Crowning Christ the King Anew With Newer and Sharper Crowns of Thorns

The modern world has been founded on the blood of Catholic martyrs.

Yes, you read that correctly.

The modern world has been founded on the blood of Catholic martyrs.

The descent of Europe into an abyss of wanton bloodshed, no matter who is responsible for directing the murderous activities of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, is the inevitable consequence of the warfare against the Divine Plan that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself instituted to effect man’s return to Him through His Catholic Church that began when the hideous drunkard and lecherous glutton named Father Martin Luther posted his ninety-five theses on the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, on October 31, 1517.

Although there were certainly antecedent heresies, especially those of John Hus, and philosophies (especially those of Niccolo Machiavelli), those false currents could not have been as triumphant as they have become in the past five centuries had not Martin Luther sought to create a false religion designed to reaffirm him as “saved” despite his life of debauchery. The warfare unleashed by Luther’s rebellion began a bloody revolt whose effects continue to be reaped in blood.

Indeed, it was just a short time after “Doctor Luther” started his own bloody revolution against the Order of Grace and the Order of Nature that the lecherous, gluttonous drunkard named King Henry VIII started his own revolution against Christ the King and His Holy Catholic Church. Henry Tudor’s revolution resulted in the martyrdom of over 72,000 faithful Catholics between 1534 and 1547 and that helped to create the unjust social conditions of Modernity by having Parliament pass Forfeiture Laws that threw the poor off of the monastery and convent lands where they were had able to provide for their own needs while partaking of the glories and the sacramental fruitfulness of the Church’s liturgical life.

The true poverty of the world in which we live today, a world that is becoming increasingly pagan, is not material. It is spiritual. There are none so poor as those who refuse to acknowledge that the Catholic Church is the one and only true Church founded by the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity made Man in the Virginal and Immaculate Womb of His Most Blessed Mother by the power of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, and who refuse to amend their lives by cooperating with the graces He won for us by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday.

Blood must flow—and flow freely—in a world where Christ the King is crowned anew with thorns every day by men who believe themselves to have the “answers” to make nations secure as the most defenseless of all, the innocent preborn, are killed with wanton legal impunity. It is absurd to think that a nation is going to be able to realize “peace and prosperity” while countenancing the daily innocent slaughter, both by chemical and surgical means, of the innocent preborn, to say nothing of the countless numbers of innocent human beings who are killed in hospitals for their bodily organs by modern Aztecs and of those other countless numbers of people whose deaths are “expedited” in hospices.

Taking nothing away from the tragic terrorist attacks that took place yesterday, Tuesday, March 22, 2016, in Brussels, Belgium, it is nevertheless true that Belgium is realizing the rotten fruits of its own early embrace of “separation of Church and State” that the late Archbishop of Poitiers, France, Louis-Eduoard Desiree Cardinal Pie in very clear terms:

To Cardinal Pie first as quoted in Father Théotimede Saint Just’s book that was translated from French into English by Mr. Daniel Leonardi and published by the Catholic Action Center:

Accordingly, the Bishop of Poitiers had always fought against THE SEPARATION OF Church and State. Moreover, he opposed all separations, that of reason and faith, of nature and grace, of natural religion and revealed religion, the separation of the philosopher and the Christian, of private man and public man. He saw in all these [separations] a resurgence of Manichean dualism and he had fought all these with, the supreme argument, the law formed by Christ. Therefore, it is in all truth, writing to [Minister of the Interior] the Count of Presigny, that he could render this testimony:

‘We have nothing in common with the theorists of disunion and opposition of two orders, temporal and spiritual, natural and supernatural. We struggle, on the contrary, with all our strength against these doctrines of separation which is leading to the denial of religion itself and of revealed religion.’”

Fr. de St. Just returns at this point and introduces us to what is perhaps Msgr. Pie’s strongest language, with regard to this entire subject:

“To this doctrine of the Church, which Msgr. Pie brought to the mind of the rulers of nations, the liberals would oppose acts favoring separation.

“Certain countries, Belgium and America, for example, haven’t they proclaimed the separation of Church and State, and doesn’t the Church enjoy a more complete liberty under such a system?”

Cardinal Pie responded firmly to this question:   

‘THE AMERICAN AND BELGIUM SYSTEM, this system of philosophical-political indifference, shall eternally be a bastard system” (pp. 122-124 in Fr. de St. Just’s book) (Selected Writings of Selected Writings of Cardinal Pie of Poitiers, Catholic Action Resource Center, Orlando, Florida, October, 2007, pp. 21-23.)

The countries of Europe have thrown off Christ the King, and thus it is that they have opened the doors wide to the devil, who has crowned man as his own king in place of the King of ings Whose Divine Kingship over men and their nations was mocked by the Roman soldiers who plaited Him with a crown of thorns that they dug deep into His skull.

God is now chastising the nations of Europe on whose soil the Cross of His Divine Son had taken deep root and produced the flowering of Christendom that was described as follows by Pope Leo XIII in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885:

As a consequence, the State, constituted as it is, is clearly bound to act up to the manifold and weighty duties linking it to God, by the public profession of religion. Nature and reason, which command every individual devoutly to worship God in holiness, because we belong to Him and must return to Him, since from Him we came, bind also the civil community by a like law. For, men living together in society are under the power of God no less than individuals are, and society, no less than individuals, owes gratitude to God who gave it being and maintains it and whose everbounteous goodness enriches it with countless blessings. Since, then, no one is allowed to be remiss in the service due to God, and since the chief duty of all men is to cling to religion in both its teaching and practice-not such religion as they may have a preference for, but the religion which God enjoins, and which certain and most clear marks show to be the only one true religion -- it is a public crime to act as though there were no God. So, too, is it a sin for the State not to have care for religion as a something beyond its scope, or as of no practical benefit; or out of many forms of religion to adopt that one which chimes in with the fancy; for we are bound absolutely to worship God in that way which He has shown to be His will. All who rule, therefore, would hold in honor the holy name of God, and one of their chief duties must be to favor religion, to protect it, to shield it under the credit and sanction of the laws, and neither to organize nor enact any measure that may compromise its safety. This is the bounden duty of rulers to the people over whom they rule. For one and all are we destined by our birth and adoption to enjoy, when this frail and fleeting life is ended, a supreme and final good in heaven, and to the attainment of this every endeavor should be directed. Since, then, upon this depends the full and perfect happiness of mankind, the securing of this end should be of all imaginable interests the most urgent. Hence, civil society, established for the common welfare, should not only safeguard the wellbeing of the community, but have also at heart the interests of its individual members, in such mode as not in any way to hinder, but in every manner to render as easy as may be, the possession of that highest and unchangeable good for which all should seek. Wherefore, for this purpose, care must especially be taken to preserve unharmed and unimpeded the religion whereof the practice is the link connecting man with God.  

Now, it cannot be difficult to find out which is the true religion, if only it be sought with an earnest and unbiased mind; for proofs are abundant and striking. We have, for example, the fulfillment of prophecies, miracles in great numbers, the rapid spread of the faith in the midst of enemies and in face of overwhelming obstacles, the witness of the martyrs, and the like. From all these it is evident that the only true religion is the one established by Jesus Christ Himself, and which He committed to His Church to protect and to propagate. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.) 

The shedding of the innocent blood that is taking place in Europe at the hands of Mohammedans, no matter whose bidding the operatives who execute various attack are doing, whether wittingly or unwittingly, is thus the direct result of the errors of Modernity, but it is also the result of the fact that the conciliar revolutionaries have encouraged the rulers of Europe in the anti-Incarnational errors of Modernity that have brought down the wrath of God upon them and their people.  

