Description
Much of what this winter issue of Calx Mariae covers seems rather grim, dark and distant from the joy of Christmas, soon to be heralded by the angels over the fields of Bethlehem. However, this reflects the birth of Our Lord at the darkest time of the year, allowing His light to shine all the brighter. Even the deepest darkness, therefore, is at the service of the light! Similarly, the spiritual darkness of our world today could deepen, until it becomes clear to everyone where our true hope lies. It is in a Newborn Child, cradled in a manger, in the stillness of night.
A brief examination of this past year (p. 3) reveals how quickly a world that has abandoned God descends into darkness. Many today have been seized by the temporal realities created by the Coronavirus crisis. So much so that increasingly ruthless attacks on human life on multiple fronts go virtually unnoticed, because our attention is firmly fixed on a potential apocalypse believed to be looming on the horizon. We could ask ourselves what will today’s soldiers find when they will return from the Covid battlefield? – home abortions, rampant euthanasia and more and more children robbed of their innocence by sex education and gender theory. It is more vital than ever, therefore, to maintain the priority of fighting for life – as ordered by God towards eternal happiness with Him in heaven – because the temptation is always to throw ourselves into a fight for life as ordered by men. There has been, as Fr Lanzetta reminds us (p. 27), a lack of supernatural wisdom in handling this situation.
We could also ask ourselves: if the battle against the Covid directives is won; that is, if all restrictions are lifted and vaccination policies scrapped; would this bring Christ’s people back to Him? Would it bring us to our knees at the manger? Would it fill our souls with humble adoration? Or can our current trials, like the epidemics of the past (p. 18), help us realise how inconstant this world is and that we can do nothing without that same Almighty God who will soon lie helpless in the arms of His Blessed Mother?
If, by the grace of God, our faith is strong and our hope alive, then they must still be united in true charity. This is what is required of us more than anything at this moment. St Louis de Montfort instructs us to implore Mary to lend us her heart, so that we may receive her Son with her dispositions:
“Tell her that, if she will take up her abode in you to receive her Son; which she can do because of the sovereignty that she has over all hearts; He will be received by her in a perfect manner, without danger of being affronted or forced to depart… Tell her… that Jesus, whose love for her is unique, still wishes to take His delight and repose in her; even in your soul; even though it is poorer and less clean than the stable, which He readily entered because she was there. Beg her to lend you her heart, saying, ‘O Mary, I take you for my all – give me your heart.’”
Calx Mariae (Heel of Mary) is Voice of the Family’s quarterly magazine promoting the culture of life, faith and the family.