We Must Ever Profess to an Unbelieving World that Christ is Risen

Most of us who were born in the first decade after the end of World War II on September 2, 1945, the Feast of Saint Stephen of Hungary (when General Douglas MacArthur accepted the surrender of the Japanese Empire) grew up at a time when cataclysmic changes were taking place in the United States of America.

Many parents of the so-called “greatest generation” that survived the Depression and “won” World War II (a victory that saw half of Europe and a good chunk of Asia imprisoned by Communism and the remnants of Christendom taken over by amoral naturalists intent on eradicating Catholicism from the fabric of once Catholic Europe) lavished their children with material pleasures and creature comforts that were unheard in the past, although the prosperity of the 1920s was certainly filled with conveniences and technological innovations that paved the way for the commercialism of the 1950s.

The pull of materialism, which has been a strong current in American thought and praxis dating back to the days of the Calvinists of colonial New England and the Anglican mercantilists of Virginia and the mid-Atlantic region, was such that the goal of most Americans, including most Catholics, became focused excessively, if not exclusively, on the pursuit of the so-called “American Dream” of the acquisition, retention and expansion of material wealth and goodies a theraison d’etre of human existence and self-identification.

Many, although far from all, Catholic parents immersed their “baby boom” children in the diversions of naturalism, including sports and amusement parks, and were content to see them “cathechized” and “entertained” by the seemingly harmless programming on network television that, although inoffensive, worked a great many themes of religious indifferentism, naturalism and even feminism. It was even the case that the “envelope” was pushed on matters of feminine attire and even personal conduct in many of those programs.

Most insipidly, though, the so-called “golden age” of television in the 1950s helped to further destroy the routine of family prayer and even family conversation as the schedules of families became centered on the schedules of network and local television station programming, which featured all manner of advertisements designed to create a “need” among children to purchase the latest toys and other novelties. Many families grew apart whose members became isolated cells living under one roof, a phenomenon that is even worse today in those homes where parents are foolish enough to provide their children with their own “social networking” devices that have proven to be even more addictive and time-consuming than was television programming in its infancy seventy years ago.

The way was thus paved for the truly revolutionary 1960s, a time in which the Judeo-Masonic forces of naturalism, preying upon the passivity that its lords had sought to produce as a result of nonstop television watching and an immersion in materialism and bread and circuses, used its “asserts,” so to speak,” to help foment a theological, liturgical, and pastoral revolution that has produced at least two full generations of young, fully grown adults who have thrown off the “shackles” of all pretense of religious adherence, especially that of the one and only true Faith, Catholicism. The end result of this revolution has been the emergence of a new form of barbarism, one that features people who have no knowledge of or interest in any religion, no less the true religion. Hedonism, a word that seems to have been lost in the past three or four decade, is rampant. Indeed, it is rampant to such an extent that sports figures and other so-called “celebrities” boast openly of the immoral pursuits. 

Unbelief is rampant among what researchers call the “millennials,” a term that demographers have coined to separate the post-baby boom generation (those born between 1965 and 1980) from those born between 1981 and 1996. The graph below, compiled by the Pew Research Center, provides empirical proof of the convergence between the forces of Judeo-Masonic Modernity in the world and of Modernism in the counterfeit church of concilarism: 

One cannot teach what one does know, and one cannot give what one does not have. The end result of this revolution has been the emergence of a new form of barbarism, one that features people who have no knowledge of or interest in any religion, no less the true religion. Hedonism, a word that seems to have been lost in the past three or four decades, is rampant. Indeed, it is rampant to such an extent that sports figures and other so-called “celebrities” boast openly of the immoral pursuits. Yet is that the current head of the false religious sect that masquerades itself as the Catholic Church has, at various times, called sins of the flesh "the least of sins" and has talked endlessly about "accompanying" hardened sinners rather than exhorting them to quit their sins. Everything about Catholicism has been turned upside down by the conciliar revolutionaries to such an extent that those Catholics who try to adhere, despite their own sins and failings, to the true teaching of Holy Mother Church are considered "renegades" and "misfits."

This is no accident.

This is the ultimate goal desired by the ancient enemies of Our Lord, those insidious people who infiltrated the highest quarters of the Catholic Church in the decades before the emergence of Angelo Roncalli as “Pope John XXIII” on October 28, 1959, and the beginning of what would be an eleven year period leading to the sacramentally barren liturgical rites of a counterfeit church that is the ape of the Catholic Church. As a true priest in the conciliar structures noted to me on Palm Sunday in 1985, “Tom, the Saracens themselves could not have not a better job of destruction than has been wrought in the past twenty years.”

