Seek First the Kingdom - The March of Hope - Chapter 8
Witnesses in a Great Cloud
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The previous chapter, combined with its imagery, was a purposeful setup for telling the all-important story in this next and pivotal juncture concerning the March of Hope. The story I have to say to you in this and the following chapter, on the heels of the contemplative, panoramic imagery introduced just previously, drives to the central theme of the March of Hope and is, in fact, the mystical reality leading to the apex of the mountain top to where I am leading. There, on the top of that mountain, is the view to the other side that has astonished me, and is a land that, once I understood what it was at which I was looking, I felt the great compulsion to run down and seek other travelers to tell them what I have seen. I have seen a vision of something that has forever altered my life. It is so astonishing that I have sold everything I have to obtain it. It is the pearl for which one would sell all he owns to purchase.[1]
You might recall that this journey began in 1984 when I, in a moment, not unlike a bolt of lightning, came to understand the apostolic authority of the Catholic Church and, in a second beyond that, to understand and believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Very soon after that, I found myself curiously fascinated with the person of, and even praying to, the Blessed Virgin Mary. The connection between my conversion to the Church, the Eucharist, and the Virgin Mary could not be mistaken as a coincidence or deriving from psychological forces. It came to me from without; it simply was the I AM. Furthermore, it was a force consistent in both content and effect as described in the Sacred Traditions of the Church and the writings of the Fathers and saints. It was not a unique experience but one that has been experienced as an ordinary course of events in the life of the Church down through the centuries. It was the great surety and certainty of dogma, and it was alive.
I also came to understand and believe a little later that the graces of my conversion, poured into my soul by the hands of the Virgin Mary, were won for me in Christ by the blessed little St. Thérèse of Lisieux. While on earth, she proclaimed that she would spend her time in heaven converting souls, and I genuinely believe I am one of those souls she converted.
I want you to remember this general theme and sequence of events when I eventually tell you the marvelous story of how Joan of Arc became such an important person and relationship in my life. Though subjugated appropriately first to Jesus Christ and then to the Virgin Mary, her role in my life has been just as pivotal as and complementary to the role Thérèse has played. Why is she the one leading me on my journey? As Our Lady has bequeathed me particular graces I do not deserve, I have, through these graces, found the similarities between the Great Event of 1984 and the coming of Joan of Arc remarkable. But we must go one step at a time to get this story right.
I am telling you what happened after The Freedom Dance brought me to that beautiful mystical mountainside where the dark Revolution must be left behind and where I must now cross over a threshold to a new and beautiful land that leads to the City of God. I have described that threshold as being the very gateway into the mysterious land of Roman Catholicism. Seeing in your mind that the top of the mountain is the gateway to this land will bring together these two images, that of a mountain top and that of a gateway. I continue to press the imagery of both the active element of the journey, going through a gate, with the contemplative aspect of watching the mist rise from our mountaintop or hillside.
I felt compelled to tell my journey beyond and through the walls of Catholicism. I realized that many souls may wish to travel it and should do so by the will of God, who established his Church on earth in the form of the second person of the Holy Trinity, Jesus Christ. He established neither a religion nor a philosophy nor an Eastern New Age spiritualism but a Church, and this is the crux of our communication problems with the rest of the world. The Catholic Church is not a man-made religion. It is an institution founded by a Godman! You obey it; you don’t theorize over its potential self-affirming value in your life. You follow it because it is life; it is God’s revelation.
But to my primary point, who could know about this great land if those of us who have been bold enough to accept its promises do not run back to tell others? The vast majority of souls in the modern culture are struck numb (and dumb) with twenty-four-hour media, vulgar music, and useless gossip for entertainment. The kingdom of God cannot be found there. Why spend so much time with it? Why, quite frankly, spend any time with it? If one is looking for riches, one does not spend most of one’s waking hours on skid row asking for venture capital. If one is seeking God, the true God of Christian revelation and his kingdom, one does not look in the modern culture or its entertainment and media industry. The Evil One does not want you to pray; he is in full charge of our so-called progressive culture. Twenty-four-hour noise and soul garbage fill our minds and hearts like cigarette smoke fills one’s lungs.
