Editor’s Note: Catholic Family News is pleased to publish the following meditation in preparation for Easter written by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò at CFN’s request. In this new text, His Excellency reflects on the past year of COVID-related “measures” and related “globalist ideology”, poignantly observing:
“If this pseudo-pandemic is a scourge, it is not difficult to understand what the sins are for which Heaven is punishing us: crimes, abortions, murders, homicides, divorces, violence, perversions, vices, thefts, deceptions, betrayals, lies, profanations, and cruelty. Both public sins as well as the sins of individuals. The sins of God’s enemies as well as the sins of His friends. The sins of lay people and the sins of clergy, of the lowly as well as the leaders, of the governed as well as those who govern, of the young as well as the old, of men as well as women.”
“Without repenting of our sins, without the intention of amending our life and conforming it to the will of God,” he further emphasizes, “we cannot hope that the consequences of our sins, which offend the Divine Majesty and can be appeased only by penance, will disappear.”
He thus encourages all the faithful to “prepare for Confession and Easter Communion” with a “spirit of reparation and expiation for our own sins as well as for those of our brothers, of the men of the Church, and of those who govern us,” knowing that “the true Great Reset” has already taken place “on Calvary”.
We are also excited to announce the release of A Voice in the Wilderness (Angelico Press, 2021), a collection of Archbishop Viganò’s major writings (Aug. 2018—Jan. 2021) edited and introduced by CFN’s own Brian McCall.
SI INIQUITATES OBSERVAVERIS, DOMINE:
DOMINE, QUIS SUSTINEBIT?
Ps 129:3
Mors et vita duello
conflixere mirando.
Last year, with a
decision as incomprehensible as it was wretched, for the first time in the
Christian era, the Catholic hierarchy placed limitations on the celebration of
Easter, following the mainstream narration of the pandemic. Many of the
faithful, constrained by measures of confinement that
were as demonstrably useless as they were counter-productive, were able to
unite themselves spiritually to the Holy Sacrifice, assisting at the liturgical
functions via computer. One year later, nothing has changed with respect to
then, and we hear it repeated once again that we ought to prepare ourselves for
a further lockdown in order to allow the population to be subjected to an
experimental genetic serum, imposed by the pharmaceutical lobby despite their
not knowing what long-term side effects there may be. In many nations they are
beginning to ban their use, due to the suspicious deaths that are following
inoculation; and yet, despite the pounding campaign of media terrorism, basic treatments
show themselves to be effective and capable of drastically reducing the number
of hospitalizations and, consequently, also the number of deaths.
As Catholics, we are
called to understand the scope of how much, for more than a year, all of
humanity has been forced to undergo in the name of an emergency that – according
to the official data in hand – has caused a number of deaths that is no
different from that of preceding years. We are called to understand, even
before believing: because if the Lord has endowed us with an intelligence, He
has done so in order for us to use it to recognize and judge the reality which
surrounds us. In the act of Faith, the baptized person does not renounce his
own rationality in an acritical fideism, but rather accepts what the Lord
reveals to him, bowing before the authority of God, Who does not deceive us and
Who is the Truth itself.
Our capacity to intus
legere events preserves us, in the light of Grace, from going down the path
of that sort of reckless irrationality which vice-versa
those display who up until yesterday were celebrating science as the necessary
antidote to “religious superstition,” and who today celebrate the self-styled
“experts” as new priests of the pandemic, denying the most elementary
principles of modern medicine. And if for the Christian a true plague is a
salutary call to conversion and penance for the faults of individuals and of
nations, for the initiates of the health religion a treatable flu syndrome is
said to be the cry of Mother Earth violated by humanity – a step-mother Nature,
to which many turn with the words of Leopardi: Why do you not later return
that which you promised then? Do you deceive your children so much? We
realize that the tribal cruelty, the primitive force like a planetary virus
which would like to exterminate us, does not reside in Nature, of which the
Creator is the admirable architect, but rather in an elite that is subservient
to globalist ideology, which on the one hand wants to impose the tyranny of the
New World Order, and on the other, in order to maintain power, generously
rewards those who put themselves at its service. The rebels, those who resist,
are conversely annihilated in their possessions, deprived of freedom, forced to
undergo unreliable testings and ineffective vaccines in the name of a superior
good which they must accept without any possibility of dissent or criticism.
A few days ago, a
woman, believing that she would appear endowed with common sense, said that it
is necessary to submit to the use of the mask and social distancing not only
because of their effectiveness, but also to support our political leaders, in hope
of a relaxation of the measures adopted so far: “If we put on the mask and
get vaccinated, maybe they will stop it and let us live again,” she
commented. In response to this observation, an elderly man responded that a
Jewish person in Germany in the 1930s might have thought that wearing the Star
of David sewn on his jacket would somehow satisfy Hitler’s delusions, avoiding
far worse violations and saving himself from deportation. Faced with this calm
objection, the woman who was speaking with him was shaken, understanding the
disturbing similarity between the Nazi dictatorship and the pandemic madness of
our own time; between the way in which tyranny could be imposed on millions of
citizens by leveraging their fear, then as now. The citizens of Germany allowed
themselves to be persuaded to obey, to not react against the violation of the
rights of the German citizens whose only crime was that they were Jews, and
themselves became informants about the “criminals” to the civil authority. And
I ask myself: what difference is there between the denunciation of a neighbor
who is hiding a Jewish family and the zealous reporting of those who have
friends over to their house in violation of an unconstitutional provision that
limits the freedom of citizens? In both instances, are the denouncers not
respecting the law and observing the norms, while these same norms violate the
rights of a part of the population that has been criminalized, yesterday on a
racial basis and today on a health basis? Have we learned nothing from the
horrors of the past?
