Adapted from Sr. Marie Gabrielle’s talk, “A Thousand Times Happy”
Many people seem to think that the future itself is a monster worth fearing. I find this interesting because the future cannot hurt us, having no real existence outside our own minds. Our Fear of the Future, however — now there is a real monster.
When the Fear of the Future bites you, the resulting wound is known as Anxiety, and its symptoms are pretty obvious. First you may experience a strange craving for the keratin so conveniently located at the end of each of your fingers. As the condition worsens, sweat may begin to pour off your face with the ferocity of a tropical rainstorm. Finally, victims of this bite have been known to obsess over the puncturing of walls by means of repeated and forceful contact between those walls and their own craniums. If you or anyone you know is suffering from these symptoms, you should read the following very carefully.
The Coming Chastisement
While admittedly illogical, even betraying something of a lack of trust in Divine Providence, being afraid of the future is something many of us find it hard to help. Presumably, this is because the present is so bad. As one saint put it:
I know that all times are perilous, and that in every time serious and anxious minds…are apt to consider no times so perilous as their own…. And so far I will admit that there were certain specific dangers to Christians at certain other times, which do not exist in this time. Doubtless, but still admitting this, still I think that the trials which lie before us are such as would appall and make dizzy even such courageous hearts as St. Athanasius, St. Gregory I, or St. Gregory VII. And they would confess that dark as the prospect of their own day was to them, ours has a darkness different in kind from any that has been before it.
So said St. John Henry Newman. 1873. Gulp. And if today is so bad, so brazenly godless, tomorrow can only be worse, right? Has Our Lady not been warning us for over 100 years now that a Chastisement is coming, the likes of which has not been seen on this planet since the Flood? Chastisement means suffering. Even death. Are we not allowed to be afraid of these things, at least?
No. If your keratin crunching and cranium cracking actually did something to improve the situation, who would bother to suggest alternative reactions? But they do not actually help. Our fingers belong folded in prayer not getting gnawed away to nothingness by a counter-productive anxiety that dissipates our energy and clouds our focus. Like discouragement, anxiety is a practical denial of Mary’s ability to see us through any crisis no matter awful.
A great chastisement? Yes, it is coming. But instead of sweating bullets and losing sleep over it, let us do this: let us allow Our Lady to prepare us. Prepare our hearts. How? First of all, by the unshakable conviction that She loves us. Personally. A lot. This has to be the first thing She makes us absolutely certain of because the person who is anxious shows that he does not really believe in God’s love. Therefore, if She can make us really believe in God’s love and Hers, we will find it next to impossible to be anxious anymore.
The Only Reason Our Lady Loves Us
By the way, if you have ever stopped to wonder why Our Lady loves you, you are not alone. Fr. Frederick Faber did the same thing in his book Creator and Creature. In a thirty-four page chapter on the subject, this genius of a spiritual writer spends twenty pages enumerating all the reasons that we might think God loves us, rejecting one after the other. He cannot love us because there is anything original in us to attract His love; certainly not any natural greatness or importance in the grand scheme of creation; it is not because of what we can do for Him, since our love is tepid, our service is half-hearted; even on God’s side, it is not for the sake of His justice that He loves us, nor His sanctity, nor His wisdom. In fact, Fr. Faber makes the case seem pretty downright hopeless — before he finally hones in on the single, solitary explanation for why an omnipotent, all-good, all-knowing, all-generous God should actually desire to be united with His impotent, ignorant, base, selfish creatures.
It is because we are His creatures. That is the only reason. He made us. We are His. So He loves us.
This does make sense, though, right, parents? Why do you love your children with all their little problems and deficiencies worlds more than you love anyone else’s children regardless of how polite, obedient, or pious they are? Because your children are yours. You would not trade them for anyone else’s even if you had the chance; you would not sell them even for a ten million dollars (though the thought might be tempting…a little). They are yours. So you love them. Period. End of story.
Well, you are Mary’s child. So She loves you. Period. End of story. This is the first thing, the first conviction, that Our Lady will use to bolster your heart in preparation for upcoming trials. Because, when our conviction of Mary’s protective maternal love and Her limitless imperial power intersects with our premonition of the dark days ahead, what do we get? An explosion of sunshine, and all those big scary Armageddon thunderheads are — poof! — gone. We suddenly see very clearly that it boils down to this: She will either shield us from suffering and death or give us the grace to endure them peacefully.
This does not mean our first reaction to the Gestapo jeeps pulling in our driveway will not be running and hiding in the tree house. But first reactions are not always in our power to control. The second ones are. After St. Isaac Jogues had been captured and horribly tortured by the Iroquois; after he had lived with them in squalor and servitude for thirteen months; after he escaped back to France, then returned to the New World; after he had worked peacefully in Montreal for two years, he received a letter from his Jesuit superiors designating him as the official ambassador to the Iroquois nation. His first reaction? The man started trembling. His second reaction? Accepto. He took the job.
Rumor Has It
Could we die in the coming Chastisement? Sure, It is possible. But even this need not frighten us since — rumor has it — death is inevitable. At some time, in some place, by some means, we will die. And, for the record, it is much better for us that we do not know the time nor hour. St. Catherine of Siena was given the revelation that her own mother would die soon, and she made the mistake of telling her mom. The poor woman…lost it. She begged and pleaded with St. Catherine hysterically to intercede for her with God to prolong her life. She was so beside herself and miserable that St. Catherine promised to ask Our Lord. Our Lord’s response interesting. He basically said, “I can do that. But she will not be happy about it.” Sure enough, the family shortly afterwards fell on hard times, and this rich Italian matron, reduced to a disgraceful poverty, did indeed wish she had died when it had originally pleased God to take her.
Our death is in God’s hands like everything else. Let that be enough for us. One of my all-time favorite quotes from St. Maximilian is exactly on this point. He said:
During the first three centuries, the Church was persecuted. The blood of martyrs watered the seeds of Christianity. Later, when the persecutions ceased, one of the Fathers of the Church deplored the lukewarmness of Christians. He rejoiced when persecution returned. In the same way, we must rejoice in what will happen, for in the midst of trials, our zeal will become more ardent. Besides, are we not in the hands of the Blessed Virgin? Is not our most ardently desired ideal to give our lives for Her? We live only once. We die only once. Therefore, let it be according to Her good pleasure.
Punishment as a Restoration of Order
Besides the conviction of Her love, another conviction Our Lady will use to prepare our little hearts for whatever great calamity may lie ahead is this thought: all is for the best. Chastisement means punishment and, as St. Thomas points out when he treats of servile fear, punishment (when it is just — and God’s will always is) is always geared toward the restoration of order. Johnny disobeyed Dad and rode his bike out into the road. Johnny gets spanked. Johnny learns obedience. The pain is for a purpose. It is to give Johnny a good — in this case a wholesome respect for his father’s rules so that Johnny does not get hit by a car.
Do we not want the disorders of the world rectified? Well, God is going to do just that. And it will be His paternal love that dictates the when, where, how, and who of this beautifully ordered punishment to come.
It is true that many lives will be lost. But it is equally true that many souls will be saved. So, again, what have we to fear?
Trust Her
Those are the convictions by which Mary will vanquish in our hearts the monster I have called “Fear of the Future” and heal the “Wound of Anxiety” inflicted by him. Let us, then, prepare for the future by sanctifying the present. Let us rest in the thought of Her maternal care with the tranquil bliss of an infant in its mother’s arms.
Trust Her. She’s got you.
