Children Of The Kingdom

We have a tendency to treat Holy Scripture like any other book.  We read the Gospel as though it was just someone telling us a story.  A true story, to be sure, but merely the retelling of events that happened in the past and which are supposed to have some kind of lesson for us.  The moral of the story is such and such, and that’s all we take away from these Gospel stories.  Now don’t get me wrong—I’m not belittling the value of these lessons.  On the contrary, if we’re aware of the meaning behind what Christ is teaching us by his miracles and his parables, we’re already on the right path.  We’re ready to put into practice the salvific works of mercy he teaches, the great moral virtues, the deep insights into the spiritual life he provides.  But there’s something else that often goes unnoticed and neglected.

Let me give you a parallel situation with the Old Testament.  The chosen people of God read their scriptures, they knew all the stories of Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Moses and the rest.  The high priests and devout practitioners of Judaism knew every single detail of these texts.  They could quote perfectly from every book of the Old Testament, preach eloquently on the lessons to be learned from every patriarch and prophet.  And yet they missed what was probably the most important element of these sacred books.  The whole purpose of the Old Testament was to provide the Jews with what they needed so they could recognize the Messiah when he came.  And for all the depth of knowledge and wisdom possessed by the likes of Annas and Caiaphas, when the time was fulfilled and the divine Saviour walked amongst them, they failed, utterly and catastrophically, to recognize that all the law and the prophets was finally fulfilled in this one Man.  Instead of being filled with joy, like the old man Simeon in the temple, their reaction was one of contempt and then of hatred, as they sought to kill the Son of God.

And so, for two thousand years, many Christians have looked down on the Jewish race for having “crucified Christ”.  From our vantage point of the true faith of the New and Everlasting Testament, we have found the Jews guilty for having failed in their ultimate mission to be the recipients of salvation and promoters of the true faith of Christ.  How smug we are!  Do we not recognize, in the failure of the Jewish people to accept the Messiah of their Scriptures, our own identical lack of awareness of our own New Testament?  Do we not fail to see that, just as the whole of the Old Testament pointed towards the coming of the Saviour, the New Testament also, in so many ways, points to his Second Coming and the End Times that precede it.  There are so many parallels between the prophecies of the Old and the New Testaments that we could spend a lifetime studying and trying to interpret them and predict the events of the future they foreshadow.  For now, let’s take a look at just today’s Gospel and see if we might extract from its storytelling and lesson-giving an idea of what is now going on in the world.

Let’s examine more closely that story of the Roman Centurion who beseeches our Lord to cure his servant who is gravely ill with the palsy.  He is a man who recognizes the limits of his own authority.  While he might order his soldiers around as he pleases, saying to the man, Go and he goeth, and to another, Come and he cometh.  But he cannot command his servant to be healed.  For this he has to turn to God and humbly beg for help.  And when Jesus saw this, he marvelled and said to them, Verily I say unto you , I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. This is nothing more than a sideways reprimand of the Jews, who know the faith and yet do not have the faith.

Where does our Lord find the faith?  In the Roman centurion.  While Israel has lost the faith, we may now find it in a Roman.  What does this foretell, if not the transfer of the Covenant from Jerusalem to Rome?  The replacement of the Chosen People of Israel by the Chosen People of the Roman Catholic Church?

And if Christ did return to Rome today, would he find the faith?  Or would he now reprimand the people of Rome and in particular their church leaders for having lost that faith.  They who had been given the keys of the kingdom to safeguard that faith and transmit it to their descendants—what have they done instead, these children of the kingdom?  “And I say unto you,” Christ wastes no time in telling us, “that the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of Steeth.”

So think of today’s Gospel as a prophecy.  The faith of Christ has been betrayed by the leaders of his Church on earth.  They will be punished.

In our Lord’s day, there were two men in particular who betrayed him.  One was of course Judas.  The other was St. Peter who denied him no less than three times and then went on to bitterly regret his lack of loyalty.  He was truly sorry for his actions, ready to repent and give up his own life for Christ, while Judas gave in to despair and took his own life.  We are in control of our own lives to some extent, and our free will is always there to govern our choices.

Take a look now at two men in our own lifetime who reflect all too well the choices made by Judas and St. Peter.  Mirroring the traitor Judas is the modern-day equivalent, the apparent pope of Rome, Jorge Bergoglio.  He has devoted his whole adult life to destroying the Catholic Church, handing it over, with the treacherous kiss of pretended piety, to the Devil.  And then there’s Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò.  He too spent much of his life as a prelate within the Conciliar Church of Bergoglio and his predecessors, loyal to the false popes and the religion of Vatican II.  But when he realized what he had done, he did not fall into the despair of Judas, but rather followed int the footsteps of the first Pope and Prince of the Apostles, apologizing to the world for having misled us with the fruits of Vatican II.  He now roundly condemns that Council and the false parallel Church of Vatican II and has devoted his life to the restoration of the true Church.  So while the new Judas Bergoglio might seem to thrive as the successor of Peter, it is actually this humble Archbishop who works for the advancement of the true Church in the face of mockery and persecution and has a far greater claim to being a successor of Peter.  He, and not Francis, recognizes the true faith, recognizes that Christ, and not Satan, is the Son of the living God.  And perhaps we can say that it is to Archbishop Viganò that Christ turns today as the rock upon which he will rebuild his Church.

Whatever God has in mind, it is our duty to support by whatever means possible the true leaders of the Catholic Church.  Not those who, ever so cautiously tiptoe away from condemning Francis, but manage to “respectfully criticize” the errors of the “Holy Father.”  No.  These are the ones our Lord identifies as neither hot nor cold, those whom he will vomit out of his mouth.  It’s not worth the efforting supporting their lukewarm and pathetic attempts to hold back the ferocious assaults of Satan.  Let’s rather pray that they might recognize the full truth of the situation we are in, so they can join the fight.  Let the truth ring out finally to the ears of all who are of good will.  Francis is an agent of the devil.  Shout it out from the rooftops.  It is a liberating truth, like that told to the shepherds by the angels.  It is the truth that Christ is king, that all glory belongs to him in the highest, and that we must march with his captains into the final battle with Satan.  “Go thy way;” says our Lord; “and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee.”