The evil rising around us is now extraordinary. It is volcanic — on fire. It portends many things, including flame. Evil is now good and good is evil (as prophesied). Should we be surprised? Many disorientations, in our time. Is the horse out of the barn — the horse of Revelation? Ireland votes overwhelmingly to allow those of the same gender to marry. At the Smithsonian in Washington is a display of a cake with two grooms holding hands. The media exults, as altruistic: doctors who perform painful late-term abortions (painful to the baby). Another hero: a woman who commits euthanasia in Oregon — forlorn Oregon, and the states of Washington, Vermont.
America, where are you? Where are you going? Where have you gone? Do you even exist any longer as a viable moral entity? Or are you just a place where anything goes (and becomes famous for it)?
The contradictions and disorientations and ironies and diabolic manifestations of our times are endless and graphic. It is the “hour of the power of darkness,” as the Blessed Mother once called it. We apologize for this reality check, the negativity.
We all have blind spots. We are all (Mark 10) the blind man appealing to Jesus. Sometimes, in the public square, it is truly amazing. On a visit to the Holy Land, one TV reality star, known for her salacious life and nude poses, with famous husband-rap star in tow, visits the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the Holy Land and a photograph of them at the very site of Crucifixion shows a peculiar, flame-like eruption above, these two poor souls who are perhaps seeking, not just tourists — but there at the sacred church with a striking play of photographic light above them (a rapper whose songs and hateful videos are anti-Christian and involve [above, right] pyrotechnics).
Never before has celebrityhood been so rude, crude, in your face, inexplicable, damaging, and aflame. The
step-dad of this woman will soon have his own reality show documenting his transition into a woman. Transgender rights now have their place alongside gay rights as if they are on a par with civil or religious rights. We have other reality shows that glorify musicians who led bands with names, telling names, such a Black Sabbath. The world, which is in the sway of the evil one, anoints in flames and destines us for a trial by fire (here or in the hereafter).
With prayer we find peace. They are not to be loathed, our “stars.” They are to be prayed for. Our hearts must be open to all. But sometimes what’s needed is tough love which involves telling it like it is. A recent cover of Cosmopolitan stares at us from grocery checkouts with the most famous female vocalist of our time in a fully sado-masochistic leather mask, offering millions including our youths a snapshot of the netherworld.
Prayer need. Satan showing his shameful (if partly masked) face. If not on a magazine, at halftime of the Super Bowl. Or in a new TV show called Lucifer. Or kids invoking a demon on Twitter. Or a professor at Princeton who advocates killing the disabled.
With the Blessed Mother, and the Precious Blood of Jesus, we have nothing to fear. We know the end game. We know that much in life is a test of love. And faith. But we also know that Jesus came to break the hold of the devil. It was His central mission. It is also the mission of any Christian.
A huge, massive disorientation.
Confusion, which we all suffer at times, is a first sign of evil.
The disorientations are at every level and in every walk of life. And all of it, with Christ, can be defeated.
“I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the Evil One,” was one of Jesus’ last prayers to the Father (John 17: 11-19). “They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world. And I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth.”
Truth. Let us lay out the truth. Yet, go for hope.
Did you ever contemplate how much Christ had to say about the “world,” and how strongly He spoke against it?
It has always been this way: under sway of the devil.
Even the Barbarian and Roman and Egyptian times, however, even Visigoths, might seem tame in regards to what transpires and gains fame in the age of media; hard-pressed, would they have been, the Goths, to exceed what now is in progress and accelerating.
Source: Michael Brown
