Texts chosen from the writings and teachings of the Father Theodossios Maria of the Cross
Appeal
Since a long time now, many men - and among the best - have drawn attention from various standpoints to the universal deadlock towards which humanity is being increasingly pushed and driven. Such a deadlock concerns all domains: ordinary every-day life, philosophic thought, relations between beings, the nostalgic feelings and the deepest desires of individuals, as well as public action to solve material problems pertaining to social organization; the mode of thinking and executing works of art, and the mode of thinking and procedure in carrying out scientific research and applying techniques; it concerns as well, the way of seeking one's happiness, one's pleasures; it concerns the way in which man regards the profound reality of death both in relation to himself and to others.
From the midst of Christianity, the word of Saints has often announced painfully and peacefully this implacable evolution of the things of this world and the great trials of the Church of Christ.
There are two different orientations in the development of the city and of persons; two points which concentrate the impulses, the movements, and all manifestations of interior and exterior life, all motives of action and references, all combats, all weariness, all the thinking power, the will and the activity of man: on one side, the interminable search for solutions to material, personal and social problems; on the other, supernatural hope, the more or less conscious reference for all things to the reality beyond the phenomena of terrestrial time, beyond the visible or invisible sideral world; on one hand expectation in History, on the other hope in Eternity.
Between these two poles, the peoples of the world evolve and they are pulled from one side to the other; but these two poles mark the most fundamental divergency in the history of men.
Now, of all that man can find in the past and in himself, no virtue, no goodwill, no experience, no systematization of thought, nor any domination of the physical and psychological world can replace the true supernatural reference; no expectation can replace hope. No verified science can replace the impulse of spiritual freedom beyond time.
The Church was founded by Christ in view of this supernatural and eternal reality. Sometimes the divergency reached her from the exterior, sometimes it passed into her interior and those were times of doctrinal and moral trials; sometimes the divergency has succeeded in penetrating more profoundly into the Holy Body of the Church and the suffering of the Saints was greater.
But always the Church of Christ has preserved and will preserve to the end, despite all tribulations and all falterings, the integrity of her essence, of her message, of her reference. Because her reference is Christ Himself, who came from eternity and who has returned to eternity, awaiting the end of time. He has thus opened the only door to man, to that reality which is called the Kingdom.
This is why we have already written elsewhere: The Church is always undergoing trials. This assembly of those who have heard and accepted God's call and who are steadily advancing towards sanctity, through grace, through participation to the Cross of Christ, through the Mysteries of the Church, this assembly, the mild and gentle Church who delivers from Babel, who has re-established the unique language of the Cross, this new generation in Creation, this descendance from the Virgin, Jesus Christ's great Church, has undergone since the beginning the assault of direct persecution and of heresy.
The spirit of darkness wishes to divide at all costs, and wishes to conceal the interior vision of eternity. Everything is utilized to bring about division and to stimulate pride and self-conceit: race, national history, difference in skies and climates, the faults of ancestors, the Saints themselves; everything is resorted to, to prevent the liberation of man from external logic and his blossoming forth in humility taught by our gentle Lord Jesus, and achieved in all the Church through the unending lineage of Saints.
All phenomena, all political, social, international evolutions and all spiritual life on earth, depend and will always depend upon the positive, deep-rooted resistance in the great assembly of Christians, to division and falsification of evangelical truth in the name of the truth of History.
Therefore the first point of our appeal addressed to each one of us, and to all men, is that we should endeavour - in the midst of the fascination exercised by technical mirages, social and universal disturbances and the extreme deformations of the sacred order and even of the natural order in all domains - to preserve and develop the supernatural reference, the hope in the Kingdom, and to live with the desire and in the spirit of a deep-rooted union in the Heart of Christ.
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It is necessary for every Christian to understand that one of the most difficult things for the Church of Christ has always been that of defining her doctrinal position of participation in the affairs of the city, in relation to the various situations and events in the course of centuries. Often it is believed that this is due to a deficiency, or a lack of clear vision and enlightenment.
Deficiencies and lack of clear vision belong to the general order of human frailty. The Church, in the measure in which she is a human society, knows such frailties.