Indeed, the blood of the innocent preborn began to flow freely in Belgium thanks to the efforts of the nefarious friend of the lavender agenda and everything ugly and sinful, Godfreed Daneels, to convince King Bouduoin of Belgium urged King Bouduoin (since deceased) of Belgium to sign a baby-killing law that had been passed by the Belgian Parliament:

Two Belgian politicians admit for the first time openly that Cardinal Godfried Danneels tried to convince King Baudouin to sign the law on abortion in 1990. Former politicians Philippe Moureau (PS, Parti Socialiste) and Mark Eyskens (CVP, Flemish Christian Democrats) said this in a documentary for the Flemish Broadcasting Corporation VTM on April 6, 2015 (http://nieuws.vtm.be/binnenland/135916-25-jaar-abortuswet-boudewijn-onder-druk, at 2:05). According to VTM, cardinal Danneels did not want to comment. 

In 1990, the 14 members of the Belgian Government - a coalition led by CVP-Prime Minister Wilfried Martens, signed one of the most liberal abortion bills in the world. King Baudouin, a devout Catholic, refused to sign this bill into law, and was temporarily considered fictitiously "incapacitated" so that the government could have the bill turned into law. 

Danneels, rabid liberal and a known pedophile-bishop-protector, was picked by Pope Francis as one of his personal choices for the 2014 Family Synod.  (http://www.rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2015/04/cardinal-danneels-family-expert-chosen.html. For a summary of Father Danneels’s wretched work, see Plenty To Say, Godfried, Plenty.)

Yet is that “Saint John Paul II” left Godfreed Daneels in place well after this, which was a well-known fact within the reaches of the conciliar-occupied and controlled Vatican, and left him in place after Danneels had given an interview to The New York Times Magazine in December that was published in 1994 in which he stated that he could never deny what purported to be Holy Communion in the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service to divorced and civilly-remarried Catholics as to do would be to stigmatize them. This one of the reasons that Jorge Mario Bergoglio picked Danneels, who wanted his reigning constitutional monarch (who was a member of Opus Dei, by the way) to sign legislation to “legalize” baby-killing, to serve on the 2014 “extraordinary synod” whose revolutionary work paved the way for the 2015 “synod” and the now-signed but as yet unreleased “exhortation” that Walter “Cardinal” Kasper says is truly revolutionary.

The blood that is flowing in Europe now is also on the hands of Bergoglio himself as he, apart from his reaffirmation of the pro-abortion, pro-sodomite, pro-family planning, pro-“climate control,” anti-family, pro-everything statist European Union, remained completely silent in 2014 as the Belgian Parliament endorsed child kill after birth until the age of eighteen in some cases:

BRUSSELS, February 13, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Belgium has become the first country in the world to approve euthanasia for children of all ages after the country’s parliamentarians passed the controversial bill today in a vote of 86 to 44, with 12 MPs abstaining.

Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, called the move a “form of abandonment.”

“Belgium has abandoned the elderly, and now they are saying they will abandon their children,” he told LifeSiteNews.

Schadenberg said the new law is not about ending suffering for children with disabilities, but about expanding the “categories that are eligible for death.”

The bill was first introduced in December 2012.

The law extends to those under the age of 18 who request euthanasia with parental consent. It also applies to younger children requesting euthanasia after a doctor has certified that the child fully understands the implications of the decision.

“This is the horrific logic of euthanasia: Once killing is accepted as an answer to human difficulty and suffering, the power of sheer logic dictates that there is no bottom,” wrote Wesley J. Smith about the law.

The proposed law had been protested by a number of groups that said the existing 2002 euthanasia legislation has been an unmitigated disaster.

Schadenberg said he was not surprised to see the bill pass, since he said the entire euthanasia project in Belgium is being “pushed blindly” by a government that has ignored all the abuses currently taking place within existing euthanasia laws.

“Euthanasia has been really out of control in Belgium for quite some time. We know from studies that about 32 percent of euthanasia deaths go without requests. Over half of euthanasia deaths are not reported,” he said.  

Schadenberg said the new law will only make it easier for doctors to indiscriminately and without repercussion end the lives of the most vulnerable deemed unfit to live. (Belgium Parliament passes law allowing children to be euthanized.)

Jorge Mario Bergoglio has remained silent about these and other moral outrages as has gone about his destructive business as a Modernist so very merrily, denouncing those who adhere to Catholic teaching while enabling those who live lives of unrepentant sin, waxing on and on about “the poor” and the need to “save the environment.” He is a pagan, not the Vicar of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Jorge has got lots to say about those things that concern him. He has nothing to say about the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance or for the Spiritual Works of Mercy, which is why he shares in the responsibility for the bloodletting taking place in Europe and around the world at this time.

Most obviously, of course, is the fact that Jorge Mario Bergoglio, acting in complete ideological communion with his fellow Marxists, including the Marxist who followed his, Bergoglio’s lead by paying his obeisance to the murderous Castros of Cuba, Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro, who went so far as to lay a wreath at the tomb of the murderous coward named Che Guevara (see The Truth About Che Guevera), insists that the violence besetting the Middle East and Europe has nothing to do with the violent nature of Mohammedanism and the “open borders” policies that promotes in the name of “human rights” for alleged refugees. 

None of this is the least bit new, however, as it was back in April of 1988 that I gave a lecture, sponsored by the Hofstra University Pro-Life Group, that was entitled “Hitler Won the War of Ideas.” The text of that lecture has long since disappeared as it was written on a Smith-Corona “Coronomatic” electric typewriter. What seemed preposterous to some in the audience that evening has become reality: the execution of children and others after birth because of their suffering from some kind of physical or emotional handicap has become an accepted, at least on a de facto basis, in many countries around the world, and is fast becoming accepted on a de jure basis. Is there any wonder that Mohammedans are killing people in Europe at this time?

Lost on even those well-meaning souls in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism who put up what can be called a “mitigated resistance” to the conciliar revolution while thinking that any of this can come from the spotless, immaculate mystical spouse of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is that the bloodletting that takes place around the world daily in abortuaries, hospitals and hospices, a bloodletting that let loose a tide of even further bloodlettinb by those who deny Our Lord’s Sacred Divinity, is but the inevitable consequence of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by the Protestant Revolution that has resulted over the course of time in the “Social Reign of Man,” which is, is a deception of the devil by means of all of the disparate elements of naturalism that constitute what is termed Judeo-Masonry. The binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law mean nothing to men who have made themselves out to be demigods, men who believe that they, contingent beings who did not create themselves and whose bodies are destined one day for the corruption of the grave, can make “legal” and “moral” the direct, intentional killing of innocent human beings at any stage of life, which begins at conception.

Catholicism is the one and only brake on the tendency of men to play God. All must fall apart absent the true Faith. All is falling apart before our very eyes.

Men have permitted themselves to be diverted by mindless bread and circuses, including the absolute farce that is electoral politics (an upcoming article will focus some attention on this farce), while the innocent preborn have been killed under cover of the civil law.

Men have permitted themselves to be deceived into believing that some form of “political ecumenism,” if you will, will “win the day” and turn back of tide of evil with which the lords of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have made their “official reconciliation.”

Men have permitted themselves to accept naturalism’s false premises on a gradual basis as various evils (“rock music,” immodesty of dress, masculine attire being worn by women, rank pornography depicted in motion pictures and on television, the pollution of the souls of our children by means of explicit classroom instruction in matters pertaining to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments, the mainstreaming of the sin of Sodom and the mutilation of one’s body by means of gender-changing surgery) have taken hold and mutated over the course of time.

