To View All Things in Light of Eternity: Do Not Get Absorbed into the Cockle of Worldly Affairs

The past week has been filled with news about the Democrats’ blue tsunami and President Donald John Trump’s reaction it, especially by appointing the Stephen Miller, the man responsible for instituting quotas for rounding up illegal immigrants rather than targeting those among the illegal immigrants who have committed violent crimes in addition to crossing the border illegally, as his Chief of Staff to replace Big Pharma’s very own Susan Summerall Wiles. Trump believes that the combative Miller will energize his “Make America Great Again” political base even though many of his former supporters, especially among younger voters are gone for good because of the Iran War and the subsequent increases in the cost of gasoline, diesel, and home heating fuel (see, for example, Fox News Host Stunned by Voters Who Deserted Trump).

Elsewhere in the world Israeli President Isaac Herzog, the son of the late Chaim Herzog, who was Israel’s President (head of state) between 1983 to 1993, has asked Gadi Eisenkot to form a coalition government that might mean the end of Benjamin Netanyahu’s current run as Israeli Prime Minister and master of genocide in Gaza and the West Bank. Eisenkot, however, is still a Zionist and his differences with Netanyahu are largely matters of style rather than substance in a mirror image of the false opposites of Judeo-Masonry that exist here in the United States of America.

These kinds of bread and circuses were dismissed as follows by Pope Pius XI in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922:

12. A much more serious and lamentable evil than these threats of external aggression is the internal discord which menaces the welfare not only of nations but of human society itself. In the first place, we must take cognizance of the war between the classes, a chronic and mortal disease of present-day society, which like a cancer is eating away the vital forces of the social fabric, labor, industry, the arts, commerce, agriculture — everything in fact which contributes to public and private welfare and to national prosperity. This conflict seems to resist every solution and grows worse because those who are never satisfied with the amount of their wealth contend with those who hold on most tenaciously to the riches which they have already acquired, while to both classes there is common the desire to rule the other and to assume control of the other’s possessions. From this class war there result frequent interruptions of work, the causes for which most often can be laid to mutual provocations. There result, too, revolutions, riots, and forcible repression of one side or other by the government, all of which cannot but end in general discontent and in grave damage to the common welfare.

To these evils we must add the contests between political parties, many of which struggles do not originate in a real difference of opinion concerning the public good or in a laudable and disinterested search for what would best promote the common welfare, but in the desire for power and for the protection of some private interest which inevitably result in injury to the citizens as a whole. From this course there often arise robberies of what belongs rightly to the people, and even conspiracies against and attacks on the supreme authority of the state, as well as on its representatives. These political struggles also beget threats of popular action and, at times, eventuate in open rebellion and other disorders which are all the more deplorable and harmful since they come from a public to whom it has been given, in our modern democratic states, to participate in very large measure in public life and in the affairs of government. Now, these different forms of government are not of themselves contrary to the principles of the Catholic Faith, which can easily be reconciled with any reasonable and just system of government. Such governments, however, are the most exposed to the danger of being overthrown by one faction or another.

13. It is most sad to see how this revolutionary spirit has penetrated into that sanctuary of peace and love, the family, the original nucleus of human society. In the family these evil seeds of dissension, which were sown long ago, have recently been spread about more and more by the fact of the absence of fathers and sons from the family fireside during the War and by the greatly increased freedom in matters of morality which followed on it as one of its effects. Frequently we behold sons alienated from their fathers, brothers quarreling with brothers, masters with servants, servants with masters. Too often likewise have we seen both the sanctity of the marriage tie and the duties to God and to humankind, which this tie imposes upon men, forgotten.