Nevertheless the Church is faced with another`and far more fundamental difficulty. This is, that the Gospel has brought the consoling message that one should not expect to attain on earth perfect and definite solutions to one's problems of life and happiness. The Gospel established the relativeness of history and the immutability of the life and order of the eternal world.
And as Christ, who came on earth, ate, drank and suffered to free man from the inconstancy of the world of phenomena, so the Church follows and listens with charity to all weaknesses and to the desires and inconstancies of man, in order that he may learn and peacefully accept the law of salvation which is sacrifice.
This message of the Gospel, this relativeness of the terrestrial world, the Word's consenting to become flesh in order to withdraw man from the world of corruption and make him enter into the eternity of life and peace, is constantly present to the discernment of the Supreme Magisterium of the Church. While spiritual man hungers for the Kingdom while still here on earth, the Church with infinite patience continues to carry on the millenary dialogue with the worldly man, «that all may be saved ».
And, in her love, as she condemned the heresies which attainted the divinity of Christ, she equally condemned austere and pious personages because they evinced impatient tendencies which thwarted the work of the Church in the world.
This verity of the Church lays upon her one of her heaviest crosses: that of having children in all countries, in all regions, who have many terrestrial hopes and desires; and such desires and hopes, of nations, of race, class, state and family are contradictory; thus in every century intricate situations are interwoven which form a crown of thorns for the Supreme Authority of the Church, of whom her children constantly demand, even as the two Israelites demanded of our Lord, that she should divide their lands among them.
Only true charity and comprehension on the part of every baptized person and on the part of each pastor, and their increasingly perfect conversion in the interior sense of the evangelical message towards the supernatural justice of sacrifice and the sweet perfect obedience, grants the possibility to the Church of Christ to carry out a genuine action for the welfare of souls and all possible good for the terrestrial city.
The Prince of this world who stirs up nations and peoples, has a great desire to see currents of protest and division arise in the midst of Christianity, capable of drawing it into the strife of the world according to concepts of the world.
The second point of our appeal is that we should endeavour to solve each time, in as far as God permits, all material and social problems according to charity and the immutable laws of sacrifice. At the same time, our criteria should in all cases and at all times be based on the evangelical truth that the coming of Christ, His teaching, His Passion and Resurrection, and the founding of His Church, signify the end of the mirage of perfect terrestrial solutions. One must be penetrated by such principles. One must not deprive the lives of Christians of this great and consoling truth, by replacing it with the delusion of the infinite improvements of the temporary city. Such a delusion harbours in its depths an element of spiritual death; while the truth of the evangelical message taught us by St. Paul, that we do not possess here below a permanent city, bestows upon earthly life the unequalled flavour of the first-fruits of eternity.
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Now, these two efforts, namely the effort to keep to supernatural reference concerning all things, and the effort to solve each time all practical and material questions trusting in supernatural justice, in the spirit of the Cross and therefore according to charity and the immovable laws of sacrifice; these two points of our appeal constitute the basis of a general mode of behaviour when confronted by the multitude of currents which today upset the life of nations, of religious communities of all kinds, and the whole of Christianity.
It is with great humility that one should think and say such things, because eternal justice belongs to God, and the power of the currents which sway the City is immense and it focusses both attention and hearts on the exterior and historical aspects of events. But one should think of them and one should speak of them. One must transmit to each other from one point to the other of the Earth, and in as far as God allows, clear messages which God causes to pass through the heart of man, messages of holy resistance against the ideological avalanche which threatens to ruin all our supernatural points of reference and hope.
Our Appeal is therefore this communication in all directions of the deep and joyous certitude we harbour in our hearts: that Christ has founded His Church on earth, with her sacraments, not to perpetuate the terrestrial city of our History, but in view of a supernatural end, namely the Eternal Celestial City, which He himself named the Kingdom.
Near or far, through written or oral interchanges, or without any particular form of interchange, he who welcomes this Appeal in his heart with sweetness and benevolence, walks in the same direction; and with the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Saints, he will be united to millions of other souls in the same trials and in the same hope.
Because through this appeal we only ask, in the midst of new lexicons and social, technical and intellectual mirages, which harden the heart and deprive youth of all its nobility and of all pure nostalgia, we only ask to spread holy perseverance, and the desire of faithfulness and unity to the end in Christ's most Sacred Heart.
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