Men have permitted themselves to be turned into boiled frogs as their governments reduce their legitimate liberties while making them, the citizens, comply with their fiats concerning what they eat and how they can use their own property and possessions while petty caesars such as New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio/Warren Wilhelm, who is a close friend of William Jefferson Blythe Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro, turn a blind eye to the killing of police and increase of black-on-white crimes that is the direct result of the false ideologies of the false opposite of the naturalist “left.

Yes, the lie that is the anti-Incarnational civil state of Modernity has convinced men that almost anything “goes” as long as they can still enjoy their bread and circuses and remained “wired” or “connected” to the high priests and priestesses of Google and other demigods of cyberspace.

What I wrote about The Netherlands over fifteen years ago now is as relevant to the situation in Belgium as it was at the time to its neighboring country:

The Netherlands has replaced Germany as the world’s leading laboratory for social engineering. The recent decision of the Dutch to “legalize” the killing of the elderly and the infirm and the chronically ill is simply the logical result of a set of forces that the Netherlands became home to following the defeat of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich in May 1945. 

The unification of the Germanic states into a single country as a result of Prussia’s victory in the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 ushered in the triumph of social engineering in northern Europe’s industrial and economic giant. Masterminded by the Freemason Otto von Bismarck, the “Iron Chancellor,” the social engineering that began in Germany during the Kulturkampf sought to create a brave new world where people would become more and more dependent upon the beneficence of the state. Bismarck knew that one of the ways to solidify political power was to create a sense of dependence on the part of the citizenry, who would become convinced that it was impossible for them to live their lives without the direction and largesse of government bureaucrats. 

Bismarck’s Kulturkampf, which started off as a direct assault upon the Catholic Church (viewed by Bismarck as an obstacle to the social and economic advancement of human society), occurred at a time when two complementary schools of thought were coming to the fore: Darwinian evolutionism and the historical-critical method of Scriptural exegesis. The latter was designed by Protestant Scripture scholars in Germany as a means of “demythologizing” Scripture, a goal that dovetailed neatly with the agendas both of the Darwinians and of Hegelian philosophers who were intent on creating the illusion of change in the very nature of God Himself. The old way of religion had to yield to the new ways of progress and social advancement. And that social advancement would entail, among other things, the discarding of those who were economically unproductive and thus relatively useless for the life of society. 

Bismarck was not as aggressive as his successors in Germany would be during the period of the Weimar Republic (1919-1933). However, he laid the groundwork for the sterilization and euthanasia policies that would be the hallmarks of both Weimar and the Third Reich. One of Bismarck’s principal legacies was the establishment of the modern welfare state, paving the way not only for the Weimar democrats and Hitler but also for V.I. Lenin and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Social Security was the crown jewel of Bismarck’s welfare state. For Bismarck desired to create a world where grown children believed that they were relieved of the natural-law responsibility to care for their elderly parents when they became incapable of caring for themselves. He wanted to rally the elderly to his side by making it appear as though he was their friend — and he wanted to do the same with the young, convincing them that he had made it possible for them to live a more comfortable life materially by relieving them of the “burden” of providing for their parents (never mind the nasty little fact that confiscatory taxes were used to pay for Social Security). Thus, Bismarck sought to pit generations against each other in preparation for the day when those who were retired could be deemed useless to society and thus worthy of liquidation. Bismarck relied upon the German traits of obedience to authority as the means by which he could convince the public that he, their chancellor, knew best. 

Social scientists and natural scientists had a field day in Germany during the Weimar Republic. Yes, democratic Germany was home to scores of biological and eugenic experimentations. Science is a tool given us by God to use as a means of assisting the legitimate development of human progress in the natural world. Absent the direction provided it by the true Church, however, science can become a terrible weapon of destruction and of maniacal social and biological engineering. Thus, the fuller development in the Third Reich of the monstrous policies pursued during the Weimar Republic was quite logical. In 1939, the German populace quite docilely accepted Hitler’s implementation of the wholesale extermination of the retarded and infirm. Germans had become used to the principle that the state knew best. Only Clemens von Galen, the Bishop of Munster, had the courage to speak out publicly against Hitler’s eugenics policies. 

(Obviously, Lenin and Stalin were playing their own monstrous games in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Psychiatry there became a tool of political reprogramming and raw terror. Social engineering is the very foundation of Marxism’s own brave new world. And the fact that the Bolsheviks had plenty of defenders in the West helps explain the triumph of the spirit of Bolshevism in almost every country in Western Europe, as well as in Canada and the United States.) 

In the West, social engineering fell into a bit of disrepute in the wake of the Nuremberg Trials that followed World War II. However, in the Netherlands the groundwork was quietly being laid for a recrudescence of the utilitarianism that was the essence of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. The social engineers and eugenicists had taken over the Dutch universities and hospitals and laboratories. The positivists held sway in the courts and in the Staaten, the Dutch national legislature. And Modernists populated much of the Dutch Catholic hierarchy. Indeed, Modernist Dutch theologians even produced a best-selling catechism that was essentially a defense of the very trends developing in the Netherlands in the 1960s. 

In that decade, the Netherlands became a playground for hallucinogenic drug use and promiscuity. It was one of the first nations in Europe to embrace every single bit of the sodomite agenda. And it is so radically pro-abortion that it is now the de facto policy in the Netherlands to permit parents to euthanize their newborn child up to a year after his birth, thus giving them from the moment of fertilization to one year after birth to take a crack at the fruit of their conjugal love. And it has been the de facto policy of the Dutch for some time to permit physicians to dispatch patients who are deemed to have outlived their usefulness in society (too old, too sick, too costly to maintain). What was once de facto is now de jure. Although no doctors in the Netherlands have been prosecuted for doing what was once technically illegal, they can now kill their patients with legal impunity. 

As I have noted on a number of occasions, arguing against euthanasia on purely natural terms is no defense against the power of sentimentality to trump rational thought. A culture of well-being seeks to anesthetize pain and all other unpleasant realities. Why should a person suffer when the truth of redemptive suffering is rejected as either fantastic or as just simply unrealistic in our modern world? Those who believe that it is possible to combat the “mercy killers” with naturalistic arguments are as delusional as those who believe that a person who supports one abortion as a matter of principle is a defender of the sanctity of innocent human life. 

Human suffering is one of the many consequences of Original Sin. Indeed, physical suffering and death are two of the very tangible consequences of Original Sin, as well as of our own actual sins. It is only the Catholic Faith that teaches the full truth concerning human suffering. And it is a rejection of the Catholic teaching on human suffering that has permitted sentimentality to triumph so mightily in the world, even among many Catholics who attend Mass every Sunday. 

The Church teaches us that no suffering is beyond our capacity to bear by means of the graces won for us by the shedding of our Lord’s Most Precious Blood on Calvary.

Further, the Church teaches us that no human suffering — no matter how intense — is the equal of the pain that just one of our venial sins imposed upon our Lord in His Sacred Humanity on the wood of the Holy Cross. And she teaches us that our patient endurance of the sufferings we experience in our lifetimes can be the means by which we help the Poor Souls in Purgatory make satisfaction for the debt we owe as a result of our forgiven sins (and our general attachment to sin), and the means by which we can give exemplary witness to the world of the fact that we unite our sufferings with those of our Blessed Lord. Indeed, our patient endurance of suffering is one of the ways we prove our love for our Lord. Knowing that our Lord never permits us to endure any suffering beyond our capacity to endure equips us with the knowledge that the more suffering we are sent, the more we receive a sign of His love for us, that He expects us to do great things for Him and His Church by becoming co-redeemers of the world with Him.

