Fides et Ratio

Karen Opening Reflection

In our last episode, we explored pride as a disorder of the intellect, the moment when the self no longer submits itself to truth. But once the intellect weakens, something else quickly begins filling the vacuum. Appetite begins demanding authority it was never meant to possess.

The Christian tradition has never taught that the body is evil. Christianity is not hostile to desire, beauty, pleasure, or human affection. The problem begins when appetite ceases to serve the good and instead begins governing the soul itself.

Modern culture increasingly teaches people to trust appetite instinctively. If something feels urgent, expressive, emotionally satisfying, or pleasurable, we are told it must therefore be authentic. Desire itself becomes a kind of moral authority. But appetite cannot discern truth. Appetite seeks satisfaction. Discernment belongs to a rightly ordered intellect illuminated by grace.

St. Thomas Aquinas understood this deeply. He taught that the passions are not evil in themselves, but they must remain properly ordered under reason and directed toward the good.[1] Once appetite becomes detached from truth, the soul becomes unstable. We begin living reactively rather than contemplatively.

When appetite begins ruling the soul, discernment weakens because desire replaces contemplation, emotional urgency replaces wisdom, and pleasure begins masquerading as fulfillment.

This disorder reaches far beyond obvious indulgence. It shapes entire ways of living. Constant stimulation, outrage cycles, compulsive entertainment, emotional dependency, consumer excess, and even panic itself can become forms of appetite-driven living. We begin feeding impulses while starving the deeper life of the soul.

Josef Pieper warned that “the inmost meaning of leisure” is not escape or diversion, but “a condition of the soul.”[2] Modern people often know how to consume, react, and distract themselves, but many no longer know how to remain interiorly still. We fear silence because silence forces encounter with the self.

St. Augustine famously wrote, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”[3] Much of modern exhaustion comes from trying to satisfy spiritual hunger with things incapable of nourishing the soul.

A civilization is renewed not by panic, but by rightly ordered souls. And rightly ordered souls must learn again how to govern appetite rather than be governed by it.

Sara 

Appetite is the matter upon which the intellect must contemplate. And when our stomach rumbles, we know that we need to feed ourselves. And then the intellect comes forth and says, well there is a Snickers bar or there is an apple. The intellect then processes those two things and determines at that point which one of those is going to be the best for that situation. Now, neither is better than the other necessarily in any given moment. The Snickers bar at one point might be appropriate to eat. The apple might be the appropriate thing to eat.

So the appetite can go both ways. You can have people who become obsessive about the appetite. They become very rigid. And those are the people who tend to have anxiety. People often think that the appetite only rules to excess. But in a lot of people, the appetite goes to deficiency. We really need to pay attention to that. Recognizing that the intellect is what takes charge of that competing information. And the appetite is giving us information.

If I only feel the sadness, if I only have the ache, if I never then take that matter which is being given to me from my own personhood, receive it in the intellect so that I can feed the needs of myself with what my appetite is telling me, I will be a mess. I will allow myself to fall into self-harm. I will allow myself to only seek pleasure. All of those things. If the intellect does not take the matter that the appetite is providing for it and educate itself, it will rule itself into really a state of what we call self

Karen Closing Reflection and Prayer

Where have I allowed appetite to govern my life? Where have I confused immediate satisfaction with genuine peace? Where have noise, stimulation, or emotional urgency weakened my ability to remain contemplative and attentive to truth?

The Christian life does not reject desire. It restores desire to right order. True freedom is not the ability to indulge every impulse. True freedom is the ability to desire rightly.

Let us pray.

Come, Holy Spirit, Spirit of wisdom and self-mastery. Teach us to govern our appetites with humility and discernment. Quiet the restless impulses that pull us away from contemplation and truth. Restore peace within our hearts and order within our loves. Grant us the grace to seek what truly nourishes the soul rather than what merely distracts or consumes us.

May we hunger not for constant stimulation, but for truth, beauty, holiness, and communion with You.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sources

[1] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1981), I-II, q.24.

[2] Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 1998), 46.

[3] Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), I.1.

The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006).

The post Discernment in an Age of Disorder Ordering the Soul in an Age of Counterfeits Eps III appeared first on Fides et Ratio | Reflections on life from a theological and rational perspective.

