Hostem Repellas Longius
Homily on Whitsunday
By His Grace Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò
We implore Thee! O forgiving
SPIRIT, now descend again,
Aid Thy own in holy living,
Aid, also, unknowing men;
Come and re-create; revive
Dead hearts doubting and in sins;
Vanquish and the vanquished give,
Divine reward, Thyself who wins.
Alessandro Manzoni, La Pentecoste, vv. 89-96
Popular devotion celebrates this solemn day with the name “Easter of Roses” [Pasqua delle rose], recalling the ancient custom of symbolizing the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles and on Mary Most Holy with a cascade of rose petals. It is so similar to Easter that on the Eve of Pentecost Holy Baptism was solemnly administered to those who had not been able to be regenerated during the Vigil of Holy Saturday. Just as the Jewish Passover was a prefigurement of the Christian Passover [Pasqua or Easter], so the Jewish Pentecost – in which the promulgation of the Ten Commandments was celebrated seven weeks after the flight from Egypt – was a prefigurement of the new Pentecost, this time extended to all peoples.
At Easter, the κόσμος bows to the Majesty of Christ the King and High Priest, per quem omnia facta sunt. On Pentecost, creation renders homage to the Creator Spirit, to the Creator Spiritus who in his power renews the face of the earth. At Easter, the Messianic promises of the Ancient Law are fulfilled. On Pentecost, the promises of the Messiah himself are realized in His Mystical Body, the Holy Church, the Mother of Saints – Madre de’ Santi – as Manzoni calls her in his famous sacred hymn for this feast.
The Apostles are locked in the Cenacle propter metum Judæorum (Jn 20:19): they had not yet received the Holy Spirit, and their human fears would disappear only ten days after the Ascension of the Lord, with the descent of the Holy Spirit. Today that same fearful inaction is repeated in reverse, with a Hierarchy that culpably ignores, culpably remains silent, and hides and nullifies the sanctifying work of the Paraclete even after His descent, and even after two thousand years of Christianity have demonstrated the Spirit’s divine power in winning souls to God and building up the Holy Church.
We must not underestimate the gravity of this act of hiding: it is deliberate, knowingly oriented to cause harm, because the mercenaries are aware that in order to demolish civil society and the Church it is necessary to prevent as much as possible the spread of Grace and its action through the Sacraments, which stop the right hand of God’s Justice by means of the Holy Mass. They want to ensure that the Sacrifice of Christ is nullified, so that by drying up the torrents of Grace, souls will be weakened and die of thirst as they cross the desert of a hostile world. Their fault – just as we saw with doctors during the pandemic farce – is not incompetence or inability: it is instead a desire to do evil, to serve the Enemy, to support the power of the New World Order in the vile and abject illusion of seeking a place in the court of the Antichrist. Miserable traitors, for whom the only reason for living is to consume themselves in this sordid libido serviendi.
This subversive work – because such it is in all respects, with regard to God, the Church, and souls – has as its aim the usurpation of the Lordship of Our Lord Jesus Christ, so that in His place the son of perdition, the Antichrist, may sit in the holy place, in a grotesque counterfeit of both civil and religious authority. We cannot believe that a Successor of the Apostles could deny and contradict the mandate received from Christ and instead serve His enemy, without understanding that by doing so he becomes complicit in the satanic plan of the Revolution. No, dear faithful: after decades of the systematic dissolution of the Church – and over two centuries of social dissolution – no Pastor in good faith can still think that the innovations introduced by Vatican II have nothing to do with the disastrous state in which the world finds itself. ecclesial body. For those who still defend the indefensible supposed “orthodoxy” of the Council and its liturgy, in the face of the massacre of souls of the last sixty years, the words of the great Bossuet are perfectly suited: Dieu se rit des hommes qui déplorent les effets dont ils chérissent les causes – God laughs at men who deplore the effects while approving the causes.
The hiding of the Church – that is, her eclipsing by the conciliar and synodal sect, her active cooperation in the synarchic project of Freemasonry – is the exact opposite of the vigilant trepidation of the Apostles, who, still spiritually disarmed, awaited the celestial weapons that would be given to them by their Lord, and they would then be ready to take up those arms and fight even at the cost of their lives, as subsequently happened.
Tristes erant Apostoli: the hearts of the Apostles were burdened by the recent Ascension of the Lord, and their anxious waiting for the Consoler Spirit relied on hope rather than any human certainty. Our Lady alone preserved – unshaken (and unshakeable) – the certainty of Faith, and She certainly consoled the Apostles as they waited by reminding them of the words of Her divine Son.
