Powerful sermon by Father Augustine Vallooran, especially pertinent to the times we currently live in:
Here is another great reminder, found on Afterthewarning.com in the After the Warning-Refuges and Solitudes tab. Original Source: www.MarkMallett.com THE Age of Ministries is ending… but something more beautiful is going to arise. It will be a new beginning, a restored Church in a new era. In fact, it was this present pope who hinted at this very thing while he was still a cardinal: The Church will be reduced in its dimensions, it will be necessary to start again. However, from this test a Church would emerge that will have been strengthened by the process of simplification it experienced, by its renewed capacity to look within itself… the Church will be numerically reduced. —Cardinal Ratzinger (POPE BENEDICT XVI), God and the World, 2001; interview with Peter Seewald He was echoing, perhaps, Pope Paul VI, who made the startling admission that, because of the growing apostasy in the Church, there will likely be left a mere remnant of the faithful: There is a great uneasiness, at this time, in the world and in the Church, and that which is in question is the faith… I sometimes read the Gospel passage of the end times and I attest that, at this time, some signs of this end are emerging… What strikes me, when I think of the Catholic world, is that within Catholicism, there seems sometimes to pre-dominate a non-Catholic way of thinking, and it can happen that tomorrow this non-Catholic thought within Catholicism, will tomorrow become the stronger. But it will never represent the thought of the Church. It is necessary that a small flock subsist, no matter how small it might be. —POPE PAUL VI, The Secret Paul VI, Jean Guitton, p. 152-153, Reference (7), p. ix. It is the divine protection of this little flock in times to come that concerns this present writing… A Purified Flock The Church must follow Jesus into her own Passion. It is through the Cross that she is purified. Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it cannot bear fruit, He said.1 Although the Church experiences this crucifixion continually, each minute of each day in her individual members, the time must come when, corporately, she will face a "final confrontation": Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers… The Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection. —Catechism of the Catholic Church, 675, 677 This corporate purification involves, as it did for Jesus, a Great Persecution that is already here and coming.2 But the Lord will not abandon us. All those who remain faithful to Him will be protected in the Refuge of His Mercy. But there will also be for some—who are not called to martyrdom—physical refuges: geographical places where God will protect His people, lest the Church be entirely extinguished.3 Because you have kept my message of endurance, I will keep you safe in the time of trial that is going to come to the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth. (Rev 3:10)
