The following comes from the first reading of the Novus Ordo Mass for today. I couldn’t help but have a sense of foreboding when I read it. It seems as though it was written for this very moment in the history of salvation. It is, I believe, a warning to us.
We have to admit that we are living in extraordinarily evil times both in the Church and in the world. To fail to notice and understand the dire situation is to be lost. So, dear children, wake up! Repent! For the Kingdom of God is at hand! Go to confession, pray the Rosary every day, consecrate yourself and your family to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and pray to St. Joseph, Terror of Demons.
If we do not heed the message of this lent and the message of this reading, we run the risk of history repeating itself. So, my spiritual children, take this scripture to prayer, read it in light of our present world. Then act. Repent! Confess! Stay in the state of grace! And most importantly, have no fear whatsoever.
All the leading priests and the people likewise were exceedingly unfaithful, following all the abominations of the nations; and they polluted the house of the Lord which he had hallowed in Jerusalem.
The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place; but they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words, and scoffing at his prophets, till the wrath of the Lord rose against his people, till there was no remedy.
Therefore, he brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans, who slew their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion on young man or virgin, old man or aged; he gave them all into his hand. And all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king and of his princes, all these he brought to Babylon. And they burned the house of God, and broke down the wall of Jerusalem, and burned all its palaces with fire, and destroyed all its precious vessels. He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia. ~ 2 Chronicles 36:14-20
