Maybe I should be upset and disheartened at today's Supreme Court decision. But I'm smiling. And I don't feel sad. I feel strangely excited.
I remember the night that Obama was elected for his second term. I went to bed early, sick to my stomach, depressed and afraid. It was truly awful. I felt a dark shroud had descended on our nation, the America that I love so much.
But I have grown and changed. The ins and outs of politics and courts and men do not bother me so much anymore. And in this case, I find myself untroubled. I am almost shocked at my peace! But isn't that what Christ came to give us, if we follow Him and not the world?
Some random thoughts (unpolished, redundant, I've not had breakfast yet) now that gay "marriage" is newly, magically discovered as a Constitutional right:
-- Pray for the soul of Justice Kennedy. He is a Catholic. He will be accountable for his decision. May the Lord have mercy on his soul.
-- America is and was always an experiment. If we put our hopes and faith in a fallible nation, even one so promising as America, we miss the boat. The only home for us is Christ's Church,
which has outlasted every empire and nation and will outlast even the world itself. If you have built your house on the Rock instead of shifting sand, and if you are safe in the Barque of Peter, and not flailing in the stormy waters, then relax and rejoice. Life is good. And Christ's promises stand. (And if you are still in the stormy waters, get in the boat!! There is room for all!)
-- God called each of us to live in this moment, at this time, in this culture. He did so for a reason. Are you ready to fulfill your baptismal mandate?
-- So many lost souls. Pray for them.
-- So many children will suffer, and we will see that fallout in the coming decades. Pray for them.
-- Everything that happened today falls under the very capable hands of Divine Providence. Now is the time to step up and really live your faith. If not, then what is your faith for, anyway?
-- Don't be afraid. I'm not. God is so good. He knows just what we need and he has given it to us. Find your courage, people!
-- Become a saint. Trust me, it's the only way. It's what will dispel the darkness and it's what will attract people to you, and to the Church, and to Christ Himself. This is about the salvation of souls, not whether or not America will continue to be a comfortable place for us.
-- America was never the "shining city on the hill", the Church is! We need to get that straight, because I think a lot of American Christians misunderstand that point.
-- Just as with the evil decision of
Roe v. Wade, this decision will continue to divide the nation. There can be no healing and unity when natural law and our very natures are dismissed and contradicted. God will not be mocked. Nature will not be mocked.
It will be the children of these "unions" who will eventually bring us back to sanity. It will take some decades, but like abortion, the tide will turn back to reality and truth. And if we don't live to see it, so what? This world is passing away. Christ has overcome the world. How can we not be filled with joy?!
-- What to do now? Live your life. Become a saint. Teach your children well (
start with this), because they will need to find some firm footing and sense in a crazy, upside-down world. The Church will continue to be a beacon, but even more so now. I praise God for making the line very clear! Now, the choice is more obvious. My overriding thought is "bring it on!" We were made for this, my dear Christians. Why are you afraid?
-- Finally, if you are truly, profoundly rattled and even devastated by this Court decision, you have put waaaaaaay too much faith in the things of this world. Change course. You will not find peace nor salvation in the things of this world. Turn to Christ, the source of our joy. He Himself asked if He would find any faith in this world upon His return. Well, will He?
He will in my house.
God bless and have a beautiful day, as I leave you with some prescient words from Venerable Fulton J. Sheen:
We are at the end of a tradition and a civilization which believed we could preserve Christianity without Christ, religion without a creed, meditation without sacrifice, family life without moral responsibility, sex without purity, and economics without ethics. We have completed our experiment of living without God and have proven the fallacy of a system of education which calls itself progressive because it finds new excuses for sins. Our so-called progressiveness, did we but realize it, is like unto the progressive putrefaction of a corpse. The soul is gone, and what we call change is only decay. How stop it except by reversing the process by which we drove God out of the world, namely by relighting the lamp of faith in the souls of men?
...
The millions of the world who keep their fingers on the pulse of public opinion and follow every theory, every vogue, every panacea, every popular immorality, and who approve the appointment of every anti-moral educator, have no standard of right and wrong. A thing cannot measure itself: A tape measure must be outside the cloth; a speedometer must not be a brick in the roadway; a judge must not be a shareholder in the corporation whose cause he judges. In like manner the judgment of the world must be from outside the world. Such a standard is the need of the hour -- an authority that does not, like some politician, find out what the people want and then give it to them, but which gives them what is true and good whether it is popular or not. We need someone to be healthy when the world is sick; someone to be a stretcher-bearer when the battlefields are freighted with wounded; someone to be calm when the house is burning; someone to be right when the world is wrong, as on Easter when they who slew the Foe lost the day.
Where is that authority except in the Church of the Risen Christ which in each new generation is condemned by the world and then rises to a new and glorious Easter? At least a thousand times the bells have tolled in history for the death of the Church, but the execution never took place; the coffin is ordered but the corpse never appears; the mourners assist at her burial but she sings a requiem over her mourners; still doomed to death, but fated not to die, she survives a thousand crucifixions and a thousand deaths, and alone has survived the crash of all civilizations, because not involved in their ruin.
There is often an hour when the world cannot understand the reason the Church gives for her position, but there is never a time when men do not live to see that her judgment was reasonable.
+++++++
If you are still discouraged, please read
this.