14. Just as the smallest part of the body feels the effect of an illness which is ravaging the whole body or one of its vital organs, so the evils now besetting society and the family afflict even individuals. In particular, We cannot but lament the morbid restlessness which has spread among people of every age and condition in life, the general spirit of insubordination and the refusal to live up to one’s obligations which has become so widespread as almost to appear the customary mode of living. We lament, too, the destruction of purity among women and young girls as is evidenced by the increasing immodesty of their dress and conversation and by their participation in shameful dances, which sins are made the more heinous by the vaunting in the faces of people less fortunate than themselves their luxurious mode of life. Finally, We cannot but grieve over the great increase in the number of what might be called social misfits who almost inevitably end by joining the ranks of those malcontents who continually agitate against all order, be it public or private.

15. It is surprising, then, that we should no longer possess that security of life in which we can place our trust and that there remains only the most terrible uncertainty, and from hour to hour added fears for the future? Instead of regular daily work there is idleness and unemployment. That blessed tranquillity which is the effect of an orderly existence and in which the essence of peace is to be found no longer exists, and, in its place, the restless spirit of revolt reigns. As a consequence industry suffers, commerce is crippled, the cultivation of literature and the arts becomes more and more difficult, and what is worse than all, Christian civilization itself is irreparably damaged thereby. In the face of our much praised progress, we behold with sorrow society lapsing back slowly but surely into a state of barbarism. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

This is certainly truer now than it was one hundred three years ago, and it is simply distressing, to say the least, that believing Catholics, of all people, still put their trust in the princes of this world, the children of men in whom there is no hope of salvation and who, quite indeed, lead people into all kinds of error, if not hell itself, because of their blasphemously obscene words and their immoral actions undertaken frequently with either an indifference to or contempt for the inviolability of innocent human being throughout all its stages. No one who supports the surgical killing of children or who supports their being killed by chemical means is worthy of exercising civil authority in a just social order.

To call to mind once again the words of Silvio Cardinal Antoniano at the end of the Sixteenth Century:

The more closely the temporal power of a nation aligns itself with the spiritual, and the more it fosters and promotes the latter, by so much the more it contributes to the conservation of the commonwealth. For it is the aim of the ecclesiastical authority by the use of spiritual means, to form good Christians in accordance with its own particular end and object; and in doing this it helps at the same time to form good citizens, and prepares them to meet their obligations as members of a civil society. This follows of necessity because in the City of God, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, a good citizen and an upright man are absolutely one and the same thing. How grave therefore is the error of those who separate things so closely united, and who think that they can produce good citizens by ways and methods other than those which make for the formation of good Christians. For, let human prudence say what it likes and reason as it pleases, it is impossible to produce true temporal peace and tranquillity by things repugnant or opposed to the peace and happiness of eternity. (Silvio Cardinal Antoniano, quoted by Pope Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)

No, no one on the naturalist "right" understands this, which makes it impossible to turn back the tide of evil advanced by their opposite numbers among the ranks of the naturalist "left," most of whom are proud to boast of their support for the very evils that undermine justice in their nations and peace in the world, and no one but no one who says he has his “own morality” in his own mind is a friend of Christ the King.

Pope Leo XIII, writing in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885, taught that it is impossible to produce a just social order if the civil law permits all kinds of licentiousness:

Whatever, therefore, is opposed to virtue and truth may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law. A well-spent life is the only way to heaven, whither all are bound, and on this account the State is acting against the laws and dictates of nature whenever it permits the license of opinion and of action to lead minds astray from truth and souls away from the practice of virtue. To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from life, from laws, from the education of youth, from domestic society is a grave and fatal error. A State from which religion is banished can never be well regulated; and already perhaps more than is desirable is known of the nature and tendency of the so-called civil philosophy of life and morals. The Church of Christ is the true and sole teacher of virtue and guardian of morals. She it is who preserves in their purity the principles from which duties flow, and, by setting forth most urgent reasons for virtuous life, bids us not only to turn away from wicked deeds, but even to curb all movements of the mind that are opposed to reason, even though they be not carried out in action. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

These points should be very familiar to longtime readers of this website. Should be. Maybe not.

