“The words of Everlasting Life” (Jn.6:69)
Fr. Campbell
During
the Octave of Corpus Christi, we ponder the words of Our Lord: “Amen,
amen I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink
his blood, you shall not have life in you” (Jn.6:54). Jesus speaks not
of the natural life shared by every descendent of Adam and Eve, but of
the supernatural life, the spiritual life, the life that comes with
Sanctifying Grace through Baptism. We are sons of God by adoption,
sharing His life through grace. We are made holy, united in a holy union
with the angels and the saints. We are alive! And this life is
sustained in us by eating the Bread of Life in the Sacrament of Holy
Communion.
This
life is not given to those who have refused the Lord’s invitation to
the Wedding Feast. The natural man knows nothing of this life. After
Jesus offered His disciples His flesh to eat and His Blood to drink many
of them walked away. Jesus explained to the Apostles, “This is why I
have said to you, ‘no one can come to me unless he is enabled to do so
by my Father’” (Jn.6:66). When He asked the twelve if they would also
leave, Peter answered: “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast words of
everlasting life, and we have come to believe and to know that thou art
the Christ, the Son of God” (Jn.6:69,70).
The
Apostles had faith, but the natural man, the man without faith, cannot
understand the things of the spirit. Those who do not have faith are
like zombies, who do not know they are dead. Not only do they not
understand spiritual things, but they oppose them, persecuting the
children of God. As Jesus says, “He who is not with me is against me;
and he who does not gather with me scatters” (Lk.11:23).
The
natural man plans our lives for us – our education, our family life,
our work, our clothing, our leisure, our entertainment. We can no longer
even think for ourselves, because he has also taken command of the
language, “dumbing it down”, and loading it with words and phrases that
disguise the greatest evil as something good, phrases like “pro choice”.
Does a woman have a right to choose to kill her unborn child? The
Lord’s Commandment says: “Thou shalt not kill!” The child in the womb is
a precious human being who may someday be led to the Font of Baptism
and be fed with the Bread of Life. But those who can’t get beyond the
words “pro choice” cannot see the truth. Those who control our language
control our thoughts.
When
George Orwell wrote his prophetic novel, “1984, he also wrote an
appendix in which he explained the principles of “Newspeak”, the
language which, in the novel, was being created to take the place of
traditional English, which was being abandoned in the new world of
English Socialism, called IntSoc:
“The
purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for
the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but
to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when
Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a
heretical thought – that is, a thought diverging from the principles of
IngSoc – should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is
dependent on words.” The great works of English literature would have to
be translated into Newspeak, a task which “meant that no book written
before approximately 1960 could be translated as a whole” (The Principles of Newspeak, newspeakdictionary.com).
In
the year1960 preparations were in progress for the planned
revolutionary council, Vatican II. It would rewrite Church history and
doctrine, downplaying practically everything written before 1960, and
imposing the Church’s variety of Newspeak upon unsuspecting Catholics.
As a result, those who follow the Newchurch speak a new impoverished
language which renders them incapable of understanding traditional
Catholicism. Those who follow the Novus Ordo are no longer able to think
for themselves. They have become the brainwashed drones of Orwell’s
novel. And they are all in danger of losing their souls.
Who
has done this? God knows who they are, and they must face His judgment.
Jesus speaks of those who have been the cause of scandal: “But whoever
causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it were better
for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck, and to be
drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of scandals!
For it must needs be that scandals come, but woe to the man through whom
scandal does come!” (Mt.18:6,7).
We
must not let this happen to us. We need some righteous indignation
against those who are harassing our souls, some Godly anger. Should we
not be angry when confronted with their ridicule, their lies, their
blasphemies, their seductions, their lewd performances, their satanic
music, their places of carnal delights? They are out to destroy our
souls. That moral monster at the other end of the shameful image on our
computer screen is no friend, but an agent of Hell. May St. Michael and
the Heavenly Armies strike at them, and send them reeling into the
bottomless pit where they belong!
But
we have true friends with whom we share a spiritual language which is
hidden from the worldly. That language is prayer, through which we raise
our minds and our hearts to God. We can call upon Holy Mary, the Mother
of God, to go to war for us against the Dragon, and upon a host of
Heavenly Angels and Saints to pray without ceasing for our victory over
the powers of Hell.
The
Lord feeds us with His greatest gift, the Hidden Manna, the Bread from
Heaven, the food of those who accept His invitation to the Wedding
Feast. St. Thomas Aquinas speaks of it in the sequence of the Mass
(after the Epistle) for the Feast of Corpus Christi:
