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| Prevost carried an empty cross. |
An apparent concern for the poor characterizes those who imitate Judas Iscariot—those who place creatures above God, in order to conceal their betrayal behind that façade.
Archbishop Fulton Sheen said that “Judas Iscariot is the patron saint of those who divide that universal law of God: love of God and love of neighbor.”
Archbishop Fulton Sheen: “The essence of the diabolical is hatred of the Cross of Christ.”
“Turn these stones into bread”- Fulton Sheen on the Temptation of Christ
BE A LIBERATION THEOLOGIAN!
The First Temptation of Christ: Become a social reformer—a Marxist "theologian" of liberation!
The evil spirit was saying to him: “Start with the primacy of the economic! Forget everything regarding sin!” It is still saying the same thing, in different words…
The first temptation of Our Blessed Lord was to become a social reformer and to give bread to the masses, who were finding nothing but stones. The path of social amelioration without spiritual regeneration has been the one temptation to which important people of history have most succumbed. But to Him, this would not be adequate service of the Father; there are deeper human needs than crushed wheat, and there are greater joys than the full stomach.
To that temptation, Our Lord answers: “Man does not live by bread alone. But by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Our Lord does not deny that men must be fed, or that social justice must be preached, but he asserts that these things are not first. He is saying to Satan: “You tempt me to a religion which would relieve want; you want me to be a Baker, instead of a Saviour; to be a social reformer, instead of a Redeemer. You are tempting me away from my Cross, to be a cheap leader of people, filling their bellies, instead of their souls; you would have me beginning with security instead of ending with it; you would have me bringing outer abundance instead of inner holiness. Do not say that I am disinterested in social justice, for I am now feeling the pangs of hunger. I refuse any plan which will make people richer without making them holier. Remember! I, who say: ‘Not by bread alone’ have not tasted bread in forty days!”
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Archbishop Fulton Sheen said that Jesus was accused of being too religious:
“Because He was too religious, He was not political enough. The religious judges said that He had no concern for the fact that the Romans were their masters, and that they might take away their country (John 11:47-48). By talking about a spiritual kingdom, a higher moral law, and His divinity, and by becoming the leader of a spiritual crusade, He was accused of being indifferent to the needs of the people and nation’s well being.”
“Luke was at first a physician of the body; hence it is that he speaks more than the other Evangelist, of the mercy of our Saviour, who heals and frees men from diseases of the soul.” Father Francis Xavier Weninger, 1876
The Church's ultimate trial
675 Before Christ's second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the "mystery of iniquity" in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.
676 The Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the "intrinsically perverse" political form of a secular messianism. 578 Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris, condemning the "false mysticism" of this "counterfeit of the redemption of the lowly".
Archbishop Fulton Sheen on Antichrist: In the midst of all his seeming love for humanity and his glib talk of freedom and equality, he will have one great secret which he will tell to no one: he will not believe in God. Because his religion will be brotherhood without the fatherhood of God, he will deceive even the elect. He will set up a counterchurch which will be the ape of the Church, because he, the Devil, is the ape of God. It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. It will be a mystical body of the Antichrist that will in all externals resemble the mystical body of Christ.
Signs of Our Times'