However, as we do live in time and cannot but help to get caught up in the apparent “victories” and “defeats” in the natural realm that distract us from the only real victory that matters, namely, the daily vanquishing of the adversary in our souls by means of the ineffable graces that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ won for us during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Grace, and thus to be prepared at all times for our death and the fearful moment of the Particular Judgment so that we can, solely by the mercy of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the love of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, become partakes of Our King’s Easter victory over sin and death for all eternity.

There are actually many areas of agreement between the newly minted Congressional majority and the president they despise, particularly as relates to a mutual support for the unrestricted distribution of the human pesticide, mifepristone, and for in vitro fertilization.

In vitro fertilization is abjectly evil.

No one has a right to a child as they are gifts of God to be welcomed with generosity according to the means He has given them to continue the species. The conception of children is not to be prevented, and those who cannot have children are called to accept their cross with equanimity while considering the adoption of children and/or to seek the advice of a believing Catholic obstetrician/gynecologist in an effort to determine whether a case of infertility is medically or surgically remediable.

One can pray for the gift of children, but one can never take matters into their own hands by having recourse to monsters who make billions of dollars by defying God in the creation of human life artificially.

The Protestant Revolution’s overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King let loose the forces of anti-Incarnational forces of naturalism upon the world that gave us, in successive turn, divorce, contraception, abortion, the promotion of sodomite and its ever-increasing spectrum of perverse vices, in vitro fertilization, “brain death”/vital organ vivisection and transplantation, the starvation and dehydration of innocent human beings, “palliative care”/hospice, legally sanctioned infanticide, euthanasia, suicide and doctor-assisted suicide and, of course, the curse of human fetal stem-cell research that has spawned the cottage industry of mad scientists who believe that there are no God-given limits on their work and that they will never have to answer to God, in whom most do not believe, for daring to mock His omnipotence.

The downward spiral, though, was over four centuries in the making, longer yet if one considers how certain elements of the Renaissance helped to undermine the integrity of Faith and Morals in various intellectual and artistic circles in the century before the rise of Martin Luther, but we are seeing the tragic consequences of this spiral into the abyss right before our very eyes.

Contraception, of course, resulted in widespread adultery, divorces, broken families, the feminization of poverty and, ultimately, the “legalization” of surgical abortion up to and including the day of birth. This denial of the Sovereignty of God over the sanctity and fecundity of marriage has produced a mentality of selfishness between spouses, most of whom view children as something to be “planned” or “wanted” and not the first end of their married lives. The belief that one can “plan” to have children was followed by the belief that married couples have a “right” to have a child if a wife (or the husband) is infertile. Those who do not accept that it is part of God’s Holy Providence for men and women to join together in Holy Matrimony to welcome as many or as few children as He sees fit to send them will not accept His Holy Will if they are incapable of having children.

The confusion that exists in the minds of many Catholics now is in large part, although not entirely, attributable to the conciliar sect’s “reconciliation” with the world “as it is,” which is nothing other than a reconciliation with the prince of darkness himself, by the officials of the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

Although everything happens within the Providence of God, all too many Catholics all across and up and down the vast expanse of the ecclesiastical divide at this time permit themselves to wonder why we are living in the midst of this time of Calvinist-Judeo-Masonry in the world and of Modernism that has run amok in Holy Mother Church’s counterfeit ape, the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

Well, the short answer is that God has known from all eternity that these would be circumstances in which we would live, meaning that His grace is sufficient for us not only to sanctify and to save our souls as members of the true Church but to plant the seeds for the restoration to come.

Additionally, as I have noted in the past two commentaries on this site, the situations that face us today are a chastisement for our own sins, our own lukewarmness, our own worldliness, and our fearfulness.

