Have times changed? Are the enemies of God and His Church showing another face? Is this the fulfilment of the “persecutions of the Church” foretold in the message of Fatima?
“If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you,” Jesus said to His disciples. It is not surprising, then, that anti-Christian hate crimes are on the rise in various parts of the world.
A revolutionary anti-Christian pandemic
In China, the government continues to eliminate the symbols of our religion. In Anhui province alone, over five hundred crosses have been torn from church exteriors in recent months. It is the continuation of an operation that has become more radical since 2018, alleging that the crosses “violate zoning laws.”
In France – the land of “liberty, equality and fraternity” – two hundred and twenty-eight violent anti-Christian acts were perpetrated between January and March 2019, according to data from the Bishops’ Conference.
In April of that year we witnessed with deep sorrow the fire of Notre-Dame Cathedral, as yet unexplained. Fifteen months later, fire destroyed the majestic 5,500-pipe organ of Nantes Cathedral. Two deputies stated in an interview that three incidents against the Church are registered daily. And not only in France. The number of attacks is increasing throughout Europe; in India, there was a 40% increase in the first half of this year.
Another zenith of anti-Christian hatred was reached in the protests staged in countries such as Chile, Mexico and Argentina. Shouting the revolutionary slogan of the Russian anarchist writer Piotr Kropotkin: “the only church that illuminates is the one that burns,” demonstrators smashed crucifixes, decapitated statues of the Virgin Mary, and painted anti-religious graffiti on church buildings.
In the United States, that model of democratic respect, demonstrators vandalized the statue of the founder of St. Gabriel’s Mission in California, the missionary St. Junipero Serra; a Franciscan friar who defended the native Indians. It was he who christened the great cities of the region with the names of Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco. Damage was also done to numerous churches.
More recently, as yet unidentified criminal hands burned a 382-year-old crucifix known as the Blood of Christ in the cathedral of Managua, Nicaragua. According to Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes, it was a “very carefully calculated act” and a “totally reprehensible sacrilege.”
Days prior, in the same country, a chapel was desecrated in the city of Nindirí. The desecrators, exhibiting particularly intense anti-Catholic rage, stole the monstrance and the ciborium of the Blessed Sacrament, scattered the Sacred Hosts on the floor and trampled them underfoot, and then went on to destroy statues, pews and other furnishings.
Is the prophecy of the message of Fatima being fulfilled?
The countries and situations vary in which ideological extremism, anarchist riots, religious fanaticism and every kind of violence have skyrocketed, but with one common characteristic: hatred against the Holy Catholic Church. The intolerance of the “tolerant” has produced a veritable “revolutionary anti-Christian pandemic” of persecution and sacrilege.
One thing is striking: there are not only attacks on mortal beings – the murder of missionaries, especially on the African continent – but also on buildings and images that symbolize heavenly things. These are criminal attacks indirectly aimed at God himself.
Have times changed? Are the enemies of Christ showing another face? Is this the fulfilment of the “persecutions of the Church” foretold in the message of Fatima?
Good is invincible; the Church is immortal
At its very outset, Sacred Scripture describes the fall of our first parents, Adam and Eve, and the promise of the Virgin’s victory, with the words: “I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: She shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel” (Gn 3:15).
The origin of two spiritual lineages is thus announced: the children of light, and the accursed race of those who practise the works of darkness. Only at the end of the world will the conflict between the two cease. However, over the course of history, those of the serpent’s race have alternately shown or hidden their claws, as they deemed appropriate, depending on the circumstances.
Catholic in our days are witnessing sacrilegious events such as these with sadness and bewilderment. In the face of them, they want to remain faithful to Christ, whose seal they bear engraved on their hearts. They seek to act day by day according to the teachings of St. Paul: working out their salvation “with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12), seeking to be “blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation” (Phil 2:15), so as to shine like lights in the world.
The fact is that we live today in a society dominated by darkness; but even with the enormous material means at its disposal to destroy goodness, evil fears the word spoken by the good. They know that the latter are invincible because the Church is immortal.
Therefore, despite the apparent disproportion of strength in face of the domination of evil, we should rejoice. The victory will always be the Blessed Virgin’s, “For with God nothing will be impossible” (Lk 1:37).
“Insult the sun, and it will continue to shine”
The underlying cause of the hatred described here – behind which the devil obviously lurks – is that a reflection of the immaculate purity of the Virgin Mary is in some way seen in her children, faithful Catholics.
She is the Queen who has come, in her various apparitions over the centuries, to prepare humanity for the clash par excellence between these two races: that of the children of light and that of the children of darkness. She does this by increasing the fervour of the good and confounding the wicked.
The matrix and precursor of the great battles to come is the conflict narrated in the book of Revelation: “a great portent appeared in Heaven, a Woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Rv 12:1). Then “behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads” (Rv 12:3).
Then there was a great battle: Michael and his Angels fought against the dragon and his followers and drove them out of Heaven.
I conclude our discussion on this passionate topic by offering, as a retort to blasphemers, this well-known phrase attributed to Edmond Rostand: “Insult the sun, and it will continue to shine.” Though they may shout as frenetically as demons, “The Church is rubbish,” or “God does not exist,” the race of the Virgin will triumph! ◊
