Witnesses in the Night of Our Faith

Jesus is the only Gospel: we have nothing further to say
or any other witness to bear.
—POPE JOHN PAUL II
Evangelium Vitae, n. 80

Whoever attacks human life, in some way attacks God himself. —POPE JOHN PAUL II, Evangelium Vitae; n. 10

Hence, wrote his successor:

Western society is a society in which God is absent in the public sphere and has nothing left to offer it. And that is why it is a society in which the measure of humanity is increasingly lost. At individual points it becomes suddenly apparent that what is evil and destroys man has become a matter of course. —EMERITUS POPE BENEDICT XVI, Essay: ‘The Church and the scandal of sexual abuse’; Catholic News Agency, April 10th, 2019

St. John Paul II clearly foresaw these times and did his best to warn the flock. Evangelium Vitae is a powerful and prophetic document that serves as both a warning and instruction to the faithful for this final confrontation “between the Church and the anti-church, between the Gospel and the anti-gospel.” You’ve heard me quote those words a thousand times, but just listen to them once more: there is an anti-Church and an anti-gospel, he said. We might mistake this to mean atheism vs Christianity. But it is far more subtle and subversive… it is a false Church within the Church; a false gospel inserted into the true Gospel. Put another way, it is “weeds among the wheat.”^[1]see When the Weeds begin to Head

Indeed, Our Lady warned recently that “Darnel has seized many hearts and they have become unfruitful.” ^[2]Our Lady Queen of Peace allegedly to Marija, February 25, 2024

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths. (2 Tim 4:3-4)

Darnel is known as a “mimic weed” because it looks almost identical to wheat plants right up until the seed heads form. But it’s poisonous — toxic to animals and humans alike.

Where there is darnel, there is treachery and toxicity. —Howard Thomas, Journal of Ethnobiology

So too, we hear new concepts emerging that seem to bear the appearance of love… but are devoid of the kernel of truth. As bishops’ conferences have stated around the world, the recent document Fiducia Supplicans is the veritable poster child of this “anti-gospel.”

They disorient the Christian faithful by their confusing and ambiguous language. They adulterate and falsify the Word of God, willing to twist and bend it to gain the world’s approval. They are the Judas Iscariots of our time. —Cardinal Sarah, Catholic Herald, April 5th, 2019

So now, you and I have awoken to a world that is not only anti-life, to the degree of what appears to be a deliberate programme of depopulation underway, but to a powerful segment of the Church that is anti-mercy. Not in the sense of being against mercy, but twisting what true mercy is — to the point of distorting the very purpose of Christ’s death and resurrection: to save us from our sin.

Hence, we arrived at the hour of the Church’s own Passion…

Remembering Our Mission!

“Walk as children of light … and try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness” (Eph 5:8, 10-11)

But even in the face of this overwhelming “beast”, St. John Paul II provides what our response ought to be. Naturally, it means building a culture of life where Christians truly value and defend human life from conception to natural death. But it goes much further: it is returning to the very mission of the Church:

The Church has received the Gospel as a proclamation and a source of joy and salvation… Born from this evangelizing activity, the Church hears every day the echo of Saint Paul’s words of warning: “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel!” (1 Cor 9:16). As Paul VI wrote, “evangelization is the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize”. —Evangelium Vitae, n. 78

Thus he says,

While the urgent need for such a cultural transformation is linked to the present historical situation, it is also rooted in the Church’s mission of evangelization. The purpose of the Gospel, in fact, is “to transform humanity from within and to make it new”. Like the yeast which leavens the whole measure of dough (cf. Mt 13:33), the Gospel is meant to permeate all cultures and give them life from within, so that they may express the full truth about the human person and about human life. —Evangelium Vitae, n. 95

Indeed, how would we ultimately transform our present situation into a “culture of life” without heralding He who declared: ‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life”? This means that you and I have an obligation, not only to be witnesses in how we live and act, but to be those who proclaim the name of Jesus to those around us — literally!

…the finest witness will prove ineffective in the long run if it is not explained, justified… and made explicit by a clear and unequivocal proclamation of the Lord Jesus. The Good News proclaimed by the witness of life sooner or later has to be proclaimed by the word of life. There is no true evangelization if the name, the teaching, the life, the promises, the kingdom and the mystery of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God are not proclaimed. —POPE ST. PAUL VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, n. 22; vatican.va

I know this stretches our comfort zone. It is so much easier to just be nice. It’s so much more peaceful to just be conciliatory. But again, “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel!” Woe to us if we are cowards!

The Western Church has fallen asleep to the point of having fallen away. We hardly know the meaning of the word “martyrdom” any longer. But it is time for us to recover that kind of courage, that kind of boldness, that kind of love. Because if we don’t, we risk losing our faith in this Great Storm.

The only Catholic families that will remain alive and thriving in the twenty-first century are the families of martyrs. —Servant of God, Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J., The Blessed Virgin and the Sanctification of the Family

We have scarcely begun the trials of this Storm that will indeed “shake the faith of many.”^[3]Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 675 We need to implore the Holy Spirit to help us be “sold out” for Jesus, to raise our eyes above this temporal and passing plain to the Kingdom of Heaven. We need to quickly shake ourselves from apathy and cowardice and awaken from the sleep of comfort and materialism. We need to return to Confession, to take up fasting and daily prayer. We need to take our spiritual lives seriously because the lukewarm are about to be spit out (Rev 3:216).

Going Out With a Blaze…

But if you think this is a call to “doom and gloom,” you have sadly misread. It is a call to glory, to being totally free sons and daughters who rise above the weight and morass of this world. Therein lies the secret joy of the saints: in losing themselves, they found themselves. Let us prepare to go out in a blaze of glory, denying ourselves and our possessions, and making our witness and our last word the name of Jesus. For, said John Paul II, “to proclaim Jesus is itself to proclaim life.”^[4]Evangelium Vitae, n. 80

There are values which must never be abandoned for a greater value and even surpass the preservation of physical life. There is martyrdom. God is (about) more than mere physical survival. A life that would be bought by the denial of God, a life that is based on a final lie, is a non-life. Martyrdom is a basic category of Christian existence. The fact that martyrdom is no longer morally necessary in the theory advocated by Böckle and many others shows that the very essence of Christianity is at stake here… Today’s Church is more than ever a “Church of the Martyrs” and thus a witness to the living God. —EMERITUS POPE BENEDICT XVI, Essay: ‘The Church and the scandal of sexual abuse’; Catholic News Agency, April 10th, 2019

This is no time to be ashamed of the Gospel. It is the time to preach it from the rooftops. —POPE ST. JOHN PAUL II, Homily, Cherry Creek State Park Homily, Denver, Colorado, August 15th, 1993; vatican.va

I wish to invite young people to open their hearts to the Gospel and become Christ’s witnesses; if necessary, His martyr-witnesses, at the threshold of the Third Millennium. —POPE ST. JOHN PAUL II to the youth, Spain, 1989

 

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