Yes, that the rise of irreligion in our world is the direct result of the apostasies, heresies, errors, sacrileges, blasphemies, and pastoral “innovations” of the lords of conciliarism, and what passes for “religious education” in the conciliar structures has resulted in the lion’s share of two full generations of Catholics having lost any knowledge of the true Faith, including:

Belief in the Real Presence of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the Most Blessed Sacrament as a matter of dogmatic truth (not that He is present in the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service, that is).

Belief that the Holy Mass is the unbloody re-presentation or perpetuation of the Our Lord’s bloody Sacrifice on the wood of the Holy Cross in atonement for our sins.

Belief that the Catholic Church is the one and only true Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order.

Belief in a God Who punishes sin and thus of the existence of Hell for unbelievers and for those Catholics who die in a state of final impenitence.

Belief that Catholics must confess their Mortal Sins both in number and by kind.

Belief in the dogma of Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception and of her Perpetual Virginity.

Belief in the efficacy of prayer to Our Lady, Saint Joseph, and all of the other saints and angels.

Belief in the Resurrection of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ from the dead on Easter Sunday.

Those who do not believe that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ rose from the dead on His own power will come to hate the true Catholic Faith and to revile those who seek to remind them of it.

Those who do not believe that there is an empty tomb in Jerusalem because Our Lord went forth from it as miraculously as He passed through Our Lady’s Virginal and Immaculate Womb on Christmas Day will come to live as pagans, seeking their “heaven” in the here and now while believing that they will still be able to enjoy their worldly pleasures in some kind of ill-defined “afterlife.”

Once again, of course, the loss of belief in Our Lord’s actual, Bodily Resurrection from the dead on Easter Sunday is attributable in large measure to the work of the devils posing as “cardinals” and “popes” in the false church of conciliarism that, so very sadly, is believed to be the Catholic Church, something that a 2016 post at Novus Ordo Watch makes very clear (Three Deniers of Our Lord's Resurrection). An article of mine from ten years ago, written while still in the early stages of accepting the truth that the counterfeit church of concilairism is not the Catholic Church and that the conciliar “popes” have been false claimants to the Throne of Saint Peter, discussed the then Joseph “Cardinal” Ratzinger’s heretical belief of the “resurrection of persons,” not of bodies. There were those who tried to defend “their man” at the time.

Ah, their own “Pope Benedict” pulled the rug out from them by reiterating many of the same false claims in Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection. Ratzinger is now what he has always been: a Modernist by way of the “improvements” made to Modernism by the “new theology” that was condemned, much to the then Reverend Mr. Ratzinger’s disdain, it should be noted, by Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis, August 12, 1950.

Most of the people we encounter as we shop for food or other necessities have no clue at all about First and Last Things. Most young people today do not even know Who God is, which is why so many of them do not believe that He exists or that, if He does, He has any relevance to their daily lives, which are defined by the constant effort to fulfill material and carnal desires that are never satiated. This is because material and carnal desires can never be satiated. Those who live carnally must want more and more and more throughout their lives until they die (or, more likely, are put to death in a hospice) as unhappy as they lived.

One's coutenance displays a great deal about the interior disposition of his immortal soul. Unhappy people are glum. They do not smile easily and they look askance, not that they know what the word askance means, that is, at anyone who does smile readily and who attempts to greet them during the course of a business transaction. Whatever "happiness" most people alive today think that they are having is fleeting, leading many into the depths of despair, alcoholism and/or drug addiction. Life is but a drudgery, and any thought of sacrifice and suffering, no less that of redemptive suffering, must be anesthetized and escaped from as quickly as possible. 

The glorious season of Paschaltide that is now upon us means nothing to most people. Daily activities were carried on as usual during Holy Week, including on Good Friday. Businesses were open and stores were filled with shoppers. The blathering blabberers of naturalism babbled on and on and on, I am sure, about the Mueller Report and the reaction to it. A full schedule of major league baseball games was played. 

Maundy Thursday?

Good Friday?

Holy Saturday?

Easter Sunday?

What's that all about? 

What's religion got to do with anything?

It is truly sad to see most people alive today have no interest in realizing that they are loved by the Infinite, Omnipotent, Eternal God, Who became Flesh in the Viriginal Immaculate Womb of His Most Blesssed Mother and suffered and died to win for us our eternal salvation. Empty lives here below lead people to the eternal emptiness of being deprived of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity.

Given this igorance, indifference and the lack of the utter lack of belief in Our Lord’s Resurrection on Easter Sunday that prevails in many, although not all, of the precincts of the counterfeit church of concilairism at a time when a heretofore “soft” form of totalitarianism on the part of “democratically elected” officials is being transformed into the sort of Soviet-style totalitarianism that exists in one-party states, it is useful to consider how a true Jesuit, Father Maurice Meschler, described the Resurrection of Our Lord in the sort of exacting terms that spell out the word A-N-A-T-H-E-M-A to the likes of Joseph Alois Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Walter Kasper, Gerhard Ludwig Muller, and, of course, Jorge Mario Bergolgio.