Many people hear about the Catholic Church from those outside who know little about her. Relying on the media to inform you of the Catholic Church is like depending on the press in Tehran to teach you about the American Revolution and the development of our constitution. Worse yet are the ex-Catholics who leave a Church and preach against a Church that does not exist. I have been astounded to hear their errant understanding of doctrine as they attempted to condemn her with "Bible-based" speculation. Yet, others will look to them as "experts" on Catholicism who have escaped the torture chambers of oppression and are living to tell about it. Who will tell people about the great land that lies through her gates? I have done that through The Freedom Dance, and the following discussion of Joan of Arc is its apex. Walking through the gateway of the kingdom with her is the direct path through the heart of Mary and to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
To safely go forward, it is vital that we first keep track of the order of things, that is, the authentic order of our values in this land of Catholicism. In this genuine ordering of values, we find the safety of the path of the Dogmatic Creed. In this ordering of our values, we ensure we follow the correct guideposts and do not end up again in the Dark Forest. One of the greatest gifts that Christ gives to us in his Church is an understanding of the correct ordering of values. This enlightenment from the Holy Spirit through the magisterial teachings of the Church is vital to being safe on our journey.
This last point cannot be stressed enough, for everywhere in our modern world, we see one of the greatest wiles of the evil one. Nothing can confuse the hearts of people of goodwill more than having them pursue all the right things in all the wrong order. For example, people speak of "tolerance" for others' lifestyles and world views or "respecting individual rights." But now, this otherwise good value of "respecting individual rights" forces us to subjectively respect the opinions of those who choose to terminate a baby's life in the womb. Without any moral authority, we have the framework for an actual conflict here. Clearly, the two sides are irreconcilable. Either the life may not be taken, and one side is "oppressed," or, conversely, the life can be destroyed in the name of "individual rights," and the other is oppressed. The modern world has cast off any notion of a moral authority to guide us other than that of individual conscience, but here, we have two opposing "consciences." We cannot escape the duality of it and the inherent conflict.
The Evil One has all of modern society going in ever-widening and ever-more dizzying circles. The chief weapon is moral and religious relativity. No one can say that anything or any religion is absolutely true. It must all be kept as a matter of mere opinion. We should accept all beliefs as equally valid. The notion that no belief should be assumed absolute implies an absolute hierarchy of values. And the promise of this confusing relativity is similarly deceptive, that is, the commitment that this will lead to peace and eliminate the dualistic conflicts that people of genuine, dogmatic belief are accused of causing. But we see above that this belief does nothing to eradicate dualism and conflict; in fact, it increases it. With no higher authority on which to call than that of our own individual belief systems, we increase potential and actual conflict exponentially.
The reduction of moral authority to no more than personal opinion leaves us spinning in circles. And the joke on us, enjoyed by the hellions of the netherworld, is that we are all arguing over "good values." We are all being "good people." We are also very "lost" people. Without proper, objective moral authority, no authentic progress can be made.
So, moral and religious relativism and actual progress are antithetical. And in an age that has long ago thrown aside the Church as the proper moral authority, we have turned to allow our political leaders to be that authority as people with nowhere else to turn. Now we are down to simply following what his personal opinion is. The circle keeps spinning faster.
That great society of Christendom in the Middle Ages would know that what we are attempting to pass off as a legitimate culture is sheer nonsense. They knew that moral authority rested in Jesus Christ and the Church he founded. They fought the Crusades, and rightfully so, to defend that culture and Church. In the modern, “progressive” world, we have surrendered with no apparent will to fight for any belief. “The military spirit is quite different from that of the executioner.”[2] Pacifism, whether spiritual or military, is part of the decline and completely ignores the proper hierarchy of values. It contributes nowhere to actual progress. The early Crusaders fought to defend the great land behind them, not out of hatred or bigotry for what was before them. And while it is true that some later Crusades were less than noble (notably the 4th, which resulted in the sacking of Constantinople and a deepening of the existing wound between the Eastern and Western Church), the Faith was generally there in its proper order for the defenders of Christendom. The Faith and the culture developed out of it were worth dying for. In sad contradistinction, in our culture, belief is, after all, only a matter of opinion. Of course, Crusades make no sense to us today. Why battle over something irrelevant or impossible to truly define as an absolute belief?
So, let us ensure that we follow this March of Hope on the Dogmatic Creed of Roman Catholicism with great attention to the authentic order of our steps. Otherwise, we could easily fall into a dark crevice and hurt or even kill ourselves.
