Eleison Comments by Mgr. Williamson - Number CDXXXI (431), CDXXX (430)

Father’s Distress

A family father knows not where to turn?

Dear Dad, Our Lord will never crash or burn!

Your Excellency,

I am sorry to bother you, but I am a father responsible for getting many little souls that God has entrusted me with to Heaven and I’ve never been so lost or confused about how to do it as I am now. I am trying not to feel hopeless as I see both my Catholic world and the rest of the world in a tail-spin, about ready to crash and burn. A clerk in today’s United States gets sent to jail if they refuse to issue a license for a same-sex marriage. What next? But I do go on hoping because God has given us many children, and another is on its way. Why is God allowing us to bring more children into this world when it seems as if it’s about to end? Should my wife and I be preparing ourselves to see them martyred? I have not up till now found devotion to Our Lady too easy, but now even I find myself turning to her.

The immediate problem is what we have found to be happening with our local Traditional Catholic parish. We moved here to guarantee for the children especially, but also for ourselves, the true Mass and a Catholic formation. Alas, many things have come to light that have left us shocked, confused and feeling defeated. There seem to be demonic influences at work, and we have had to wonder if even the priests are not under their evil grip, because they are not the same priests we knew a year ago. For the past year we have done our best to help, but to no avail. We have continued to attend Mass there, all the while praying, fasting and doing Novenas in the hope that things would change. We have “watched and prayed,” and like the spouse of an alcoholic we have made excuses for them for as long as we could. But finally things have occurred which are driving us to look elsewhere if we do not want our children to be confused about their faith.

So where do we go from here? Obviously I want the children to have the Sacraments and to continue to grow in the faith by attending a valid Mass, so long as it is there. To raise these children’s souls for Christ my wife and I also have an essential need of the graces of the Mass. We want to stay away from major cities. My work situation is such that I could seek work anywhere in the United States. Where do we go?

Dear Father of a large family,

First and foremost, as I read everything you write, let me advise you to count your blessings. Almighty God is not making things easy for you, but nor did he do so for his own Son on earth. This is a “valley of tears,” but amid the tears, God is giving to you and to your family many graces. You are keeping the faith, you have been given to see the need for true Tradition, and your making it your first priority to get your family to Heaven is another huge grace. The Devil may have thrown quite an obstacle in your way, but you have seen it was him. Count on it, there will be many more such obstacles before this crisis is over, and the worst of them a re liable to come from the priests (“We carry our treasure in vessels of clay,” says St Paul). Never be surprised by evil today, the Devil is running wild. Therefore above all, keep well in mind how much God is doing for you, as he did for the Holy Family, despite all the apparent hardships. That will put them in the right perspective. And do not be surprised if as the man of the family, God wants you to take some manly decisions for its future. He is not going to take these decisions for you.

Alright, you say, but the question remains, where do we go? Answer, wherever you are sure of finding firstly, work for yourself and secondly, the true Mass, in that order, because the family cannot survive without a breadwinner. As for the Mass, 20 years ago one might not have hesitated to say, it must be a Society of St Pius X Mass. Today, that is no longer so sure. I would say, go rather by the priest than by his Congregation, or label. Expect failures and betrayals. We are all adrift in a sea of apostasy. But have a boundless, a boundless confidence in Our Lord and his Mother. They will never let you go unless you want to be let go. Have compassion on your fellow human beings. And God bless you.

Kyrie eleison.

Eleison Comments” by Mgr. Williamson – Number CDXXX (430)

Positive Advice

We are not left with nothing we can do.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way to see this through.

Americans have an expression, “To think outside the box.” It means to think outside of one’s usual way of thinking. If ever there was a time for “thinking outside the box,” that time is now. For six or seven hundred years mankind has been turning away from God, in a process which it has freely chosen and which God does not intervene to stop, as he could easily do, because he does not give us men our free-will to take it away again. Also, if he is now allowing this process to be reaching in our own time its logical conclusion, he must be hoping that as the crisis deepens and the pressures increase, so there will be more and more souls driven to think outside the box of their materialism, and by so doing get back on the road to Heaven.

Now how the next few years unfold remains God’s secret, especially the calendar. However, it seems highly probable that the suburban and urban areas where most of us live will be seriously destabilized, firstly because these areas are largely immersed in materialism and “happily” living without God, which must call down his wrath, and secondly because these areas are as intrinsically unstable as they are cut off from nature and artificial, depending more and more on the fragile system of supermarkets for sustenance and survival, on the under-manned police forces for any peace and order, on the Internet’s vulnerable satellites for their information and communications, on the villainous banks for the roof over their heads.

In fact only when the crisis really hits will we truly realize how fragile was our environment that seemed as natural as nature. Therefore for subsistence and survival it surely makes sense to lay in a stock of food and water; for information and guidance to lay in a battery-operated radio (with batteries); for law and order to lay in some physical means of self-defence, and to make contact with one’s immediate neighbours, however little one may have chosen them, because friends in need will be friends indeed; and for the roof over one’s head, to get as far as one can, as soon as one can, out of debt and out of the clutches of the bankers, although we are late in the day for that.

A Catholic reader goes further by suggesting that Catholics in a given area band together to set up Catholic refuges, even material as well as spiritual, invisible as such from the outside, but where the joy of the Faith will reign on the inside. That seems a strange thought. It is certainly “outside the box.” It depends upon a number of Catholics living close to one another who share the same sense of urgency as to imminent events, but it is an idea whose time may come. Also some ‘student’ should make good use of his time at ‘university’ by doing a thesis on how Catholics kept the Faith under brutal Communist repression. Globalism is not yet physically brutal, but that can make it all the more dangerous for souls.

And finally a priest makes a few classic suggestions for spiritual means to meet the present spiritual needs, which are urgent enough, even without grave events being imminent. 

The full 15-Mystery Rosary every day has Heaven’s guarantee for its efficacy. A 24-hour fast on bread and water can obtain miracles. A corporal work of mercy, e.g real alms to a real beggar (more difficult than writing a cheque) pulls down grace. So does a spiritual work of mercy, like giving a Catholic leaflet or a Miraculous Medal to non-Catholics. Total abstinence from the Internet for one or several days can put a brake on habits of wasting time, and it can make half an hour available to meditate instead on the Passion of Our Lord, who is only waiting and longing for us to make use of all that He suffered.

Kyrie eleison.