The
Resurrection represents the eternal and definitive triumph of Our Lord
Jesus Christ, the complete defeat of his adversaries, and the supreme
argument of our faith. Saint Paul said that, if Christ had not
resurrected, our faith would be vain. The whole edifice of our beliefs
is founded on the supernatural fact of the Resurrection. Let us then
meditate about this highly elevated subject.
* * *
Christ
Our Lord was not resurrected: He resurrected. He was dead. Lazarus was
resurrected. Someone other than him, in this case, Our Lord, called him
back to life. As for the Divine Redeemer, no one resurrected Him. He
resurrected Himself, needing no one to call Him back to life. He took
his life back when He so willed.
Everything
that is said about Our Lord can be analogically applied to the Holy
Catholic Church. We often see, in the history of the Church, that
precisely when She seemed irremediably lost and all the symptoms of
catastrophe seemed to undermine Her, events took place that kept Her
alive against all the expectations of Her adversaries. A rather curious
fact is that sometimes it is the Church’s enemies that come to Her aid,
rather than Her friends. For example, in a most sensitive time period
for Catholicism like Napoleon’s era, an extremely unusual episode took
place: a conclave was convened for the election of Pius VII under the
protection of Russian troops, all of them schismatic and under the
command of a schismatic sovereign. In Russia itself, the practice of
the Catholic religion was curbed in a thousand ways. Yet, in Italy,
Russian troops ensured the free election of a Sovereign Pontiff
precisely at the moment when a vacancy in the See of Peter would have
caused such grievous damages for Holy Church that, humanly speaking, she
might never have been able to overcome them.
Such
are the marvelous means that Divine Providence employs to demonstrate
that God has the supreme government of all things. However, let us not
think that the Church owed Her salvation to Constantine, Charlemagne,
John of Austria, or Russian troops. Even when She seems to be entirely
abandoned and when She lacks the most indispensable natural resources
for survival, let us be certain that Holy Church will not die. Like Our
Lord, She will rise with Her own, divine strength. And the more
inexplicable the seeming resurrection of the Church may be from the
human standpoint (we say seeming, because, unlike Our Lord, the Church
will never die a real death), the more glorious Her victory will be.
In
these murky and sad days, let us thus confide. However,
in order to restore all things in the Kingdom of Christ, let us confide
not in this or that power, man, or ideological current but in Divine
Providence, which will once again force the sea to open wide, move
mountains and cause the whole earth to tremble if necessary to fulfill
the divine promise:
“The gates of Hell shall not prevail against Her.”
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