Father Meschler’s reflection consists of several distinct parts, each of which provides a vast contrast between the rationalism of the conciliar revolutionaries (and their naturalist comrades in the world) and the actual truths of the Catholic Faith. The first part deals with the truth and the reality of the Resurrection that is denied by many conciliar revolutionaries and by their like-minded heretics in various “mainstream” Protestant sects, each of which is dying as a result of their centuries-long devolution into the realms of open paganism:

We now come to the glorious life of Jesus, the brilliant reverse of His earthly life, which, in spite of the miracles and prophecies by which God’s glory was manifested in it, nevertheless bore throughout the stamp of poverty, labour, suffering and humiliation—in short, the “form of a servant.”

Christ entered upon this glorious life by three gradations. Immediately after His Death His Soul was glorified, i.e., its lower faculties also entered into the state of beatitude. In the Resurrection His Body too was glorified by being reunited to the beatified Soul. And at the Ascension His glory reached its climax and consummation.

Thus we have two periods of the glorious life to consider: the Resurrection and the glorious life on earth until the Ascension; then the Ascension and the glorious life in heaven.

THE GLORIOUS LIFE OF JESUS ON EARTH

The Resurrection of Christ

Mark vvi. 9. But he rising early the first day of the week appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils.

The first mystery of Christ’s complete glorification is the Resurrection. In the Resurrection His entire Humanity, Body and Soul, entered into essential glory, and hence Easter is the most glorious feast of the God-Man and of all Christendom, as the Martyrology so beautifully and rightly expresses it: “The feast of feasts, the Resurrection of our Lord and Redeemer Jesus Christ.”

1. Truth and Reality of the Resurrection

Christ truly rose from the dead. All assure us of this: the Holy Scriptures (Mark xvi. 9), the holy angels (Matt. xxviii. 6. Luke xxiv. 6), the holy women (Mark xvi. 10, Luke xxiv. 9, 22. John xx. 18), and the Apostles (Luke xxiv. 34), who doubted at first, but were afterwards convinced of the fact and preached their testimony of the Resurrection throughout the world. Indeed, the whole system of Christianity bears witness to the Resurrection: its very essence and stability stand and fall with this truth (1 Cor. xv. 14).

And Christ was bound to rise from the dead (Luke xxiv. 46.). This had been prophesied of Him (Ps. xv. 10. Acts ii. 31) and proclaimed in His types, Isaac (Hebr. xi. 19) and especially Jonas. Christ Himself had often and solemnly predicted it to His Apostles (Matt xv. 22; xx. 19. Mark ix. 30; x. 34. Luke xviiii. 33) and even to the Jews; at first mysteriously(John ii. 19 and then quite plainly. He repeatedly refers to the miracle of Jonas as a sign of in confirmation of His mission, His Messianic office, and His Divinity (Matt. xv. 4. Luke xi. 29). So the Jews themselves awaited the third day after His Death in eager suspense (Matt. xxvii. 63). All eyes were directed to this Sepulchre. If He did not rise again, all was over with Him—with His Person, His plans, and His work. This last failure would truly be worse for Him than anything. Thus it behoved Christ to rise from the dead, and He has risen in truth. “Surrexit Dominus vere, alleluia . . . Scimu Christum surrexise a mortuis vere” (Missal). . (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. 519-520.)

To deny the actual fact of Our Lord’s Bodily Resurrection is to make Him, the God-Man, into a liar, a blasphemy that matters not to those who believe themselves to have a “mission” to “correct” all that has been taught by the Catholic Church under the infallible guidance of God the Holy Ghost from time immemorial.

Father Meschler then described the aspects and circumstances of Our Lord’s Resurrection.

2. Nature and Attendant Circumstances of the Resurrection

The essence of the resurrection consists in the reunion of the body and the soul to a glorified life. The transfigured soul reanimates the body; but the result of this reanimation is no longer an earthly life, but an entirely new and marvelous one. The body is now not merely a perfectly pliable instrument, which opposes no further resistance and obstruction to the action of the soul; it is also a glorious instrument on a par with the soul which it supports and to which it offers undreamed-of sources  of knowledge, joy, and power. For without ceasing to be a body it assumes spiritual qualities, the attributes of glorified bodies. They are these: First, immortality, which is completely impassability and a complete independence with regard to life, youth, and strength of exterior conditions and influences, such as food and sleep; secondly, clarity, which consists in radiant beauty and glory; thirdly, freedom, which excludes and overcomes everything difficult or base; lastly, agility, subtlety, and fullness of power, which knows no restrictions of matter, time, or distance. In consequence of these attributes a glorified body is a most wonderful thing, a masterpiece of God’s wisdom and power (1. Cor. xv. 26, 38 seq.).

