The Cross Conquers the World

Back in July, Pope Leo sent a warm and gracious message to the Life Teen organization. A priest-friend of the pope is on the leadership team at Life Teen. Have you ever heard of Life Teen? Its Wikipedia page states:

Life Teen holds youth-focused masses, which it says are the most important part of its program. Particular efforts are made to create a welcoming atmosphere, reverent and relevant music, and an engaging homily that speaks to the issues in teens’ lives.

I went to a Life Teen Mass once, over 25 years ago, when I was still a layman. I had been traveling on a Sunday and made it to my mother’s. She said there was a 5 p.m. Mass in town but added, “It’s a Life Teen Mass.” I said, “What does that mean?” And she said, “Well, it’s for the youth.” And so, duly warned, I went. 

Before Mass started, an upper-middle-age man and wife, sporting bright colored T-shirts that said “Life Teen,” walked around the half-empty nave. They asked how everyone was doing, if anyone was visiting from out of town, and if it was anyone’s birthday. A young child slowly raised his hand, and all were instructed to sing “Happy Birthday” to him.  

The Mass, offered by an upper-middle-age priest, began not with “In the name of the Father…” but with “Good Afternoon!” During the Gloria and Alleluia, someone played the drums while a teenage girl prompted the small crowd to make various bodily motions with their arms in some sort of half-cocked dance routine.  

At Communion time, the priest processed to the front of the sanctuary to distribute Holy Communion, but he was empty-handed. Standing on his left and his right were two teenage girls wearing very short shorts. They were both holding ciboria, the sacred vessels which hold the Most Holy Eucharist. 

As people processed up the aisle, two by two, the priest would take a Communion host from the girls’ ciboria. The communicants were instructed to hold out their left hand and the priest then reached out and held their hand below their wrist. He looked them in the eye while holding their hand and said, “The Body of Christ.” 

While watching all this as I processed up, I said to myself, “I’m not going to hold hands with this man.” And so, as I approached, I put my arms behind my back and stuck out my tongue. Visibly shocked, the priest placed the host on my tongue.  

Of course, the rules for Mass did and do not call for the priest to be holding hands or otherwise touching anyone during the Communion Rite. Last Sunday, I mentioned the liturgical abuse of non-communicants processing up at Communion time to get a blessing, which causes confusion and sacrilege. At weddings and funerals, fallen-away Catholics process up; and if they do not commit sacrilege by receiving Holy Communion, they get a blessing, which means absolutely nothing because they have no intention of reconciling with the Church.  

Parents have been conditioned to have their very young children be blessed at Communion. This is a distraction for all involved. For when those parents should be focused like a laser beam on what is taking place—that God Himself is being placed on their tongue—they find themselves busy looking at their children, making sure they get a blessing. 

And priests, not wishing to offend anyone, give blessings. In the past, it was considered gravely sinful for a priest to break the rules at Mass. Not so much today, as Mass has become more focused on us instead of the One person who can save us from ourselves; the One person who can save us from Hell.  

That One person died, tortured to death for our sins. And so, Holy Communion only comes to us through a death. Any food we eat has to die first before we can eat it. The wheat gets ripped off the stalk, ground up, and put in the fire before becoming bread. The grape gets smashed in the press. And the lamb gets its throat slashed, bled out, and then roasted before we can have communion with it. 

Oh, by the way, Life Teen was invented in Arizona in 1985 by a priest who claimed the Church needed a new way to evangelize youth. After being appointed to the important post of Vicar General of his diocese, he was arrested for sexually abusing teenage boys. Later, he was excommunicated by opening a Protestant non-denominational worship center in Phoenix. Sources claim it was this man who invented or greatly popularized the idea of people processing up and getting blessings at Communion time. 

