By The Unknown Centurion
St. Hildegard von Bingen prophesied that in the last age, the Church would be attacked from within by the grey wolf of ambiguity. (Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, trans. by Mother Columba Hart and Jane Bishop). The Enemy knows that it’s far easier to steer the ship off course and accomplish a worldly agenda not in stark terms of black and white, but in the grey, allowing the evil spirit of the age to define and do the dirty work, while those in charge remain hidden behind a façade of plausible deniability.
Its easier to sow the seeds of revolution with ambiguous words such as accompaniment, inclusion, tolerance, collegiality, synodality, and stewardship, than with more accurate words like “adapt to the world”, “embrace globalism” “undermine tradition”, “change doctrine”, ”profane the sacred”, “create division”, “trust the experts”, “everything is relative”, “protect the heterodox” and “punish the orthodox”.
Until this satanic strategy and those who engage in it are called out, by the leaders of the Church not in league with it, Catholics have no choice but to bypass our bishops and priests who were entrusted to safeguard the Faith of Christ. We must always orient ourselves on Christ, not His vicar on earth or those entrusted to sacramentally act in the person of Christ.
People, no matter their title, will always go astray. If we follow any of them, sooner or later, we will go astray as well. We have to fix our eyes on Christ alone, especially when it’s so hard to discern which bishop is oriented toward God and which one is oriented toward the world.
Mass Disorientation
Of all the diabolical disorientation infecting the Church, the most obvious and perhaps important example is in its sacred Liturgy. If we understand pros as the unwavering orientation of Jesus’ being toward the Father, a directional “stance” that orients the entirety of His person, and that which defines him from eternity, this same stance must be the one we adopt as we participate in the liturgical prayer of the Church.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “The liturgy is a participation in Christ’s own prayer addressed to the Father in the Holy Spirit. In the liturgy, all Christian prayer finds its source and goal.” (CCC 1073). Especially the presider who acts in Persona Christi in offering our sacrifices joined to the perfect sacrifice of Christ to the Father must have the same orientation of Christ toward the Father, otherwise, there is disorientation.
One can interpret the diabolical disorientation described by Sr. Lucia in two ways, which is consistent with the “both/and” approach of our Faith. It can mean a disorientation of belief and practice, as well as a physical and liturgical disorientation. The latter of which can be said to have begun with the promulgation of the Novus Ordo Missae. At that time when the revolutionary spirit of the age was at its apex, the priest no longer oriented Himself to the East (Ad Orientem), facing the same direction as the people he offered the sacrifice on behalf of, but turned his back on the tabernacle to face the people (Versus Populum).
Such a serious self-inflicted wound was not only unnecessary but may have caused untold damage because the disorientation takes place at the re-presentation of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ. And because the Eucharist enables us to be transformed and conformed to Christ, including His perfect and perpetual orientation to the Father, what supernatural effects are there if the liturgical action which confects the Eucharist is disordered and not oriented to the Father? Beyond the unseen ramifications that a deliberate disorientation during the sacred sacrifice and dispensation of the merits and graces of the Cross, the measurable metrics from and after the time priests turned away from the Father and toward the people and the world, have been unimaginable in terms of Mass attendance, retention of the Faith, and living in accordance with it.
Such a seismic secular shift within the Church has caused many to abandon ship, with those most drawn to and edified by the reverence, awe, and otherworldliness of the traditional liturgy even becoming Orthodox Christians, since the seemingly spiteful suppression of the Traditional Latin Mass. It seems fitting, that in the one act of perfect worship, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the priest who stands in the person of Christ offering the sacrifice to the Father on our behalf has turned his back on God. His orientation, even at the time of consecration through consummation of the most sacred sacrifice is toward the world and the people and away from the Father.
The Church continues to hold that the presider’s “spiritual orientation” ought always to be “versus Deum”, which in the modern age has become disconnected and distinguished from the actual orientation of the presider. Is it? And why should it be? Can we get the theology of the most important act in and outside of history so wrong, with priest physically turning His back on God to take a more communal, homocentric orientation hoping that God doesn’t mind and understands that despite how it looks, the priest’s “spiritual orientation” is rightly ordered toward Him.