Pride: When Intellect Revolts Against Truth

Karen Opening Reflection

Pride is often misunderstood because we reduce it to arrogance, vanity, or self-importance. But the Christian tradition understands pride much more deeply than that. Pride is not merely thinking too highly of oneself. Pride is the refusal to submit oneself to truth.

At the center of pride is a disordered relationship between the self and reality. The intellect no longer seeks truth with humility. Instead, it begins reshaping truth according to desire, emotion, ideology, or will. Pride does not merely inflate the ego. Pride disorders perception itself.

St. Augustine wrote, “Pride is the beginning of sin.” That line remains painfully relevant because pride always begins by placing the self above what is real, above correction, above wisdom, and ultimately above God.

We live in a culture that increasingly treats self-definition as the highest form of freedom. We are encouraged to construct identity rather than receive it, to assert rather than contemplate, to react rather than discern. Emotional certainty is often mistaken for wisdom. Confidence is mistaken for truth. The inability to receive correction is now praised as authenticity.

But humility is not humiliation. Humility is truthful vision.

The disorder of civilization begins when the intellect no longer submits itself to truth. Pride weakens discernment by placing the self above reality, and once truth itself becomes unstable within the soul, counterfeits begin replacing wisdom, beauty, and transcendence.

St. Teresa of Ávila once wrote, “Humility is truth.” The saints understood something modern culture often forgets: the soul cannot be healed while it remains committed to illusion, self-protection, or false autonomy.

A civilization is renewed not by panic, but by rightly ordered souls. And right order begins with the humility to seek truth rather than mastery.

Sara 

And there are many current lies about us being sinners every day. We are told to accept somebody as we know concretely is not true. Because God made us for himself. He made us to know him, love him, and serve him in truth. And there is a structure between living in his will and fighting or struggling against his will. The place where we cannot but suffer. There can be nothing that will bring us peace and harmony, any type of peace, if we just live lives that are out of structure with God.

Just as worry is essentially our gift to Satan. That is how we honor him with our worry. God is not honored by worrying. God is honored by our faithful, humble confidence in his goodness. And I think that is where most people find themselves, in that disordered state of stress and worry and anxiety. But all of those are paying homage to the disruptor, to the father of lies.

If we can rightly order our lives, we recognize that the creator of the universe is a father with ultimate love for us. We can rest in the knowledge that our intellect informs us. If everything that we see is beautiful, good, and true, then he wants that for me too.

You were saying that despair can be a real feeling, a necessary feeling in the case of a very sorrowful or traumatic situation, provided that the despair does not overwhelm reason

Karen Closing Reflection and Prayer

Where have I resisted correction? Where have I confused certainty with wisdom? Where have I protected my own image rather than seeking truth? Where has pride made me less teachable, less contemplative, or less open to grace?

Humility does not diminish the human person. Humility restores the soul to reality. It allows us to see clearly, receive truth honestly, and remain open to transformation.

Let us pray.

Lord Jesus Christ, grant us the grace of humility. Free us from the pride that blinds discernment and hardens the heart. Teach us to love truth more than self-protection, wisdom more than certainty, and holiness more than appearance. Quiet the need to dominate, perform, or always be right. Give us hearts willing to receive correction, minds willing to seek truth, and souls attentive to Your grace.

May we become people who desire not mastery over truth, but faithful surrender to it.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sources

Augustine. Confessions. Translated by Henry Chadwick. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Augustine. The City of God. Translated by Marcus Dods. New York: Modern Library, 1950.

The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006.

Teresa of Ávila. The Interior Castle. Translated by E. Allison Peers. New York: Image Books, 1961.

Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae. Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1981.

The post Discernment in an Age of Disorder Ordering the Soul in an Age of Counterfeits Eps II appeared first on Fides et Ratio | Reflections on life from a theological and rational perspective.

Series Thesis

Civilizations reflect the spiritual condition of the human person. When intellect, appetite, and love become disordered, discernment weakens and counterfeits replace truth, beauty, and transcendence. The renewal of culture begins not in panic, outrage, or fear, but in the restoration of rightly ordered souls attentive to grace and truth

The Soul and the Crisis of Civilization

There is a temptation in every age to believe that the great crises of civilization begin somewhere outside ourselves. We look to politics, institutions, technology, economics, wars, and ideologies. Certainly, these things matter. They shape nations and affect millions of lives. But Christianity has always insisted that disorder begins deeper than systems. It begins within the human person.