So Christ rise again. After He had laid aside all the consequences of this early life, which is burdened with the curse of sin (Rom. vi. 10). He walked in this newness of life (Rom. vi. 4), as a Body of glory (Phil. iii. 21) which displayed the whole plenitude and magnificence of this glorious life. For He is the “first fruit” (1 Cor. xv. 20), the “first-born from the dead,” the Author and Model of all the glorified (Col. i. 18), and the true Son of God, Who merited for Himself the crown of glory and honour by His suffering and Death (Hebr. ii. 9). The servile form has disappeared, and the Divinity now shines forth through the glorified Body, so that the Father can say as at the eternal generation: “Thou art My Son this day have I begotten Thee. As of Me, and I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thy inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for Thy possession” (Ps. ii. 7 seq.). Who can comprehend the floods of joy and rapture that now pour into the Soul of the God-Man through the transfigured senses of this glorious Body, and flow together into His Sacred Heart? His glorified Humanity receives a vast kingdom of honour, power, and joy, diffuses it again on all sides in streams of light, beatitude and strength. He now reigns in truth. In the agility, power, and freedom of His glorified existence no point of His kingdom I remote from Him, and His screptre reaches to the utmost boundaries of His vast dominion. The holy women who come to Him are the harbingers of millions of adorers; for in place of one nation which has rejected Him all the nations of the earth will be His portion. From His grave the angels proclaim His Resurrection and send the soldiers as heralds of it into the city, which, in the midst of her victory, trembles before the Risen Lord. And what sets the seal of perfection upon all His happiness and glory is its immutability, permanence, and eternity. “Christ rising again form the dead dieth now no more, death shall no more have dominion over Him” (Rom. vi. 9). The bright and beautiful day of a blissful eternity has risen for the God-Man, and it will never wane nor set.

Such is the essence of the Resurrection. Its attendant circumstances were as follows: Fist, it took places three days after Christ’s Death. Three days sufficed for a valid proof of His real Death; there was no reason for a longer period.

Secondly, the Resurrection took place unseen. No mortal eye looked on; it was beheld with exultant joy only by eternity and the choirs of angels and patriarchs. Of the latter some shared in this glorious Resurrection, either temporarily or permanently. As the God-Man had once gone forth at midnight from the virginal womb of His Mother without violating its integrity, so His glorious Humanity now made its exist from the shade of the Sepulchre without breaking its seals, and unnoticed by men. The result of the Resurrection was a life that no longer belonged to this world.

Thirdly, the Resurrection was accomplished by Christ’s own divine power. The raising of the dead is exclusively the work of divine omnipotence. This omnipotence originates in the Father, and therefore we are told that the Father raised up Jesus from the dead (Rom. viii. 11), and that He lives by the power and the glory of the Father (1. Cor. vi. 14. Rom. vi. 4 But in virtue of the eternal generation the Son likewise possesses this omnipotence, and so the Resurrection is also the work of His own divine power. And since the latter operates independently of time and means, it (the Resurrection) was accomplished in a moment, as will be the case with us also (1 Cor. xv. 52). This self-resuscitation is a peculiar glory of the Resurrection of Christ. The God-Man resumes His life, as He had laid it down, of His own free volition (John ii. 19; x. 18).  (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. 520-523.)

I don’t know about you out there in cyberspace. Father Maurice Meschler described the nature and the circumstances of Our Lord’s Resurrection with Catholic truth, not with the obfuscation and double-talk of the Modernists condemned by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907, which has been employed as the basis of Scriptural exegesis, catechesis, and homiletics for over a half century now.

Indeed, quite similar to the fairy tale told by Gerhard Ludwig Muller, who is the official archivist of the heretical works of “Pope Benedict XVI” and who was the prefect of the misnamed Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith since July 1, 2012, a presbyter in the conciliar structures told the story during a weekday staging of the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service of how one of his seminary professors said that a video camera would have filmed nothing on Easter Sunday. Similarly, a notorious heretic, a true priest, in the same diocese adamantly claimed to a Catholic woman after she had questioned him about Our Lord’s Resurrection as he was packing up his briefcase following a heretical reflection, “He did not rise! He did not rise!”

Our Lord did rise from the dead, and those in the conciliar structures who deceive the Catholic faithful on this point are headed for eternal perdition if they do not repent of their errors and abjure them publicly before they die.

Modernists must always make “foggy” and “complex” what is clear and simple, something that eats away at their pride and their alleged “scholarship,” which is nothing other than sophism.

The world as we know it is founded on a web of lies, the chief of which being that it that the Incarnation, Nativity, Hidden Years, Public Life and Ministry, and Passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Our Lord Jesus Christ are matters of complete indifference having no bearing on either personal or social order.

