WE HAVE MOVED!

"And I beheld, and heard the voice of one eagle flying through the midst of heaven,
saying with a loud voice: Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth....
[Apocalypse (Revelation) 8:13]

Sunday, January 10, 2016

Fr. Campbell- “Children of Light” (Eph.5:8)

Fr. Campbell- “Children of Light” (Eph.5:8)

The world desires to have power over us. It seeks to disturb our peace – the peace of soul that should be there, since we are temples of the Living God. St. Louis, King of France, believed so much in the presence of God within the soul, that he used to kneel to adore the Holy Trinity at the bedside of his sleeping son. If God dwells within our souls, then there should be perfect order there, and perfect peace, since “peace is the tranquility of order” (St. Augustine). 


Those who allow the world to have power over them often say with the philosopher, Jean Paul Sartre, “Hell is other people.” Human nature is so fragile and vulnerable. Sin has made us that way, the sin of our first parents – Original Sin – which weakened our human nature spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically. Then there is personal sin, which has weakened us further, and sometimes almost destroyed us.

And as if we were not paranoid enough already, many are becoming convinced that Big Brother is indeed watching us, just as George Orwell warned in his novel, 1984. Who would have thought that “Big Brother” would turn out to be our own governmental system, under the ultimate control, of course, of a far more intelligent and sinister power? The words of Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of England under Queen Victoria, are often quoted: “The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.”


But though we live in this world, we are not of this world, and we don’t have to fear “Big Brother.” We are a different generation, “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people” (1Pet.2:9). We are the generation born of water and the Spirit—the Holy Spirit of God, the Holy Ghost. That is, we belong to the Holy Family. By grace we are a new creation. The natural man is a victim of his genes, his personal and family history, and his environment. But by grace man transcends nature and becomes a new creature, begotten of God. We are members of the Holy Family – Jesus, Mary, and Joseph – God’s family on earth, which is, in fact, the Church. Our Brother, Jesus, is bigger and stronger than any power on earth.

The ‘old man’ still tries to enslave us, but he is a liar. He tries to convince us that we are incapable of avoiding sin by making us think: “Oh, I’ve always been this way; I never really had a chance; the temptations are too much for me; I have to do this; I’m too old to change now.” These are the lies of the “old man”, the natural man, actually the lies of the devil. But the word of God tells us:

“Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit that is from God, that we may know the things that have been given us by God. These things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in the learning of the Spirit, combining spiritual with spiritual. But the sensual man does not perceive the things that are of the Spirit of God, for it is foolishness to him and he cannot understand, because it is examined spiritually. But the spiritual man judges all things, and he himself is judged by no man. For ‘who has known the mind of the Lord, that he might instruct him?’ But we have the mind of Christ” (1Cor.2:13-16).

The contemporary church has given up judging according to the Spirit, and it allows itself to be guided by the world, and judged by the world. It speaks piously about human solidarity and the brotherhood of man. Solidarity with the Herods, and the Hitlers, and the antichrists of this age? Solidarity with the Margaret Sangers, and the New Worlders, and the “Pro Choice” crowd? I think not! 


Our solidarity is with Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and with all who are signed with the seal of the Living God through Baptism, and are fed with the True Bread from Heaven, the Body and Blood of Christ. Here is the true “civilization of peace and love” in which the unbelieving world can have no place. There are still Philomenas and Maria Gorettis, Dominic Savios and Don Boscos. There are still Augustines and Aquinases, Teresas and Joans, Thomas Mores and John Fishers, waiting to be revealed by the Spirit of God, living lives of intense faith like the saints of old, ready to defend the faith of their fathers before the judges, or to surrender their lives to the persecutors. (We know you’re out there!)

We must stop defining ourselves in our own minds by what nature has given us, and begin to see ourselves as sons and daughters of God, a new creation. If our image of ourselves is that of the natural man, the unregenerate man, we will go on behaving as natural men. But if we see ourselves as children of God we will grow in wisdom and grace, as Jesus did, under the careful guidance of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph.

These words of St. Paul are for us:

“This, therefore, I say and testify in the Lord, that henceforward you are not to walk as the Gentiles walk in the futility of their mind, having their understanding clouded in darkness, estranged from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart. For they have given themselves up in despair to sensuality, greedily practicing every kind of uncleanness. But you have not so learned Christ – for surely you have heard of him and have been taught in him (as truth is in Jesus) that as regards your former manner of life you are to put off the old man, which is being corrupted through its deceptive lusts. But be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, which has been created according to God in justice and holiness of truth” (Eph.4:17-24)… For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk, then, as children of light (for the fruit of the light is in all goodness and justice and truth), testing what is well pleasing to God; and have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness…” (Eph.5:8-11).