Originally published by: Círculo Sacerdotal Cura Santa Cruz March 19, 2021
We have all received a single baptism that makes us members of the Mystical Body. In these hours of Ecclesial passion, similar to those in which the Shepherd was wounded and the sheep scattered, we must avoid disintegration by remaining in Communion, awaiting the Resurrection of the Church. Let us avoid the temptation to disperse and return to the ranch, like the disciples of Emmaus, crestfallen, routed and vanquished. We know and we believe that the gates of hell will not prevail against Her, even if some now put a tombstone on the grave. However, the Church is a divine institution, which today suffers the terrible consequences of its human conformation: «and blessed is he that shall not be scandalized in Me.» Meanwhile, from the altar the graces that will irrigate the valley of thorns continue to flow.
That in this Lent we learn to mortify our self-love, as well as the ideas and actions, feelings and attitudes that derive from it, and that the God who fills the humble with good things, from Whom we receive with simplicity the precious legacy that constitutes the rich heritage of Tradition, grant us the grace to know how to transmit, with loyalty and responsibility, «because he that is not with Me, scattereth.» For we well know that faith without works is dead, just as works without faith are useless and, if the Lord does not build, the workers labor in vain. Dying to ourselves implies working for the greater glory of God from our humility.
In the Catechism we learned that at the end of our life we will be judged at our particular judgment and, with the grace of God, we hope to hear this sentence: «Well done, good and faithful servant: because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will place thee over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.» But we must not forget that at the end of History we will be judged in the Universal Judgment as members of a Body, where our fidelity in relation to all of History and not only to our contemporary generation will be placed before our eyes and before others.
We Catholics are part of a plan of eternal love that escapes our brief temporal dimension; we are living stones of a cathedral that may yet be in its foundations and we will never be able to see it finished. Perhaps we will not be alive in order to contemplate how the spires will crown the magnificent edifice of the City of God, which is built on the basis of love for Him to the point of self-contempt. God wants us to be stones and not adobes–that time and weather dissolve and turn into dust.
Let us build on the Cornerstone, since our existence has eternal dimensions, which exceed the absolute immediacy in which pride isolates us, with its damned individualism. Our Lord gave us an example of humility by becoming man, similar to us in everything except sin; with an immeasurable act of love He took His self-sacrifice for us to the excess of the Cross, so that our human person can reach divine communion, which should be our constant desire. «Charitas Christi urget nos.» We cannot imagine how far God can exalt the one who humbles himself! We must cure ourselves of myopia: our carnal, short, narrow, selfish and petty gaze, knowing that our existence has eternal and divine perspectives.
«Thy Kingdom come» cannot only be an expression of desire: He has already triumphed over death and, since He wants to make us share in His triumph, He invites us to fight the good fight, because, without merit on our part, we will not be able to rejoice in the Glory of eternal victory. He no longer needs to win: He has already won. What His love longs for now is to conquer our hearts and that, now or never, since we still have time, we will acquire the necessary merits. We have to reconquer the entire world, the entire society, inch by inch, for Christ the King. It is our duty to pray, work and fight in order to get out of the chaos and into that which «he who divides everything» has plunged the Kingdom of God. This is not achieved without the self-sacrifice of the self. We have to learn to conjugate verbs in the plural, and not let ourselves be dazzled by immediate benefits, with which the world bribes its enemies. The Kingdom of Christ will be strengthened to the extent that we work with all our strength and with His grace, for that common good, natural and supernatural, which is the true and supreme benefit, so that the supplication «let Thy Kingdom come» may be made reality.
Let us not fall into the temptations of individualism, and of those anarchic autonomies that only contribute to an increase in the chaos in which we are immersed. The cross that Our Lord invites us to embrace every day is the symbol that adds up: let us give up our individualisms that divide.
That the symbol of the Cross of Saint Andrew, with all that it means for the Traditionalists, which represents in arithmetic the sign of multiplication, leads us precisely to increase and multiply our dwindling forces, the meager means, our depleted troops and our meager merits. With the same divine grace with which one day Our Lord multiplied loaves and fishes. May we not fall into the traps of the one who divides, scatters and destroys all things. May we live with the same fervor that led Saint Paul to exclaim: «Nothing can separate me from the love of Christ!» Thus, we will be living stones, which are not adobes, founded on the Cornerstone, united in the Communion of Christians, instaurare omnia in Christo.
Rev. Fr. José Ramón García Gallardo, Chaplain of the Traditionalist Youth. Royal Chaplain.
Translation by Alférez Matthew Scullin, Círculo Carlista Camino Real de Tejas.