With all this in mind, I ask you to finish your respite, and, having now caught our breath, we will return to moving toward what I have called the apex of my journey. I have told you that I must tell this story, for I cannot leave the story of Catholicism in the hands of a media and culture that are the sworn enemies of the Church. And I have told you that we must take this step by step to keep from losing our way to the great promise lying through the gates and over the mountaintop. Without this care, the story might never be understood. We might never arrive at the great land.
Where do we begin in describing these next steps on the March of Hope? We start not with philosophy, spiritualism, or even theology but with a person who is the summation of all proper values, Jesus Christ. Any hierarchy of values that does not recognize Jesus Christ as the point to which all other valid values are directed is not authentic. Von Hildebrand states it as follows:
“The heroic man is simple, and his heroic act becomes the simpler. Every heroic act is the victory of a dominant aim over a multitude of petty ties and distractions. All experiences which enlarge our hearts, which expand and embolden our souls, and which render us able to sacrifice inferior things heroically – as does, above all a great love under Jesus – contribute to our achieving true simplicity. What we must seek is a general readiness to give away lower things for the sake of higher ones, according to the divinely sanctioned legitimate order of values, and in this sense, ultimately, even to abandon any and every high good for the sake of the highest one – that is, Christ.”[3]
A proper order of things is a hierarchy of values that supports a willingness to give up even "good" objectives for the sake of the highest, Jesus Christ. I am, in the proper state of things, willing to give up, or at least subjugate anyway, what I consider to be a "right" to render obedience to the opinion, law, and attitude of Christ. I believe in "tolerance" wholeheartedly, but I want to see that value in its proper position related to Christ.
Jesus was compassionate but did not tolerate evil, nor shall we if we wish to keep the proper state of affairs. Under Christ as our God, Savior, and moral authority, we are no longer "good" people squabbling over which "good" value should super cede another in a divided, pluralistic society. We are now united under the banner of the Cross and understand what we must sacrifice for authentic progress. This was the superior attitude of ancient Christendom to our own culture. This is why Crusaders carried the banner of the Cross to defend their land, families, and Church.
In other words, describing the following steps on the March of Hope begins with Jesus Christ. From the early chapters in this book, the first order of things to which Our Lady was leading me after the great moment of my healing and restoration to sanity was to Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. The Mass, the sacraments, and the primary sacrament deriving from the Mass, the Eucharist, along with obedience to the magisterial teachings of the Pope and the Bishops in communion with him, must be that to which we surrender or subjugate all other values, even our highest and most cherished ones. All described above is Jesus Christ as he teaches through his body, the Church, under the Pope's and Magisterium's direction and leadership. He administers his sacraments through his priests and Bishops, and he stays with us really and substantially in the Holy Eucharist. Jesus Christ is the Son of God and Savior of the entire human race. Any order of values that does not recognize this is inauthentic and, ultimately, divisive and deadly, despite even the sweet promises of universal love that some value schemes offer.
You may be pausing for a moment now, perhaps a little confused. Having read all that above and knowing what you do of Catholicism and the land inside of that faith I have described, your curiosity might be piqued. Have I not consistently and boldly proclaimed my great love for and surrender to the Holy Mother of God, the Virgin Mary? I have, and I do. I follow the Tradition of the Church from apostolic times forward of devotion to Mary.
Devotion to Mary has been the most significant earmark of the Church’s faith after that of Jesus himself. Devotion to Mary is not a new doctrine nor a novel aberration of the faith. Devotion to Our Lady has been the Tradition of the Church from the moment Jesus Christ gave his life on the Cross[4] to the earliest Church Fathers, through the Middle Ages, surviving the attack on it in the Protestant Revolution, and into the modern world of the 21st century. Not only is Marian devotion a beautiful and consistent reality of historic Christianity, but it is also essential to our salvation according to the teachings of our great saints. It is also quite a joyful path and is true, as St. Louis de Montfort made clear, the ultimate and most direct path to Jesus Christ, our highest value!
I consecrated myself to the Blessed Virgin Mary under the formula given to us by Saint Louis de Montfort and, later in life, by that of another great saint, Maximilian Kolbe. They are essentially the same, and both are highly approved by the Church. Pope St. John Paul II was consecrated to Mary under the De Montfort formula. In this consecration, we give everything we have, all of our natural and spiritual goods, our very souls, to the Holy Mother of God as the shortest, easiest, and safest path to her Son, Jesus Christ.
How can this be? Are we not falling off into one of those crevices? Have we yet to find ourselves back in the Dark Forest? No, we have not. We are on the surest and solid ground. The pathway to Jesus through Mary is the next step in the hierarchy of principles that must be explained before we can make any sense in our discussion of Joan of Arc.