We live in an age flooded with information and starving for wisdom. We know more facts than perhaps any civilization in history, yet many people no longer know how to discern what is true, good, beautiful, or worthy of love. We confuse emotional intensity with conviction. We mistake outrage for moral seriousness. We mistake visibility for virtue. Increasingly, we consume panic as though fear itself were a form of discernment.

But fear cannot guide the soul toward truth.

This series begins with a simple but demanding premise: civilizations reflect the spiritual condition of the human person. When intellect, appetite, and love become disordered, discernment weakens and counterfeits begin replacing truth, beauty, and transcendence. The crisis eventually appears in institutions and culture, but it begins much earlier and much deeper within the soul itself.

St. Augustine once wrote, “A disordered soul is its own punishment.” That observation feels painfully modern. Much of our exhaustion today comes not merely from external pressures, but from interior disorder. Appetite competes with intellect. Vanity competes with charity. Noise overwhelms contemplation. We lose hierarchy within the soul itself.

And yet this series is not about despair. It is not about identifying enemies or feeding cultural panic. It is about learning once again how to see clearly. Because the soul cannot properly order what it cannot first recognize.

St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that grace does not destroy nature but perfects it. Christianity does not ask us to abandon reason, appetite, emotion, or desire. It asks that these things become rightly ordered under truth and directed toward God.

A civilization is renewed not by panic, but by rightly ordered souls.

Perhaps renewal begins the moment we stop asking only what is happening to the world and begin asking what is happening within ourselves.

Sara Discussion

I think part of the time that we’re living in is both obsessed with the self and at the same time absolutely unwilling to engage with the true self. So many times everything is self-help. Everything is allegedly self-awareness and self-reflection. And yet, unfortunately, all of those appeals to the self are physical. There’s no manifestation of an interior spiritual recollection.

As you were saying before, it is imperative that the person become rightly ordered. If the focus is constantly on physical well-being, physical activity, and physical appetite—with no real interior motivation toward an effective spiritual change within the self—all of it is going to fall flat. Because, as you said before, and also in any sense very early in his Confessions, our soul is restless until it rests in God.

The body can be satisfied. You can fill it with food. You can do all the exercise that you want. And at the end of the day, it still falls flat. Because in very few places is anyone suffering from any real honest physical malaise—particularly in the first-world countries. Nobody is starving. Nobody is at want for physical needs. Perhaps those who put themselves into situations of excess use of drugs and alcohol find themselves in uncomfortable straits. But even those people have easy reach for food and clothing and health care if they need it.

But there is no authentic care for the soul right now. And I think that that’s just because there is really an intense spiritual battle that is going on right now. We feel the intensity of it. And yet we’re ill-equipped to be prepared for it because we have not received much by way of real instruction that roots us or that grounds us in our own faith

Karen Closing Reflection and Prayer

Where has noise replaced contemplation in my life? Where has appetite become my guide? Where have I confused emotional intensity with wisdom? Where have I consumed fear instead of pursuing discernment?

The restoration of civilization begins long before public renewal. It begins quietly, often invisibly, within the soul. Christianity has always understood that before societies are renewed, hearts must be renewed. Before culture is healed, the soul must learn again how to see clearly, love rightly, and remain attentive to truth.

Let us pray.

Come, Holy Spirit, Spirit of wisdom and truth. Quiet the disorder within us. Teach us to recognize what is false, reject what is counterfeit, and desire what leads us toward You. Restore right order within our minds, our hearts, and our loves. Grant us the humility to seek truth, the courage to resist fear, and the grace to become instruments of peace in an age of confusion.

May our lives reflect not panic, but discernment. Not noise, but contemplation. Not despair, but hope rightly ordered toward God.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Sources

Augustine. Confessions. Translated by Henry Chadwick. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Augustine. The City of God. Translated by Marcus Dods. New York: Modern Library, 1950.

The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006.

Ignatius of Loyola. The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. Translated by George E. Ganss, S.J. Chicago: Loyola Press, 1992.

Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae. Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1981.

