Fiat Voluntas Tua

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Pater Noster, qui es in caelis: sanctificetur nomen tuum: adveniat regnun tuum: fiat voluntas tua sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie: et dimmite nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentantionem. Sed libera nos a malo. Amen.

Fiat voluntas tua sicut in caelo et in terra. Each time we pray the Pater Noster we pray that God's Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. We are thus instructed by God Himself to accept His Holy Will with equanimity. A serene acceptance of God's Holy Will means that we must have a sense of detachment from the things, people and places of this passing world, being ready to lose everything as we remain attached solely to God as He has revealed Himself through His true Church. A sense of detachment from the things of this passing life must be cultivated over the course of a lifetime. Our Lord really did mean it when He said that He comes like a thief in the night. We must count only one thing as a genuine, eternal loss: to die in a state of final impenitence.

That is, as devastating as the material and personal losses being experienced by the people who have been made refugees as a result of Hurricane Katrina, these losses, although terrible and catastrophic to those who are experiencing them, pale into insignificance when one considers the loss of just one soul for all eternity. It is quite sadly the case that souls are being lost in the modern world, including the United States of America, because of the anti-Incarnational errors upon which it is founded, resulting in the cultural embrace of religious indifferentism, cultural pluralism, moral relativism, legal and political positivism, and the amorality of contemporary economics. The loss of thousands of people as a result of a devastating hurricane is a reminder from God Himself that millions of living human beings are lost in a sea of diabolical machinations that are the direct and inevitable result of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King and the triumph of the demonic spirit of the deification of man and his disordered, perverted sense of narcissistic self-love.

God will not be mocked. Our Lady herself has said that she could not stay the hand of her Divine Son forever. She told Sister Lucia that two-thirds of the world's nations would be annihilated if the consecration of Russia to her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart was not done properly by a pope in concert with all of the world's bishops. In the midst of a world where innocent babies are killed every day, both chemically and surgically, under cover of law, and in the midst of a world where the other three sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance are promoted in every aspect of our culture and protected by the misuse and misapplication of civil law, is it any wonder that an area that specializes in the promotion of vice, both natural and perverse, and greed and sins against the First Commandment (all manner of fortune tellers plied their evil trade right in front of Saint Louis Cathedral in New Orleans) has been subjected to a devastation of near-Biblical proportions?

Mind you, noting these facts is in no way to minimize the suffering of those who have been displaced and who have lost relatives and friends. We must pray for the living and for the dead. We must pray for the success of the relief and rescue efforts that have been underway for several days. We must pray that those who have been displaced will be provided with food, clothing and shelter as they seek to rebuild the physical aspect of their lives. It is not possible for a believing Catholic, however, to refuse to see the hand of God's wrath in all of this, especially when one considers that the entire nation is already suffering economic consequences from Hurricane Katrina. A nation that plays God with the innocent preborn and the elderly and the disabled cannot be expected to survive with impunity over the course of the long term, ladies and gentlemen. Sooner or later, as I wrote four years ago in the aftermath of the September 11 events, all empires collapse. The American empire of religious indifferentism and crass commercialism and rampant individualism cannot survive. It will either come under the sweet yoke of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen or it will perish, either from the natural catastrophes visited upon it by God Himself or from those natural disasters and the wiles of foreign invaders who have no more regard for the sanctity of our lives than we have for the Sovereignty of Christ the King as He has revealed Himself through His true Church.

Each of us must be prepared for the moment our Particular Judgments. Death can come to us at any time and in any manner. Indeed, Saint Alphonsus De Liguori wrote in his Preparation for Death that God uses catastrophes (such a hurricanes and wars and invasions) and the physical illnesses that afflict our bodies to remind us of the imminence of death and how to prepare for it. Consider the words of the Doctor of Moral Theologians as it pertains to the total acceptance of the will of God in the midst of tragedies and disasters:

He who is united with the divine will, enjoys, even in this life, a perpetual peace. Whatsoever shall befall the just man, it shall not make him sad. Yes, for a man cannot enjoy greater happiness than that which arises from the accomplishment of all his wishes. He who wills only what God wills, possesses all he desires; for whatever happens to him, happens by the will of God. If, says Salvian, the soul that is resigned to be humbled, it desires humiliations; if it is poor, it delights in poverty; in a word, it wishes whatever happens, and thus leads a happy life. Let cold, heat, wind, or rain come, and he that is united with the will of God says: I wish for this cold, this heat, this wind, and this rain, because God wills them. If loss of property, persecution, or sickness befall him, he says: I wish to be miserable, to be persecuted, to be sick, because such is the will of God. He who reposes in the divine will, and is resigned to whatever the Lord does, is like a man who stands above the tempest raging below. This is the peace which, according to the Apostle, surpasseth all understanding, which exceeds all the delights of the world; a perpetual peace, subject to no vicissitudes. A fool is changed like the moon. . . . A holy man continueth in wisdom like the sun. . . . . When the will is united with the will of God, crosses may produce some pain in the inferior part, but in the superior part peace shall always reign.

Accepting the will of God means understanding the shortness and the frailty of our mortal lives in this vale of tears:

What is your life? It is like a vapor, which is dissipated by a blast of wind, and is seen no more. All know that they must die, but the delusion of many is, that they imagine death as far off as if it were never to arrive. But Job tells us that the life of man is short. Man born of a woman, living for a short time. . . . who cometh forth like a flower, and is destroyed. This truth the Lord commanded Isaias to preach to the people. Cry. . . . All flesh is grass. . . . Indeed, the people is grass. The grass is withered, and the flower is fallen. The life of man is like the life of a blade of grass.; death comes, the grass dried up: behold life ends, and the flower of all greatness and of all worldly goods falls off.