When explaining this doctrine of True Devotion to Mary to non-Catholics, I typically get two responses from spiritually oriented people. The first will be from those infected with that deadly spiritual disease New Age, which is nothing more than Eastern religion and spirituality commercially packaged for a superficial and materialistic Western world. It is not only valueless; it is deadly. The proposed value schemes there are completely topsy-turvy and inauthentic. But these fine and well-meaning souls will often join me in a great exclamation of love for Mary as if she were to be considered one of their "goddesses," "manifestations," "spirit guides," or whatever it is that they call these spiritual concepts. They will delight in her but for all the wrong reasons. As soon as I describe Mary in the context of orthodox Catholicism, these New Agers head for the hills.
The others I run across in these matters are Protestants. They have no idea what I am talking about. Their typical reaction is similar to that of the New Agers in that they figure we must be worshiping her (along with all those other saints) as one would worship God. They do not see that the esteem we give her and, to a lesser degree, the rest of the saints is perfectly sound as that which is rightfully given unto mere creatures. It is all proper to the authentic order of values that begins with Christ. It is appropriate to honor worthy men and women without implying that we are giving them adoration due to God alone. Latin distinguishes between these two senses in a way that clarifies what we refer to in English as "worship." The Church, with its Latin foundation, has consistently taught us that there are two kinds of worship: "latria," which is given to God alone, and "dulia," which is the honor properly offered to the saints (as proper to mere created beings). "Hyperdulia" is a higher form of "dulia" that is reserved for Mary alone as the Mother of God and the first among the angels and the saints (and therefore the most honored with that dignity proper to created beings). This is a severe point of confusion among many Protestants regarding the Catholic's love for and devotion to Mary and the rest of the angels and saints.
Yes, if we were to worship Mary with the adoration of latria due to God alone, these Protestants would have every right to condemn us if God did not do it for them. In fact, the Virgin Mary would be the first to protest us; she would be the most saddened of all. For, she teaches us quite the opposite, that, despite her extraordinary dignity and the love which the Church pours on her with the honor of hyperdulia, we are to adore and worship with latria no one but the Holy Trinity. And her Son is the second person of that almighty Trinity. As properly expressed by "hyperdulia," true devotion to Mary always leads to stronger devotion to and "latria" of Jesus Christ; she is his mother and wants all souls to be reconciled with him.
If we all agree that neither Mary nor any saint is to be honored with the latria by which God is worshiped, what do we make of all this? Why even worry about it? Is it not easier, in fact, to forget about honoring all these saints and such and go "straight to Jesus," as my Protestant friends never fail to advise me? Is all this saint business just unnecessary complexity? No, this is not complexity; it is the richness of the Faith in the simplicity of an authentic and unifying dominant principle, as we discussed above.
What, I usually query with them, makes you think that these saints do not lead us directly to Jesus? How is it that if I drive from Chicago through Cleveland to Boston, I have yet to go straight to Boston? In fact, I could say that one "must" go through Cleveland as the shortest, easiest, and most effective way to drive to Boston from my home. One would certainly want to avoid the pitfall of driving from Chicago through Denver to go to Boston.
Using the imagery above is advantageous, combining the active journey with the contemplative experience of watching the mist rise. Indeed, Jesus is the endpoint and summation of all our objectives and values. In that sense, we experience him through his great light of day that clears that mist from our minds and souls. But we are also on a journey in our desire to reach Jesus. We have things to experience and knowledge to gain; in other words, we must grow toward and into that tremendous contemplative vision we have before us. And there, on that journey, into union with Christ, we must follow the most "direct" path. Only by the most direct route will we go "straight to Jesus." And that path straight to Jesus, handed to us through two millennia of Sacred Tradition and confirmed in the Sacred Scriptures, is the way through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Mary will lead you "straight" to Jesus. She will not send you to Denver in an attempt to reach Boston.
To use another analogy, what could improve our relationship more than if I loved your mother with all my heart and learned about you from her perspective? Do you think Jesus is indifferent to his mother and does not love her and listen to and obey his mother in heaven as he did on earth? Do not those who esteem his mother make him immensely happy? St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that grace builds on nature; grace never destroys nature. Has the natural order of things changed in heaven? And does she not continue to love her son in heaven and desire that all people follow him and know him? Why would a relationship with Mary do anything but create a positive foundation for understanding and loving Jesus Christ ever more strongly?
