{"id":24226,"date":"2016-06-02T19:19:13","date_gmt":"2016-06-03T01:19:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markmallett.com\/blog\/?p=24226"},"modified":"2019-06-27T00:50:32","modified_gmt":"2019-06-27T06:50:32","slug":"the-last-trumpet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markmallett.com\/blog\/the-last-trumpet\/","title":{"rendered":"The Last Trumpet","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"

\"trumpetThe Last Trumpet, <\/i>photo by Joel Bornzin<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/b>I<\/b> have been shaken today, literally, by the voice of the Lord speaking in the depths of my soul; shaken by His inexpressible grief; shaken by the deep concern He has for those in the Church <\/i>who have utterly fallen asleep.<\/p>\n

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For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they did not know until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of man. (Matt 24:38-39)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I am stunned at the shocking truth of those words. For truly, we are living as in the days of Noah. <\/i>We have lost our capacity to hear His voice, to listen to the Good Shepherd, to understand the \u201csigns of the times.\u201d I have no doubt that many people scrolled to the bottom of my recent writing, Is Jesus Really Coming?<\/a>,<\/i> to see how long it was, and then said, \u201cToo long\u201d, \u201cI don\u2019t have time\u201d, \u201cNot interested.\u201d How could any Christian not <\/i>be interested in this question? Moreover, we are given an authoritative<\/i> answer from the Church and Our Lady as to the nearness of the coming of the Lord. <\/i>And yet many of these same souls easily spend hours cruising their Facebook wall or wandering the mindless debris of the world-wide web. We are a Church that has been dulled by comfort and pleasure, numbed by the constant drone of the spirit of the world, so much so, that we cannot hear the rumble of heavenly\u00a0hooves.<\/p>\n

For we have lost our way. Many\u00a0Catholics have been discomfited\u00a0by Pope Francis\u2019 blunt and bold assertion that we have lost the joy of the Gospel; that clergy are acting like CEO\u2019s running a corporation; and that many have lost the spirit<\/em> of the Gospel, which is to reach the wounded with the mercy of Christ, not “obsess” with doctrine. The words of Ezekiel read like an indictment over this generation’s hardened hearts:<\/p>\n

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The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the crippled you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and they became food for all the wild beasts. (Ezekiel 34:4-5)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Sure, some clergy have begun to stir and write letters to the government protesting transgender bathrooms or same-sex marriage. But it\u2019s too late.<\/i> We needed to preach the Gospel of Life back in 1968 when Humanae Vitae<\/i><\/a> rejected the culture of death. We needed “to commit all of the Church’s energies to a new evangelization\u201d back in 1990, as John Paul II begged us to, [1]<\/sup><\/a>Redemptoris Missio<\/a>, <\/i>n. 3<\/span><\/span>