit church of concilarism in no manner whatsoever as the latter entity is an embodiment of sophistry and heresy that has made terms with the ancient enemies of Christ the King and all other false religions and false philosophies and social currents. No one, no matter how prominent he may be nor how wealthy he may have become as a result of enterprise and hard work, can claim that the Catholic Church is institutionally corrupt as her Divine Constitution guarantees her a virginal purity as well as the infallible protection of God the Holy Ghost in her Faith, Worship and Morals.

It is far past time for believing Catholics to understand and then to accept the fact that the problem facing us at this time is not a "heretical pope" but a false church that has been headed by heretics from its inception. All that has happened recently is that the heretics have become bolder and more open about their agenda after a steady dose of five decades of fables that have been designed to convince baptized Catholics to hate Catholic truth as opposed to God's "mercy" and to embrace naturalism as the only legitimate foundation of social order. 

We need Our Lady's help, especially by means of her Most Holy Rosary, in these troubling times as without the graces she sends us we will be prone to view the world through the eyes of naturalism and not through the supernatural eyes of the Catholic Faith.

May we take solace in these words of Dom Prosper Gueranger about Gaudete Sunday:

There hath stood One in the midst of you, whom you know not, says Saint John the Baptist to them that were sent by the Jews. So that our Lord may be near. He may even have come, and yet by some be not known! This Lamb of God is the holy Precursor’s consolation; he considers it a singular privilege to be but the voice which cries out to them to prepare the way of the Redeemer. In this, St. John a type of the Church, and of all such as seek Jesus. St. John  is full of joy because the Savior has come, but the men around him are as indifferent as though they neither expected nor wanted a Savior. This is the third week of Advent; and are all hearts excited by the great tidings told them by the Church, that the Messias is near at hand? They that love Him not as their Savior, do they fear Him as their Judge? Are the crooked ways being made straight, and the hills being brought low? Are Christians seriously engaged in removing from their hearts the love or riches and the love of sensual pleasures? There is no time to lose: The Lord is nigh!" If these lines should come under the eye of any of those Christians who are in this state of sinful indifference, we would conjure them to shake off  their lethargy, an render themselves worthy of the visit of the divine Infant; such a visit will bring them the greatest consolation here, and give them confidence hereafter, when our Lord will come to judge all mankind. Send thy grace, O Jesus, still more plentifully into their hearts; ‘compel them to go in,’ and permit not that it be said of the children of the Church, as St. John said of the Synagogue: There standeth in the midst of you One, whom you know not. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, The Liturgical Year, Volume I, Advent, pp. 205-206.)

We need Our Lady's help to make straight the path of her Divine Son into our own souls so that, liberated from the muck and mire of competing sets of naturalists, we may focus on the joy that should be shared by everyone in the world about the fact that He has become Incarnate for us and our salvation and deigned to be born in a lowly estate on Christmas Day. 

This is all the more reason to take seriously this week's Ember Days in order that we might make reparation for our sins by offering up our prayers, fasting and sacrifices to the Throne of the Most Blessed Trinity as the consecrated slaves of Our Lord Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of  Mary and by praying as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits.

Viva Cristo Rey!

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

On The "O Antiphons"

Reflecting on the O Antiphons that we pray in Vespers from December 17 to December 24, Father Benedict Baur, O.S.B., provided some commentary that is as relevant to our circumstances today as they were when his Light of the World was published in Germany in 1954. (The entire texts of Father Baur's reflections on the first three O Antiphons can be found in the appendices below.)

Father Benedict Baur’s reflection on the antiphon prayed on Mondaym December 17, “O Wisdom,” contains the following passages that describe both the ignorance of the naturalists—the “sensible” men of the world—and the faith of those who duly submissive to the Church founded by Wisdom Incarnate:

Divine Wisdom clothes itself in the nature of a man. It conceals itself in the weakness of a child. It chooses for itself, infancy, poverty, obedience, subjection, obscurity. “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the produce of the prudent I will not reject. . . . Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God, by the foolishness of our preaching, to save them that believe. For both the Jews require signs, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; but since we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews, indeed, a stumbling block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness; but unto them that are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.  . . . But the foolish things of the world hath God chosen, that He may confound the wise; and the weak things of the world hath God chosen, that He may confound the strong. And the base things of the world and the things that are contemptible, hath God chosen, and the things that are not, that He might bring to naught the things that are” (1 Cor.19 ff.).