Do we even know how the supernatural realities are impacted when the priest, who performs the two-way intercessory role of offering our sacrifices along with the sacred sacrifice of Christ to the Father, and through the Eucharist dispenses the merits of the Cross to us as a channel of God’s grace orients himself toward the people and away from God? Is it worth it to risk offending God and limiting the limitless graces of the sacrifice of Christ just to seem more communal, ecumenical, and accessible to increasingly emptier churches?
Will we continue to be chastised with an even greater apostasy and a deeper disorientation until we reorient ourselves to God liturgically as well as in our faith and morals? Can such a seemingly simple shift in orientation during the Holiest Sacrifice help accomplish a reorientation of priests and people to be courageous, countercultural and singularly focused on God? Aside from, or in addition to, the disorientation of the celebrant, (and those of us who rely upon his rightly ordered sacrificial act), could it be that the reason the Mass, which is the source of the Church’s power (CCC 1074), may not be as powerful and efficacious, is that it is too often celebrated without the appropriate level of seriousness, solemnity, and sanctity?
Perhaps all the priestly ad-libs, omissions, and unnecessary banter coupled with the irreverent mannerisms, casual consecrations, and careless purifications, unbefitting of the sacrifice of the Son of God on Calvary have done great damage to the Body of Christ, requiring a response of lay and clerical reparation, repentance, and reorientation for God to turn His face back to us?
Conclusion
At its core, before us lie three choices. We can walk away from God when we don’t follow Him or fulfill the purposes for which we were created. We can walk toward God when we repent and strive to live in conformity to Christ. And we can walk with God when we reverently participate in the Mass and worthily receive Him in the Eucharist and go out with Christ within us to gather others to Him. It is impossible for us to conform our wills and completely orient ourselves toward God, entering into an intimate relationship with the Father like Jesus, unless we have the transforming, divine life of God within us.
Sadly, it has become far too easy for the Enemy these days; especially when he controls so much of the battlefield and so few have the divine life of God within them to orient them. If the Enemy can’t get us to walk away from God, he’ll just keep us so distracted that we take our focus off God, turning inward toward ourselves or outward toward worldly anxieties and perishable pursuits of pleasure, power, honor, and wealth.
Merely being distracted, comfortable, inactive, or indifferent, or caught up in the idleness and ideologies of the day, to the exclusion of God, is sufficient to place the eternal state of our souls in jeopardy. Even if people stay in one place, going neither forward nor backward, then they will find themselves farther from God, for He is active, and always calling us to move forward in the spiritual life. Plus, the Evil One has been so successful in convincing many people that neither he nor hell exists, and that all one has to do to reach heaven is to be a nice person, that he likely gains millions of souls who fall for this big lie.
This is why we must constantly calibrate our orientation and direction in reference to God, like a spiritual antenna or a magnet to the true north. One can gauge where one is in the process by discerning whether one is walking away from God, walking toward God, or walking with God. Without solid spiritual direction (aptly named), we can delude ourselves and find ourselves far off course when we think we are walking toward Christ and are oriented toward the Father.
In ancient times, Satan turned man away from God and toward the false gods of the day, which concealed the true identity of these demonic beings. Today, he turns our gaze to a modern, material, secular religion he established that systematically excludes the reality and relevance of God from our collective consciousness and notions of existence, identity, nature, truth, and wisdom, as well as our social structures and daily rhythm of life. As a result, we are ignorant of God and indifferent to the will of God, when we need to be indifferent to everything except the will of God. To break this diabolical disorientation, our orientation needs to be single-mindedly focused on doing God’s will, nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else.
Remember too that there will be opposition, from among family and friends and from every corner of the anti-Christian culture. This path today is a narrow, rough road, up a steep hill, and against strong headwinds. It is less traveled than the wide smooth road that leads to perdition because the diabolical disorientation strategy has been so successful. In these times we have to be courageous and countercultural, rejecting the spirit of the world and leading by example those deluded by it. Many will oppose us, but if we do so with joy, love, and humility, some will follow.
To break free from this all-encompassing hold, and from the disordered distractions and unhealthy attachments, we need to employ silence, prayer, sacrifice, self-denial, and above all the grace of God. To make this hard hike to heaven, we must build up countervailing habits by choosing the lesser, doing the harder, removing ourselves from the constant noise and rejecting the satanic cycle of consumption, comfort, affirmation and anxiety. We need to set our face like flint, resolutely, urgently, and undeterred, as we march forward in the face of overwhelming opposition toward our goal of God and our conformity to Christ
