Martyrdom

I have long been inspired by the Ancient Roman Martyrs whose blood planted the seeds of our Holy Faith in the hearts of men. I can attest to their eternal relevancy, having been supernaturally converted by St. Philomena the martyr in a most unexpected way. Despite the slander perpetuated by the Modernists in the church, St. Philomena still attends to her miraculous interventions in the lives of the faithful and I am proof of this fact. I know firsthand that these brave men and women who shed their blood for the Truth are all around us as our spiritual family.

     I am very blessed to possess many genuine relics of these ancient martyrs and have myriad icons on my walls of their lovely faces as a reminder of their constant care and concern. I have read extensively of their sufferings and have always been amazed by their bravery in the face of great hardships. Fortunately, on my trips to Italy I have been able to visit many shrines of these holy men and women in order to venerate their ancient relics.

I have long been drawn to the martyrs of old and could never understand why, it was something unexplainable - until now.

    It is obvious to anyone with a pulse and some perspective that we are living in a very difficult age. The world has become unstable and unpredictable. Since the ‘pandemic’ the world has changed in many ways, and not for the better. Sure, it was headed in a wrong direction for a very long time but things have sped up. The world has embraced the broad road and the church itself has been infected with modernism and worse. The future seems uncertain to millions and the ‘self-chosen’ of this planet could care less about the ‘little people’ as they make their selfish decisions. Technology is enslaving humanity at breakneck speed, taking us away from our roots. I would go so far as to say that the world has grown into an unnatural pagan wasteland where a true Christian and especially a Traditional Catholic is antithetical to the prevailing ‘woke’ culture of deceptions and distortions hell bent on annihilating Christian culture once and for all.

These days, Traditional Catholics must endure a host of horrors and perversions right outside their very doorways and sometimes within their own homes and even in their churches. Should I name the horrors? Should I name the perversions? I am sure you know what I am talking about. Besides the radical changes in the church that have led to sacrileges and a great falling away of the Catholic Spirit, there is the culture at large dominated by darkness which is infecting the young. Television is a wasteland of propaganda and soft pornography and now homosexuality. Schools have become indoctrination camps of ‘wokeism’ and socialism and even communism. Our medical system can no longer be trusted after the covid fiasco with its countless obfuscations surrounding non-toxic and non-life-threatening treatments that were deliberately suppressed. Our culture is being ‘diversified’ to water it down and eventually usher it out the door to be replaced by totalitarianism disguised as secular humanism. Music has become ‘thugism’ glorified. There are drugs in almost every community now. Toxic addictive poison is called food by the ignorant. Honesty seems a rarity. People seem obsessed with ‘getting over’ and ‘getting free stuff.’ There is anxiety and stress everywhere and people seem very unhappy. The old false security has floated away into the air like a balloon, never to return.

 Perhaps I seem jaded but I can assure you I am not. I am quite the optimist. However, I do live in a big city and maybe I see more of the bad than the good sometimes. But I am sure the deteriorations I mention are everywhere now, city or countryside. We are not living in normal times. We are living in unnatural times that try the souls of all good people. Let me make it quite clear: to live as a modern Traditional Catholic is to be at odds with the world and therefore to be martyred daily.

Every true lover of Christ is now a martyr. You cannot be a follower of Christ and love the world with its endless perversions and its false promises and its broken rubbish strewn in front of you. You cannot love Christ and love the world system. You cannot love Christ and accept murder as health care. You cannot go along to get along because that will lead you to Hell. You cannot pretend to be something you are not. You cannot fit in with the superficiality of this world You cannot sell out your ancestry and your heritage. You cannot allow yourself to be brutalized daily without any effect. At some point you must take a stand and that might cost you. You might be martyred!  

    Your martyrdom might take the form of loss in the guise of your money or your comfort or your friends or your spouse or your family or your reputation or your health or your job or your whatever. And it has come to the point where you may lose your physical life because the demon possessed madmen and madwomen who run the show here do not want true believers of Christ around. Have you figured that out yet? The point is that to truly follow Christ you might have to pay a price and that may include the ultimate price.  

   It is my observation that simply living in this upside-down world is a daily martyrdom. All true Christians are now martyrs. I pray I make it through this dark time. I pray you make it through this dark time. But what if I don’t? What if you don’t? If you are sincere in your faith, then you are a martyr and have always been one. You are a martyr of these unnatural times and you suffer daily as I do. You know how horrible it is to live in a filthy world headed towards self-destruction. The Roman Martyrs must have felt the same living in a pagan society but I must take comfort in the fact that they were happy in the assurance that after this fitful sleep called life, there was paradise in Christ. They were happy in the knowledge that in the end, Christ wins. They knew they were eternal beings. They understood the Truth and saw beyond the veil. And they were happy in the assurance that evil would not prevail forever. Likewise, I hold to that.