“Knight of the Immaculata” No. 23
Dear Knights of the Immaculata!
We are all aware, that extraordinary times have arrived. The aim of the current undertakings in the world is to destroy the Church and Christian civilization in order to build on their ruins a New World Order without God and His Law. But this is neither new nor extraordinary, because from the very beginning this was always the ambition of the devil. What is extraordinary and makes it apocalyptic, is the intensity and totality of this war! As Saint Louis Mary Grignion de Montfort announced, the devil, because he has not much time left, will redouble his efforts to achieve his battle of destruction. And according to the Apocalypse he will almost win and humanly speaking there is no hope for us. If therefore we try to enter this final battle on a purely human and natural level with the limited means of our earthly resources, we will certainly lose it.
How important, therefore, the prophetic words of Archbishop Lefebvre, already spoken out in 1987: "This is not a fight against man, we are fighting against Satan. It is a fight that requires all supernatural forces to be able to fight against those who want to raze the Church, to destroy it to the ground. We must be aware of this dramatic, apocalyptic struggle in which we live, and we must no longer underestimate it. As we underestimate it, so our strength to fight decreases, we become weak, we no longer have the courage to proclaim the truth, we no longer have the courage to proclaim the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ over society, because it sounds bad in the ears of the godless and atheistic mentality of the world."
Saint Maximilian equally reflected often about such exceptional times. Already since 1938 he foresaw the upcoming Second World War, and he wanted to prepare the Knights for such times of heavy trials. His advice is extremely precious for us, to prepare us for similar, or worse, or even the final battles and wars:
First he explains: "During the first three centuries there was a great deal of persecution in the Church. The blood of the martyrs was the seed of new Christians. One of the historians of that time writes that for some forty years or so, when there was peace, many Christians were spoiled. That is why he rejoiced that persecution had begun again. We, too, can rejoice, because at a time of various difficulties, we will encourage ourselves to be zealous and understand better the need for greater prayer and mortification." So the first order for such times like ours is: ENCOURAGE ONE ANOTHER! The more we are attacked, the more we need to stand together and motivate one another to be faithful and to redouble our efforts to be good soldiers of Our Divine Commander.
Secondly: "First and foremost, we must try to make sure that our zeal is great. The resolution, the intention that I must be a saint, must be very serious and firm. And this must be consistently pursued. Our sanctification is our zeal." So the second order for such times is: STRIVE FOR HOLINESS! To explain this point, you may read the following articles of this issue of the Knight, explaining the necessity of a great desire to become a saint!
Thirdly: "Zeal for mutual love must go as far as possible. It is easy to provide evidence of love when we love those who are good towards us, but real love is when we patiently endure annoyances and adversity, when we pay goodness for evil inflicted on us. That is true love. We must go so far as to completely forgive all injuries and not feel the least bit offended. (...) This is the spirit of all Christians, and let us be careful that there remains nothing that is not forgiven. This is an extremely important thing, because we love God in this. We do not do so, in order that anything evil should not afflict us, but we endure all these trials for the Immaculata. And this is supernatural love. Then we are able to completely and always forgive." So the third order of such times is: FORGIVE ALWAYS! This is maybe the most difficult point of our strategy: if we are almost surrounded only by hatred and malicious attacks trying to destroy what is the most precious for us, then we have a hard time to "forgive those who trespass against us!" However, it is just this: the Will or Our Lord: He will forgive us in the measure as we forgive our enemies. But remain attentive to forgiving your enemies, by no way means accepting the evil they do. Our holy Founder explains this, too, very often: Our Lady hates sin, but she loves the sinner, so that he may convert! Equally we must hate Freemasonry, communism, heresy, apostasy, modernism etc., but love those poor souls, victims of these satanic ideologies, and do what we can to convert them!
With great confidence let us live another year of Our Lord, and let us have just one ambition and desire: the greatest glory of God and the salvation of many souls through the Immaculata!
Fr. Karl Stehlin
Warsaw, on the Feast of the Most Holy Name of Jesus,
on the 3rd of January 2021
