Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Feast of St. Josaphat, Bishop and Martyr


I imagine that it might not be coincidence that my colleague has posted an article out of St. Josaphat's TLM community on the feast day of St. Josaphat according to the 1962 calendar. My wife and I were blessed to hear Mass there regularly before coming here to Austria. As such, I wish a happy patronal feast day to all of our dear friends at St. Josaphat parish in Detroit! We miss you all very much.

St. Josaphat, pray for us! And let us all join our meager prayers to his for the return of the schismatic Greek Churches to the one true Church of Christ founded on St. Peter.

In an almost completely unrelated vein, I stumbled across some words of the Venerable Pope Pius XII (some of which I have read before as I'm sure many of have) that gave me pause. It's not everyday that one encounters such prophetic wisdom.

The words of Pius XII (then Secretary of State of Pius XI) to his friend Jean Guitton as recorded by his biographer Msgr. Roche, Pius XII Devant L’Histoire, pp. 52-53:

Imagine, dear friend, that communism be only the most visible of the means of subversion against the Church and against the tradition of divine revelation, then we will assist at the invasion of all that is spiritual, philosophy, science, law, teaching, the arts, the press, literature, the theatre and religion. I am obsessed by the confidences of the Virgin to the little Lucy of Fatima. This obstinacy of the good Lady in front of the dangers which threaten the Church is a divine warning against the suicide represented by the alteration of the faith in its liturgy, its theology, in its soul. I hear all around me innovators who want to dismantle the Holy Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the Church, throw away her ornaments, give her a remorse of her historical past. Well my dear friend, I have the conviction that the Church of Peter must assume her past or she will dig her own grave. A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt like Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God, that his Son is a mere symbol, a philosophy like many others and in the churches Christians will seek in vain the red light where God waits for them, like Magdalen weeping before the empty tomb, 'Where have they taken Him?'

Pope Pius XII, a few days before he died: The day the Church abandons her universal tongue [Latin] is the day before she returns to the catacombs.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't suppose you're in a certain Lower Austrian diocese?

Anonymous said...

In fact we are in a certain lower Austrian diocese. Why do you ask?