Bishop Schneider: If God allows trials He always give spiritual fruits
If Divine Providence will allow that we will as well undergo trials in our time, it will bring undoubtedly abundant spiritual fruits
(PerMariam) — “When we have the Faith, when we have the Holy Mass, when we have the Eucharist, we have all things and we are lacking nothing.” So notes Bishop Athanasius Schneider, in a presentation which highlights the beauty and trueness of the Catholic Church.
He notes that during periods of crises and persecution, God always grants graces to sustain the Church, adding that such times can be periods of immense grace and of strengthening of the Church.
His Excellency’s comments were delivered some years previously in a public talk, but by kind permission, they are now reproduced here for PerMariam readers. The contents of his talk, Bishop Schneider notes, remain true and timely regardless of their date of re-publication.
Due to the length of Bp. Schneider’s talk, it will be published in separate parts on Per Mariam. The text begins below.
‘The light of the Catholic Faith’ - Bp. Schneider
In these troublesome and dark times in which we live, we want to recall the supernatural light and the spiritual treasures which we possess as a gift from God. It is the light of the Catholic Faith, it is the inestimable and ineffable treasure of the Holy Mass, which can be seen in a more expressive manner in its celebration in the most ancient form.
When we have the Faith, when we have the Holy Mass, when we have the Eucharist, we have all things, and we are lacking nothing.
So many Catholic generations experienced a situation of persecution, marginalization: as for instance during the first three centuries, Catholics during the period of the Penal Laws in the United Kingdom and Ireland, Catholics during the free-masonic persecution in France and Mexico, the glorious Confessors and Martyrs of Ireland, England, of the Vendée region in France, the Cristeros in Mexico, Catholics during the Communist persecution in Spain, in the Soviet-Union, in China and of other places.
Those times were also times of special graces. If Divine Providence will allow that we will as well undergo such an experience in our time, it will bring undoubtedly abundant spiritual fruits: God will grant to His Church many confessors of Faith and martyrs, and this will bring forth a new generation of holy priests, bishops and of holy popes.
Divine Providence gave us for our time a special saint of Christ the King, a martyr, and this was a Mexican boy, Saint José Luíz Sanchez Del Río. He was born in 1913, in Mexico.
The Freemasonic government in Mexico undertook from 1926 to 1929 one of the greatest persecutions that the Catholic Church suffered in the 20th century. With the pretext of “freeing the nation from religious fanaticism,” the government initiated a military onslaught against priests, religious and lay faithful who showed any sign of the Catholic faith.
One day, Jose saw the soldiers enter his church on horseback and hang the old priest. At the age of 13, Jose Sanchez del Rio went to join the Cristero army, the army that tried to free the Catholics from the persecution of the government. José Sanchez del Río introduced himself to the general of the Christian army and said: “I came here to die for Christ the King.”
This was confirmed when, even though he was arrested and tortured, he continued to proclaim: “Long live Christ the King and the Virgin of Guadalupe!” The sincerity of those words and the vivid fearless look of that noble boy resonated deeply in the heart of the general of the Cristero army, who authorized his entry into the army.
Over the course of a year, José Sanchez del Río fought in many ferocious confrontations against the army of the Free-Masonic government. Because he was the smallest, José went ahead with a banner with the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Many Christians died in combat. José wrote to his Mother: “It has never been easier to win Heaven.”
In one of these fights, the general of the Cristeros lost his horse and was going to be captured. José said to him: “My general, here is my horse, save yourself, even if they kill me! I will be not a loss, but you will be a loss.” It was in this courageous way that José was captured by the soldiers of the government.
With the intention of causing the boy to renounce the Faith, they peeled the soles of his feet to the nerves and tied him to a horse, forcing him to walk for about 14 kilometers on foot and barefoot. It is not necessary to mention here the level of pain that this poor child felt, but even so, in the moments when the pain was unbearable, the boy, full of Divine Grace, shouted in a loud and vigorous voice “Viva Cristo Rei y la a Virgin of Guadalupe! Long live Christ the King and the Virgin of Guadalupe!”
Unsuccessful in trying to get Jose Sanchez del Rio to abjure the Faith through the most searing and mind-boggling pain possible, the soldiers tried to intimidate him in another way.
When they arrived at the village where he was born, to be executed the next day, the soldiers caused the boy's mother to write him a letter asking him to abjure the Catholic Faith, in order to be released. José Sanchez del Río answered his mother's note thus:
“My dear Mother: I was taken prisoner in combat this day. I believe that in a little while I will die, but it doesn't matter, nothing matters, Mother. Resign yourself to the will of God; I die very happy because at the end of all this, I die at the site of Our Lord. Do not worry about my death, which is what mortifies me. Rather, tell my other brothers to follow the example of the smallest, and you do the will of our God. Have courage and send me your blessing together with my Father's. Greet everyone for the last time and receive, lastly, the heart of your son who wants you so much and wanted so much to see you before he died.”
The next day, February 10, 1928, the boy who was about to turn 15, offered his earthly life so as not to lose eternal life or the sight of Jesus Christ, in whom he bravely and faithfully placed his faith. When Pope Pius XI learned of José and what the Christians were suffering in Mexico, he wrote:
“Dear brothers, among those teenagers and young people there are some – and I cannot hold back the tears when I remember them – who, taking the rosary and acclaiming Christ the King, willingly suffer death.”
