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I think,
however, that your comments on the futility of protest are wrong and are
not in accordance with the teachings of the Catholic Church. You seem to
think that the only response Christians can or should make to injustice is
to pray. If Moses had had that idea, the children of Israel would still be
in bondage in Egypt. Where would the world be if Solidarity had not challenged
the Soviet Empire—with the full support of Pope John Paul II? Should
African Americans have just stayed home in the 1950s and waited for white
people to get their acts together?
Should we never go and pray in front of the abortuaries and instead just
stay home while children are murdered?
Be wary of being an apologist and defender of evil and injustice by recommending
political “quietism.”
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 oses led the Israelites from slavery
in Egypt without any protest at all. He simply did what God told him to do.
He went to Pharaoh and asked politely to let his people go. When Pharaoh
refused, Moses prayed. God then sent a plague on Egypt. Moses went back and
asked Pharaoh again to let his people go. Pharaoh refused again. Moses prayed
again. And he suffered greatly—through the mistreatment inflicted on
the Israelites. So it went. Requests, refusals, sufferings, plagues, and
prayers. Until finally Pharaoh got tired of it all and told Moses good
riddance.
So, as Moses learned, real prayer
depends on total trust in God in the midst of
suffering; it’s hard
work.[1]
Listen to what Jesus told Saint Faustina.
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 My daughter, I want to instruct
you on how you are to rescue souls through sacrifice and prayer. You will
save more souls through prayer and suffering than a missionary will through
his teachings and sermons alone. I want to see you as a sacrifice of living
love, which only then carries any weight before Me. You must be annihilated,
destroyed, living as if you were dead in the most secret depths of your
being. . . . Outwardly, your sacrifice must look like this:
silent, hidden, permeated with love, imbued with
prayer. . . .
I will now instruct
you on what your holocaust shall consist of, in everyday life, so as to preserve
you from illusions. You shall accept all sufferings with
love. Do not be afflicted if your heart often
experiences repugnance and dislike for sacrifice. All its power rests in
the will, and so these contrary feelings, far from lowering the value of
sacrifice in My eyes, will enhance it. Know that your body and soul will
often be in the midst of fire. Although you will not feel My presence on
some occasions, I will always be with you. Do not
fear; My grace will be with
you. . .
—as told to Saint Faustina,
Diary, 1767 |
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Now, you ask where we would be
without protest. Well, look at where we are now,
with it: we are in a world growing increasingly self-indulgent,
increasingly secular, increasingly cynical, increasingly antagonistic,
increasingly cold, increasingly brutal, increasingly
evil. In today’s world,
not a day goes by that someone isn’t protesting something. And, in the
midst of all this sin, look at all the wasted time
that could be spent in prayer. Look at all the hours wasted watching TV,
playing video games, surfing the Internet, and chatting and texting on cell
phones. If all that time were spent in prayer, it would be a different
world.
And why isn’t all that time
spent in prayer? Because real prayer is too hard and demanding. It requires
disciplined self-sacrifice and
humility. It’s far easier to wave a banner
in the face of an opponent than to empty yourself in sacrifice before God.
Protest feels good. Protest, like junk food, is satisfying—or, at least
it gives the illusion that it
is.
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Thus we reach
the ultimate irony that your protesting the fraud of the world only makes
you part of the fraud. |
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If you want to change the world,
get outside the box of social illusion
and fraud. Do what Moses did. Do what the Apostles, the pillars of the Catholic
Church, did. Do what Saint Paul, in his letters, did. Pray constantly
and suffer. And, for that matter, do what Jesus did. He never protested
anything. He prayed, and he suffered—because he
trusted in God, totally.
So if you want to change the
world, pray and suffer—because you trust in God, totally.
___________
1. Genuine Christian prayer can have aspects of
passive contemplation, but that simply means that the soul remains passive
while God’s grace actively works within it (as Saint John of the Cross
made clear in his Dark Night of the Soul). The
fruits of prayer, however, are very real
and very tangible. This website, for example, is the fruit of prayer. Missionary
work can be prayer. And keeping a vigil before an
abortion facility can be prayer—as long as
the vigil is quiet and peaceful and does not aim to make itself seen.
Once you address your actions to the world, rather than to God, you set aside
the humility of prayer and step into the
pride and narcissism of
protest.
No
advertising—no sponsor—just the simple truth . . .
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