A rejection of those simple truths results in the tyranny of the social engineers and the bioethicists (who don’t practice true biology and are not very ethical).

Why not kill “unwanted” babies?

Why not kill those who suffer?

Why not clone yourself?

Why not conceive a child in order to kill it and use its body parts to aid someone with Parkinson’s Disease?

Why can’t a woman who is sterile conceive a child by means of in vitro fertilization? Why can’t two people of the same gender who “love” one another get “married”? What’s wrong with surrogate motherhood?

Why can’t we use genetics to pick the sort of child we want? T

he very people who reject the authority of the Church in those matters look to secular “experts” to provide them with guidance, ironically conferring on those pseudo-experts a spirit of infallibility that is rejected as belonging to the Successor of Saint Peter and the bishops who are in full communion with him.

 The Netherlands goes first where other nations follow. That has been true both ecclesiastically and civilly. And the state of Oregon is already the de jure euthanasia pioneer in the United States. The actual de facto practice in most hospitals in most places in this country is pretty much the same as it has been in the Netherlands. Doctors are liberally dispatching people as a matter of routine, making decisions that certain people have simply outlived their usefulness. That is over and above the instances where poorly formed people (or their families) actually ask to be killed. No, there are all types of “mysterious” deaths in hospitals these days as doctors and Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) play God and make cost-benefit analyses as to a person’s “worth.” 

It is no accident that the Netherlands is one of the leaders in utilitarian social engineering. At one time under the control of Catholic Spain, the Netherlands, like some other nations of Europe, eventually fell under the sway of Lutheranism and Calvinism. The Netherlands has long been home to relativists. After all, an essential tenet of Protestantism is that a person is saved if he makes a confession of faith in our Lord with his lips and in his heart. Nothing else matters after that profession of faith is made. There is no room for a theology of redemptive suffering in such a belief system. Protestantism rejects Purgatory as un-Scriptural. It contends that we do not prove our faith by good works. And it rejects the simple truth that we gain merit for our good works, merit that can be applied to the Poor Souls in Purgatory and help make expiation for the debt we owe our own forgiven sins. Why not annihilate yourself when pain becomes too severe? A “loving” God would understand that, wouldn’t He? 

There is only one weapon that can stop the advance of the brave new world that has been evolving since the time of the Renaissance and the Protestant Revolt: the Cross of the Divine Redeemer. When are we going to learn that we cannot fight the culture of death without the weapon that brought us the possibility of eternal life? (“Land of Windmills and Murder,” from the printed pages of Christ or Chaos, February 6, 2001.)

Bishop Clemens von Galen, whose opposition to Nazism was discussed in Meet Some Catholics Truly Worth Admiring, part one and Meet Some Catholics Truly Worth Admiring, part two, explained that the life of every human being would be at risk of arbitrary execution once those deemed “unfit” could be executed under cover of the civil law:

For some months we have been heating reports that inmates of establishments for the care of the mentally ill who have been ill for a long period and perhaps appear incurable have been forcibly removed from these establishments on orders from Berlin. Regularly the relatives receive soon afterwards an intimation that the patient is dead, that the patient’s body has been cremated and that they can collect the ashes. There is a general suspicion, verging on certainty. that these numerous unexpected deaths of the mentally ill do not occur naturally but are intentionally brought about in accordance with the doctrine that it is legitimate to destroy a so-called “worthless life”” in other words to kill innocent men and women, if it is thought that their lives are of no further value to the people and the state. A terrible doctrine which seeks to justify the murder of innocent people, which legitimises the violent killing of disabled persons who are no longer capable of work, of cripples, the incurably ill and the aged and infirm!

I am reliably informed that in hospitals and homes in the province of Westphalia lists are being prepared of inmates who are classified as “unproductive members of the national community” and are to be removed from these establishments and shortly thereafter killed. The first party of patients left the mental hospital at Marienthal, near Munster, in the course of this week.

German men and women! Article 211 of the German Penal Code is still in force, in these terms: “Whoever kills a man of deliberate intent is guilty of murder and punishable with death”. No doubt in order to protect those who kill with intent these poor men and women, members of our families, from this punishment laid down by law, the patients who have been selected for killing are removed from their home area to some distant place. Some illness or other is then given as the cause of death. Since the body is immediately cremated, the relatives and the criminal police are unable to establish whether the patient had in fact been ill or what the cause of death actually was. I have been assured, however, that in the Ministry of the Interior and the office of the Chief Medical Officer, Dr Conti, no secret is made of the fact that indeed a large number of mentally ill persons in Germany have already been killed with intent and that this will continue.

Article 139 of the Penal Code provides that “anyone who has knowledge of an intention to commit a crime against the life of any person . . . and fails to inform the authorities or the person whose life is threatened in due time . . . commits a punishable offence”. When I learned of the intention to remove patients from Marienthal I reported the matter on 28th July to the State Prosecutor of Munster Provincial Court and to the Munster chief of police by registered letter, in the following terms:

“According to information I have received it is planned in the course of this week (the date has been mentioned as 31st July) to move a large number of inmates of the provincial hospital at Marienthal, classified as ‘unproductive members of the national community’, to the mental hospital at Eichberg, where, as is generally believed to have happened in the case of patients removed from other establishments, they are to be killed with intent. Since such action is not only contrary to the divine and the natural moral law but under article 211 of the German Penal Code ranks as murder and attracts the death penalty, I hereby report the matter in accordance with my obligation under article 139 of the Penal Code and request that steps should at once be taken to protect the patients concerned by proceedings against the authorities planning their removal and murder, and that I may be informed of the action taken”.

I have received no information of any action by the State Prosecutor or the police.

I had already written on 26th July to the Westphalian provincial authorities, who are responsible for the running of the mental hospital and for the patients entrusted to them for care and for cure, protesting in the strongest terms. It had no effect. The first transport of the innocent victims under sentence of death has left Marienthal. And I am now told that 800 patients have already been removed from the hospital at Warstein.

We must expect, therefore, that the poor defenceless patients are, sooner or later, going to be killed. Why? Not because they have committed any offence justifying their death, not because, for example, they have attacked a nurse or attendant, who would be entitled in legitimate self­defence to meet violence with violence. In such a case the use of violence leading to death is permitted and may be called for, as it is in the case of killing an armed enemy.

No: these unfortunate patients are to die, not for some such reason as this but because in the judgment of some official body, on the decision of some committee, they have become “unworthy to live,” because they are classed as “unproductive members of the national community”.

The judgment is that they can no longer produce any goods: they are like an old piece of machinery which no longer works, like an old horse which has become incurably lame, like a cow which no longer gives any milk. What happens to an old piece of machinery? It is thrown on the scrap heap. What happens to a lame horse, an unproductive cow?

I will not pursue the comparison to the end so fearful is its appropriateness and its illuminating power.

But we are not here concerned with pieces of machinery; we are not dealing with horses and cows, whose sole function is to serve mankind, to produce goods for mankind. They may be broken up; they may be slaughtered when they no longer perform this function.

No: We are concerned with men and women, our fellow creatures, our brothers and sisters! Poor human beings, ill human beings, they are unproductive, if you will. But does that mean that they have lost the right to live? Have you, have I, the right to live only so long as we are productive, so long as we are recognised by others as productive?