The wheat the chaff must grow together, something that the Gospel read at Holy Mass yesterday, the Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost (Mass of the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany) and the Commemorations of the Octave of All Saints and the Four Holy Crowned Martyrs, teaches us very explicitly:

At that time: Jesus spoke this parable to the multitude, saying: The kingdom of heaven is likened to a man that sowed good seeds in his field. But while men were asleep, his enemy came and oversowed cockle among the wheat and went his way. And when the blade was sprung up, and had brought forth fruit, then appeared also the cockle. And the servants of the good man of the house coming said to him: Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? whence then hath it cockle? And he said to them: An enemy hath done this. And the servants said to him: Wilt thou that we go and gather it up? And he said: No, lest perhaps gathering up the cockle, you root up the wheat also together with it. Suffer both to grow until the harvest, and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers: Gather up first the cockle, and bind it into bundles to burn, but the wheat gather ye into my barn. (Matthew 13: 24-30.)

Dom Prosper Gueranger explained this parable as follows in The Liturgical Year:

The kingdom of heaven, spoken of our by our Lord, is the Church Militant, the society of them that believe in Him. And yet, the field He has tilled with so much care is oversown with cockle; heresies have crept in, scandals have abounded; are we, on that account, to have misgivings about the foresight of the Master, who knows all things, and without whose permission nothing happens? Far from us be such a thought! He Himself tells us that these things must needs be. Man has been gifted with free will; it is for him to choose between good and evil; but God will turn all to His own greater glory. Heresies, then, like weeds in a field, may spring up in the Church; but the day must come when they will be uprooted; some of them will wither on the parent stems, but the whole cockle shall be gathered into bundles to burn. Where are now the heresies that sprang up in the first ages of the Church? And in another hundred years, what will have become of the heresy which, under the pretentious name of “the reformation,” has caused incalculable evil? It is the same with the scandals which rise up within the pale of the Church: they are a hard trial; but trials must come. The divine Husbandman wills not that this cockle be torn up, lest the wheat should suffer injury. First of all, the mixture of good and bad is an advantage; it teaches the good not to put their hopes in man, but in God. Then, too, the mercy of our Lord is so great that at times the very cockle is converted, by divine grace, into wheat. We must therefore have patience. But whereas it is while the men are asleep that the enemy oversows the field with cockle, it behooves us to pray for pastors, and ask their divine Master to bless them with that vigilance which is the primary condition of the flock being safe, and is so essential a quality in every bishop, that his very name is “one who watches.”  (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany.)

As Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J., wrote about the same Gospel passage, we must recognize that there is both wheat and cockle in our own immortal souls and that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ bears with us patiently to give us the opportunity to cast out the cockle by means of the graces that He has won for us during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross so that we will not be subjected to eternal hellfire for refusing to do so:

Holy Writ compares the working out of our salvation and the using of divine grace to different occupations of men, such as building, fishing and commerce. In today's Gospel our Lord draws His comparison from a field which a husbandman sows with good seed. The field is the heart of man, the husbandman is the Lord, and the seeds are the communications of His grace, which through our co-operation bring forth fruit for eternal life.

Unhappily, this seed frequently fails to bring forth that fruit which Christ expected to reap when He intrusted it to our hearts. The enemy of God, the enemy of the children of God, the Evil One, endeavors to prevent the growth of the seed, and it is our duty to check his attempts. And how can this be done? We will consider this question today. O Mary, pray for us, that we may be filled with the desire to prepare our heart for the Lord, and that we may keep it closed to all evil influences! I speak in the most holy name of Jesus, to the greater glory of God!

We have but one thing to care for here on earth, and that is to serve God, to know and fulfill His holy will, and to save our souls. We shall accomplish this task by earnestly endeavoring to co-operate with the divine grace which God bestows upon us for the growth of virtue in our hearts, and by eradicating from them all evil inclinations. Christ, as I said, compares the inspirations of His grace to seed which falls into the hearts of men. And how early, how ceaselessly, and in what manifold ways this seed falls into our hearts!

First, the sight of the entire world reminds us daily and hourly of the power, greatness, majesty, wisdom, and goodness of God, and is a perpetual admonition to serve God, and gather fruit for eternity, to employ for this end all the means which God has given us, to ask Him for help, return thanks for benefits received, and render Him all the honor in our power.

