{"id":36536,"date":"2019-04-19T11:44:28","date_gmt":"2019-04-19T17:44:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markmallett.com\/blog\/?p=36536"},"modified":"2019-04-20T09:49:34","modified_gmt":"2019-04-20T15:49:34","slug":"the-signs-of-our-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markmallett.com\/blog\/the-signs-of-our-times\/","title":{"rendered":"The Signs of Our Times","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Notre Dame on Fire, <\/em>Thomas Samson\/Agence France-Presse <\/span><\/p>\n

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IT\u00a0<\/strong>was the coldest day on our visit to Jerusalem last month. The breeze was merciless as the sun fought against the clouds for dominion. It was here on the Mount of Olives that Jesus wept over that ancient city. Our pilgrim group entered the chapel there, rising above the Garden of Gethsemane, to say Mass.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As soon as the Liturgy started (it was Three O’Clock), the unexpected sound of what seemed to be a\u00a0shofar\u00a0<\/em>resonated and continued to be blown intermittently. The shofar is a ram’s horn or trumpet blown in the Old Testament to herald both the\u00a0sunset\u00a0<\/em>and Day of Judgment (Rosh Hashanah). Unbeknownst to us, at the very same time<\/em> this was happening, my friend Kitty Cleveland and her pilgrim group from America were on the outside of the chapel. All of them were witnessing\u00a0the miracle of the sun<\/a>\u2014<\/em>its disc moving, dancing, glimmering, giving off shoots of light, all visible to the bare eye without harm or difficulty. Then, exactly as Mass ended, so too did this shofar sound, not to be heard again.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The next day, Kitty related her story to me, and realizing it was happening during our Mass, I asked if she had also heard the shofar, and she did. I thought she was going to tell me it was someone in her group because it was so close, almost as if someone were standing on the chapel blowing it. But she replied to my astonishment, “I don’t know where the sound came from either.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

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THE SIGNS OF OUR TIMES<\/p>\n

There were unmistakable prophecies and signs that foretold the coming of Jesus to earth the first time. Save for three\u00a0wise\u00a0<\/em>men from the East, everyone missed them. Now, two thousand years later, we live in a generation that has been immersed in countless signs. From the incorruptible bodies<\/a> of saints visible in glass coffins scattered throughout Europe, to Eucharist miracles<\/a>, to Marian apparitions<\/a>, to inexplicable healings “in the name of Jesus”, we are a generation\u00a0of SIGNS. And all of it, all of it, accessible through a search engine.<\/p>\n

And yet, somehow, unbelievably, we are missing the signs of the times again. In that place nestled in the mountains of Bosnia-Hercegovina where the Vatican now permits official pilgrimages<\/a>; that place that the Vatican’s Ruini Commission<\/a>, according to a leaked report<\/a>, has affirmed the supernatural origin of the first apparitions there… Our Lady of Medjugorje allegedly stated not too long ago:<\/p>\n

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My children, do you not recognize the signs of the times? Do you not speak of them?<\/strong><\/em>\u2014April 2nd, 2006, quoted in My Heart Will Triumph <\/em>by Mirjana Soldo, p. 299<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And again,<\/p>\n

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Only with total interior renunciation will you recognize God\u2019s love and the signs of the time in which you live. You will be witnesses of these signs and will begin to speak about them.<\/em><\/strong> \u2014March 18th, 2006, Ibid.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I think this is why Our Lady has appeared almost exclusively to children throughout the centuries: they are already predisposed to being little and humble\u2014not yet possessed by the spirit of rationalism<\/a> that has eroded the discernment of the “adults” of our time.<\/p>\n

\"\"Once again this week, another remarkable sign unfolded, or at least one could say, the symbolism of it all is unmistakable. Last week, both\u00a0Cardinal Robert Sarah<\/a> and Pope Benedict XVI<\/a> addressed the utter collapse of faith in the Western world that has fomented a spiritual crisis that is now worldwide. And then, just days later, the roof of the greatest symbol of Christianity outside of Rome collapsed, as a fire tore through Notre Dame’s beams. It reminds me of what I wrote a few weeks ago about “apostasy” in the hierarchy, the falling down\u00a0<\/em>of clerical stars (see When the Stars Fall<\/em><\/a>). Cardinal Sarah framed this apostasy precisely in the context of the Church’s own Passion:<\/p>\n

