Cross-post from St. Louis Catholic via nonvenipacem.com. I love the sentiment in this post: to keep up the good cheer no matter how bleak things appear to be. Never focus on the negative, turn always your eyes to God. As Saint Paul writes in Philippians 4:4, “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say, rejoice.” He means it. Like really, really rejoice! Do everything for God. Be virtuous, stand for what is right, shine the light, no matter what happens.
Full article below, bold is mine:
This is a hard fight and we had better all die than lose it.
General James Longstreet
Looking at the poor state of affairs on this blog, and wondering why I still have it, it is obvious that the reason I haven’t been posting regularly is that the news is so uniformly bad. Well, that’s not the whole reason– after all, deploring the bad and promoting the good is what a Catholic blog is all about. It is rather that the uniformly bad news is already so depressingly obvious to everyone who would read this blog. In short, if you read this blog you already know how bad it is. So going around and saying things like, “Perverts perversely reading to children perverse things while dressed perversely, while being allowed to by perverted parents and protected by perverted law enforcement and perverted courts is bad!” sort of loses its punch. That is, when you already know this, and you know it will continue, and you know it will be followed by progressively worse things to come.
This is compounded by the fact that I have been writing this thing for 16+ years and I have said pretty much all I have to say that is at all original– however much that may have been. I am not in the flowering phase of my creativity. If I can use a gardening metaphor (my garden being one of the things that brings me joy these days), this blog is like when the green bean bushes are picked over, but then in late summer you still find a few at times. And some days you are pleasantly surprised to still get a meal’s worth out of them.
That’s good enough for me. This is not a post about ending the blog.
I admire those inspirational bloggers still at it in this land of famine, like Ann Barnhardt, Mark Docherty and Frank Walker (I still want Frank to change the title of his Canon 212 Update to “Get off my Catholic lawn!”– with full credit to yours truly– but alas). You don’t think they know things are bad? I mean, really. But there they are, doing it. They are warriors for Christ. There are others, of course, and we all have our zone. I love reading them. I do so every day. When one of my regular reads has a day without a new post, I am disappointed. I can only imagine that my readers have long since stopped the daily refresh. It wasn’t that long ago I would average more than a post a day. But like I said, this is what I’ve got. And so be it.
Back to topic, after that long aside. It must be hard for many of us to keep our good cheer surrounded by such palpable evil. It is understandable, but we have to guard, feed and increase the deep interior joy that is essential for a Catholic. We have been given everything! We have the example of the Divine Person Who is Our Lord to show us that suffering is redemptive. We have an opportunity to share in the sufferings of our Divine Master, and if we play our cards right we are assured thereafter of sharing in His eternal glory.
Today is the Vigil of Saints Peter and Paul. Their example is perfect for our time. The time God chose for us. Let us not ask why we were born in this time, instead of the glorious era of Christendom, for instance. God’s plan is perfect. Who knows, this time may have been the only time when I, or you perhaps, had the right conditions for our salvation.
I don’t remember the apparition off of the top of my head, but I seem to recall an observation made in one of them that in the latter days Catholics would be so weak and so relatively pitiful to the great Saints of the past, but that in their weakness they would give the most powerful witness for Christ. If I mistake the source the point still seems good to me. Our Lord Himself told St. Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” And we must answer as St. Paul did: “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”
Doesn’t it seem that to be even a mediocre Catholic these days takes heroic effort? We must not be mediocre, we are called to perfection. But I speak of the vibe, you dig?
What lies ahead? I think we know, at least for many. Consider the words of the Risen Christ to St. Peter: “Amen, amen I say to thee, when thou wast younger, thou didst gird thyself, and didst walk where thou wouldst. But when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and lead thee whither thou wouldst not. And this he said, signifying by what death he should glorify God. And when he had said this, he saith to him: Follow me.”
OK then. Will do. And remember, we’re in this together.
So let us fight on, cheerfully and manfully, this rearguard action of standing for our beleaguered Church and what remains of Christian civilization.