Were we always to bear in mind how perfectly nature fulfills the will of God, how with all its strength it strives after perfection; further, were we to remember how every breath we draw, every drop of water we drink, every morsel of bread we eat, each thread of our clothes is a gift of God, what an incentive would not these thoughts be to serve God, to praise Him and to do His holy will!

In the life of St. Paul of the Cross we read that when he walked through the fields he sometimes would beat the grass with a stick, and say to the flowers: "Be silent! " Me felt ashamed at the sight of them, and thought: Oh, that I served God as perfectly as you do, and that the virtues of my life were as fragrant as you. How precious is the seed which God by the hand of nature sows upon the field of our heart to animate us in the service of our Creator!

Let us consider the effects of interior grace, and the influence it exercises over us, as also the instruction we receive as children of the Church.

First: In regard to the bestowing of His graces, what has God not done, and what is He not daily doing for us? The good seed fell upon our youthful hearts with every word which our parents spoke when instructing us in our faith and encouraging us to live rightly. Think too of all that you were told as children at school or in the Church, to encourage you to lead a virtuous life. Add to this the festivals of the Church, the good example of many of her children, the lives of her saints, and the countless good books which place the beauty of virtue before your eyes! All this is seed which falls ever anew upon the hearts of the children of the Church. So, too, all that we hear from the mouth of the priest in the pulpit, the very words I address to you now, are good seeds falling into the hearts of those who listen.

Moreover, all the inspirations of grace are greatly increased if we walk prayerfully in the presence of the Lord, and are zealous in receiving holy Communion. How abundant would our spiritual harvest be, were we to receive into our hearts the seed that falls upon it, and by our co-operation aid it to grow and ripen! Call to mind what doctors in theology tell us, that for each grace well applied, the Lord bestows a still greater one. It is, however, necessary to take care lest there be mixed with the good seed which falls into our hearts some of the bad seed which Satan is constantly endeavoring to sow. As regards the outer world, he is anxious to prevail upon us to esteem and seek inordinately the enjoyment of temporal good, and instead of praising, glorifying, and loving with all our hearts the Creator, to offend Him by misusing His gifts even to idolatry. Oh! how many weeds sprout up in the garden of our heart through this misuse, and how great the danger which menaces man, if he be not careful to root out the weed of inordinate love for creatures, lest it stifle the good seed and overgrow the ground of his heart!

I have said before that every word which was addressed to us in our youth, and which instructed us in our faith, was a good seed dropped into our hearts. Satan knows this, and tries to prevent the sowing of these seeds. He endeavors to create obstacles which will prevent parents from fulfilling their duties, so that the children grow up without instruction or the habit of prayer. He causes them to give scandal to their children by word and conduct, and thus sow the seed of evil. It is a subject for wonder that sometimes children are better and more pious than their parents.

School is the place where youth ought to be instructed in their religion, and trained to walk in the way of virtue; it is next to the family circle the place where the good seed ought to be sown most abundantly and fostered most carefully, and yet school is not unfrequently the most active field of Satan for the sowing of evil. Children are sent to godless schools, where they imbibe the spirit of the world, where, hearing our holy religion abused, and coming in contact with children of depraved morals, they take into their hearts seeds of immorality and irreligion.

In a short time the youth that have been under such influences avoid the church, and feel disgust at prayer and the word of God. They prefer to hear the frivolous conversation of children of the world and frequent their society; they read no longer good books, but peruse such as are filled with vain and worldly tales, perhaps even with immorality. Alas, what a vast amount of evil seeds falls into such hearts! And who is there to eradicate the tares? Those whose duty it is are careless, asleep. Satan has plenty of time to tend and water the sprouting tares.

As Christ says in to-day's Gospel, while the husbandman is sleeping the enemy comes and sows cockle. Sleep is the emblem of carelessness, and how fraught with danger is this our sleep for those whom God has placed under our guidance! Why is it that so many children, instead of progressing in virtue, grow in frivolity and wickedness? The carelessness of the parents is the cause. They sleep, fulfill not their duty, and the enemy cometh; they do not keep watch over the conduct of their children, and Satan enrolls them as his own.