Father Meschler’s description of the significance of Our Lord’s Resurrection is thus an important antidote to the web of lies that the Modernists and  naturalist pals, whether of the false opposites of the “left” or of the “right,” keep telling to themselves and the general public:

3. Significance of the Resurrection

The great significance of the Resurrection consists in its being the crown of the life and work of Christ and the completion of the Redemption, and this in three respects.

The first aim of Christ’s ministry was to prove His true Divinity, in order that we might be justified by faith. His teaching and miracles had this for their immediate object. But there was still a link wanting in the chain of this great proof—the most important link of all, viz. His Resurrection. Our Saviour Himself had held out the prospect of it to the Jews as His principal miracle and the most irrefutable proof of His Divinity. Now He works this miracle, and it is in very deed far greater than any other that His foes could have demanded of heaven (Mark viii. 11), because it is wrought upon His own Body and life. So the Resurrection is the last and supreme proof of His Divinity. All other miracles rest upon this and receive from it their confirmation. Thus the glory of the Resurrection is reflected back upon the whole life and work of Jesus, surrounding it with a halo of radiant brightness.

The second object of Christ’s ministry was our deliverance from the tyranny of Satan. With three mighty forces—the power of the passions, sin, and death—the prince of darkness had subjugated the human race to his sway, and robbed men of all God’s gifts—peace, grace, and the immortality of the body. Our Saviour had already overcome the two first of these, the power of the passions and sin, by the example of virtue He set us throughout His life, by His Passion and Death, and by the grace that He thereby merited for us. It only remained for Him to vanquish the last enemy, Death. This He does now by His Resurrection, conquering this foe in his own securest stronghold, the grave (1 Cr. Xv. 26 55 seq.). As Samson lifted and carried away the gates of the city where he was imprisoned, so our Lord unhinged the terrible bolts and gates of death and bore them off in a triumph, thus opening the prison of eternal death, that we might all escape (Judg. xvi. 3). By His Resurrection He has vanquished death for us, and our resurrection is now as certain as His (1 Cor.  xv.). The fearsome grave, the death of all earthly hope, has become the place of life, and the garden around it is the new Paradise in which the Risen Saviour offers to mankind the gift of immortality. Thus the Resurrection is a new victory of the Redemption, a great and glorious victory, complete and universal, because it has been won for us all.

Thirdy, the Resurrection is the crown and perfection of the life and work of the God-Man, because it is His essential glorification, the entrance into His kingdom and the beginning of the glorious life that was due to Him from the first as the Son of God, and which was also the prize and reward of His suffering life. This divine life was in reality the destined end of the God-Man; the Passion was only a transition period and a preparation for the life of glory. And now He has entered upon this glory; for in His Resurrection He did not return to His former passible life, but began a new and most glorious one, truly immortal and divine. This glorious life is the type, pledge, and cause of the glorious life that is in store for us. With it the Redemption is consummated. Thus the Resurrection of Christ is the completion of the Redemption and of His entire work as God-Man. Everything is now accomplished. All foes are defeated, all possessions and blessings are recovered; all God’s plans for the human race are re-established—nay, infinitely furthered. Now all is peace—a blessed and eternal peace! Now there is nothing to be done but to enjoy and use what He has won. . (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. 523-525.)

We are not to fear anything that the combined forces of Modernity in the world and Modernism in the counterfeit church of concilairism propose to do to us. This is the time of chastisement. Those who profess the true Catholic Faith, those who call sin by its proper name, those who seek to do penance for their sins—and, yes, even those who even make the Sign of the Cross in public will be charged with “hate crimes” before too very long. It is only a matter of time, and the “laboratories” of various state governments in the United States of America are already making sure that there will be no dissent from the public celebration of sin and error as such dissent is “hateful” and “bigoted,” before this persecution receives the full and open sanction of the Supreme Court of the United States of America and possibly of Congress itself.

In the midst of these terrible times, though, we must proclaim our joy in the knowledge of the actual fact of Our Lord’s Resurrection from the dead on Easter Sunday, a joy that no petty potentate of the “left” or of the “right” can take away from us even if we are imprisoned, beaten, tortured, water-boarded, and executed. If God be with us, Who can be against us? We cannot live in fear. We must manifest our confidence in the truths of the Holy Faith.

