FT Chapter 17 (Swimming Against the Tide of Secularism)
Today, more than ever life is being attacked. It is easy to sit back and do nothing. The culture we live in is pulling us along. The tide is extremely strong. The winds are blowing against us. Our culture wants us to go with the tide and with the wind. There is not much effort needed to go with the flow. Everybody is doing it, and everybody who is anybody is following this current.
Is everybody doing it? NO, but it is hard, there is much suffering to swim against the tide. We who are doing it are getting beat up. We need help. Well than we need to follow what Our Lady says, we need to pray our Rosaries daily for peace and the conversion of sinners. This isn’t easy, and we don’t like to stick out like a sore thumb (or a red fish swimming in the opposite direction).
We want to be like everyone else. We are not everyone else, we are someone else. We are Christians, we are Catholics. We are to stand up for life from natural conception to natural death. We need Our Lady’s help for us to have “the gift of courage to proclaim and defend [God’s] plan for marriage, which is the union of one man and one woman in a lifelong, exclusive relationship of loving trust, compassion, and generosity, open to the conception of children” (Prayer from the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis). We stand for the defense of life from: “abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, assisted suicide and the whole ‘culture of death’” (Fatima for Today, 195).
Not only are we to work toward the end of the ‘Culture of Death,’ we are to praise God and glorify His name. Too often in movies, God’s name is blasphemed. Too often He is disrespected. The tide says it is okay to say these things, but what does God’s word say. Our Lady in the message of Fatima calls us to receive Communion on First Saturdays in Reparation. She wants us to praise God by receiving Him worthily. Receiving Him worthily means that we are not in Mortal Sin. To receive Him worthy means that we are praising Him, otherwise we are blaspheming God.
Jesus went against the tide. Why? Because it is the loving thing to do. Jesus swam for us. Our Lady calls us to do the same. Why do we do it? Because it is joyful to praise God. He is the only one that can bring peace. Going with the tide there is no peace. Jesus calls us to heed the call to follow Him.