Therefore if we earnestly desire to exclude from our hearts the seeds of evil, and to stifle the germ of sin within us, we must watch, and while rooting out the tares of evil, cherish and watch over the seed that produces the harvest which the hands of angels will one day collect for the granaries of heaven! Amen! (Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J., First Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany.)

The final few paragraphs of Father Weninger’s third sermon for the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany explains that we must be entirely dependent upon Our Lady’s help to save our souls:

A closing word to parents and superiors--and then I have done. O Christian fathers and mothers! are you continually on your guard to prevent your children from associating with dangerous companions? Remember that God has intrusted these little ones to your charge, that you may bring them up in His fear and love. You will have to give a rigorous account of their souls on the day of judgment; our Lord Jesus Christ will strictly examine as to your diligence in preserving them from every evil association and occasion of sin. What, then, will He say on the Last Day to those parents, who not only have used no efforts to keep their children away from bad company, but have been themselves the ministers of Satan to them, instilling evil principles into their minds, or scandalizing them by their disorderly, irreligious lives? Ah! He will say to them: "It would have been better for you if you had never been born. Instead of securing the salvation of their souls you have plunged them by your bad example and counsels into eternal ruin! You and they are alike everlastingly lost. Depart, then, depart forever from my presence into the quenchless fires of hell!"

O Christian masters and superiors, you too must watch continually over your dependents lest they be seduced and corrupted by evil, immoral companions. Let the keen eye of holy vigilance be ever open in the household, in the shop, in the factories, and on the streets. Let every Christian vie with his neighbor in giving edification, parents with their children, and children with their parents; brothers with their sisters, and sisters with their brothers; masters with their servants, and servants with their masters; and thus may we all, dear brethren, by our united efforts spread the kingdom of God daily, more and more, and counteract the efforts of those who by their disedifying lives are endeavoring to spread abroad the kingdom of Satan and of Sin. That you may be the better able to effect your holy purpose, have continual recourse to Mary, the loving Mother of God, and our fond Mother, also. She is the model of perfection, and no human being ever led a more exemplary life than she. Let us then, by imitating her virtues, and by frequently invoking her powerful intercession, render her propitious in our regard.

Call upon her continually and confidingly; for her maternal heart is ever burning with solicitude for our temporal and eternal welfare. Her devout client is ever a match for the united powers of hell; since we read in her sacred office, that "she is terrible as an army set in array." Recommend yourselves also daily to her spouse, the good and benevolent St. Joseph--to your angel guardian--and your holy patron Saints, that they may obtain for you all the grace you need; especially, the grace to avoid all dangerous society, or, if you are forced to frequent it against your will, the grace to be protected from all its evils and enervating influences. Thus, at last, my beloved, having fought the good fight, having brought your unruly passions under due subjection, you may, one day, reap the reward of your labors in heaven, by being admitted to the eternal society of Jesus and Mary, and of all the Angels and Saints. Amen. (Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J., Third Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany.)

We need the help of Our Lady to prevail in the daily battle being waged against us by the adversary in ways that could lead us away from praying her Holy Rosary daily or from spending any appreciable time in mental prayer or undertaking spiritual reading. In plain words, therefore, we cannot sanctify and save our immortal souls except by a sincere and profound devotion to the Mother of God, she who is the August Queen of Heaven and Our Lady of Divine Providence, especially by means of our fervent praying of her Psalter, the Rosary, by meditating upon the mysteries contained therein.

Our Lady has given us so many means to root out the cockle and to get home to Heaven, and it is imperative that make use of each means she sends us to develop hearts that wholly belong to the Sacred Heart of her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, through her own Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

The great business that we must be about is not is found in politics or political parties or political movements but only in praying and working assiduously to sanctify and save our souls as members of His true Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there cannot be just order within nations nor a just and enduring peace among them.

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. 

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Theodore, pray for us.