The voice of the Church
calls upon the Divine Majesty to remove “flagella tuae
iracundiae, quae pro peccatis nostris meremur [the scourge of Your
wrath, which we merit for our sins].” These scourges have been manifested in
the course of History by wars, plagues, and famines; today they are manifested
by the tyranny of globalism, capable of creating more victims than a world war
and destroying national economies more than any earthquake could. We must
understand that if the Lord should allow the creators of the Covid emergency to
succeed, it will certainly be for our greater good. Because today the little
that remains in our society that is still inspired by Christian civilization,
and which up until yesterday we considered normal and taken for granted, is now
forbidden: exercising our fundamental freedoms, going to church to pray, going
out with our friends, having dinner with our loved ones, being able to open a
shop or a restaurant and earn our living honestly, going to school or taking a
trip.
If this pseudo-pandemic
is a scourge, it is not difficult to understand what the sins are for which
Heaven is punishing us: crimes, abortions, murders, homicides, divorces,
violence, perversions, vices, thefts, deceptions, betrayals, lies,
profanations, and cruelty. Both public sins as well as the sins of individuals.
The sins of God’s enemies as well as the sins of His friends. The sins of lay
people and the sins of clergy, of the lowly as well as the leaders, of the
governed as well as those who govern, of the young as well as the old, of men
as well as women.
They are mistaken who
believe that the violation of our natural rights that we are undergoing has no
supernatural significance, and that our share of responsibility in making
ourselves complicit in what is happening is irrelevant. Jesus Christ is the
Lord of History, and whoever would like to banish the Prince of Peace from the
world that He created and redeemed with His Most Precious Blood does not want
to accept the inexorable defeat of Satan, the eternal loser. And so, in a
delirium that has all the features of hybris, his servants are moving as
if the victory of evil was now certain, while in reality it is necessarily
ephemeral and momentary. The nemesis that is being prepared for them
will remind us of the people of Israel after the crossing of the Red Sea, and
that Pharaoh could not have done anything if it were not permitted by God.
Christian Easter, the
true Passover of which the Old Testament Passover was only a figure, is
accomplished on Golgotha, on the blessed wood of the Cross. Jesus Christ is the
perfect Altar, Priest, and Victim of that Sacrifice. The Agnus Dei,
pointed out by the Forerunner on the banks of the Jordan, took upon Himself the
sins of the world in order to offer Himself as a human and divine victim to the
Father, restoring in His Blood the order violated by our first Parent. It is
there, on Calvary, that the true Great Reset took place, thanks to which the
inextinguishable debt of the children of Adam was cancelled by the infinite
merits of the Passion of the Redeemer, ransoming us from the slavery of sin and
death.
Without repenting of our
sins, without the intention of amending our life and conforming it to the will
of God, we cannot hope that the consequences of our sins, which offend the
Divine Majesty and can be appeased only by penance, will disappear. Our Lord
has shown us the royal way of the Cross: “Christ suffered for you, leaving
you an example, so you may follow in His footsteps” (1 Pt 2:21). Let us each
take up our cross, denying ourselves and following the Divine Master. Let us
draw near to Holy Easter with the knowledge that we are always beneath the gaze
of the Lord: “You had gone astray like sheep, but now you have returned to
the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls” (1 Pt 2:25). And let us remember
that on the dies irae we will all certainly have Him as our Judge, but
thanks to Baptism we have merited the right to recognize Him as Brother and
Friend.
We ask the Supreme Judge,
using the words of Sacred Scripture: “Discerne
causam meam de gente non sancta, ab homine iniquo et doloso erue me [Distinguish my cause from the nation that is not holy, deliver me from the
unjust and deceitful man].” To the Merciful Father Who in His Divine Son has
made us heirs of eternal glory, we address with humility the words of David: “Amplius lava me ab iniquitate mea, et a peccato meo munda me [Wash me more and more from my iniquity, and cleanse me of my sin].” We ask the
Consoler Spirit: “Da virtutis meritum, da salutis
exitum, da perenne gaudium [Grant the reward of virtue, grant the
deliverance of salvation, grant eternal joy].”
If we really want this
so-called pandemic to collapse like a house of cards – as has always happened
for far worse scourges, when the Lord decreed their end – let us remember to
acknowledge to Him, and Him alone, that universal Lordship which we usurp each
time we sin, refusing to obey His holy Law and thus making ourselves slaves of
Satan. If we desire the peace of Christ, it is Christ Who must reign, and it is
His Kingdom we must desire, beginning with ourselves, our family, our circle of
friends and acquaintances, our religious community. Adveniat
regnum tuum. If instead we allow the hateful tyranny of sin and
rebellion against Christ to be established, the folly of Covid will be only the
beginning of hell on earth.
Let us therefore
prepare for Confession and Easter Communion with this spirit of reparation and
expiation for our own sins as well as for those of our brothers, of the men of
the Church, and of those who govern us. The true and holy “new Renaissance” to
which we ought to aspire should be the life of Grace, friendship with God, and constancy
with His Most Holy Mother and the Saints. The true “nothing will be as it
was before” must be the one we say when we rise from the confessional with
the resolve to sin no more, offering our heart to the Eucharistic King as a
throne where He delights to dwell, consecrating our every action, thought, and
breath to Him.
May these be our wishes
for the coming Easter of the Resurrection, beneath the kindly gaze of Our Queen
and Lady, Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix of all Graces.
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
9 March 2021
The post Abp. Viganò: Meditation in Preparation for Easter appeared first on Catholic Family News.