Father Meschler made this clear in his section on the conclusion to be drawn from the mystery of the Resurrection:

4. Conclusion to be Drawn From the Mystery of the Resurrection

The first fruit of the mystery is joy. Alleluia is the watchword, the cry of supreme and everlasting peace (Tob. xii. 22. Apoc. xix 1). All rejoice; Heaven rejoices; the angels appear clad in the white garments of joy, and bid men rejoice; our Saviour, the Apostles and the whole Church rejoice. “In resurrectione tua, Christe, coeli et terra laetentur!” (Roman Breviary.) And who would not rejoice, both for our Saviour’s sake and our own? Let us rejoice, then, and congratulate Him with all our hearts on His day of triumph. How well has He earned it! The ear that saw such evil days; the ear that heard so much contradiction and mockery, and so many blasphemies; the heart that broke with fear, grief, and the terrible anguish of death—how different everything has become! “Ru Rex gloriae, Christe, tu Patris sempiternus es Filius” (Te Deum). “Jesu dulcis memoria.”) Let us unite ourselves in spirit with all the thanksgivings, praises, and expressions of joy of heaven and earth; for this is truly “the day which the Lord hath made. Let us be glad and rejoice therein.” (Ps. cxvii. 24).

The second lesson of this mystery is love for our Divine Saviour. Every reason urges it. In the first place, we see here how great a Master we have in Him, glorious, immortal, powerful, and gracious beyond all measure. It is this very mystery which shows us what a sacrifice He made for us in renouncing His glory for so long. Moreover His glory is our glory, His Resurrection our resurrection. He cannot forget us; He obtains everything for us, and shares everything with us.

The third lesson is hope, courage, and confidence! What have we to fear, now that we no longer need to fear death? “Surrexit Christus, spes mea!” (Missal.) “I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that believeth in Me . . . shall not die for ever (John xi. 26). Christ is immortal; everything about Him and everything that is united to Him is immortal—His doctrine, His Church, His elect and their thoughts, words, sufferings, and death. We Christians cannot be conquered by death. The Holy Sepulchre is the proof of it. Where is the stone? Where are the guards, the seals? Where is death? Let those who do not believe in Christ fear and despair! We hope and exult! “Thanks be to God, who hath given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. xv. 57). How sorely to be pitied are His enemies and adversaries! Let us pray for them, that they too may become participators in His joy and peace. “Tu nobis, victor Rex, miserere, Amen.” (Missal. Alleluia! Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem.”—Love, joy, and courage—these are set before us to-day with the “newness of life” to which Christ’s Resurrection calls us (Rom. vi. 4).

For reading and meditation: “Victimae Paschali” (Missal); “Te Deum;” Ps. ii. cxvii. cxxxviii. . (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. 525-526.)

Yes, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s doctrine is immortal. It is not subject to reinvention by Modernists or to the same sort of outright denial exhibited by the Jews during Our Lord’s life here on earth and in the immediate aftermath of His Resurrection. Our joy, our hope, and our confidence in Our Lord’s Easter victory over the power of sin and eternal death must be absolutely unflagging without, of course, presuming that we are saved. We have confidence without presumption. We are Catholics, which means that the fear of the forces of this world can have no part in our interior lives. We need to fear only displeasing God by means of Mortal Sin and of dying in its unholy persistence.

Father Meschler explained how the Jews, whose Talmudic descendants today continue to spread the lies that they paid the Roman soldiers who guarded Our Lord’s tomb to tell, knew that Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ had risen from the dead but remained obstinate in their refusal to yield unto Him. They paid the price for this obstinacy with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. by the Romans and their dispersal to the far quarters of the earth:

The Glorious Life from the Resurrection to the Ascension. Aim and Signification of this Life.

The object of this intermediate sojourn on earth was two-fold. First, the revelation of this truth and nature of the Resurrection; to prove that our Saviour was truly risen, and to a glorious life. And in all likelihood He also intended to show us what awaits our body after this life—Secondly, the completion of the organization of the Church, in which many very important points were still wanting. All our Saviour’s appearances after His resurrection are made in pursuit after His Resurrection are made in pursuit of these end; sometimes of the former sometimes of the latter, sometimes of both together.

The necessity of this revelation of the Resurrection lies in the extraordinary importance of this fact for the life-work of Jesus, for whole Church, and indeed for the whole world. It is the foundation of all religion. That is why it is written that Christ “was delivered up for our sins rose again for our justification: (Rom. iv. 25), i.e. for the confirmation of the faith, hope, and charity by which we are justified. So the Resurrection must of necessity in some way be proclaimed and made manifest.

As for the manner of this proclamation, it was not to take place through Christ Himself, by His rising again in presence of all the people. The life of Resurrection is quite a new and extraordinary life, and does belong to this world, but to the kingdom of glory. It was therefore advisable that the revelation should be made by means of intermediary agents and in ways appointed by God alone.

And by whom, then, was it made. First by angels, who are always the connecting links between this world and the world beyond, and whom God employs to reveal His eternal decrees, as was the case with the mystery of the Incarnation at the Annunciation and Nativity of Christ. This service by angels also gave proof of Christ’s supremacy and power. Probably the Saints whose bodies were now resuscitated and also appeared to many people in the city, were also charged to make known the fact of His Resurrection (Matt. xvii 52 53).

