In 1974 the Venerable Servant of God Archbishop Fulton Sheen startled his audience by declaring, “We are at the end of Christendom”. In case it was assumed that he meant the end of this world was nigh, he continued: “Not of Christianity, not of the Church, but of Christendom”. The good Archbishop then explained that by Christendom he meant “economic, political, social life as inspired by Christian principles,” adding: “That is ending, we’ve seen it die. Look at the symptoms: the breakup of the family, divorce, abortion, immorality, general dishonesty.”
If the good Archbishop lived to see the crumbling of that citadel in the 1960s and 70s, we now inhabit its ruins. They are the ruins of a once great civilisation, which was great, if naturally always imperfect, in so far as its foundation was the Baptism conferred by the early Christian missionaries who exorcised the demons that held sway over our pagan antecedents.
In one of the Gospel readings traditionally appointed for the Lenten cycle, Our Lord recounts an exorcism that is initially successful. But after the expelled unclean spirit roams around and finds no new home on earth in which to take up residence, he returns to his previous dwelling with seven more spirits even more wicked than himself. Finding it swept and garnished they enter in and make themselves at home so that “the last state of that man becomes worse than the first”. (Lk 11:24-26). St Anthony the Great, meanwhile, related how the devil once appeared at the door of his hermitage in the desert. When St Anthony asked him what he was doing on the threshold of his cell, the devil complained that he was weary, because the whole land that had once been pagan was now full of zealous monks, so that he was reduced to wandering around with nowhere to dwell, and his power was weak because the incessant prayers of these Christians were far stronger than any weapons that he had at his own disposal. St Anthony was astonished that for once the Father of Lies had told the truth.
In the light of Archbishop Sheen’s 1974 elegy on Christendom, all of this would seem to have obvious and troubling implications for our own society. Nature hates a vacuum, and the devil is constantly on the prowl in search of a spiritual vacuum in which to take up residence. Now it seems as if the devil has returned to this windswept house to unleash his vengeance with reinforcements, so that “the last state of that man is worse than the first”. We would have to be blind not to see the effects of his activity all around us. The hubris of nominally Christian policymakers who have attempted to redefine the nature of marriage, the push for the legalisation of so-called euthanasia, indoctrination of the children in our schools in which disorder is supposedly normalised – all lead our society to ever greater depths of decay. We see its all too baleful consequences within the Church wherever those of us who are supposed to be ambassadors of the King of Kings go native and embrace the spirit of this world.
Archbishop Sheen would not leave us discouraged, however. Instead he declared in that same sermon in 1974: “These are great and glorious days to be alive. I thank God…that I can live in these days, because these are days of testing.” He continued: “Really it is beautiful. Now we can say “aye” or “nay”, and we can bear up under assault, criticism and ridicule, because this is the lot of the Christian in the days of the spirit of the world.” We have a clear choice: either we can drift downstream with the flotsam and into the abyss, or we can swim against the current and claim the crown of everlasting glory. The Provost does not possess the prophetic charism of the great Archbishop, but it is quite conceivable that where Christendom long waxed and lately waned another religion will gain dominance of economic, political and social life, and then we shall be tested further. And with testing comes purification.
Lent should be a bad time of year for the devil. It is a season during which we make war on the evil spirits through penance, fasting, prayer and almsgiving. It is the time of year more than any other when we heed the injunction of St Paul in his Epistle to the Ephesians: “Put you on the armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places” (Eph 6:11-12).
Let us thank God for the blessing of our Baptism, and stand unflinching in our Holy Faith. During these remaining days of Lent let us daily do battle with the world, the flesh and the devil, as we approach Calvary and the Resurrection under the protection and intercession of the Immaculate Mother of God, Who crushed the serpent’s head under Her heel.
Father Julian Large