If the principle that men is entitled to kill his unproductive fellow-man is established and applied, then woe betide all of us when we become aged and infirm! If it is legitimate to kill unproductive members of the community, woe betide the disabled who have sacrificed their health or their limbs in the productive process! If unproductive men and women can be disposed of by violent means, woe betide our brave soldiers who return home with major disabilities as cripples, as invalids! If it is once admitted that men have the right to kill “unproductive” fellow-men even though it is at present applied only to poor and defenceless mentally ill patients” then the way is open for the murder of all unproductive men and women: the incurably ill, the handicapped who are unable to work, those disabled in industry or war. The way is open, indeed, for the murder of all of us when we become old and infirm and therefore unproductive. Then it will require only a secret order to be issued that the procedure which has been tried and tested with the mentally ill should be extended to other “unproductive” persons, that it should also be applied to those suffering from incurable tuberculosis, the aged and infirm, persons disabled in industry, soldiers with disabling injuries!

Then no man will be safe: some committee or other will be able to put him on the list of “unproductive” persons, who in their judgment have become “unworthy to live”. And there will be no police to protect him, no court to avenge his murder and bring his murderers to justice.

Who could then have any confidence in a doctor? He might report a patient as unproductive and then be given instructions to kill him! It does not bear thinking of, the moral depravity, the universal mistrust which will spread even in the bosom of the family, if this terrible doctrine is tolerated, accepted and put into practice. Woe betide mankind, woe betide our German people, if the divine commandment, “Thou shalt not kill”, which the Lord proclaimed on Sinai amid thunder and lightning, which God our Creator wrote into man’s conscience from the beginning, if this commandment is not merely violated but the violation is tolerated and remains unpunished!

I will give you an example of what is happening. One of the patients in Marienthal was a man of 55, a farmer from a country parish in the Münster region – I could give you his name – who has suffered for some years from mental disturbance and was therefore admitted to Marienthal hospital. He was not mentally ill in the full sense: he could receive visits and was always happy, when his relatives came to see him. Only a fortnight ago he was visited by his wife and one of his sons, a soldier on home leave from the front. The son is much attached to his father, and the parting was a sad one:

No one can tell, whether the soldier will return and see his father again, since he may fall in battle for his country. The son, the soldier, will certainly never again see his father on earth, for he has since then been put on the list of the “unproductive“. A relative, who wanted to visit the father this week in Marienthal, was turned away with the information that the patient had been transferred elsewhere on the instructions of the Council of State for National Defence. No information could be given about where he had been sent, but the relatives would be informed within a few days. What information will they be given? The same as in other cases of the kind? That the man has died, that his body has been cremated, that the ashes will be handed over on payment of a fee? Then the soldier, risking his life in the field for his fellow-countrymen, will not see his father again on earth, because fellow- countrymen at home have killed him. The facts I have stated are firmly established. I can give the names of the patient, his wife and his son the soldier, and the place where they live.

“Thou shalt not kill!” God wrote this commandment in the conscience of man long before any penal code laid down the penalty for murder, long before there was any prosecutor or any court to investigate and avenge a murder. Cain, who killed his brother Abel, was a murderer long before there were any states or any courts of law. And he confessed his deed, driven by his accusing conscience: “My punishment is greater than I can bear … and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me the murderer shall slay me” (Genesis 4,13-14)

“Thou shalt not kill!” This commandment from God, who alone has power to decide on life or death, was written in the hearts of men from the beginning, long before God gave the children of Israel on Mount Sinai his moral code in those lapidary sentences inscribed on stone which are recorded for us in Holy Scripture and which as children we learned by heart in the catechism.

“I am the Lord thy God!“ Thus begins this immutable law. “Thou shalt have not other gods before me.” God – the only God, transcendent, almighty, omniscient, infinitely holy and just, our Creator and future Judge – has given us these commandments. Out of love for us he wrote these commandments in our heart and proclaimed them to us. For they meet the need of our God-created nature; they are the indispensable norms for all rational, godly, redeeming and holy individual and community life. With these commandments God, our Father, seeks to gather us, His children, as the hen gathers her chickens under her wings. If we follow these commands, these invitations, this call from God, then we shall be guarded and protected and preserved from harm, defended against threatening death and destruction like the chickens under the hen’s wings.

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem … how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” Is this to come about again in our country of Germany, in our province of Westphalia, in our city of Münster? How far are the divine commandments now obeyed in Germany, how far are they obeyed here in our community?

The eighth commandment: “Thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not lie.” How often is it shamelessly and publicly broken! The seventh commandment: “Thou shalt not steal”. Whose possessions are now secure since the arbitrary and ruthless confiscation of the property of our brothers and sisters, members of Catholic orders? Whose property is protected, if this illegally confiscated property is not returned?

The sixth commandment: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Think of the instructions and assurances on free sexual intercourse and unmarried motherhood in the notorious Open Letter by Rudolf Hess, who has disappeared since, which was published in all the newspapers. And how much shameless and disreputable conduct of this kind do we read about and observe and experience in our city of Münster! To what shamelessness in dress have our young people been forced to get accustomed to – the preparation for future adultery! For modesty, the bulwark of chastity, is about to be destroyed.

And now the fifth commandment: “Thou shalt not kill”, is set aside and broken under the eyes of the authorities whose function it should be to protect the rule of law and human life, when men presume to kill innocent fellow-men with intent merely because they are “unproductive”, because they can no longer produce any goods.

And how do matters stand with the observance of the fourth commandment, which enjoins us to honour and obey our parents and those in authority over us? The status and authority of parents is already much undermined and is increasingly shaken by all the obligations imposed on children against the will of their parents. Can anyone believe that sincere respect and conscientious obedience to the state authorities can be maintained when men continue to violate the commandments of the supreme authority, the Commandments of God, when they even combat and seek to stamp out faith in the only true transcendent God, the Lord of heaven and earth?

The observance of the first three commandments has in reality for many years been largely suspended among the public in Germany and in Münster. By how many people are Sundays and feast days profaned and withheld from the service of God! How the name of God is abused, dishonoured and blasphemed!

And the first commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” In place of the only true eternal God men set up their own idols at will and worship them: Nature, or the state, or the people, or the race. And how many are there whose God, in Paul’s word, “is their belly” (Philippians 3,19) – their own well – being, to which they sacrifice all else, even honour and conscience – the pleasures of the senses, the lust for money, the lust for power! In accordance with all this men may indeed seek to arrogate to themselves divine attributes, to make themselves lords over the life and death of their fellow-men.

When Jesus came near to Jerusalem and beheld the city he wept over it, saying: “If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the day shall come upon thee, that thine enemies … shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.”

Looking with his bodily eyes, Jesus saw only the walls and towers of the city of Jerusalem, but the divine omniscience looked deeper and saw how matters stood within the city and its inhabitants: “O Jersualem, Jerusalem … how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings – and ye would not!“ That is the great sorrow hat oppresses Jesus’s heart, that brings tears to his eyes. I wanted to act for your good, but ye would not!

Jesus saw how sinful, how terrible, how criminal, how disastrous this unwillingness is. Little man, that frail creature, sets his created will against the will of God! Jerusalem and its inhabitants, His chosen and favoured people, set their will against God’s will! Foolishly and criminally, they defy the will of God! And so Jesus weeps over the heinous sin and the inevitable punishment. God is not mocked!

