You came down amongst us as a Light shining in the darkness, as a sign for men of good will, that they might become part of Your Flock, guided by Your Vicar on earth, and as a contradiction to those who, having eyes, do not see, and having ears, do not hear. You came as a Child to Mary Immaculate, and as a Child You rule the world forever. Eternal Child of God, “through Whom all things were made” as Your Spirit inspired Your Beloved Disciple to write, You came to Your world as a King and as a Saviour.
But the devil has blinded the hearts of men, and they, forsaking You, have given their minds over to that wisdom which comes from the devil and which fills their understandings with his darkness. They close their eyes on You; they choose their own kings, among the sons of darkness, of whom the Apostle said: “Our fight is not against flesh and blood, but against Powers and Principalities.”
But they cannot escape Your rule, Little King of the World. Their condemnation is the work of their own hands: blindness of intellect and perverted affections of the heart.
In this world which tries, but in vain, to escape Your rule, in this time when intellectualism has killed in the sons of men all childlike simplicity, we promise You, our Dear Infant of Prague, to devote ourselves to You as to a Child and a King, to repudiate all profane and sinful interest in history and all intellectual evasions, and to study the glorious history of Our Holy Mother the Church, Your Immaculate Spouse, in the spirit in which Your Evangelists told the story of Your Life in the Holy Land.
On this day on which I write, which is the glorious feast of St. Athanasius, our first Doctor, we promise to love you personally, and Your Spotless Mother, and Your Holy Church, and to be the enemies of Your enemies, even if we have to shout like our first Doctor:
“Athanasius against the world.”
(This article was originally published in From the Housetops, Volume III, No.1, September, 1948.)