Thomas Aquinas. Summa Contra Gentiles. Translated by Anton C. Pegis. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975.

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Final Synthesis: The Same Response

We have now traced a path across different lives, different places, and different conditions. What remains is to name clearly what we have seen.

At the center of this series is a simple claim. God has revealed Himself not as an abstraction, but in a Face that can be encountered, loved, offended, and consoled. The response to that revelation appears again and again within the life of the Church.

We began with Sister Mary of St. Peter. In her life, the response is named with precision. It is directed toward blasphemy and irreverence, and it takes the form of reparation. It is structured, explicit, and entrusted within obedience.¹

We then turned to Thérèse of Lisieux, known as Thérèse of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face. In her, the same response is not formulated in the same way, but it is lived. It becomes interior, expressed through love, through offering, and through a desire to console Christ where He is not loved.²

Finally, we considered Blessed Concepción Cabrera de Armida. In her life, the response moves into the world. It is lived within marriage, motherhood, suffering, and social instability. It is no longer confined to the cloister. It becomes present in the ordinary conditions of life.³

These lives are not dependent on one another. They arise in different places, under different circumstances, and without direct connection. When they are placed side by side, a pattern becomes visible.

The world moves toward indifference and, at times, toward hostility. The response that emerges is not argument alone, nor withdrawal, nor abstraction. It is attention, reparation, and love directed toward Christ.

This response takes different forms. In one place, it is named and structured. In another, it is interior and hidden. In another, it is lived within the world. The expression changes, but the movement remains the same.

This shows that we are not dealing with isolated devotions or individual preferences. We are seeing something that belongs to the life of the Church. It appears where it is needed, is entrusted to those prepared to receive it, and is lived according to the vocation in which each person is placed.

It also clarifies what is being asked. The response does not require a particular state of life or a specific set of circumstances. It begins with attention and becomes concrete through prayer, through deliberate acts of reparation, and through a willingness to respond in love where love is not returned.

What we have seen across these lives is not a theory. It is a pattern that has already been lived. The only remaining question is whether it will be taken up again.

Sara Remarks

Yeah, a love that has not been returned, right. You know, there is this divine lover waiting for His beloved.

I mean, He never ceases to be who He is toward us. His Holy Face is always turned toward us. The question is whether we continue to open our eyes.

We return, then, to what was first given, not as something new, but as something now understood.

Within this devotion, a prayer was entrusted as an act of reparation for the offenses given to God. It remains simple, but it now stands in the light of what we have seen across these lives.

You can take a moment and offer it, slowly and with attention:

May the most holy, most sacred, most adorable, most incomprehensible and unutterable Name of God be always praised, blessed, loved, adored and glorified, in Heaven, on earth, and under the earth, by all the creatures of God, and by the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. Amen.⁴

What has changed is not the words, but the understanding with which they are offered.

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Conchita: The Response Lived in the World

We have now seen the same response appear in two Carmelite lives, hidden, enclosed, and shaped within the structure of religious life. The question that remains is whether this response is confined to that setting, or whether it extends beyond it. What becomes clear is that it does not remain within the cloister.

We turn to Blessed Concepción Cabrera de Armida, known as Conchita, a wife, a mother, and later a widow, who lived her life in the world, within the ordinary demands of family, society, and daily responsibility.

She was born in Mexico in 1862, in a country that would experience profound instability and conflict, including tensions between the Church and the state that would later intensify into open persecution.¹ Her life was not marked by separation from the world, but by immersion in it.

From an early point, her interior life developed in a serious and sustained way. Her writings, which extend over many years, show a consistent attention to the presence of God and a deepening desire to respond to Him.² This response is not theoretical. It is lived within the concrete realities of marriage, motherhood, and loss.

After the death of her husband, her life entered a new phase of suffering and offering. What had already been present became more explicit. Her desire to unite herself to Christ, particularly in His suffering, took on a clearer form.³

What is striking is the intention that governs her response. She expresses a desire to console Christ, to respond to the lack of love, and to offer herself in reparation for those who do not respond. This is not framed as a program or a structured devotion. It is lived as an interior disposition that informs her entire life.

The setting has now changed completely.

