Historia Magistra Vitae III
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
What is it that hath been? The same thing that shall be. What is it that hath been done? The same that shall be done. Nothing under the sun is new, neither is any man able to say: Behold this is new: for it hath already gone before in the ages that were before us.” (Eccl. 1:9-10)
The acceleration of the mystery of iniquity in the last few years under our own eyes obliges us to take the very foundations of our faith more seriously than ever. Divine Providence seems to allow evil to take such proportions as to awaken the last good souls that have not yet found the strength to react in front of the flood of iniquity surrounding us.
How many good souls unhappily closed their eyes when they saw the altars turned around and mass said facing the people? How many forced themselves to get used to the replacing of Latin as the official language of the sacred Roman liturgy by the vernacular. Then, they had to accept, in the name of obedience, the disrespectful practice of Communion in the hand that has led and continues to lead to many sacrileges and to a loss of faith in the real presence.
Some rare souls received the grace to understand the strategy of the enemy from the very start of the liturgical revolution, back in the mid-1960s. Some are just reacting now, in 2015, like this man who wrote to me a few weeks ago describing how, in a church in Quebec, Holy Communion had been distributed under both species. Every communicant had been given a little plastic cup with the ‘Precious Blood’ to be taken back to his place. But what to do then with the drops remaining at the bottom of the cup after drinking it? For this good soul, that was the moment of grace, it was literally ‘the last drop’ shaking him out of his numbness, and he finally wrote to us for help. The subsequent reading of the “Open Letter to Confused Catholics” was the eye-opener for him. “What Archbishop Lefebvre wrote in 1984 is more actual than ever” he wrote back after studying attentively the whole book.
And now this ‘Synod on the Family’ – in fact it is not really a synod on the family, a synod that would be encouraging large families and conjugal fidelity – it is rather about officially allowing Holy Communion to be given to unworthy recipients. As an immediate consequence, it will be the attempt to officially approve certain sins against the Sixth and the Ninth Commandments. One could add: this will also be against the Fourth and Fifth Commandments. And by the same token, against the First and Third Commandments as well, since to approve Communion to divorcees remarried and to homosexuals, will go directly against the proper worship due to God.
There is nothing new under the sun: “Woe to you that call evil good, and good evil: that put darkness for light, and light for darkness: that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter. They have cast away the law of the Lord of hosts, and have blasphemed the word of the Holy One of Israel.” (Isaiah 5: 20, 24)
These are signs of the very last battles of the devil and his allies, as we read at the end of the Apocalypse. These demons will be “numerous as the sand of the sea” and “will encompass the camp of the saints, and the beloved city.” (Apoc. 20: 7, 8)
The loss of the sense of sin goes hand in hand with the loss of faith, as morality always follows doctrine. A consequence of this principle is that whatever helps us to remain faithful to the Commandments of God, will also help us to keep the faith.
An old Jesuit illustrated this to two SSPX priests a few years ago when they were praying at the shrine of the Twenty-Six Martyrs of Nagasaki, Japan, on the hill of Nishizaka, a few hundred meters away from Nagasaki main train station. While he was giving them a guided tour of the museum of the martyrs, which contains relics, artefacts, paintings, manuscripts, and “wanted”-panels, he disclosed to them a powerful mystery that was not on display, nor written in the books of history. He explained to them that the Hidden Christians who had kept the faith in the absence of any priests for a period of about 220 years (1640-1860) were those who kept the practice of the act of contrition in their family. The last missionaries to be martyred in the 1630s-1640s had urged them to keep this practice as part of their daily prayers. They had composed for this a little leaflet containing a short examination of conscience and the act of contrition. The families that kept this practice kept the faith, and those who neglected this practice eventually compromised their faith, gradually lost it, and refused to accept the priests who came back in the 1860s.
As we see the iniquity abounding all around us, let us, in the spirit of the ‘agere contra’ of the Saints, fight back by working seriously on keeping our souls free from sin, by frequenting even more often the great sacrament of penance, and remaining faithful to the practice of the act of contrition. Let us even strive for perfection in the practice of virtue according to our state of life. This will be the most efficacious way to make reparation for all these sins and abominations, and thus console the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
Yours truly in their service,
Fr. Daniel Couture
District Superior
