St. Paul Writing at a Desk, Lambert Jacobs

DOM PROSPER Guéranger, in his commentary on the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, offers a profound description of these times, when there is “an almost universal falling off” from infinite and unchangeable truth:

It is then more than at all previous times that the Faithful will have to remember the injunction given to us by the Apostle in today’s Epistle; that is, they will have to comport themselves with that circumspection which he enjoins, taking every possible care to keep their understanding, no less than their heart, pure in those evil days. Supernatural light will, in those days, not only have to stand the attacks of the children of darkness, who will put forward their false doctrines; it will, moreover, be minimized and falsified by the very children of the light yielding on the question of principles; it will be endangered by the hesitations and trimmings and human prudence of those who are called far-seeing men. Many will practically ignore the master-truth, that the Church never can be overwhelmed by any created power. If they do remember that our Lord has promised himself to uphold his Church even to the end of the world, they will still have the impertinence to believe that they do a great service to the good cause by making certain politically clever concessions, which, if they were tried in the balance of the sanctuary, would be found under weight! Those future worldly-wise people will quite forget that our Lord will have no need for helping him to keep his promise of crooked schemes, however shrewd those may be; they will entirely overlook this most elementary consideration—that the cooperation, which Jesus deigns to accept, at the hands of his servants, in the defense of the rights of his Church, never could consist in the grabling, or in the disguisement, of those grant truths which constitute the power and beauty of the Bride. Is it possible that they will forget the Apostle’s maxim, which he lays down in his Epistle to the Romans—that the conforming oneself to this world—the attempting an impossible adaptation of the Gospel to a world that is un-christianized—is not the means for proving what is the good, and acceptable, and the perfect will of God. So that it will be a thing of great and rare merit, in many an occurrence of those unhappy times, to merely understand what is the will of God, as our Epistle expresses it. [bold added]

Look to yourselves, would St. John say to those men, that ye lose not the things which ye have wrought; make yourselves sure of the full reward, which is only given to the persevering thoroughness of doctrine and faith! Besides, it will be then, as in all other times, that, according to the saying of the Holy Ghost, the simplicity of the just shall guide them, and far more safely, than any human ingenuity could do; humility will give them Wisdom; and, keeping themselves closely united to this noble companion, they will be made truly wise by her, and will know what is acceptable to God. They will understand that aspiring, like the Church herself, to union with the eternal Word—fidelity to the Spouse, for them, as it is for the Church, is nothing else than fidelity to the truth; for the Word, who is the one same object of love to both of them, is, in God, no other than the splendor of infinite truth. Their one care, therefore, will ever be to approach nearer and nearer to their Beloved by a continually increasing resemblance to him; that is to say, by the completest reproduction, both in their words and works, of the beautiful Truth. By so doing, they will be serving their fellow creatures in the best possible way, for they will be putting in practice the counsel of Jesus, who bids them seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and confide in him for all the rest. Others may have recourse to human and accommodating combinations, fitted to please all parties; they may put forward dubious compromises which (so their suggestors think), will keep back, for some weeks, or some months perhaps, the fierce tide of revolution—but those who have God’s spirit in them will put a very different construction on the admonition given us, by the Apostle, in today’s Epistle, where he tells us to redeem the time.

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