In Sister Mary of St. Peter, the response is given within the cloister and named with precision. In Thérèse of Lisieux, it is interiorized and lived in hidden love. In Conchita, it moves into the world, into the life of a family, into the midst of social and political instability. The expression changes, but the movement remains.

Conchita offers her life, her suffering, and her daily duties as a response to Christ. She does not withdraw from the world in order to do this. She remains within it. The response is therefore not limited to a particular vocation. It is capable of being lived wherever a soul is attentive and willing to respond.

Her writings also show a clear awareness of the state of the world around her. The tensions between the Church and society are not abstract. They are lived realities. Within that context, her response takes on a particular intensity. It is not only personal. It is offered in relation to a wider condition.

What we see, when we consider these lives together, is a pattern that is now fully visible. The world moves toward indifference and, at times, toward open hostility. A response is given that is directed, intentional, and rooted in love. It appears in different places, in different forms, and within different vocations. It is not dependent on a single revelation or a single life. It emerges again and again, shaped by the conditions in which it appears.

In Conchita, that response is no longer confined to the cloister. It is lived in the home, in suffering, in ordinary duties, and in the midst of a world that is not ordered toward God. This is where the pattern reaches its full expression.

Sara Remarks

Lord Jesus, in the life that has already been given to me, do not let me pass through it without response. In what is ordinary, teach me to be attentive. In what is difficult, teach me to offer it. In what would normally go unnoticed, draw me back to You.

I bring this present moment to You as it is. I do not set it aside or wait for something different. I ask that it become something real, something given, and something directed.

Let what is small be enough, if it is offered. Let what is hidden be seen by You. And let this moment not pass without response.

Amen.

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We have now seen a work entrusted, restrained, and clarified within a particular place and through a particular soul. The question that follows is whether it remains confined there or whether it appears again. What becomes evident is that it does not remain confined. Without direct connection or dependence, the same response emerges in another life, in another moment, and in a different form.

We turn to Thérèse of Lisieux, known in religion as Thérèse of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face. That title is not incidental. It reflects something central to her life, a sustained attention to the humanity of Christ as it is revealed in His suffering and often met with indifference. Her life unfolds within the Carmel of Lisieux, hidden, structured, and without outward mission, yet marked by an interior clarity that parallels what we have already seen.

At the center of her life is a precise and focused awareness of Christ, not as an abstraction, but as a Person whose love is given and often unreturned. This perception does not lead her to analysis or commentary, but to response. She offers her sufferings, her limitations, and the ordinary substance of her daily life with a clear intention to console, to respond, and to love where love is not returned. There is no formal structure, no defined program of reparation, and no explicit formulation that mirrors what has been previously given. Yet the movement itself is unmistakable.

In the life of Sister Mary of St. Peter, the response was named and directed toward specific offenses, particularly blasphemy and irreverence toward the Holy Name of God. It was articulated clearly and given in a structured form. In the life of Thérèse, the same response is interiorized and lived. It is expressed through love rather than through formal definition, yet it remains directed, intentional, and real. The humanity of Christ is attended to, the absence of response is perceived, and something is offered in return.

This is the point of convergence. The response does not depend on a single revelation or require direct transmission. It arises within the life of the Church under different conditions and within different souls. The expression changes, but the movement remains consistent. What was named in one place is lived in another. What was given in a structured form is received in a more interior way. The two do not stand in opposition, but in mutual illumination.

This convergence matters because it reveals that we are not dealing with an isolated phenomenon. We are seeing a pattern within the life of the Church. The world moves toward indifference, and the response that emerges is one of attention, reparation, and love. It takes different forms depending on the soul and the circumstance, but it addresses the same reality.

In Thérèse, this response becomes accessible in a new way. It is no longer confined to a particular devotion or set of prayers, but is lived through fidelity in ordinary things. It is interior, but not abstract, simple, but not superficial. What has been entrusted and defined is now embodied, and in that embodiment, it becomes recognizable beyond its original context.

What we have seen in these two lives prepares us to recognize the same movement again wherever it appears.

Yeah, impactful, right. I mean, I just feel like it is that image of our Lord knocking at the door of your soul, just knocking. And each generation, each person individually, as you said, is given this invitation.

God is so profoundly personal. And I think that is actually one of the problems that is going on. It is almost like a kind of spiritualism, because a spirit, as we tend to think of it, is not personal. It is disembodied, separate, ephemeral, seeming to have no substance.