Come, O Divine Wisdom, teach us the way of knowledge. We are unwise; we judge and speak according to the vain standards of the world, which is foolishness in the eyes of God. Come, O divine Wisdom, give us the true knowledge and the taste for what is eternal and divine. Inspire us with a thirst for God’s holy will help us seek God’s guidance and direction enlighten us in the teachings of the holy gospel, make us submissive to Thy holy Church. Strengthen us in the forgetfulness of self, and help us to reign ourselves to a position of obscurity if that be Thy holy will. Detach our hearts from resurgent pride. Give us wisdom that we may understand that “but one thing is necessary” (Luke 10:42). “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?” (Matt. 16:26.) The Holy Spirit would have us know that one degree of grace is worth more than all worldly possessions.

“The sensual man,” with only his natural ability, his unaided human talents, “perceiveth not these thing that are of the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2:14).Eternal Wisdom is foolishness to such a man. He cannot understand because he is not spiritually minded. The spiritual man is guided by the Holy Ghost, penetrates and values all things in the light of divine Wisdom, who “Himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ,” the eternal Wisdom (1 Cor. 2:15f.).

The wisdom of God appears to us in the crib, in poverty, in silence, in the weakness of childhood, in the gospel message: Blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, those who suffer persecution for Christ’s sake. The wisdom of God is made manifest in the foolishness of the cross. (Father Benedict Baur, O.S.B., The Light of the World, Volume I, B. Herder Book Company, 1954, “O Divine Wisdom,” pp, 77-78.)

Father Baur’s reflection on “O Adonai,” which will be prayed tomorrow night Monday, December 18, 2023, echoes themes that had been written by Pope Pius XI over three decades earlier, reiterating the sad state of those who prefer to believe that Our Lord, if He is truly the Divine Redeemer, has no place in public life, or that all mention of His Holy Name must be banished from social discourse:

O Adonai, O almighty God, stretch forth Thy arm and save us. The enemy of our salvation, the enemy of souls, the enemy of the Church rises with great power seeking to destroy belief in God, in Christ, and in the Christian religion. Men have wandered far from the true God; they have turned their backs on Him and made for themselves grave images. They have banished God from their thoughts and from their lives. God is a disturbing element which they would be glad to be rid of. Any other molestation they will gladly suffer, no matter how foolish and disturbing it is.

“Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and ye gates thereof be very desolate with the Lord. For My people have done two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living water, and have digged to themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.” (Jer. 2: 12 f.). Both men and nations have lost all peace and tranquility. All virtues, innocence, fidelity, honor, honesty, and even a man’s word may be bought for gold. Scarcely one man can be found who trusts another. Nation has risen against nation, and man against man. Few are they who are faithful to their duty. The spirit of self-sacrifice is rarely to be found. Whether men read, study, or work, their actions are characterized by a spirit of restlessness and disquietude. All their striving produces few results, except to make them more tired, empty, and soulless. And yet they perish in their efforts to do without God and without Christ. Thus they live in spite of the fact “there is no other name under heaven given to men whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4: 12.). Only He, the almighty God, can save us. (Father Benedict Baur, O.S.B., The Light of the World,  Volume I, “O Adonai,” pp. 79-80.)

Yes, this all the angst amongst "conservatives" who are striving within a false church against the heresies, sacrileges and blasphemies of a false "pope."

“All their striving produces few results, except to make them more tire, empty, and soulless. And yet they perish in their efforts to do without God and without Christ.”

This is a perfect description of the vain babbling that so many people accept as “wisdom” in this world, which is indeed in the grip of the adversary, something that Father Baur pointed out in his reflection for today’s antiphon, “O Root of Jesse”:

“Come to deliver us and tarry not.” The world cries out for Christ its King, who shall cast out the Prince of this world (John 12:31). The prince of this world established his power over men as a result of original sin. He exercises his lordship very efficiently, and has led man men into apostasy and idolatry, and has brought them into the temples where he himself is adored. He even dared to approach our Lord, after His fast of forty days in the desert to tempt Him to fall down before him and adore him. Even after we had been delivered from the servitude of Satan through the death of Christ on the cross, the prince of this world attempts to exercise his power over us. “The devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet. 5:8). Like a bird of prey he hovers above us waiting for a favorable opportunity to seize us and to lead us into sin. Often enough he transforms “himself into an angel of light” (1 Cor. 11:14). The sworn enemy and adversary of Christ and of all that is good, he devotes his entire energy and his great intelligence to the task of establishing a kingdom of sin and darkness which is opposed to God and to Christianity.

