Gueranger: islam Has Long Been a Scourge Against Unfaithful/Heretical Christians

We human creatures seem to have some built in flaws we are simply unable to overcome.  Or we refuse to do so.  One of the most critical of these is our steadfast refusal to learn from the lessons of the past.  This applies in all imaginable fields – economic, political, military, technological, spiritual, you name it.

Dom Prosper Gueranger gives us a little bit of a history lesson from Vol. 4 of The Liturgical Year, pp. 168-9, concerning God’s permitting islam to be the punishment visited upon Christians who fall into persistent error and schism.  While written 150 years ago, it may as well have been written for today, when, I am quite certain, Dom Gueranger would be mortified into shocked silence by the specter of a Christendom so utterly devoid of faith and already deeply into the process of being overrun by islam in its very heartland:

When, later on, the Christian nations of the east had lost the Faith which they themselves had transmitted to the western world; when they had disfigured the sacred symbol of faith by their blasphemous heresies; the anger of God sent upon them, from Arabia, the deluge of Mahometanism.  It swept away the Christian churches, that had existed from the very time of the Apostles.  Jerusalem, the favored Jerusalem, on which Jesus had lavished the tenderest love, even she became a victim to the infidel hordes.  Antioch and Alexandria, with their patriarchates, were plunged into the vilest slavery; and at length Constantinople, that had so obstinately provoked the divine indignation, was made the very capital of the Turkish empire.

And we, the western nations, if we return not to the Lord our God, shall we be spared? Shall the floodgates of of Heaven’s vengeance, the torrent of fresh Vandals, ever be menacing to burst upon us, yet never come?  Where is the country of our own West, that has not corrupted its way, as in the days of Noah?  That has not made conventions against the Lord and His Christ?  That has not clamored out that old cry of revolt: “Let us break their bonds asunder, let us cast away their yoke from us?” (Ps ii:3).

Well may we fear lest the time is at hand, when, despite our haughty confidence  in our means of defense, Christ our Lord, to whom all nations have been given by the Father, shall rule us with a rod of iron, and break us in pieces like a potter’s vessel (Ps ii:9).

Let us propitiate the anger of our offended God, and follow the inspired counsel of the royal prophet; Serve ye the Lord with fear; embrace the discipline of His Law; lest, at any time, the Lord be angry, and  ye perist from the just way (Ps ii:12).

———–End Quote———–

Heavy, heavy stuff. But none too remote a prophecy, I fear.

My brethren, we are of course afflicted with an even worse situation than that which faced Dom Gueranger.  While he could easily and accurately extrapolate the then nascent trends in Christendom towards liberalism, modernism, atheism, and hedonism, Gueranger did have the Grace to live in a time when Holy Mother Church was, herself, quite strong and robust of Faith and Doctrine.

We do not have a like situation today.  We live in a virtually unprecedented time of apostasy and faithlessness from the vast swaths of the masses up through the highest echelons of the church.  We can, however, hold some solace in the fact that such periods of faithlessness have been numerous in the history of the Church, and she has always recovered. However, it is quite possible that this our present age is the worst our glorious Mother the Church has had to endure.

And thus the rod of iron, stayed so long by Mary’s arm, presses down with ever more relentless weight and pent up fury upon our Mother’s exhausted, outstretched hands.  Only we can sustain her through our prayers, as she has so often implored us to do, from Lourdes to La Salette to Fatima to Akita and beyond.  Only we can turn back the Lord’s vengeance through prayer and penance, though I comprehend how many find the burden to be too great, and the shirking of duty by others leaving us with too great a task to face, a task that is not fairly borne by us.

But no one ever said life was fair.  This is our lot, and we must try to do our best.