And yet we know that that is not the presence of our God. Our God is profoundly real. We talk about this often when we speak about our relationship to the Eucharist, His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, a real presence, not something imagined or merely symbolic.

Those things may have some level of goodness within themselves, but if there is goodness there, it is because it is founded on some prior reality. But God is not prior in that sense. He simply is. He is always with us.

And I think that this, maybe, is really speaking to me. Maybe this whole conversation is a profound invitation to me, knocking on the door of my heart. This is something for you. Gaze upon my face. Do not see me as something ephemeral or not real, but re-engage with me as a person.

As a matter of fact, just the other day I was pondering the reality of His wounds after the Resurrection. I was thinking about Padre Pio and the stigmata that he bore, and the fact that those were active wounds.

I have always envisioned Christ’s Resurrection with a body that has scars, healed wounds, perhaps. I do not know exactly what the Church teaches on that. But for the first time, it struck me that anyone who has borne the stigmata does not have healed wounds in that sense. They are living wounds.

And I was thinking how profound it is that our Lord bears the wounds of the Cross eternally.

What follows from this is not something abstract, but something that can be lived. If the same response appears across different lives, then it is not limited to them. It becomes a question that returns to us.

For today, take a brief moment and make this concrete. Turn your attention to Christ, not as an idea, but as a Person who can be encountered. Consider where that encounter is met with indifference, either in the world or in your own life. Then choose one small, deliberate response. It may be a quiet act of love, a moment of restraint, or a simple offering made without being seen.

If you wish to put it into words, you can write a single line:

“Where love is not returned, I will respond.”

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Discernment, Timing, and the Church

We have now seen the moment in which a work is entrusted. It was not sought. It was not constructed. It was given, and it was given in a way that was precise and direct.

Before moving forward, it is necessary to understand what we are looking at and how the Church receives something of this kind.

What was given to Sister Mary of St. Peter belongs to what the Church calls private revelation. It does not belong to the deposit of faith. It is not required for belief, and it does not add anything to what has already been revealed in Christ. At the same time, it is not dismissed. It is received cautiously, tested, and, when appropriate, permitted to assist the faithful in a particular time and circumstance.

This testing is not abstract. It is concrete. It passes through obedience, through time, and through conformity with what the Church already teaches.

We have already seen this in her life.

When the work of reparation was first communicated to her, she did not act on it freely. She wrote it down and submitted it to her superiors. They forbade her to occupy herself with it. They removed the prayers and instructed her not to think about the matter.¹ She did not resist. She obeyed.

This is the first point of discernment. The work remains under obedience.

At the same time, the interior experience did not disappear. She describes it as something that remained within her with intensity, like a fire that could not be expressed outwardly.² There was a desire to speak, but that desire was governed by obedience. She continued to write what she received and to present it only under authority.²

The second point appears in the timing.

France had undergone a profound transformation. The Revolution had weakened the visible structure of the Church and introduced a way of thinking that no longer took God as its reference point. Irreverence, particularly in speech, had become more common. Blasphemy was no longer unthinkable. It was becoming ordinary.

The response that was given corresponds directly to that condition. It is not general. It is directed toward a specific offense. The work of reparation for blasphemy addresses the condition in which it appears.

This leads to the question of why it was entrusted to her.

Nothing in her life suggests that she was chosen for influence or visibility. She was not placed in a position of authority. She did not possess a public voice. What we see instead is a soul that has been formed through correction, struggle, and obedience. She had experienced scruples and had been freed from them through submission. She had endured poor spiritual direction and had been restored through perseverance. She had desired religious life and had been required to wait. She had been tested.

What is entrusted to her is given to a soul that has already learned not to act on its own.

A further point of discernment appears in the form of external confirmation.

At a certain moment, a pamphlet fell unexpectedly into the hands of the Reverend Mother. It contained a call to reparation for blasphemy against the Holy Name of God, expressed in language and urgency that closely matched what had been communicated to her.³ The pamphlet had been published years earlier and was connected to a prior Carmelite movement of reparation.

This shows that what she received was not isolated. It had appeared before. It was now reappearing in a new moment.