Bishop Henry Grey Graham, who converted from the Protestant Scottish Church to the Holy Catholic Church and died in 1959, wrote in his autobiographical the following. God “had founded a Church to which He had committed His truth to be preserved and perpetuated till the end of time; that this truth was a definite, recognizable body of doctrines; and that His Church must have endowed with the power of guarding and teaching and handing down this truth.” (From the Kirk to the Catholic Church, Glasgow 1960, p. 38)
“The Church was intended to be perpetuated from age to age, living and growing and extending, yet ever the same; teaching the same truth; keeping up an unbroken continuity and succession, according to the promise of its Founder that the gates of hell should not prevail against it. A Church which was compelled to skip over many centuries, and jump back, over the heads of Saints and Doctors and Fathers, right into the Acts of the Apostles, to find its origin, repudiating and rejecting all that intervened, could not conceivably be the institution that Our Lord meant to continue throughout all ages, and so stand out as a witness in every century for His revealed doctrine.” (p. 39)
“At all events the Catholic Church was the only Christian body on earth that claimed to have the light and the truth, and to give it with infallible certainty. You could tell the day and the place and the circumstances of the rise of every other church in history, and could name the very men who took the foremost part in founding it.
But you could not point to any date or place when the Catholic Church took its origin except that occasion when Our Lord said to St. Peter: Thou art Peter, and in this rock I will build My Church. Here was a Church which came to me with a genealogy that could not be questioned; which could trace her family history back to Jesus Christ Himself; which could justly boast of an unbroken, continuous growth from the seed to the great tree, and from childhood to manhood.” (pp. 44-45)
“I did believe that Christ intended every Christian to hold precisely the same truths, the same set of doctrines; and that these must always be the same, must be unchangeable; and all for the simple reason that He Himself had descended from heaven to teach a certain set of truths; that these truths were, of course, divine, and could never be altered; and that anything and everything different from these truths must be false. Thee truths of Christianity could no more change than the truths of arithmetic; if they were true yesterday, they must be true today and tomorrow and for ever. To change them meant that they must be susceptible of change and of improvement; and if that were so, they might never have been true at all.” (pp. 48-49)
The Catholic Church “and she alone, was everywhere spoken against, like the company of Christians after Pentecost and during the earliest centuries. This appeared a mark of her divine origin. The fact that the Catholic Church had survived and prospered and progressed in spite of the weaknesses and wickedness of her members and officials proved that she had a divine side, as no other body had” (pp. 52-53)
The importance of the Catholic liturgy Bishop Henry Grey Graham stresses as follows:
“I will confess that the worship of the Roman Church drew me as much as her doctrine. There was about it a sanctifying, soothing, elevating influence that was to be experienced nowhere else. How grand and inspiring was the ceremonial of Mass and Benediction! I felt there was a grandeur and solemnity about them, a hallowing and uplifting influence, that was utterly lacking in the bald, uninteresting, dreary meetings of the Presbyterians. The very buildings themselves were holy and edifying, and true “houses of prayer”; and, where the Catholics could afford it, they were obviously meant to be as worthy of the majesty of God as poor mortals could make them.” (pp. 53-54)
“What has happened to me in this particular, has happened to many another. There has stood One in the midst of you whom you know not, is as literally true of non-Catholics visiting a Catholic church as it was true of the Jews in the time of Our Lord. Only when they have received the gift of faith do they realize what was that silent, strong, irresistible Power that drew them to the altar as the magnet draws the steel, and constrained them to abide there till the Incarnate God Himself had wounded their hearts with the darts of His love.” (p. 55)
“God is pleased with beautiful things, and that the worship of the Most High is not any the more likely to be acceptable to Him because it is ugly and monotonous and mean. The worship of the Church of Rome must be beautiful and fascinating, because it is the true worship; all the works of God are perfect. Heretical worship is hideous, because it is false. Truth is lovely, but error is ugly. The ritual of the Mass could not possibly be aught but sublime and beautiful, because it has been fashioned by the Holy Ghost to be the one true worship in God’s one true Church.” (p. 55)
The liturgical services of the Catholic Church “enshrines and adorns the inward offering of the faithful; it is the setting, the framework, so to call it; encircling some doctrinal truth, some revealed truth of God; it is the divinely appointed ceremony and form of giving back to God that which He Himself first taught us. For it is the belief of Catholics that Almighty God has shown us not only the right faith, but also the right form of worship. He has prescribed a method of offering Him public adoration. He has not left us to haphazard or chance. Mass, then, is the liturgy that Almighty God has willed as the chief act of Christian worship, and we have no right to attempt any other” (p. 55)
“We consider it but fitting that all the treasures of art and music and ceremonial should be impressed into the liturgical service of our Maker. Are we to be doomed for ever to a form of liturgical service that lacerates our feelings, violates our aesthetic and musical taste, and outrages every recognized principle of beauty and orderliness? Thank God, many non-Catholics have been brought into the True Fold through the sublime and heavenly ritual that Rome has composed century by century, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost!
It was God’s own way of bringing them in; then they came to see that the interior worship of God, the true doctrines, the life of sacrifice in the Church, were even more beautiful than the external ceremonial which had attracted them. There is no contradiction between outward splendour in ritual and the inward worship of the soul. If there were, how could thousands of persons of the greatest sanctity have loved it, and been united to their Lord through it? The Protestant objection to the beautiful in Rome’s worship sprang from false principles in regard to the nature of worship and the nature of man” (pp. 57-58)
End of Part One of Bishop Schneider’s talk. Subsequent parts will be published on these pages in the following days.
Beautiful thank you Michael