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The ancient letter to Diognetus is instructive. Do we recognize ourselves in these words? If not, why not?

Join us 8:30am, Friday, 5/13 at the Fatima Shrine at St. Catharine Church in Spring Lake for a time of prayer.. "When we have the courage to pursue the truth about “what is wrong with the world” (to borrow a phrase of G.K. Chesterton), we discover that most things in the present world are not what they seem. And instead of focusing on all the “whats” going on in the world, we should be focusing on the“why” because, as Venerable Fulton Sheen said during World War II, the real reason behind today’s wars and evils is not dialectical, but theological. The world has rejected God and that rejection comes with earth-shattering consequences—consequences we are living with today."

But there is no good reason or justification to give our children the freedom to seek out their own destruction. The above excuses are just that—excuses not to do the hard work of teaching and parenting. Besides, we have so much ourselves to give them: our time and attention, for one. We can give them physical toys, books, art supplies, journals, and bikes. We can give them chores and useful skills for adulthood. We can encourage friendships, give them edifying conversation and advice, and show them how to pray. We can teach them to trust in us and to speak with us. We can teach them that they are loved and wanted without having to imitate someone else’s Internet fantasy life. We can teach them that we are made for Heaven, not for virtual fantasies. We can teach them that the world is against them and wants to hurt them but that we are for them—and God is for us.

The Paschal Triduum begins with the evening Mass of Holy Thursday and lasts through the evening of Easter Sunday. Dating to the earliest days of the Church, the three-day liturgy is the summit of the Liturgical year for Catholics. Through the centuries, Catholics have developed many customs and rituals special to these days that really form one prolonged memorial and sacrifice in the life of the faithful. Here are five amazing facts about the Triduum to get you ready for Easter.

Tucked at the end of a hotly debated passage in Lumen Gentium about the Church’s role in salvation comes one sentence that has not received as much attention. What follows the statement that “all the Church’s children” have received their holy Catholic faith not from merit, but from “the special grace of Christ,” is the most harrowing line of Vatican II: If they fail moreover to respond to that grace in thought, word and deed, not only shall they not be saved but they will be the more severely judged. (LG 14) These words are worth pondering deeply as we approach Good Friday and Easter this week.

This willingness to die for us was a note of the Lord’s whole life, St. Alphonsus observes, citing “With desire have I desired to eat this pasch with you.” (Lk 22:15) The Apostle Thomas responds, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” (Jn 11:16) Whether the remark is heartfelt or, as some have thought, sarcastic, either way it testifies to Our Lord’s evident keenness. Philosophers have long debated whether courage is absence of fear or holding fast despite fears. Jesus’s example seems to teach something else: it is feeling proportionate fear, but then, when it is clear that one must die, embracing death willingly. Now, a coward dies a thousand deaths. But a Christian must die four.

Why now? Why 105 years after the Fatima apparitions, and 93 years after Sister Lucia had the message from Our Lady confirmed in 1929, is the Holy Father explicitly consecrating Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in union with the bishops of the world? The war is the reason, and not just the fighting in Ukraine. Kyiv is still standing but Kirill of Moscow has already fallen.

C.S. Lewis articulated this brilliantly in his 1948 essay On Living in An Atomic Age. As the world first faced the possibility of nuclear destruction, Lewis offered an eternal context: “Those who care for something else more than civilization are the only people by whom civilization is at all likely to be preserved. Those who want Heaven most have served Earth best. Those who love man less than God do most for man.” So, Lewis argued, should the atomic bomb ever drop, it ought to find us doing “sensible and human” things: praying, working, listening to music, laughing, and talking with friends. This is no naive or lighthearted invitation to shirk responsibility. It’s an invitation to celebrate good things, even when by every worldly standard, the only realistic response is despair.

Rather than be discouraged by the discomforts of Lent, we can turn each one into a prayer. First, like the blind man sitting on the road near Jericho, feeling our helplessness, we cry out for divine help: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” (Lk 17:38) Second, we redirect them, while conscious that they will not mysteriously disappear, by begging God not to allow our natural desires to consume us. We cannot empty ourselves without His aid. “I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears.” (Ps 34:4)

So. . .what’s the point of all this remembering? Just this: Here in America, such things could never occur. Physician-assisted suicide? Sixty million abortions? Selling unborn baby parts? Fetal tissue experiments? Catholic public officials who ignore or allow such things? It can’t happen here.

Needless to say, the Church on earth is not looking very much like the spotless Bride of Christ. This may be one of those cases in which a sheep finds himself looking over the fence into the Protestant, Orthodox, or sedevacantist field and sees what appears to be greener grass. To some, the barren wilderness of “nonery” may even look attractive. We are certainly living in the midst of a crisis, and we have been for some time.

Recently, the Pew Research Center came out with a study showing that fewer Americans intend to have kids than ever before. There’s a lot of data in the study, but the major points are this: 44% of non-parents ages 18-49 are not likely to have children. And 74% of those 18-49 who already do have children are not likely to have more. Those are staggering percentages with huge ramifications on our society and our Church. So what can we as Catholics do to encourage and support the growth of families?

cardinal Wilton Gregory called the perpetrators of the same stunt in DC as one with Judas. Locally, father Dave Swantek said that the beast is thrashing its tail because it knows it has lost. Let us pray it has, and let us pray for these very lost souls.

Both history and science fiction warn where this kind of thinking leads. The issue is not the bad science behind modern eugenics, but rather the bad idea behind all eugenics. It’s an idea that has claimed victims throughout history and must be rejected no matter how accurate our tests are. Christians have faced down dehumanizing practices before, since the church’s earliest days rescuing abandoned Roman babies. They were inspired and animated by a better idea: that every human being is intrinsically valuable because they bear the image of God.

Because love is a gift, recognizing the child as a gift creates a wholly different posture from regarding the child as a project, custom-made to specs dictated either by negative eugenics (no Down syndrome, no heart murmurs, no decreased IQ, no obesity in the genes) or positive eugenics (“right” sex, blue eyes, tall, athletic).

Of course charity and hope require that we extend our prayers for the new President. We pray for his success in all things noble and good. And yes, we also pray that his worst plans will fail miserably. As we should. Above all, we pray for his conversion. The light of baptism still flickers in his soul, despite the truly reprehensible policies he has promised. With God all things are possible!

“A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is out of harmony with the moral law.”

“Home, by its nature, is meant to be a foreshadowing of heaven,” they wrote. “It is to be both satisfying in this earthly life while also offering a glimpse of things to come.” So it is that ordinary things like hot soup and a bedside lamp can contribute to the creation of a “sanctuary,” a place where its inhabitants feel a sense of belonging and peace.

Lost in the wilderness

We cannot help but notice Satan’s work in this: the de-prioritization of the human person, a recycled tactic from a fallen angel who could not accept God becoming human, the emphasis on a consumer culture that favors pets over those who are truly in need, and a diminishment in the call from God to be fruitful and multiply (cf. Genesis 1:28). Satan would rather we not follow Christ’s call to the cross but be entrapped in consumer comforts.