Christians of Münster! Did the Son of God in his omniscience in that day see only Jerusalem and its people? Did he weep only over Jerusalem? Is the people of Israel the only people whom God has encompassed and protected with a father’s care and mother’s love, has drawn to Himself? Is it the only people that w o u l d n o t? The only one that rejected God’s truth, that threw off God’s law and so condemned itself to ruin? 

Did Jesus, the omniscient God, also see in that day our German people, our land of Westphalia, our region of Münster, the Lower Rhineland? Did he also weep over us? Over Münster?

For a thousand years he has instructed our forefathers and us in his truth, guided us with his law, nourished us with his grace, gathered us together as the hen gathers her chickens under her wings. Did the omniscient Son of God see in that day that in our time he must also pronounce this judgment on us: “Ye would not: see, your house will be laid waste!” How terrible that would be!

My Christians! I hope there is still time; but then indeed it is high time: That we may realise, in this our day, the things that belong unto our peace! That we may realise what alone can save us, can preserve us from the divine judgment: that we should take, without reservation, the divine commandments as the guiding rule of our lives and act in sober earnest according to the words: “Rather die than sin”. That in prayer and sincere penitence we should beg that God’s forgiveness and mercy may descend upon us, upon our city, our country and our beloved German people.

But with those who continue to provoke God’s judgment, who blaspheme our faith, who scorn God’s commandments, who make common cause with those who alienate our young people from Christianity, who rob and banish our religious, who bring about the death of innocent men and women, our brothers and sisters – with all those we will avoid any confidential relationship, we will keep ourselves and our families out of reach of their influence, lest we become infected with their godless ways of thinking and acting, lest we become partakers in their guilt and thus liable to the judgment which a just God must and will inflict on all those who, like the ungrateful city of Jerusalem, do not will what God wills. 

O God, make us all know, in this our day, before it is too late, the things which belong to our peace!

O most sacred heart of Jesus, grieved to tears at the blindness and iniquities of men, help us through Thy grace, that we may always strive after that which is pleasing to Thee and renounce that which displeases Thee, that we may remain in Thy love and find peace for our souls! Amen. (As found in The Bishop of Munster Versus the Nazis. Text also online at: Four Sermons in Defiance of the Nazis.)

Although the monstrous developments throughout Europe in Belgium have been evolving for a long time now, it is nevertheless important to point out that the so-called “lay state” that the conciliar revolutionaries, including Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, have considered such a “positive development” as men seek to enjoy “fraternity” with each other despite their “differences” is responsible for making possible the collapse of nations from within as God uses infidels, whether Mohammedan or Talmudic, as the means to chastise the same nations that once bore Him public homage and venerated His Most Blessed Mother with great acts of filial piethy.

Well, behold such the fruit of the “lay state” the so-called “civilized world,” including in Belgium and in the United States of America.  One might be tempted to ask, “O Lord, how long can this go on?”

I am afraid, though, that we have not even begun to see the full fury of the statists, which will be used to justify our own execution for being “dangerous” to the “peace” and “order” of the nation.

Too far-fetched?

Not at all.

Although I had a lot to learn in 1988 despite having been told by sedevacantists three years before what the truth of our situation was, the essential thesis advanced in that lecture of twenty-six years ago has, sadly, proved all too true. It did not take any genius at the time to advance that thesis, and it does not take any special genius or prophetic insight to know that it is only a matter of time that the Church Militant on earth, undergoing her mystical burial in this time of apostasy and betrayal, suffers under the caesars of the realm as she had in her infancy before the Edict of Milan. It is only a matter of when, not if, such executions will begin in earnest as we are labeled “enemies of the state.”

What can we do?

Pray more Rosaries!

Trust more in Our Lady’s motherly intercession for us.

Surrender ourselves fully to the Throne of the Most Blessed Trinity as the consecrated slaves of Christ the King through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Suffer each penance, each humiliation, each rejection and each and every illness and vexation with love, patience, joy and gratitude for having been chosen by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to suffer for Him as the clients of His Most Blessed Mother’s Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

For the moment, however, let us pray for the souls of those killed and for the recovery of those wounded, keeping in mind, of course, that we must always be in a State of Sanctifying Grace as the violence that is spreading far and wide in the world is the direct result of the shedding of the blood of the innocent preborn and, of course, of the warfare that has been made against the Social Reign of Christ the King for the past five hundred years, a warfare that has been joined in the past five decades by the lords of conciliarism.

May God have mercy on us all as we beg Our Lady always to make a perfect Act of Contrition before we go to sleep each night and when we awaken each morning. We do not know when the Divine Master will come for us, and it is going to be increasingly the case that we could be killed anywhere at any time, which is why we must make use of these days of the Paschal Triduum of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as the means to make for our own sins as His consecrated slaves through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Father Maurice Meschler’s reflections on how our sins caused Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to agonize in the Garden of Gethsameni as He saw in all flash the horror of each one of the sins of all men, including our own, from beginning to the end of time, are included in the appendix below. This will provide readers desirous of some supernatural sustenance during these most solemn days of the liturgical year so as to serve as an antidote to the fear that prevails in the hearts of many as the modern world reaps unto itself that chastisements that it deserves for its own warfare against the Social Reign of Christ the King and His true Church and the bloodletting engendered thereby.

We must be intent on crowning Our Lord with acts love and reparation during these most holy days, not by crowning Him anew with thorns by our immersion into the drama that unfolds on a world of Judeo-Masonry.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls and all of the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

Vivat Christus Rex!

Viva Cristo Rey!

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, Patron of Departing Souls, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

APPENDIX

FATHER MAURICE MESCHLER ON OUR LORD'S AGONY IN THE GARDEN 

THE NATURE OF HIS SUFFERINGS

As regards the nature of our Lords sufferings on Mount Olivet, they were not external, but purely internal, that is to say mental sufferings, sufferings of the soul. But suffering of soul can be much worse than bodily pain, for the very reason that it is interiour and mental, and it often communicates itself to the body.

With regard to their number these sufferings were manifold and various. Thrr in particular are enumerated, viz: first fear and apprehension (Mark xiv. 33); secondly, repugnance, horror and aversion (Mark xiv. 33); and thirdly, sadness and depression (Matt xxvi. 37 38). Even one mental suffering can make us unhappy enough. Here it was not a question of one only, but of many; the waves of affliction came surging in upon the Sacred Heart of our Saviour from all sides. There is no conceivable phase or form of mental suffering that He did not go through in His Agony.

And what shall we say of the depth and violence of these sufferings! We can form some ideas of their terrible intensity from the variability of our Lord's outward behaviour. Now He shuns the companionship of His Apostles, now He goes to seek them; now He prays, now complains of His abandonment; in short, His whole nature is in a tumult of agitation, and He betrays great inward perturbation. – The intensity of these interior sufferings finds vent, secondly, in His words. He says: “My soul is sorrowful even unto death” (Matt. Xxvi. 38.  Mark xiv. 34). Our Saviour was not wont to exaggerate. When He says, then, that He is “Sorrowful unto death.” this sorrow really is such depression, sadness, and abandonment as is experienced only in death; a sadness that would be capable of causing His death, did not his Divinity support and strengthen His human nature. Still more; He asks (not unconditionally, but “if it be possible”) that this bitter chalice of sadness and anguish of soul may be taken from Him. “Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from Me” (Matt xxvi. 39 42  Mark xiv. 36.  Luke xxii. 42). And He repeats this prayer more than once. It must indeed have been terrible anguish, if He, Who had hitherto longed and prayed for this chalice – He, the Strength of God – finds it so unspeakably bitter and insupportable that He would fain have it taken from Him, and turns from it with repugnance and horror. – And the last peculiar sign and striking proof of the vehemence of these mental sufferings is the actual sweat of blood that they force from His veins. “Being in an agony . . . His sweat became as drops of blood trickling down upon the ground” (Luke xxii. 44).