Recently, in Rome, with the apparent blessing of the Vatican, sexually-confused men processed into St. Peter’s Basilica carrying a wooden cross painted in the colors of the rainbow. The men wore T-shirts which featured Michaelangelo’s huge dome of St. Peter’s Basilica draped in the colors of the rainbow. Now, do you think the rainbow attire sent a message of love and inclusiveness and tolerance? Or were those colors and the defaced cross a statement that said, “We’ve conquered this place”?  

In 614, the Persians conquered the Holy Land, which for almost 300 years had been what it was supposed to be—Christian. When the Persians broke through the walls of Jerusalem, they killed tens of thousands and destroyed some 300 churches. They took 35,000 prisoners, along with Jerusalem’s treasures, including the relic of the True Cross. Then the Persians gave Jerusalem to the Jews, who had given the Persian invaders significant help in overtaking the Holy City (see Warren H. Carroll’s The Building of Christendom, Ch.8). 

Fifteen years later, a Christian army, led by the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius, reconquered the Holy Land and recaptured the Church’s treasures from the Persians. On September 14, 629, the emperor placed the True Cross back in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. 

It’s interesting about the Persians and the Jews joining forces all those centuries ago against Christians. It’s interesting because it shows some things don’t really change. The recently-assassinated Charlie Kirk had noted how Marxism and Islam have joined forces in modern day to conquer Christianity. Abortion, atheism, and sexual deviancy have been coupled with mass migration of military-age male Muslims in an effort to overtake what was once Christendom. 

Charlie Kirk said the American way of life was a Christian way, which meant not having to live anywhere where the Muslim call to prayer was heard five times a day over loudspeakers. I have been to the Middle East three times and have heard the Muslim call to prayer. It does not sound like tolerance, welcome, and peaceful co-existence to me. To me it sounds more like “We’ve conquered the place.” 

Charlie Kirk had the courage to venture into our Marxist-controlled universities and tell them the truth. They couldn’t debate him, so they killed him. And many people are now celebrating his death in ghoulish and satanic fashion. 

The leaders in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago couldn’t debate Christ, so they killed Him. But here’s the thing: The truth cannot be killed. Therein lies our hope. And so, we Christians wear an emblem of torture and violent death around our necks and hang it on our walls. The emblem is the cross, representative of the most hideous, barbaric form of execution there ever was—crucifixion—invented by the Persians and perfected by the Romans. 

St. Paul said we boast in the Cross. Why? Because it’s the weapon we use to kill people? Do we tell people to submit to Christ and then hang them on a cross if they refuse? No. We don’t hang people on crosses. Instead, we hang on crosses, by dying to ourselves and the world. We follow St. Paul’s urging to make our bodies living sacrifices; to become obedient to death, even death on a cross.  

Becoming obedient to death, however, does not make us cowards. Fortitude (courage) is a cardinal virtue. And we are called to be virtuous, which includes being courageous. A writer wrote the other day that, in Romans, Paul taught that rulers were God’s ministers and therefore were to punish evil doers and protect the good (13:4). Citing Thomas Aquinas, he wrote that the common good requires rulers to suppress injustice and preserve order. He quoted Pope Leo XIII, who died in 1903, who warned that when authority neglects its divinely ordained duty, bloodshed follows. 

Christ told us to be merciful as our Father is merciful. And so we are. He told us to love our enemies. But as I’ve instructed before, loving our enemies does not mean pretending they are our friends. And note that Christ never said “Blessed are the pacifists.” Rather, He said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”  

My friends, we are not Quakers. When our homes, families, or churches are attacked, we have a duty to defend those things. It is not mercy to stand by and watch good things be destroyed, it is cowardice. A Christian puts a stop to mindless evil destruction. Then he forgives. For he desires that all men, friend and foe alike, attain eternal life.

Christ told us to conquer the world by baptizing it. Christ did so first, conquering Satan with the same weapon Satan used to trap our first parents—a tree. So, we glory in that tree. We glory in the Cross of Jesus Christ. We glory in the sweet wood and the sweet nails that deliver us and set us free.