MI Canada: Inspiring Hope
by Msgr. Robert Nusca
The profane demonstration against the Church witnessed by the young Saint Maximilian as a seminarian in Rome in 1917 at first shocked, and then inspired him to found a movement that now claims countless members worldwide.
Our own “post-modern” world is in many ways so different from that of Saint Maximilian. And yet, beneath the hi-tech veneer of our global era, similarities are not lacking. Theologians speak of a society that has lost its moral compass. Psychologists speak of a culture that has lost the “latitudes and longitudes of the soul.” Philosophers discuss the failure of the secular humanist vision and speak of the arrival of a “post-secular” era.
The drama of the spiritual conflict between St. Michael and the Dragon (Rv 12) continues to play itself out in our day-just as it has in every generation that has gone before us. For the temptation “to build a city and a tower without God” (Gn 11:4) is a perennial one that emerges from deep within a human heart that is divided (Rm 7:14ff). And nowhere is this “struggle over the world’s soul” (Pope John Paul II) more evident today than in the powerful forces of anti-evangelization at work in a host of issues: abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem-cell research and in efforts to redefine marriage and the family.
Inspiring us to hope and trust in the Lord always, Saint Paul reminds us that “where sin abounds grace abounds all the more” (Rm 5:20). The lives of the Saints serve as shining examples of great love, joy and determination amid the struggles and adversities of their times. They show us that “all things are possible for God” (Mk 10:27). As Saint Maximilian reminds us, “The human heart desires a higher good, a good without bounds, a good that lasts forever. And only God is the higher good that the heart desires.”
May the City of God-the New Jerusalem-and its culture of life shine forth in our world today. To the “Woman Adorned with the Sun,” who stands at the center of the spirituality of the MI, we entrust our efforts. And to her we consecrate especially the institution of marriage and the family, “through which run the future of the world and of the Church” (Familiaris Consortio, 75).
January / February / March 2006 :: Immaculata Magazine