There is no doubting the fact; this sweat of blood was so copious that it trickled down on the ground. This shows us on the one hand how delicately constituted was our Lord's Sacred Body, and on the other the force of His mental anguish and struggle. It must have been an exceedingly vehement resistance of the higher will to the attacks of the lower volition, for the force of this resistance to press the blood from His Heart through the delicate tissues of His Body. Thus it was a real agony, a true death-struggle, and even His outward aspect must have been a pitiable spectacle. His face was pale, His limbs frembled; His breast heaved convulsively, and His respiration grew short and spasmodic' His terrified glance wandered from heaven to earth, and then to the Apostles, as a cying man turns his anxious gaze first upon one, then upon another of those around him. (cf. Ps. Xvii. 5 6; lxviii 2 3; cxiv. 3).

CAUSES OF THESE SUFFERINGS

Our Lord's three principal sufferings in His Agony may be traced to three corresponding causes.

His fear and apprehension were caused by the certainty and proximity of His Death and the sufferings that were to bring it about. Life is sweet, and it is a hard and bitter sacrifice – indeed, the greatest of all sacrifices – to give it up. Our Saviour recognised more fully than anyone the value of His life, its merit, holiness, and priceless worth for heaven and earth, and especially for His holy Mother and His friends. And this life He was to sacrifice – while yet so young, and by a death so unjust, so unworthy of Him and of such unheard-of cruelty! He pictured these sufferings to Himself, and His vivid fancy conjured up all the scenes of the coming Passion – all the ignominy, ill-treatment and pain that the fury and cruel malice of His foes, the faithlessness and inconstancy of His friends, and the base cowardice of those in authority were to cause Him. He saw all the instruments that were to torture His Body, and His limbs seemed to feel their sharpness and strength already. He recognized the signification of all His torments, and let the consciousness of the sins He had undertaken to expiate cast its shadow over His whole nature, like the thousand spreading branches of a mighty tree. How terribly a hman heart can be affected by fear of a misfortune, or by terror and mortal agony! And what must our Lord have felt, with His vivid fancy and sensitive temperament, presuming that He surrendered Himself up to these impressions! And very probably Divine Justice, in order that He might expiate the contempt with which it meets from men, so worked upon His mind by terrible representations and revelations as to make Him tremble and quiver like an aspen-leaf. For what is even a God-Man against the terrific justice of God, Who crushes like a lion (Isa. Xxxviii. 13), and Whose voice “breaketh the cedars of Libanus” and “shaketh the desert” (Ps. Xxviii. 5 8)? Our Lord writhed under its force, and found no escape from its terrors. He trembled and shook at the magnitude of the atoning suffering that Divine Justice required of Him.

The repugnance, disgust and aversion experienced by our Lord arose from the knowledge of the sins for which He was to suffer so much and so terribly. He was and recognized them in all their dreadful multiplicity – the sins of a ll men and races and ages; He saw all their vileness, baseness wantonness and malice; saw them in their shocking contradiction to God's supreme authority, justice, beauty and goodness; saw their fearful ravages among the human race, and their fatal effects upon men for time and eternity. What abominable pictures of sins, in all their lust, vileness and insolence, crowded upon Him! He saw as it were a mingled torrent of the sinful filth of all ages and races pouring down upon Him. He saw it before Him in one loathsome, unfathomable sea of crime, and every single hateful  drop of it must filled His sensitive Sacred Heart with unutterable repugnance ad horror. And all these sins called for bitter expiation. —The human race itself was a second cause of His repugnance. What must He have seen there! What are men to Him – these men, to atone for whose sins He was now to suffer and die? The greater part of mankind, in all ages, sunk in the depth of heathenism and unbelief—what are they to Him? And all who hold aloof from Him in heresy, mortal sin, indifference, worldliness, and lukewarmness—what are they to Him? Are there not Christians who stand up in crowds against Him, as His personal enemies, full of ferocity and hate? Do then not persecute Him in the souls of men, in His Church, His doctrine, His Sacraments, His representative the Pope, and His own Person? How well He deserved our love and reverence, as our Lord and our God! How good was His will towards us all! And yet, what does He see? Throughout all the centuries, whole troops of Christ-haters drawn up in battle array, and raging against Him with all the weapons at their command. How small the handful of His faithful followers looks against this army of foes! And how does it stand even with these trusty soldiers? Which of us can say that he does all his duty, and serves so good a Master with zeal, constancy, unselfishness and generosity? Oh, how soon we all tire! How we grudge and weigh our service, how soon it is “too much” and “too hard!” We chaffer and haggle over every sacrifice, and how often our Saviour gets the worst of the bargain! He saw all this – saw, too, His own Divine Person and all its claims to service, loyalty, love and generosity, as opposed to our slothfulness, indifference, and unbounded selfishness. Is it any wonder that He felt unspeakable repugnance, disgust and aversion for these men, who would do nothing for Him?

His sadness, lastly, was caused by His knowledge of the small result He would gain by all His sacrifices. In the Incarnation He had espoused Himself to the human race as His bride, in order to lead it to the Heavenly Father. To this end He had founded the Church and instituted her doctrine, Sacraments, and priesthood; and now He was going to die for men. But what was to be the fruit of all this? What is the use of it all? Do they take advantage of it? No! They neglect it all, or misuse it to their own ruin. Our Lord saw the tree of sound doctrine imbued by proud heretics with such deadly poison that millions would die of the fatal fruits; saw the living fountain of the Sacraments neglected, desecrated and profaned by administrators as well recipients, or stopped up altogether in wanton criminal stupidity; the priesthood contemned, mocked at, persecuted; His “seamless coat”—His Church—torn, tattered, and soiled. He was the altar of His most holy Sacrifice and Sacrament become a stone of stumbling and separation, and disappear from whole countries; saw countless souls saved but by a hair's breadth, and many other precious souls – to wander astray and go to their eternal ruin. He gave His infinitely precious Life and Blood for all, and the magnitude of this price He paid for them gave Him a right to expect that all would be saved. And now He was so many perish! The loss of every soul gave Him infinite pain. At that time they were still members of His mystical Body, and He felt the loss of each one as acutely as though a limb had been torn from His material Body. Oh, the grief it cause Him! How many were to perish even on account of His bitter Passion, because they reviled and despised it! All these terrible pictures rose before Him in endless array, and cut Him to the very heart. He mourned, lamented, sighed, and prayed in His agony and distress, bathed in perspiration and blood. It seemed as though all the horrors of earth and hell were besieging the grotto and crowding round Him. This is what made Him come to the Apostles so often, to flee from these oppressors, so to speak, and seek comfort. But He always found them overcome with weariness, anxiety, and drowsiness, and they afforded Him no relief. Thus Gethsemani was truly a wine-press, in which His Precious Blood was forced from the veins of His Sacred Body, as the juice and oil are pressed from the crushed grape and pounded olive.

MANNER IN WHICH OUR SAVIOUR SUFFERED.

The circumstances of the Passion lead us to consider the manner in which our Saviour suffered on Mount Olivet.

