St. Josemaría Escrivá: When Bishops and Priest Change the Supernatural Aims of the Church

By St. Josemaría Escrivá, Courageous Priest

I cannot say how often the prophetic words of the Apostle have been fulfilled, but you would have to be blind not to see how they are being carried out almost to the letter in our own time. People reject the doctrine contained in the law of God and of the Church. They twist the content of the beatitudes, translating them into a socio-political doctrine. They attack those who try to be humble, meek and pure of heart as ignorant or outdated partisans of things long ago consigned to the past. They refuse to bear the yoke of chastity and invent a thousand excuses to evade Christ’s divine precepts.

There is one symptom that sums up this whole situation: the attempt to change the supernatural aims of the Church. When they speak of justice, some people no longer understand by it a life of sanctity, but a particular political struggle, more or less influenced by Marxism, which is incompatible with the Christian faith. For them, liberation does not imply a personal battle to flee from sin, but merely a human task which may be noble and just in itself, but which is meaningless for a Christian, if it implies losing sight of the one thing necessary — the eternal salvation of souls, one by one.

With a blindness that comes from separating themselves from God — this people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me — some fabricate an image of the Church that has nothing to do with what Christ founded. Even the holy sacrament of the altar, the renewal of the sacrifice of Calvary, is profaned or reduced to a mere symbol of what they call the ‘communion of men with each other’. What would have become of souls if Our Lord had not sacrificed himself for us, to the last drop of his precious Blood? How can they despise this perpetual miracle of the real presence of Christ in the tabernacle? He has stayed with us so that we can talk to him and adore him. He has stayed with us as a foretaste of our future glory, so that we decide once and for all to follow in his footsteps.

These are times of trial, and we have to ask the Lord with an unceasing clamour to shorten them, to look mercifully on his Church and to grant once again his supernatural light to the souls of her shepherds and of all the faithful. The Church has no reason to try to pander to men, since they, individually or in community, cannot save themselves. The only one who saves is God.

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