Satan establishes his power over deluded over men in a way that is perfectly obvious. When he has gained control over the body of man, he uses it for his own purposes, as though it were he who actually controls and animates the body in place of the human soul. He often exerts his influence over men by harassing them and hindering them by his external works, as is so evident in the lives of some holy men and women. In these trying times, when faith in Christ and in God has largely disappeared, when the propaganda of a pagan culture is broadcast everywhere, and the forces of evil and falsehood rise up to cast God from His throne, who does not feel the power of the devil? Does it not appear that we are approaching that time when Satan will be released from the depths of hell to work his wonders and mislead, if possible, even the elect? (Apoc. 20:2; Matt. 24:24.)

Catholics are never without hope!

Catholics hope in Christ the King and in the Revelation He has entrusted to His true Church as they rely upon the maternal intercession of the Mediatrix of All Graces, she who is our very “life, our sweetness, and our hope,” to help us to live in such a way in this life so as to be prepared at all times to die in a state of Sanctifying Grace as a member of the Catholic Church and thus adore God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost in the unending Easter Sunday of glory in Heaven that the Newborn Christ the King came to win for us on the wood of the Holy Cross.

We must cry out for Christ the King in the midst of the madness of these times.

We must make reparation for our sins, including our own sins of indifference or lukewarness towards—if not outright rejection of—the necessity of viewing everything in the world through the eyes of true Faith at all times and without any exception whatsoever.

We must make use of this holy week of Our Lady’s Expectation to pray her Most Holy Rosary, especially the Joyful Mysteries, with renewed fervor and with the authentic Supernatural Virtue of Hope that our souls will be prepared properly for the celebration of the Nativity the Baby Jesus on Christmas Day, and that they will be disposed to receive Him in Holy Communion with renewed fervor, purity, and devotion.

Appendix A

Father Benedict Baur on "O Divine Wisdom"

“O Wisdom, who camest out of the mouth of the Most High, reaching from end to end and ordering all things mightily and sweetly, come to teach us the way of prudence.”

O Wisdom! The Savior whom we shall find as a weak babe in the crib is the Wisdom which from eternity proceeds from the Father. The eternal Wisdom which comes to us in the person of the Savior, has devised everything that is: heaven and earth, angels and men, matter and spirit, the entire universe. It has formed all creatures and given them their outward form and their place in the order of creation. It has fixed the wonderful order of nature, and it governs its laws. The power of this gentle and mighty Spirit has its eternal designs upon the world and pervades and governs all that exists. Eternal Wisdom, resting as a child in the lap of Thy mother, I believe in Thee. How great Thou art in the works of Thy creation, how wonderful is the order of Thy universe, how merciful in the work of redemption, how sublimely humble in Thy crib, how divinely wise in the teachings of Thy gospel, how provident in the work of Thy holy Church! O divine Wisdom, let me understand Thee!

Divine Wisdom clothes itself in the nature of a man. It conceals itself in the weakness of a child. It chooses for itself, infancy, poverty, obedience, subjection, obscurity. “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the produce of the prudent I will not reject. . . . Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God, by the foolishness of our preaching, to save them that believe. For both the Jews require signs, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; but since we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews, indeed, a stumbling block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness; but unto them that are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.  . . . But the foolish things of the world hath God chosen, that He may confound the wise; and the weak things of the world hath God chosen, that He may confound the strong. And the base things of the world and the things that are contemptible, hath God chosen, and the things that are not, that He might bring to naught the things that are” (1 Cor.19 ff.).

Come, O Divine Wisdom, teach us the way of knowledge. We are unwise; we judge and speak according to the vain standards of the world, which is foolishness in the eyes of God. Come, O divine Wisdom, give us the true knowledge and the taste for what is eternal and divine. Inspire us with a thirst for God’s holy will help us seek God’s guidance and direction enlighten us in the teachings of the holy gospel, make us submissive to Thy holy Church. Strengthen us in the forgetfulness of self, and help us to reign ourselves to a position of obscurity if that be Thy holy will. Detach our hearts from resurgent pride. Give us wisdom that we may understand that “but one thing is necessary” (Luke 10:42). “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?” (Matt. 16:26.) The Holy Spirit would have us know that one degree of grace is worth more than all worldly possessions.