In the first place, He suffered voluntarily. He was absolute master of His emotions. If He suffered, then, and suffered much and terribly, it was of His own free will and choice. He Himself opened, so to speak, the flood-gates of the bitter waters of affliction that surged over His Heart; He immersed Himself of His own accord in their terrible depths. He was like one who, though suffering intensely, will not made use of a remedy that is certain to ease the pain, because He wishes to suffer. More than this; theologians find a deep mystery in this mental suffering of our Saviour on Mount Olivet. How was it possible that, in spite of the clear vision of God that shed a beatific light upon His Passion, He could yet be sorrowful, not merely in His Body and sensual appetitive faculty, but also in His higher, purely spiritual will? It was a though the same object at once gave light and joy, and yet frightened Him by its darkness. Of course it may be said that our Saviour had different faculties with which to regard His passion, and could therefore rejoice at it in one respect and sorrow over it in another; but nevertheless it remains a deep and inscrutable mystery and a miracle worked by Our Lord, that He should be able to suffer thus. Indeed, it cannot be denied that this clear vision of God itself increased the pain, horror, and aversion to sin in His higher will. Does not this free volition make the sacrifice doubly dear and deserving of our love and reverence? How glad we feel when the load of some oppressive sadness is at last removed from us, and how great should we consider the sacrifice if we were asked to bear this state of suffering still longer, and even inflict it upon ourselves! But this is what our Saviour did. He shed His first Blood Himself, and how copiously! Truly He has trodden the wine-press Himself – and along (Isa. Lxiii. 3.). How noble, how lovable, precious, and venerable this tree and voluntary endurance renders His Passion!

Secondly, our Saviour suffers with beautiful humility. This suffering on Mount Olivet was, in the eyes of men, a state of great weakness. Nevertheless He allows His disciples to witness it; not all of them, indeed, because they could not all have borne it, but the three chief of the Apostles, who had also witnessed His Transfiguration. – And He shows the same touching humility in His prayer; for in His distress He takes refuge in prayer. He prays most fervently and with the most touching words, crying again and again: “Father, Abba, My Father” (Matt. Xxvi. 39 42. Mark xiv. 36. Luke xxii. 42); He prays repeatedly (Matt xxvi. 44 Mark xiv. 39) and with perfect resignation to His Heavenly Father's Will. However hard it is for His nature to acquiesce in His Passion and Death, still He protests again and again that the Will of His Heavenly Father shall be done. He also shows His humility by not aspiring to the greatest and loftiest flight of generosity in His petitions and asking for suffering, but contenting Himself with lowly submission to the Will of God. – Lastly, He shows loving and humble solicitude for the Apostles, constantly going to watch over them, warning them, encouraging them to pray, and excusing their slowness to respond. “Simon, sleepeth thou? Couldst thou not watch one hour with me? Watch ye, and pray that ye enter not into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matt. Xxvi. 40 41. Mark xiv. 37 38).

Lastly, our Saviour suffers with constancy and perseverance, and triumphs gloriously. The battle was indeed a hard one; the fear, repugnance and sadness of His inmost nature were unutterable, and so His higher will had a long and hard siege to sustain and a terrible charge to repulse. But He stood firm and won the victory. He kept fast to God's Will – that He should redeem us by His Passion and Death – and so He was comforted. “There appeared to Him an angel from heaven, strengthening him” (Luke xxii. 43) Such a degree of self-forgetfulness and humiliation as He showed in His Agony on Mount Olivet deserved an outward sign from heaven. This was often the case in our Saviour's life; e.g. His Nativity, after His fast in the desert, and again here. He did not absolutely need this comfort, it is true; but still it was consoling to His Sacred Humanity to see a messenger from His Heavenly Father approach Him in visible form, and in His touching humility and gracious condescension He deigned to accept an external consolation of this kink. But how did the angel strengthen our Saviour? Certainly he could not really offer Him anything, exteriorly or interiorly, that He did not know and possess already, or might not have procured for Himself. Probably the heavenly messenger strengthened our Lord in the same way as we comfort a friend, by praising his constancy and drawing his attention to the glorious results of suffering, of suffering well borne. Thus the angel may possibly have shown our Saviour in vision all the grand and glorious consequences, so salutary for men and so conducive to the glory of God, that were to result from His Passion. Perhaps He may have seen all the Saints of the Old and New Testament, vested in the glory merited for them by His Passion, passing before Him in one long, glorious procession, formed from out all ages of the Church – all a wondrous and manifold reflection of His most sacred Life and Passion, and a glorious crown of victory destined for His brow. Certainly the sight of this must have comforted and encouraged our Saviour, so that freed from the inward struggle and the anxiety of His lower nature, He could enter upon the work of the Redemption.

AIM AND INTENT OF THE AGONY ON MOUNT OLIVET

Our Lord's chief intention in suffering this Agony was certainly to give us a conclusive proof of His true and complete human nature. We have here indeed a confirmation of the fact that there were two wills in Christ's nature, one divine and one human; for He says: “Not my will, but Thine be done” (Luke xxii 42 Matt xxvi. 39). – Further, we have a palpable proof that He had, like ourselves, an inferior will with all its natural impulses and emotions; the only difference being that in His case even the very beginning of an emotion was dependent upon His higher will. – Lastly, He wished to teach us that these emotions are not faults or even imperfections, as long as they remain subject to reason. The emotion of fear experienced by our Saviour in this case was not a imperfection; for no one can be said to fear who only fears when he wills to do so.

Secondly, our Saviour intended in this mystery to experience His own Person all interiour sufferings, and this in a very high degree; just as He was also about to take upon Himself all exterior sufferings. That is why He fills the chalice of mental suffering to the very brim, and drains it to the last drop.

Thirdly, He intended to satisfy for the sins and imperfections that we are often guilty of in these interior trials – impatience, rebellion against the Will of God, want of generosity, neglect of prayer, unfaithfulness to resolutions, inordinate seeking for comfort from creatures and complaining to them. Our behaviour is often very different from that of our Saviour on Mount Olivet. He wished to do penance for this.

Fourthly, our Saviour wished to comfort us by His example, when we cannot find comfort anywhere else. How pained He felt at finding no one to console Him and having to bear the whole weight of His suffering alone! Here we have an example to comfort us, when we can find no other solace. And is it not a sweet consolation, to think that our Saivour had to suffer the same and that He too found no comfort.

Lastly, our Lord intended to merit special grace and strength for us when we have interiour trials and sufferings to bear. We are sorely in need of it then. Our Saviour has won it for us; let us go to Him and ask for it. We too shall have our hours on Mount Olivet. But there will be one hour in particular that will be very like of our Saviour's Agony – the hour of our death, our mortal agony, when similar anguish of soul, fear, lassitude and sadness will unman us, and we shall be quite alone. What a consolation it is for us then, that our Saviour has gone through this hour, and that we find in Him a Heart that can understand our distress and help us! Let us often ask for a share in the blessings, graces, and victorious strength of the Agony of Jesus. How sweet it will be then to think that we have often paid it loving veneration! But, generally speaking, perhaps the resolution most in accordance with the intention and signification of this mystery will be never to desist from our good resolves not abate our generosity in the service of our Lord on account of interior difficulties, such as distaste, fear, or sadness. Let us never forget what a combat He had to sustain in His Heart and how hard it was for Him to undertake the Passion for us, but yet how that loving Heart never wavered in its love and fidelity to us.  What a happiness, what an honour for us, if the Angel of Comfort included us also in his consoling representations and pointed to us as being among those who, out of gratitude and reverence for His Passion, would stand the test of interior affliction victoriously! (Father Maurice Meschler, S.J., The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, The Son of God, in Meditations, Volume II,Freiburg Im Breisgau 1928 Herder & Co., Publishers to the Holy Apostolic See, pp. 378-389.)