OCTOBER’S CALL II
In 2010, I posted “October’s Call”. Three years later, on the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, I am updating the posting to fit our current situation.
October as a month is often times the Eve of Elections, and we are urged to take our Christianity into the public square. So we rally, debate, campaign, go door-to-door and in general stand for truth, justice and the Christian-American way while opposing the dictatorship of relativism in its numerous guises of toleration, openness, choice, acceptance and anti-bigotry.
The beginning of the month of October has a definite message for us before we step too boldly into the public square where we will be assaulted with every sort of ideology opposed to the goodness that Our Lord has shown us.
October 7th and October 13th are days of Blessed Mother, but they are also days that bring to mind two ideologies that are radically opposed to Christianity: Islam and Communism. Both of these dates also show the principle action that we need to do before we enter the public square lest all our activity makes us nothing more than worthless servants.
October’s call is to fall in love. And the means we are given to do this is through meditation on the life of Jesus and the life of His Mother.
When Pope St. Pius V called on Christendom to pray for victory at Lepanto, his call, I am sure, was not one to pray feverishly in desperation for victory. I imagine his call to the faithful was to pray in quiet hope, by entering into that sanctuary that lies within each of us where we can experience the rush of the thrill of a first love and the peace of the deepening of a long-standing love. It is a sanctuary to which Blessed Mother takes us to be with her Son ever the same and ever new.
The public square needs the articulate, the activist, the organizer, but above all she needs saints.
We find ourselves in the middle of 40 Days for Life, an effort to change hearts and minds by prayer, fasting and a peaceful presence where chaos reigns. We find ourselves approaching Pope Francis’ call to consecrate ourselves to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima. We find ourselves in the end days of a campaign for governor of Virginia where one candidate stands with us in these 40 Days for Life and in our love for Blessed Mother.
Yesterday’s Gospel speaks to us about October’s Call. The Gospel opened with the Apostles asking Our Lord to increase their faith, the same thing we have been asking Jesus during this Year of Faith that has spanned two pontificates. Jesus tells the Apostles that faith enables one to do impossible things. Then there seems to be an abrupt change in the message of Jesus. He tells the Apostles that if they do just what they are commanded to do, then they are nothing more than worthless servants.
Jesus seems to put us at a level below “worthless servant” since we often fail to do what Our Lord commands. But there is no change in what Christ is telling His Apostles and us. Our simple efforts are those of worthless servants, or something less than worthless. But our efforts flowing from and fortified by faith can produce the impossible. They are not the works of worthless servants, simply obeying. They are the works of one who loves the Lord and loves His will. They are works that originate not in a worthless servant, but in the One we serve Who is all-powerful and can do all things and can do the impossible through us.
The rosaries that Pius V elicited from the faithful; the rosaries that the Fatima children prayed brought about victory at Lepanto and made the sun to dance because they were prayed in faith. Let us pray with confidence during the remainder of the 40 Day for Life, as we prepare for the Consecration to the Immaculate Heart and come to the end of the Virginia governor’s race.
Let us heed October’s call.
Jezu, ufam Tobie.