“The sensual man,” with only his natural ability, his unaided human talents, “perceiveth not these thing that are of the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2:14). Eternal Wisdom is foolishness to such a man. He cannot understand because he is not spiritually minded. The spiritual man is guided by the Holy Ghost, penetrates and values all things in the light of divine Wisdom, who “Himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ,” the eternal Wisdom (1 Cor. 2:15f.).

The wisdom of God appears to us in the crib, in poverty, in silence, in the weakness of childhood, in the gospel message: Blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, those who suffer persecution for Christ’s sake. The wisdom of God is made manifest in the foolishness of the cross. (Father Benedict Baur, O.S.B., The Light of the World, Volume I, B. Herder Book Company, 1954, “O Divine Wisdom,” pp, 77-78.)

Appendix B

Father Baur on "O Adonai"

“O Addonai (O almighty God), and leader of the house of Israel, who didst appear to Moses in the burning bush and didst give to him the law on Mount Sinai, come with an outstretched arm to redeem us.”

O Addonai! The Redeemer whom we await was already the Redeemer in the Old Testament. He it was who appeared to Moses in the burning bush in the desert and gave him the commission to lead Israel out of the bondage of Egypt. Through Moses, He wrought great signs in Egypt and rescued His people from the power of the tyranny of the Pharaohs. He led His people with power through the Red Sea and gave them the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. He led them through the desert, provided food and drink, and ushered them into the Promised Land. He appears now also as Redeemer of the Church of the New Law. He is the Savior and guide of those have been baptized in the Church. Little child of the crib, so small, so weak, so silent, how mighty must You be to rescue us from passion, from temptation, and from the power of Satan! We believe in Your power, we trust in the strength of Your arm, we follow with confidence Your leadership and Your guidance.

O Adonai, O almighty God, stretch forth Thy arm and save us. The enemy of our salvation, the enemy of souls, the enemy of the Church rises with great power seeking to destroy belief in God, in Christ, and in the Christian religion. Men have wandered far from the true God; they have turned their backs on Him and made for themselves grave images. They have banished God from their thoughts and from their lives. God is a disturbing element which they would be glad to be rid of. Any other molestation they will gladly suffer, no matter how foolish and disturbing it is.

“Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and ye gates thereof be very desolate with the Lord. For My people have done two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living water, and have digged to themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.” (Jer. 2: 12 f.). Both men and nations have lost all peace and tranquility. All virtues, innocence, fidelity, honor, honesty, and even a man’s word may be bought for gold. Scarcely one man can be found who trusts another. Nation has risen against nation, and man against man. Few are they who are faithful to their duty. The spirit of self-sacrifice is rarely to be found. Whether men read, study, or work, their actions are characterized by a spirit of restlessness and disquietude. All their striving produces few results, except to make them more tired, empty, and soulless. And yet they perish in their efforts to do without God and without Christ. Thus they live in spite of the fact “there is no other name under heaven given to men whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4: 12.). Only He, the almighty God, can save us.

Thou art He “who didst appear to Moses in the burning bush,” “I have seen the affliction of My people in Egypt, and I have heard their cry because of the rigor of them out of the hands of the Egyptians and to bring them out of that land into a good and spacious land, into a land that floweth with milk and honey” (Exod. 3:7f.). Thus spoke the Lord to Moses from the bush which burned but has not been consumed, which is a figure of God’s condescension to assume the weakness of human nature. The human nature of Christ is united to the burning divine nature, and yet it is not consumed.

As Moses approached the burning bush, so we approach the divine Savior in the form of a child in the crib, or in the form of the consecrated host, and falling down we adore Him. “Put off the shoes from thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. . . . I am who am” (Exod. 3:5, 14).

O Adonai, almighty God! Mighty in the weakness of a child, and in the helplessness of the Crucified! Thou, almighty God, mighty in the wonders that Thou hast worked. Mighty in guiding, sustaining, and developing Thy Church! “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18). Thou art mighty in the healing and redemption of souls, mighty in Thy love for us, who are so unworthy of Thy love. Instant are Thou in mercy, and all-sufficient in every need. Come and save us.

