Liberation is near

At her blog Old Pages — New Life, Aunt Melanie posts excerpts from her spiritual reading. I've enjoyed reading them and sharing her mind in Christ. That's the most meaningful fellowship there is, when people know not only the same Lord, but even the same ideas. A few days ago she posted this excerpt entitled The Blessings of Christianity from Our Christian Heritage by James Cardinal Gibbons. I read this book at the beginning of my conversion and it helped me a great deal, though it did not cause me to become a Roman Catholic. The excerpt starts out like this, and I left the comment following…

What are the blessings that Christian civilization confers on the individual, the family, and society?

It has delivered us from idolatry and led us to the worship of the one, true, and living God. Our Saviour came down from heaven to shed light on that illimitable world which lies beyond the tomb, and to reveal to us a new life which begins with death. He has made known to us our origin and destiny and the means of attaining it.

He has brought not only light to our intellects, but also peace to our hearts, that peace which springs from the knowledge of the truth and the hope of eternal life.
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Cardinal Gibbons is quite right, but modern people, even modern Christians, think and act as though Christianity has been and is anything but a blessing to civilisation. What it took centuries to build up by the humble and patient labors of our pious forefathers has been essentially dismantled—deconstructed is the word they like to use, with pride—in the short space of a century.

They say that the Great War (1914-1918) was the end of the height of civilisation in the Western world. Those of us who were born half a century later tend to think that the year 1963, marked by the assassination of President Kennedy, was the end of ‘the happy days.’ I think both are correct.

Civilisation, the Christian civilisation in which wars were fought but according to the law of war (which was rather chivalrous), ended at least during World War I. Some have said that the American Civil War was actually the turning point, and in some senses it may have been, but that war evoked one last movement of grace critical to the healing of our nation, provided by President Lincoln, himself a martyr and saint (in my book, at least).

So here we are. Castaways on the desert isle of time’s end, Christianity as an institution being behind bars that it has itself erected, and authentic discipleship now, like the French resistance in World War II, always on the run in a hostile, catch-as-catch-can world.

Shadows of the past are still speaking, propped up by mere inertia. Pope and patriarchs, presiding bishopess and moderators, charismatic magi running Christian centers and praise-a-thons, all of them sheep without a shepherd yet trying to shepherd others. I won’t say it’s a case of the blind leading the blind, because I do not claim to have sight either. I do have my hearing, though, and I can still recognize the Shepherd’s voice when I hear Him.

But does all this discourage me? No, not in the least. I feel that it is a rare privilege to live in the time at the end of all things, and I believe the Word of God who says, ‘When these things begin to take place, stand erect, hold your heads high, because your liberation is near at hand’ (Luke 21:28).