We are truly seeing a crisis in the Church, a crisis of Faith, a crisis of discipline; a blurring, to the point of invisibility, of the distinction between Good and Evil.
Only by hating Sin can we overcome it, only by hating the Devil can we resist him. This hatred must be real, as strong and gripping as the keenest love we have ever felt.
The great Bishop Morlino of Madison sums it up in his wonderful letter to his diocese issued last week, reminding us of the Thomist reflection of Christ’s teaching in the Gospel, he writes:
If you’ll permit me, what the Church needs now is more hatred! As I have said previously, St. Thomas Aquinas said that hatred of wickedness actually belongs to the virtue of charity. As the Book of Proverbs says “My mouth shall meditate truth, and my lips shall hate wickedness (Prov. 8:7).” It is an act of love to hate sin and to call others to turn away from sin.
Our noble Order has for centuries fought the enemies of the Church. The enemies of the Church are the enemies of Truth, the enemies of Christ. They hate us, and we hate their error. Whether they be Turks, sworn to wipe the Church out of the Mediterranean; or Protestants, who eviscerated our martyrs in the name of a corrupted religion; or the humanitarian disasters we have battled in the last two centuries, Knights of Malta stood firm, and at great personal sacrifice, often to death, fought for Christ’s Truth. No matter that today the enemy is within the Church, our steadfastness is expected of us just the same. There is no comfortable ride.
One cannot fight in battle without knowing the enemy – the pressures of society to turn an ever growing list of sins into virtues can cut no ice with us if we are to win. We must come to "hate the Devil and all his works", these are not empty words we rehearse once a year at Easter. They are how we save our own souls and the souls of those around us. It is the Devil who guides those who perpetrate evil, be they cardinals, bishops, priests or laymen, and only by hating the sin which grips them, which holds them in stranglehold so they can no longer see their own souls in the image and likeness of God, can we love them enough to pray for the redemption of their souls. Without your prayers these men will go to Hell.
Let it be clear, whatever worldly punishment they deserve, and justly, it is the salvation of their souls we must desire and fight for, and we shall not achieve this by turning a blind eye, or finding some condoning excuse for their depravity, or some administrative damage-limitation procedure.
Every day we have this duty to fight, as more and more people fall away from the Church, through indifference, through the influence of bad men, through corruption of sin; this remnant, those of us who are left must man the defences and carry on the spiritual battle. Many times the garrison in Rhodes and Malta was reduced to a few dozen knights, and yet they won victory after victory, and always with Our Lady’s unfailing help.
Make no mistake, there are no sins lesser than others, every departure from the Truth, on the smallest matter, opens the soul to further attack which it cannot resist. There is a state of grace, or a state of separation from God, there is no middle ground which is ‘just about ok”.
Blessed James Bell, ordained priest under Queen Mary, who had apostatised under Elizabeth, only to be reconciled and martyred in old age, said to the judge when condemned to be hanged, drawn and quartered, "I beseech you, my Lord, for the love of God, add also to your former sentence that my lips be pared and my fingers cut off, wherewith I have hithertofore sworn and subscribed to heretical articles, both against my conscience and the truth.'' That is how one should hate sin: with no thought of self.
One hundred years ago last Sunday Our Lady said to the children of Fatima, with an air of great sadness, “Pray, pray hard and make sacrifices for sinners, because many souls will go to Hell because they have no one who will make sacrifices and pray for them.”
Let us, Knights, Dames and Companions of Malta, be those champions of injured souls. Fast, pray, confess, and set a lead by exemplary lives.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for the Church.
Our Lady of Philermo, pray for our Order.
Our Lady Queen of the Clergy, pray for our Priests.
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