This grace flowed from the one, true, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church.
This grace would have built up the churches both in Europe and North America, if only the people had repented in the years between 1945 and 2015. A seventy year period of real freedom, including the freedom of religion and speech.
That time is ending this year, as we have, except for the few, squandered graces, passed up opportunities, falling into materialism, consumerism and the dullness of status, greed and sloth. The adult appropriation of the one, true Faith handed down for over 2,000 years did not happened because of free choices of free peoples in the West, specifically Europe and America.
I am living proof of the changing of the tide. God is allowing great evil to come against sin and corruption on this earth.
What happened is that the world gave people, including myself, so much comfort, that the Will of God for the Church Militant was easily set aside.
The truth is that most people did not, in the past seventy years, want the radical Gospel. They did not want to be reconciled with Christ, as Christ makes demands on those who give their lives to Him.
This morning at Mass, the Gospel acclamation was this:
2 Corinthians 5:19Douay-Rheims
19 For God indeed was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not imputing to them their sins; and he hath placed in us the word of reconciliation.
God is not understood as Justice. His Will demands obedience, in love.
Here is St. Thomas Aquinas on justice and mercy in the Summa, First Part, Question 21
I answer that, Mercy and truth are necessarily found in all God's works, if mercy be taken to mean the removal of any kind of defect. Not every defect, however, can properly be called a misery; but only defect in a rationalnature whose lot is to be happy; for misery is opposed to happiness. For this necessity there is a reason, because since a debt paid according to the divine justice is one due either to God, or to some creature, neither the one nor the other can be lacking in any work of God: because God can do nothing that is not in accord with His wisdom and goodness; and it is in this sense, as we have said, that anything is due to God. Likewise, whatever is done by Him in created things, is done according to proper order and proportion wherein consists the idea ofjustice. Thus justice must exist in all God's works. Now the work of divine justice always presupposes the work of mercy; and is founded thereupon. For nothing is due to creatures, except for something pre-existing in them, or foreknown. Again, if this is due to a creature, it must be due on account of something that precedes. And since we cannot go on to infinity, we must come to something that depends only on the goodness of the divine will--which is the ultimate end. We may say, for instance, that to possess hands is due to man on account of his rational soul; and his rational soul is due to him that he may be man; and his being man is on account of the divine goodness. So in every work of God, viewed at its primary source, there appears mercy. In all that follows, the power of mercy remains, and works indeed with even greater force; as the influence of the first cause is more intense than that of second causes. For this reason does God out of abundance of His goodness bestow upon creatures what is due to them more bountifully than is proportionate to their deserts: since less would suffice for preserving the order of justice than what the divine goodness confers; because between creatures and God'sgoodness there can be no proportion.
Reply to Objection 1. Certain works are attributed to justice, and certain others to mercy, because in somejustice appears more forcibly and in others mercy. Even in the damnation of the reprobate mercy is seen, which, though it does not totally remit, yet somewhat alleviates, in punishing short of what is deserved.In the justification of the ungodly, justice is seen, when God remits sins on account of love, though He Himself has mercifully infused that love. So we read of Magdalen: "Many sins are forgiven her, because she hath lovedmuch" (Luke 7:47).
Reply to Objection 2. God's justice and mercy appear both in the conversion of the Jews and of the Gentiles. But an aspect of justice appears in the conversion of the Jews which is not seen in the conversion of the Gentiles; inasmuch as the Jews were saved on account of the promises made to the fathers.
Reply to Objection 3. Justice and mercy appear in the punishment of the just in this world, since by afflictions lesser faults are cleansed in them, and they are the more raised up from earthly affections to God. As to thisGregory says (Moral. xxvi, 9): "The evils that press on us in this world force us to go to God."
Reply to Objection 4. Although creation presupposes nothing in the universe; yet it does presuppose something in the knowledge of God. In this way too the idea of justice is preserved in creation; by the production of beings in a manner that accords with the divine wisdom and goodness. And the idea of mercy, also, is preserved in the change of creatures from non-existence to existence.
And from today's Office of Readings from St. Alphonsus....
.... in whatever situations we happen to be, we can and we must aspire to the life of perfection.