NewsletterResources

Kolbe Report 12-19-20

Download MP3

Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,

Pax Christi!

We have often reflected that the original and traditional mission of the Church is to work for the "restoration of all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth." But the mission of the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment anti-Catholic movements has been to achieve a revolution against the old order of things to achieve a utopian society in the future. Nowadays, these two opposite orientations can be seen reflected in contrasting approaches to spirituality. The traditional approach to the spiritual life seeks a restoration of the original harmony between man and God that existed before the Original Sin. The New Age approach to spirituality seeks a new synthesis where traditional understandings and distinctions give way to a new unity in which all contradictions are resolved.

In an  essay  just posted on the Kolbe website, John Evans at Bible and Spade, demonstrates that the Desert Fathers and Mothers who pioneered and established the pattern for Christian monastic life remained ever mindful of the original holiness of Adam and Eve and the original order of the universe. They did everything with a view to cooperating with the grace of God to restore the original harmony of Eden within and around them. As Evans explains:

the spiritual combat of the monk should be understood as a medicinal enterprise in which the desert father, the ecclesia as a whole, and creation itself are withdrawn from the fallen patterns due to Original Sin and instead called out into a rightly ordered relationship with God. The ministry of exorcism then, which is a ministry of healing, will be explored not merely as a vocation singularly relegated to the deliverance of a possessed or oppressed person, object, or place. Instead in view is the genuine liberation of all of creation from the bondage to decay recorded first in Genesis 3 and conquered by the salvific work of Christ, embodied by the lives of His foremost warriors, the desert fathers and mothers of the 3rd and 4th centuries.

The restoration of the original harmony of Eden is not just the work of monks and consecrated religious, however. It ought to be the goal of every Catholic - priest, religious, married or single. It is my privilege week after week to receive testimonies from all over the world, from Catholics whose spiritual lives have been transformed by their embrace of the literal truth of the sacred history of Genesis.   I would like to share a beautiful testimony I recently received from a couple whose ability to enter into Holy Matrimony hinged in large part on their acceptance of the traditional doctrine of creation as the foundation of the Church's teaching on Holy Marriage. Magdalena writes from the U.K.:

My husband Sebastien and I are both from broken families without fathers. I grew up Catholic, but I rejected the faith in my teenage years because I did not understand it, I did not know why I needed it and I was more interested in being accepted by my peers and having a "good time." Sebastien grew up in a family with different faiths and with no faith. We both had lived very secular, worldly lives and we started our relationship 10 years ago in a very secular way. About half-way into our relationship, I realized I was very unhappy with my life in general and I had gotten to the point when I said to God, "Either You must help me, or I will just give up living"! (I didn't mean that I would commit suicide, but that I would fall into a deep depression.)

Everything started from there, miraculously. God took care of me first. He showed me how much He loved me. He sent me the right people, conferences, sermons, and books. He showed me my sins; He helped me to reject them. I had to make a decision about our relationship: to live chastely or to separate. True love does not know compromise. It was very difficult for Sebastien. He was not a Christian and he did not understand it, but he accepted it eventually. Then we stumbled upon creation science - first from protestant sources - and we were shocked and in awe. Sebastien is a scientist, so it all spoke to him very strongly. Then we found you and your Kolbe Center conference. Sebastien struggled a lot, but he could not deny the science, the logic, the history and the philosophy. After a great spiritual battle, he accepted to be baptized, to receive his first Holy Communion and to be Confirmed in January 2019.

For me, learning the truth about Creation really set me free. Everything made more sense and became simpler. God was so close, always. He cared about the tiniest things in my life. Creation truth really helped me to come back to the relationship that I had had with Jesus when I was a child. If the Bible was true, so were the miracles in the Bible, so were the recent miracles, the Saints were true, the Church was right, and God was always present and acting in all of human history and in my life. I felt free, joyful, hopeful and at peace. Thanks to this newly found relationship with Jesus, I was able to go through the next struggle - to get married. The concept of marriage was completely alien to Sebastien. All of his family members were divorced or not married, and he was terrified of life-long commitment.

God was with us all the time. He sent armies of family, friends and priests and nuns to pray for us and to guide us. He sent right conferences, books, sermons. Eventually my husband made a leap of faith, still unsure and scared he decided to just "do the right thing." It was during the fake Covid "pandemic," so we did not even know when and how to celebrate our sacrament. We encountered lots of obstacles: cancelled flights, lockdown, closed restaurants, our priest self-isolating and not being able to bless us, satanic riots in Poland and much more. We gave everything to Our Lady and asked her to organize everything. Our wedding happened in Krakow in St. Ann Church during the recent satanic riots in Poland, but Our Lady really took care of everything. It was more beautiful that we could ever have imagined. Time stopped, and we could really appreciate the sacrament, each other and God's presence in that special moment. God showered us with graces. He healed Sebastien from his fear and doubts, and we couldn't be happier and more united today. Praised be Our Most Loving and Merciful Lord and Our Lady!

As we await the Nativity of Christ and long for His final Coming in glory, let us draw inspiration from the Desert Fathers and Mothers who, like St. John the Baptist, made straight the way of the Lord, and let us rejoice in the true doctrine of creation, the foundation of our Faith, and in its power to transform the lives of Truth-loving souls, like Sebastien and Magdalena.

Yours in Christ through the Immaculata in union with St. Joseph,

Hugh Owen

P.S. We have been shipping out a tremendous number of copies of Pamela Acker's new book Vaccination: A Catholic Perspective, but Coronamania has caused severe delays in postal delivery, even for priority mail. Partly to make her book immediately available to more people, Pamela has recorded it as an audiobook, which is now available for download on the Kolbe website at this link.

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Check Also
Close
Back to top button