From Generation To Generation

And His Mercy is on those who fear Him from generation to generation.

These words, from the Magnificat, never fail to fill me with a great sense of consolation and hope.

Wretched sinner as I am, I too can hope to be, one day, not left out, but unworthily – and after a, no doubt, long purgatory – admitted to eternal joy beyond human comprehension.

There is something in Catholicism that atheists and assorted anticlericals are utterly unable to get. What they see as uncompromising harshness hides, in fact, infinite sweetness. They cannot see the sweetness, because the acceptance of the harshness is necessary to appreciate it in the first place. They are like a son rebelling against his rigid mother, who will never know how tenderly she loves him.

Fear of the Lord truly is the beginning of wisdom. Its absence is a major indication of foolishness on a vast scale.

I will keep my fear of the Lord and my very harsh religion; and will thoroughly enjoy the tears of consolation and hope that it gives me. May I – and you, my dear readers – never lose it, drowning in the stupidity of the Age of Francis.

M