Separation, communion, and witness. These elements of holiness set the trajectory for Lent. By our mortifications and acts of self-denial we separate ourselves and declare our independence from the world. We do so with a view to encounter and be one with Christ, especially in His passion and death. When we conclude at Easter, we hope to give witness along with the Apostles saying, “We cannot help but speak of what we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:20)
I do not underestimate the real divisions in America and in what we once called the Western world. Both our editor and David Warren can testify to my Augustinian pessimism regarding the short-term prospects for the City of Man around us. If anything, I believe the divisions are more profound than most people realize, hinging as they do on incompatible and irreconcilable notions of what justice is and what the human person is. That kind of division makes political community impossible, and the best that can be hoped for is a less violent confrontation between the opposing understandings of reality.
For the Christian, this female power can never be diminished. There’s a reason that mystics throughout the centuries have said we are all symbolically female in relation to God. He initiates with grace, and we choose. He lays down His life, and we follow Him. That’s why the highest example of a Christian will always be Mary. She was presented with a choice, and, on behalf of humanity, said “yes,” just like her symbolic predecessor Eve chose “no” by listening to the Serpent.
Above all else, my brethren, fast from strife and discord. Keep in mind the words used by the Prophet in his vehement denunciation of certain persons: “ln the days of your fast your own wills are found because you torment all who are under your power and you strike with your fists ; your voice is heard in outcry.” Continuing in the same strain, he adds: “Not such a fast have I chosen, saith the Lord.” (Is. 58:3-5)
One wonders whether our German bishop – devoted (at least in his own mind) to the greater good of Germany, who refused to have “the common good” reduced to “a single issue” of “what to do about the Jews,” and who styled himself in favor of “collaboration” rather than “confrontation” – whether that bishop would have reassured himself, saying: “I am certain no one will look back fifty years from now and say about me, ‘What kind of bishop would have prided himself on being a collaborator with a government that accelerated the murder of millions?’” Indeed, what, I wonder, would Bishop McElroy say in retrospect about such poor, deluded foolishness?
"We are no longer Catholics, brothers in Jesus. We find it necessary to self-identify as “conservative” or “liberal,” blurring the distinction between membership in the tribe of Jesus and membership in diabolical tribes of ideology. Indeed, the Devil prefers a politicized Catholic enemy to a far more formidable authentically Catholic enemy."
Quo vadis as a Latin phrase is usually rendered “where are you going?” But the verb has the sense “rushing to.” And the phrase emphasizes the end point, not the motion. Am I agitated, distracted, working frenetically, or putting off work? Whatever I am doing: the end of all my activity, what is it? The novel suggests: If I am not putting away everything else to move quickly towards Christ, I am going away from him.