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Yes, there are unfaithful priests, bishops, and even cardinals who fail to observe chastity. But also, and this is also very grave, they fail to hold fast to doctrinal truth! They disorient the Christian faithful by their confusing and ambiguous language. They adulterate and falsify the Word of God, willing to twist and bend it to gain the world\u2019s approval. They are the Judas Iscariots of our time. <\/strong>\u2014Catholic Herald<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>April 5th, 2019<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And then another sign: a priest, Father Jean-Marc Fournier, had run into that burning cathedral and saved the relic of the Crown of Thorns. Notre Dame had long ago, at least for the majority of the people of France, become little more than a museum. Indeed, as churches close across the Western World and the remaining ones stay open, propped up by immigration, it is clear that the Church must now wear those Thorns herself. I am reminded of the words of John Paul II to a group of German pilgrims.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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We must be prepared to undergo great trials in the not-too-distant future; trials that will require us to give up even our lives, and a total gift of self to Christ and for Christ. Through your prayers and mine, it is possible to alleviate this tribulation, but it is no longer possible to avert it, because it is only in this way that the Church can be effectively renewed.<\/em> How many times, indeed, has the renewal of the Church been effected in blood? This time, again, it will not be otherwise.<\/strong> \u2014POPE ST. JOHN JOHN PAUL II, Fr. Regis Scanlon, cited in Flood and Fire, Homiletic & Pastoral Review<\/em>, April 1994<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"Yesterday, as I pondered these things… the burning Cathedral, the preservation of the Crown of Thorns, the coming Passion of the Church, etc. I decided not to write anything just yet. Then, but an hour later as I drove through the small town near where we live, I noticed smoke. Within minutes, I was running into the burning house of a neighbour, saving whatever we could before fire consumed its frame. Another startling exclamation point to this week’s events.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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SIGNS ABOUND<\/p>\n

Yes, for thirteen years now, I have been compelled to speak about the Passion of the Church. At first, it sounds like a gloomy subject. But it’s not. What’s coming is a resurrection of the Bride of Christ that will restore the primordial interior beauty once possessed in Eden. But before I conclude on that note, we must consider the “Good Friday” of the Church.<\/p>\n

One of the chief “signs of that times” is what I have been speaking of all week<\/a>: apostasy, a massive falling away from the faith, which we are witnessing in real time. The Catechism speaks of this:<\/p>\n

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…apostasy <\/em>is the total repudiation of the Christian faith… The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in the place of God and his Messiah who has come in the flesh. <\/strong>The Antichrist\u2019s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope that can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the \u201cintrinsically perverse\u201d political form of a secular messianism.<\/strong><\/span> \u2014Catechism of the Catholic Church, <\/em>n. 2089, 675-676<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Catholic speaker, author, professor, and dear friend, Michael D. O\u2019Brien, echoed what Cardinal Sarah and Benedict XVI highlighted this Lent:<\/p>\n

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Gazing about at the contemporary world, even our \u201cdemocratic\u201d world, could we not say that we are living in the midst of precisely this spirit of secular messianism? And is this spirit not manifested especially in its political form, which the Catechism calls in the strongest language, \u201cintrinsically perverse\u201d? How many people in our times now believe that the triumph of good over evil in the world will be achieved through social revolution or social evolution? How many have succumbed to the belief that man will save himself when sufficient knowledge and energy are applied to the human condition? I would suggest that this intrinsic perversity now dominates the entire Western world.<\/strong> \u2014talk at St. Patrick\u2019s basilica in Ottawa, Canada, September 20th, 2005; studiobrien.com<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026an abstract, negative religion is being made into a tyrannical standard that everyone must follow<\/strong>. \u2014POPE BENEDICT XVI, Light of the World, A Conversation with Peter Seewald<\/em>, p. 52<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"This week, I received a few comments from readers struggling with these warnings. They felt that I should be more focused on the positive.\u00a0“Look at the blessings and response of the people in France! Look at the shining cross and relics that were saved! Look at the damage that did\u00a0<\/em>not occur!” From a heritage viewpoint, I agree. Even from a\u00a0spiritual standpoint, it is a witness… but in the same vein as the “daughters of Jerusalem” who stood weeping as Jesus passed them by. The West has abandoned Jesus. Let us not pretend it is the Resurrection already! Those faithful singing Ave Maria<\/em> before Notre Dame’s plumes of smoke were a courageous and inspiring witness in contrast to those Catholics who, today, are ashamed of Jesus<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At the canonization of that great French saint, Joan of Arc, Pope St. Pius X observed:<\/p>\n

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In our time more than ever before the greatest asset of the evilly disposed is the cowardice and weakness of good men, and all the vigor of Satan\u2019s reign is due to the easygoing weakness of Catholics. O, if I might ask the divine redeemer, as the prophet Zachary did in spirit, \u2018What are these wounds in your hands?\u2019 the answer would not be doubtful. \u2018With these I was wounded in the house of those who loved me. I was wounded by my friends who did nothing to defend me and who, on every occasion, made themselves the accomplices of my adversaries.\u2019 This reproach can be leveled at the weak and timid Catholics of all countries.<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014Publication of the Decree of the Heroic Virtues of St. Joan of Arc<\/em>, etc., December 13th, 1908; vatican.va<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Thus Jesus said to those daughters of Jerusalem: “if these things are done when the wood is green what will happen when it is dry?”<\/em> [1]<\/sup><\/a>Luke 23:31<\/span><\/span>