Have you noticed it? Or is it our imagination?

A lull, a flatness, nearly a deadness out there, in the secular world.

Oh, there are pockets of exception. We don’t feel the lull here. There are certain large holy events. There are places like Medjugorje, which continues to boom. (Stay tuned for announcement of a pilgrimage there). Here we feel the Spirit strongly because the Church is alive when viewed in a mystical way.

Was this not the way it was founded—not just with the Resurrection of Jesus (the final proof) but also with what it says in today’s (5/3/24) Mass reading: “in accordance with the Scriptures; that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at once.”

Five hundred saw Jesus at the same time!

And then He showed Himself to Paul. (How much would be missing from the New Testament had that not occurred; is the supernatural not a critical part of our faith?)

But overall–and especially in North America–many seem deadened. They seem to have lost their vigor. They have strayed into secularism—the worldliness of politics and materialism, instead of holding fast.

So back to that question: is there a lull?

Is there a sense of waiting for the next “shoe” to drop?

Drop it will. Events will come. Their precursors surround us. The prophetic, if sometimes premature, is materializing.

Drips and drabs.

Eventually, and perhaps soon, perhaps a bit longer, perhaps in the further future, but at some point, major events will come, absent the conversion to Christ of this world.

So yes: we are in a “calm before the storm.”

(But oh, the smaller storms around us!)

 

But that hardly means it’s a time to sit back and wait for them.

Sticking one’s head in the sand doesn’t work. (The hole only fills with water.)

It means that active prayer from the heart with joyful worship (which banishes evil) is needed.

Apathy, antagonism, and vain amusement are not things that redound to purification.

Let us know: do you sense the apathy, the “flatness,” the diversions? Have you observed or felt a shift in mood? ([email protected])

Diverting energy and attention to politics, social media, or making more money (right now, it’s growing on trees) are a temptation of our era—and not just a temporal detriment but an eternal one.

[resources: retreat, Florida and Secrets of the Eucharist]