My days, says Job, have been swifter than a post. death runs to meet us more swiftly than a post, and we at every moment run towards death. Every step, every breath, brings us nearer to the end. "What I write," says Jerome, "is so much taken away from life." "During the time I write, I draw near to death." We all die, and like the waters that return no more, we fall into the earth. Behold how the stream flows to the sea, and the passing waters never return! Thus, my brother, your days pass by, and you approach death. Pleasures, amusements, pomps, praises, and acclamations pass away; and what remains? And only the grave remaineth for me. We shall be throw into a grave, and there we shall remain to rot, stripped of all things. At the hour of death the remembrance of the delights enjoyed, and of all the honors acquired in this life, will serve only to increase our pain. and our diffidence of obtaining eternal salvation. then the miserable worldling will say: "My house, my gardens, my fashionable furniture, my pleasures, my garments, will in a little time be no longer mine, and 'only the grave remaineth for me.'"

Ah! at that hour all earthly goods are viewed only with pain by those who have had an attachment for them. And this pain will serve only to increase the danger of their eternal salvation; for we see by experience, that persons attached to the world wish at death to speak only of their sickness, of the physicians to be called to attend the, and of the remedies which may restore their health. When any one speaks of the state of the soul, they soon grow weary, and beg to be allowed to repose. They complain of headache, and say that it pains them to hear any one speak. And if they sometimes answer, they are confused, and know not what to say. It often happens that the confessor gives them absolution, not because he knows that they are disposed for the sacrament, but because it is dangerous to defer it. Such is the death of those who think but little of death.

Everyone in this country should take heed of the fact that calamities are a sign of our own morality and of our utter dependence upon God as He has revealed Himself solely through the Catholic Church and upon the supernatural helps that are available to souls only through that same Church. Again, to Saint Alphonsus's Preparation for Death:

The Lord does not wish us to be lost; and therefore, by the threat of chastisement, he unceasingly exhorts us to a change of life. Except you will be converted, He will brandish His sword. Behold, he says in another place, how many, because they would not cease to offend me, have met with a sudden death, when they were least expecting it, and were living in peace, secure of a life of many years. For whey they shall say: Peace and security: then shall sudden destruction come upon them. Again he says: Unless you shall do penance, you shall likewise perish. Why so many threats of chastisements before the execution of vengeance? It is because he wishes that we amend our lives, and thus avoid an unhappy death. "He," says Saint Augustine, "who tells you to beware, does not wish to take away your life." It is necessary, then, to prepare our accounts before the day of account arrives. Dearly beloved Christians, were you to die, and were your lot for eternity to be decided before night would your accounts be ready? Oh! how much would you give to obtain from God another year or month, or even another day, to prepare for judgment? Why then do yo not now, that God gives you this time, settle the accounts of your conscience? Perhaps is cannot happen that this shall be the last day for you? Delay not to be converted to the Lord, and defer it not from day to day; for His wrath shall come on a sudden, and in a the time of vengeance He will destroy thee. My brother, to save your soul you must give up your sin. "If then you must renounce it at some time, why do you not abandon it at this moment?" says Saint Augustine. Perhaps you are waiting till death arrives? But for obstinate sinners, the hour of death is the time, not of pardon, but of vengeance. In the time of vengeance He will destroy thee.

The time for this nation to render an account of its exaltation of "civil liberty," practiced in an ethos of Protestant-Masonic religious indifferentism, appears to be at hand. All the more reason for each one of us to be assiduous about going to Confession once a week (and making a general confession of our sins when we are approaching surgery or have been told that we have but a short time to live) and of living penitentially, which means embracing a life of Holy Poverty of detachment from the things of this passing world.

As always, our trust must be placed totally in Our Lady. Saint Alphonsus wrote in Preparation for Death of the confidence we must place in Mary, the Mother of God:

Oh! how great will be our thankfulness for the mercy of God, for having given us for our advocate, Mary, who, by her prayers, can obtain for us all the graces we stand in need of. "Truly wonderful," exclaims St. Bonaventure, "is the bound of our God, who has given thee, O Lady, to his guilty subjects as their advocate, so that thou art able to obtain for them by thy assistance whatever thou wilt." Sinners, brethren, if we find ourselves debtors to the divine justice, and commended to hell by our sins, let us not despair; let us have recourse to this divine mother; let us put ourselves under her protection, and she will save us. But we must have a sincere purpose of amending our lives. If we have such a purpose, and place confidence in Mary, we shall be saved. And why? Because Mary is a powerful advocate, a merciful advocate, an advocate that desires to save all."

Our hope must then be in Mary. It is to Our Lady that we commend the particular needs of those who have been rendered refugees by Hurricane Katrina. And it is to Our Lady that we commend the need of this nation to be converted in every aspect of its national life to the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation. We trust in Our Lady to help us to save our own souls, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. We must trust in Our Lady to save our nation from the course of the destruction upon which it was set by men who believed in their ability to create a social order absent a total subordination of individual and social lives to Christ the King and to her, our Immaculate Queen. And we must beseech Our Lady, as noted above, that the Vicar of her Divine Son, Pope Benedict XVI, will consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart with all of the world's bishops.

In the meantime, though, each of us must be prepared for the moment of our own deaths, recognizing that we live at a time in salvation history when the forces unleashed by the social toleration and promotion of sin are exacting a heavy toll on us all and might take us from this mortal life when we least expect it.

With prayers for the victims, both living and dead, of Hurricane Katrina, may we keep Our Lady's Fatima requests so that the day will soon arrive when all hearts in this country, consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus, will exclaim, Viva Cristo Rey!