This is simple. Mary is Jesus’ mother. She loves you and wants you to be saved. She wants you to be united with Jesus and will do everything in her remarkable power to bring you to salvation in truth. Love her and consecrate yourself to her. Give your life and soul to her. You will find the fullness of Jesus more quickly and effectively than in any other way. You do not have to trust me on this matter. There are so many writings on this subject in the history and Traditions of the Church that I cannot even begin to sift through the most poignant ones to quote here.
I have a remarkable story to tell you on this very point. This story demonstrates everything I find delightful in telling others about the Virgin Mary. I am always happy to find new ways to start a conversation about Mary!
This story takes place in Texarkana, Texas., a fine small city where we lived for two years. It sits in the extreme Eastern part of Texas, straddles the state line of Texas and Arkansas, and is, I would call it, a pretty Protestant and evangelical place. There are two Catholic Churches in the area, one on the Texas side and the other on the Arkansas side.
One day I was at the checkout counter in a local grocery store when the young lady checking my goods noticed the brown scapular I had around my neck that had come out from under my shirt. The brown scapular is a small square cut of cloth worn around the neck that represents the large scapulars worn by the religious of the Carmelite Order, an Order primarily devoted to Mary and the contemplative life. St. Thérèse of Lisieux was a Carmelite nun. The scapular is a sign of love for and consecration to the Virgin Mary. But this young lady did not know that.
She asked me what it was. She had the beginnings of a terrified look on her face. I sensed that while she could not identify it, she knew it must have come from hell, whatever it was. I could see the look building on her face. So, I told her it was a "scapular" and a sign of love for and devotion to Mary.
Her face went pale; my explanation had confirmed her worst fears. She had probably heard of these saint-worshiping Catholics, and now she was standing in the shadows of one! She blurted out, and I love this with all my heart, "You know that only Jesus can save you!"
What I loved about her proclamation was that it was the absolute truth. There, at the checkout counter at the local grocery store, this young lady proclaimed the truth of the gospel to me. She almost fainted in the process, but she declared it beautifully. Yes. Only Jesus can save us. I smiled at her and replied, "Yes, what you said is true. But it never hurts to have his mother on your side!" She was flustered by that yet graciously bagged my groceries and sent me on my way.
This incident undoubtedly made for hot gossip at the next prayer group meeting. But let me tell you this. That was the ecumenical movement; that was true inter-faith dialogue. Together, she and I made two of the most sublime and powerful theological constructs this side of the Vatican, enough to make the faculty chairs at most seminaries sit up with a start in their leather seats. Only Jesus can save us; the sure way to secure and build our relationship with him is to love and honor his mother. The Vatican can meet with leaders of other faiths, but genuine dialogue between us is held at the checkout counter in your local grocery store, not in the ivy halls of intellectual theorists.
So, in catching your breath here, we have taken another giant leap forward on the March of Hope. We are, you will recall, stepping into the footprints of the mighty saints who went before us on the path of the Dogmatic Creed of Roman Catholicism. This is the path handed to us by the Apostles of Jesus and then through their heirs, the Bishops in union with the Pope, for two thousand years in the form of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. These first two steps are, respectively, the primacy in both heaven and on earth of Jesus Christ as the resurrected Son of God and Savior of the human race, followed by the beautiful, heart-warming leap into True Devotion to Mary as the surest way to an authentic love for that Godman.
We took our time here. We have taken these affairs in the authentic order of "to Jesus through Mary." The steps have become swifter now, for we feel joyful and free. We are on true and solid ground, following the path of our fathers in the Church. We are secure in the heart of Mary as she leads us to her divine son.
With this order of business taken care of, we may now run with joy on our journey to discuss the even larger framework of the family of God, the saints. With all I have told you above about the Virgin Mary, you should see now that with the mother, there are also brothers and sisters; in fact, there is a whole family in heaven, the family of God. We have the hundred-fold return that Our Lord promised us. They are waiting to lead us to Jesus.
With that behind us now, it is time to tell you how I came to experience the arrival of Joan of Arc.
[1] See Mathew 13:44-45
[2]Correa de Oliveira, Plinio. (1993). Revolution and Counter-Revolution. PA: The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property. P. 70.
[3] Von Hildebrand, Dietrich (1948). Transformation in Christ. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, P.104.
[4] See John 19:25-27.