The hearts of the mercenaries are not fearful. Instead, they are driven mad with hostility towards the One who has already won the victory, serving and pleasing those who know they have already inescapably lost. And it is equally madness to believe that in the presence of such a scandalous and unprecedented betrayal on the part of the Hierarchy, that same Holy Spirit cannot deploy His Omnipotence in extraordinary ways, raising up prophets from the very stones.
This is the creative and regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete: to blow wherever He wills. And as Our Lord teaches Nicodemus, “where he wills” does not mean “wherever he feels like going” – it does not imply arbitrariness – but rather the union of the divine act with the divine will. And He wills to come down to sanctify and bless the Sacrifice of the Altar with His Grace: veni, et benedic hoc sacrificium tuo sancto nomini præparatum. He wills to descend on those who are reborn in the water of Baptism, on the milites Christi in Confirmation, on the Ministers of the Most High in Sacred Ordination, on spouses in Matrimony, on the sick and dying in Extreme Unction. He also breathes within the small communities that resist the spirit of the world: a lying spirit that does not come from God. He blows in those churches where the flame of Faith is preserved, and in the flourishing of traditional Vocations, both secular and religious.
In place of Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s “God of surprises,” the true Church and true Pastors contrast the semper idem of Divine Eternity. Because the newness of Christian Revelation is not an unattainable goal pursued by so-called progress, which is also subject to fashions and the passage of time; but rather an historical event that constitutes the discrimen – the distinction between before and after, between the old and the new, precisely; between darkness and light. It is a Revelation which is Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Eternal Word of the Father, and which the Paraclete seals with his Gifts, the Divine Love who proceeds from the Father and the Son; the same Spirit who has spoken through the Prophets and who continues to speak to us in the eternal words of Holy Church, the voice of Christ which the sheep recognize.
The world mocks and rejects the peace that only Our Lord can give. Pax Christi in Regno Christi: whoever wants to make Satan reign can neither understand nor desire the peace of Christ, intending instead Chaos Antichristi in Regno Antichristi. Peace comes only from Christ, and without Christ there can be no peace. There can be no peace in the world sunk into apostasy and the cult of Satan due to the betrayal of the corrupt civil authority that is subservient to power; there can be no peace in a Church whose Hierarchy is no less apostate, corrupted in both Morals and Faith and subservient to the same power.
But if in a world that daily crucifies its Lord there can be neither peace nor prosperity, there is however a small sanctuary in which this peace is possible, in which the Lord deigns to choose to make his dwelling, in which the Angels love to stop and rest: it is our soul. A precious sanctuary that, by God’s will, no one has the power to violate, not even demons and their servants who are intoxicated by the delirium of artificial intelligence. The state of the soul in the Grace of God makes it grow in holiness, and the more it confidently abandons itself to the will of the Lord, the more quickly this spiritual growth proceeds. That is the Cenacle in which we often take refuge, asking the Consoler to give us strength and support us in times of trial. And the family is a similar refuge – the “domestic church” – where the horrors of the corrupt world do not enter and which will be saved when the exterminating Angel passes over.
If the Most Holy Trinity dwells in our soul, we will not lack interior peace even in the most difficult moments, because we will know that it is precisely in those situations that the Lord comes to our aid like a Divine Cyrenian. We will not fail even when we have to answer, as if for a crime, for fully professing the Catholic Faith. When they bring you before the synagogues, the magistrates and the authorities, do not worry about how to exonerate yourself or what to say; because the Holy Spirit will teach you in that moment what you should say (Lk 12: 11-12). This is the meaning of the word Paraclete: the Advocate, Advisor and Defender of those under accusation, whom the devil – διάβολος, the accuser – slanders with his false arguments. This is why in the Veni Creator we ask the Paraclete: Hostem repellas longius – drive the enemy away. This is why we unite to that invocation the request for peace: pacemque dones protinus.
Let us therefore invoke, dear brothers and sisters, the Divine Consoler, dulcis hospes animæ, so that in the sanctuary of our heart, in our families and communities, Christ, the Prince of Peace, may reign; so that where the Son reigns, the Father and the Holy Spirit may also reign, restoring the Divine Order broken by sin. And so may it be.
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
19 May 2024
Dominica Pentecostes