And to whom was the revelation made? Not to all the people, but to the “witnesses preordained by God” (Acts x. 41; xiii. 30 seq. 1. Cor. xv. 5), the Apostles. After His Resurrection, Christ no longer held personal intercourse with the people. They are now referred to the Apostles. It is better so for their faith and for their submission to the Church in its established form. The Revelation of the Resurrection to Christ’s Enemies

1. Why Christ Reveals His Resurrection to His Enemies

Christ reveals His Resurrection to His enemies, in the first place that He may be true to His word. He had held out the sure prospect of it to them, as well as to His Apostles, and so they too were to receive certain tidings of it.

Secondly, He did this out of goodness and mercy. The great miracle of the Resurrection was to remove the last pretext for their obdurate unbelief.

Lastly, He did it in pursuit of a plan of His wisdom, according to which the measures they had already taken to frustrate the Resurrection, as well as those they were about to take in order to deprive it of credence, should become the most brilliant testimony in its favour and also bear witness to the holiness of Jesus and their own wickedness.

2. How Christ Reveals His Resurrection to His Enemies

Our Lord first reveals His Resurrection to the soldiers on guard, through an angel, and with every token of terrific power. The angel descends like a flash of lightning, the earth trembles and quakes; he rolls away the stone and seats himself quietly and majestically upon it, in the midst of the soldiers in the antechamber of the Sepulchre, so that they could convince themselves that it was empty, if they liked (Matt. xxviii. 2 3). The angels meet those who oppose violence to Christ with terrific and overwhelming power.

As for His enemies in the city, the chief priests, our Saviour reveals His Resurrection to them through the guards. Half-dead with terror, the soldiers fled. Some of them ran at once into the city and told the chief priests, under whose order Pilate had placed them, what happened (Matt. xxviii. 4 11). These witnesses are quite unimpeachable, partly on account of their calling and office and because they were in no way implicated in the matter, and partly because they must have been more inclined to speak in accordance with Pilate’s and the chief priests’ wishes than otherwise. And nevertheless they acknowledge the true facts of the occurrence. Thus the chief priests receive the official information of the Resurrection against their will, and through the very guards they had posted to prevent any fraud.

3. With What Result Christ Reveals His Resurrection to His Enemies

The chief priests take counsel with the ancients (Matt. xxviii. 12); and their decision is therefore an official one. Instead of yielding, as they had promised to do (Matt. xxvii. 42), or of explaining away the whole occurrence by ascribing it to sorcery, against which even armed force was powerless, they evidently acknowledge it to be a fact; but in order to get out of the dilemma they induce the soldiers to tell a lie, bribe them with a large sum of money (Matt. xxviii. 13 14), and promise to secure them against punishment even from Pilate. They were to say that the disciples had taken away the Body whilst they slept. Under these circumstances Pilate might well feel little indication to make an ado about the matter, in his own interest as well as in that of the soldiers and Jews. He had enough on his conscience. This measure of the chief priests was not simple unbelief, but the basest dishonesty. Every word is a crime and a fatal snare for themselves, as St. Augustine demonstrates (“In Ps. lxiii. Mentita est iniquitas sibi, Ps.xxvi. 12”). By their lies they bring themselves into a dilemma, and win shame and hell as their portion. And yet, although their tissue of lies came to light, the tradition that the disciples took away the Body remained prevalent among the Jews, as St. Matthew tells us (xxiii. 15).—We may here notice in passing the role that money plays in our Saivour’s destiny; it is always that of iniquity and injustice (Luke xvi. 9 11).

With this act of dishonesty, the Great Council disappears from the Gospels. It has throughout perseveringly played the part of the impious State, in league with the temporal power of the day; first, in pursuit of its object, viz. to stand its ground against God and the truth; secondly in the employment of means to this end, viz. bribery, lying, official manipulation of seals, confiscation, and suppression by brute force; and thirdly in the result of all this which is nothing else than defeat and destruction in shame and terror. And this was the actually the fate of the Jewish State for a few years later. “The truth of the Lord remaineth for ever” (Ps. cxvi. 2).

On the other hand, how glorious is our Saviour in His all-merciful goodness! He thinks of His unhappy persecutors, and sends them angels to instruct and embarrassments to warn them. And then in His supremacy and power! H does not show Himself to His foes again, nor ask them to bear witness to His Resurrection. He lives—above them and among them. He shows Himself everywhere, and everywhere witnesses are loudly preaching His Resurrection. What a terrible thought for his foes! Oh that the mighty one of this world might at learn “learn where is wisdom, where is strength, where is understanding,” and “know also where is length of days and life, which is the light of the eyes and peace!” (Bar. iii. 14). Where else than with God? How significant, in light of this mystery, is the Office of Easter-week, in which we find depicted on the one hand the indestructible beauty of the Just One, and on the other the vain and future efforts of His foes, and their miserable defeat and destruction. (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. 526-530.)