At the same time, the Church was already moving. In that same period, August of 1843, Pope Gregory XVI authorized a confraternity of reparation for blasphemy in Rome.⁴ This does not identify her experience with that movement, but it shows that the concern was present within the life of the Church.

There is one further clarification.

The work of reparation was not limited to blasphemy alone. It included the profanation of the Lord’s Day.⁵ Both were understood as grave offenses. Both called for a response. The work is therefore precise but not narrow.

When these elements are considered together, a pattern becomes visible.

The world moves away from God. A response is given that corresponds to the need. The response is restrained, tested, and examined. It is confirmed, both by prior witness and by the life of the Church. Only then does it begin to take shape.

This is not an isolated event. It is the beginning of something that will appear again.

Sara Remarks

I mean, that kind of goes along with what we were saying before, that you have this beautiful weaving of the tapestry, the large threads and the small threads coming together in the Church, a teaching which is grounded both in the magisterium of the Church, that is given the authority to instruct, and in the little soul who receives these personal locutions from Christ, instructing her independent of that magisterium.

Not in opposition to one another, but really as a manner of being able to confirm all of us in our faith, because this is obviously an element that was close to the heart of the Church, and one that needed to be attended to given the state of the world.

We have never really recovered from this time period. We are still struggling mightily in the aftermath of this essentially communist revolution that began to undermine the Church, and really feels like, at certain points today, that it is succeeding.

We know that it will not triumph. We know that our Lord’s Sacred Heart is going to triumph, that Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart is going to triumph. But there are many reparations that are required of us because our Lord and Our Lady are so gravely offended by so many sins.

And this beautiful image is really a profound invitation from God to gaze upon Him, to see the Man that we have wounded, who still looks upon us with a heart.

We have so much that we ought to be saying sorry for, even if it is not a personal sin, so much that we can do for those who do not even know that they are offending someone.

Very true.

The pattern we have seen is not confined to one moment.

The response to God is not driven by urgency or personal initiative. It is formed through obedience, tested over time, and aligned with what the Church already knows to be true.

The question is not whether this belongs to the past. The question is whether the same response will be made now.

It begins in a simple way. It begins with something deliberate that is offered.

Within this devotion, Our Lord did not only call for reparation. He also attached specific promises to those who would honor His Holy Face and take up this work.

Listen carefully to what is claimed:

All those who honor My Face in a spirit of reparation will by so doing perform the office of the pious Veronica. According to the care they take in making reparation to My Face disfigured by blasphemers, so will I take care of their souls which have been disfigured by sin. My Face is the seal of the Divinity, which has the virtue of reproducing in souls the image of God.

This is not sentiment. It is not general encouragement.

It is a defined claim about what follows from a defined response.

The question is whether that response will be made.

Sara Remarks

I think that that goes back to what I was saying before, at the very beginning, that engagement with our Lord is not esoteric. There is a concrete weight that is attached to this relationship that we are engaged in.

And these promises are not just pie-in-the-sky ideas. I think that we oftentimes really disconnect ourselves from that fact. We become very complacent in our own arrogance, particularly in the modern world where we do not really go to a church anymore. Obviously people will go to church, but in general, we are going to a church that reflects ourselves. We are no longer seeking out truth per se. We are seeking out churches that confirm us in whatever truth we are living in.

And so we become very jaded. It is as though we are becoming very short-sighted, and we do not really believe that we have done anything that is bad enough to merit an eternal punishment.

And yet the reality is that man put his own God to death. Even if that is the only thing that humanity has done collectively, to put the Savior to death on a cross, none of us after that would merit anything but the worst eternal punishment.

So these promises, particularly the one that always gives me such great hope, the surety of the grace of final perseverance, to me is so profoundly beautiful.

The Lord is the Good Shepherd. We just heard these readings in this time of the Church calendar. He goes out and seeks the lost sheep, leaving the ninety-nine, because He does not want to lose anyone. And He says, I did not lose any of my sheep.

So we have this beautiful promise of the Lord, that if we engage with this devotion honestly, there is a very concrete promise that He will be faithful to us.

And we are so faithful in such small things, to look upon His Holy Face every day, to tell Him that we love Him, to try and conform our lives more to His own. It is such a small thing for us, but the promises are so astoundingly beautiful, and we have to believe that they are real.

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