“Come with an outstretched arm to redeem us.” This is the cry of the Church for the second coming of Christ on the last day. The return of the Saviour brings us plentiful redemption. “Come, ye blessed of My Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you” (Matt. 25:34).  (Father Benedict Baur, O.S.B., The Light of the World,  Volume I, “O Adonai,” pp. 79-80.)

Appendix C

Father Baur on "O Root of Jesse"

“O Root of Jesse, who standest as an ensign of the people, before whom kings keep silence and the Gentiles shall make supplication, come to deliver us and tarry not.”

Christ the King, the Lord! Divine Wisdom, Adonai, the powerful God, is at the same time man with flesh and blood at the house of Jesse, the father of King David. The glory that once clothed the royal family has faded and withered, leaving only a blighted and withered root. But from this root is to spring a glorious blossom, the King of the world. “He shall rule from sea to sea and from river unto the ends of the earth. Before Him the Ethiopians shall fall down and His enemies shall lick the ground. The kings of Tharsis and the islands shall offer presents: the kings of the Arabians and of Saba shall serve Him” (Ps. 71:8-11). To Him God has said, “Thou art My Son. . . . I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thy inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for Thy possession” (Ps. 2:7 f.).

“He shall be great. . . . and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of David, His father, and He shall reign in the house of Jacob forever. And of His kingdom there shall be no end” (Luke 1:32. f.). In the face of Roman power He shall declare, “I am a King” (John 18:37). On the throne of the cross they shall proclaim His kingship in the three universal languages of the time: “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews” (John 19:19). He will send forth apostles, for all power is given Him “in heaven and in earth. Going, therefore, teach ye all nations, . . . . teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matt. 29: 18-20). Before Him a Herod, a Domitian, and a Diocletian shall tremble. A Julian will be obliged to confess, “Galilean, Thou hast conquered.”

He will establish His kingdom in the world, a kingdom of truth, of justice, and of grace. He who was cast off by men and fastened to the cross, will make that cross a throne. The Lord rules as a king from His cross. He is remembered gratefully and loved by millions who leave all earthly things, father and mother and all else, to follow Him. They devote their health, their life, even their blood, to His service. Root of Jesse. Thou standest as an ensign of the nations, and kings are silent in reverence before Thee. 

“Come to deliver us and tarry not.” The world cries out for Christ its King, who shall cast out the Prince of this world (John 12:31). The prince of this world established his power over men as a result of original sin. He exercises his lordship very efficiently, and has led man men into apostasy and idolatry, and has brought them into the temples where he himself is adored. He even dared to approach our Lord, after His fast of forty days in the desert to tempt Him to fall down before him and adore him. Even after we had been delivered from the servitude of Satan through the death of Christ on the cross, the prince of this world attempts to exercise his power over us. “The devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet. 5:8). Like a bird of prey he hovers above us waiting for a favorable opportunity to seize us and to lead us into sin. Often enough he transforms “himself into an angel of light” (1 Cor. 11:14). The sworn enemy and adversary of Christ and of all that is good, he devotes his entire energy and his great intelligence to the task of establishing a kingdom of sin and darkness which is opposed to God and to Christianity.

Satan establishes his power over deluded over men in a way that is perfectly obvious. When he has gained control over the body of man, he uses it for his own purposes, as though it were he who actually controls and animates the body in place of the human soul. He often exerts his influence over men by harassing them and hindering them by his external works, as is so evident in the lives of some holy men and women. In these trying times, when faith in Christ and in God has largely disappeared, when the propaganda of a pagan culture is broadcast everywhere, and the forces of evil and falsehood rise up to cast God from His throne, who does not feel the power of the devil? Does it not appear that we are approaching that time when Satan will be released from the depths of hell to work his wonders and mislead, if possible, even the elect? (Apoc. 20:2; Matt. 24:24.)

“Come, tarry not.” Observe not how thoroughly the world of today has submitted to the reign of Satan. Mankind has abandoned the search for what is good and holy. Loyalty, justice, freedom, love, and mutual trust are no longer highly regarded. Establish, O God, Thy kingdom among us, a kingdom established upon truth, justice, and peace. “Come, tarry not.” “Thy kingdom come.” (Father Benedict Baur, O.S.B., The Light of the World, Volume I, B. Herder Book Company, 1954. pp. 81-82.)