Father Meschler described the state of politics in the United States of America, practiced by men and women who make their obeisance to the Talmudic descendants of the chief Jewish priests of Our Lord’s time by pledging their fealty to the government of a murderous, anti-Christian regime, the State of Israel, when speaking before the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee. Indeed, one candidate in 2016, our current and much-besieged president who suffers from many self-inflicted wounds that arise from his ignorance of embracing the cross and of enduring injustice as Our Lord showed us during His Passion and Death, even boasted that his daughter, who practices the diabolical Kabbalism, was about to have a “beautiful Jewish baby” (see  Trump Remarks at AIPAC) while another candidate three years ago, a baptized Catholic whose father turned him in a fire-breathing Baptist apostate, considers support for a state whose creation was opposed by Pope Saint Pius X when he spoke to the founder of international Zionism, Theodore Herzl, on January 25, 1904, the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul the Apostles, as a test of one’s “fidelity” to the interests of the United States of America, which he believes are synonymous with those of Israel, starting off by saying “God bless AIPAC” (see Rafael Edward Cruz Obeisance at AIPAC).

The world is indeed built on a fabric of anti-Incarnational lies, and yet it is that even Catholics believe that God will grant a respite to nations built on those lies, which have mutated to the point of being the means of the self-annihilation of those very nations. I mean, what part of “Without Me you can do nothing” (John 15: 5) is hard to understand or to accept?

In the midst of the lies told by the naturalists of Modernity and the rationalists of Modernism, we must always have recourse to the fairest flower of our race, the Blessed Virgin Mary, to whom Our Lord appeared first (an apparition that was recounted from the New English Edition of The Mystical City of God in ). Father Meschler described the reason why Our Lord appeared to His Most Blessed Mother first and how it affects us today:

3. What Results for Us From Our Saviour’s Appearance to His Mother

In the first place, let us rejoice in Our Lady’s joy and congratulate her with all our hearts; for she has well deserved it is of us.—Secondly, we see how we can too can attain to true Easter joy, viz. by always following our Lord faithfully and generously wherever He goes.—Thirdly, let us learn wherein true Easter joy consists and how we must manifest it. In this Mary is our model. The object of our joy must be our Saviour and spiritual things; the manner of it must be quiet and interior, in prayer and recollection; and lastly it must be noble and unselfish, not excluding others.—All this finds a beautiful expression in the Easter anthem, which we may here briefly consider, in order to recite it well. Regina coeli, laetare, Alleulia! She is now no longer the Mother of Sorrows, but the Queen of heaven, i.e. of honour, power, and joy. To be the Mother of God is now a joy. Quia, quem meruisti portare, Alleluia! Al the joy of the Easter feast is peculiarly her own. She is the Mother of the Risen Saviour. She gave Him birth and bore all His sorrows and sufferings with Him till His Death. Resurrexit sicut dixt, Alleluia! O joy! By His Resurrection thy Son has confirmed everything: His doctrine, His word, and His Divinity. All is gloriously consummated. All is gloriously consummated. Ora pro nobis Deum, Alleulia! Pray for us, as thou then didst for the Apostles and the whole Church. Obtain for Christ’s kingdom by thy glorious intercession an increase of faith, hope, and love, and for the whole world participation in the true Easter joy in Christ, here below and in a blissful eternity. (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, p. 533.)

This is the season of Easter joy, a joy which we must make manifest to the unbelieving world in which we live, a joy that no man can take from us, a joy that transcends the petty men of naturalism and the forgettable revolutionaries of conciliarism who will be but footnotes in the annals of salvation history once the final battle takes place.

It is Easter!

Let us celebrate with true joy as we keep close to Our Lord by meditating upon the Glorious Mysteries of His Most Blessed Mother’s Most Holy Rosary, which is the weapon that we must use to console the good God and to make reparation for our sins and those of the whole world, a world that is in a mess today because it does not now the joy of the Crucified and Resurrected Christ the King nor that of having such a Blessed Mother to help us in our every need, whether spiritual and temporal.

Let must make manifest Easter joy in the midst of an unbelieving world, and we must be ever grateful to Our Lord and His Most Blessed Mother for the imcomparable, unmerited gift of the Catholic Faith, which makes it possible for us to be sharers of an unending Easter Sunday of glory in Paradise.

Alleluia!

Christ is Risen!

Alleulia!

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, Triumph soon!

Our Lady of the the Rosary, pray for us.  

Saint Joseph, 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.

Saints Soter and Caius (whose feasts are impeded this year), pra for us.