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CATHOLIC SURVIVAL PLAN
In 1801, during the spiritual chaos following the French Revolution,
many Catholics refused to avail themselves of the ministry of apostate
priests who had taken the oath to the revolutionary regime. Finding
themselves bereft of Mass and the Sacraments, a group of them wrote
for spiritual direction to a Father Demaris, a Missionary of St. Joseph
and a professor of theology in Lyon who had remained faithful to his
Ordination. His reply has come down to us and is even more pertinent
today than when it was first written. He tells his correspondents: "The
Holy Eucharist had for you many joys and advantages when you were
able to participate in this Sacrament of love, but now you are deprived of
it for being defenders of truth and justice." He says they must not
despair however, because, "We are obedient in going to Communion,
but in holding ourselves from the Sacrifice we are immolating
ourselves... We sacrifice our own life as much as it is in us to do" and
the sacrifice is continuous, "renewing itself every day, every time that we
adore with submission the hand of God that drives us away from His
altars... It is to be advantageously deprived of the Eucharist, to raise the
standard of the Cross for the cause of Christ and the glory of the
Church... Yes, I have no fear in saying it. When the storm of the malice
of men roars against truth and justice, it is more advantageous to the
faithful to suffer for Christ than to participate in His Body by Communion.
I seem to hear the Savior saying to us, 'Repair by this humiliating
deprivation that glorifies Me, all the Communions which dishonor Me. ' "
Regarding the loss of sacramental Confession Fr. Demaris wrote,
"Removed from the resources of the sanctuary and deprived of all
exercise of the Priesthood, there remains no mediator for us save Jesus
Christ. It is to Him we must go for our needs. Before His supreme
Majesty we must bluntly tear the veil off our consciences and in search
of the good and bad we have done, thank Him for His graces, confess
our sins and ask pardon and to show us the direction of His Holy Will,
having in our hearts the sincere desire to confess to His minister
whenever we are able to do so. There, my children, is what I call
confessing to God! In such a confession well made, God himself will
absolve us.... Anything which attaches to God is holy. When we suffer
for the truth, our sufferings are those of Jesus Christ, who honors us
then with a special character of resemblance to Him with His Cross. This
grace is the greatest happiness that could possibly happen to a mortal
in this life.
"It is thus in all painful situations that deprive us of the Sacraments.
The carrying of the Cross like a Christian is the source of the remission
of our sins, just as it was for the sins of the whole human race when it
was once carried by Jesus Christ.... What the world does to drive us
away from God only brings us closer... We are able now to repair those
faults which came from too great a trust in absolution and not examining
one's weaknesses thoroughly enough. Obliged to wail now before God,
the faithful soul considers all its deformities... Let this confession to God
be for you a short daily practice, but fervent... The first fruit that you will
draw from it apart from the remission of your sins, will be to learn to
know yourself and to know God, and the second will be to be ever ready
to present yourself to a priest if you are able, enriched in character by
the mercy of the Lord. "
As for being deprived of the Last Sacraments at the moment of death,
Fr. Demaris wrote, "Console yourselves, my children, in the trust you
have in God. This tender Father will pour on you His graces, His
blessings and His mercies in these awful moments that you fear, in more
abundance than if you were being assisted by His ministers, of whom
you have been deprived only because you wouldn't abandon Him. The
abandonment and forsakenness that we fear for ourselves resembles
that of the Savior on the Cross when He said to His Father, 'My God, my
God, why hast thou forsaken me?' ... Your pains and abandonment
lead you to your glorious destiny in ending your life like Jesus ended
His!"
Bearing all this in mind, there are many Catholic practices left to the laity
which cannot be taken away from us:
+ First and foremost there is the daily recitation of the Rosary, the
"layman's breviary," which is essentially a compendium of the Divine
Office, the official prayer of the Church and on which, together with the
Angelus we can structure our day.
+ We can pray the Chaplet of Mercy as a means of keeping us in
union with the eternal Mass in heaven where the Son constantly offers
Himself to the Father in the Blessed Trinity for our salvation. We can
always make spiritual Communions.
+ There is an abundance of sacramentals to be used with faith.
Beginning with the Scapular of Mt. Carmel, the holy habit by which the
fervent Catholic is universally identified, there are the Miraculous Medal
and the Saint Benedict Medal, besides many other scapulars and
medals, not to mention relics of the saints.
+ Besides the Bible, in which for centuries God was pre-incarnate and
in which He still resides in His Word, there are countless good Catholic
books and lives of the saints. Collect them, read them, study them, lend
them to others!
+ And let's not forget the dogged, daily practice of virtue, forgiving all
offenses real or imagined, trying always to overcome evil with good,
loving our enemies and doing good to those who hate us. There are the
corporal and spiritual works of mercy to be performed, especially
counseling the doubtful and teaching the ignorant of all ages in these
dark days, helping one another both materially and spiritually, "teaching
and admonishing one another" as St. Paul advised the early Christians
(Col. 3:16).
Whatever means we make use of, we must pray without ceasing,
whether saying the approved prayers of the Church, making the
Stations of the Cross or meditating on the Gospels. Above all other
practices we should cultivate the awareness of the divine Indwelling in
our own souls as we would in church before a sanctuary lamp. St. Paul
asks, "Know you not that you are the temple of God, and that the spirit
of God dwells in you? ... For the temple of God is holy, which you are" (1
Cor. 3;16-17). Only unrepented mortal sin can remove God's presence
from the souls of the baptized.
The spiritual master Fr. Edward Leen pointed out that, "The material
temple of God does not worship the God in whose honor it is built," but
"the spiritual temple can and does. It is its prerogative to do so.... It is to
be noted that there is no question here of a merely metaphorical or
figurative presence. It is one which is real and substantial." And then he
goes on to say something which many of us may find surprising: "The
Holy Ghost is present in the soul in grace in a manner which bears an
analogy to, but is much superior to, that in which the Incarnate God is
present under the sacred species.... It was to make this wonder possible
for us that Jesus lived, labored, suffered and died... If the soul in grace
cultivates a close attention to God within it and labors to draw ever
closer to Him by perfecting its worship of love and service, it gradually
undergoes a transforming process. It becomes more and more like to
the God it loves, and becoming like Him, begins to have a foretaste of
that bliss enjoyed by God himself and those to whom He stands
revealed in the Beatific Vision." In other words, loss of the sacraments
need not stand in the way of our becoming saints.
Nothing happens without the will of God, whose divine Son told us,
"The very hairs of your head are all numbered" (Matt. 10:30), but Fr.
Demaris nevertheless warned his charges, "Don't be surprised at the
great number who quit! Truth wins, no matter how small the number of
those who love and remain attached to God."
So I'll close with the same words with which he ended his long letter:
"God watches over us, our hope is justified. It tells us that either the
persecution stops or the persecution will be our crown. In the alternative
of one or the other, I see the accomplishment of our destiny. Let God's
will be done, since in whatever manner He delivers us, His eternal
mercies pour into us."
http://www.catholicapologetics.info/modernproblems/vatican2/ffaith.htm
www.olmhtchurch.org