LOVE IS THE ONLY YARDSTICK (1966) by H. Howell

LOVE (THE UNION OF HEART, SOUL, AND MIND) IS THE ONLY YARDSTICK necessary to judge all things correctly -the "fruits" of hirelings, wolves, and false shepherds. We know our Divine Shepherd's Voice, the LANGUAGE OF LOVE that cannot be deceived! It is SIMPLE FAITH as He meant it to be, a language without words, the solitude of Nazareth, the center of which is the Adorable Species, the Holy Sacrament of the Altar which we can preserve within our hearts for all the plenitude of its riches when God's Holy Will decrees that course! He can and does give abundantly to those who still BELIEVE in His Omnipotence, united in heart and will, with no other desire but His Honor and Glory even though we cannot always understand incidentals of the tests He is giving us. Our Blessed Lord foresaw and lamented the lack of faith that BELIEVES in spite of evidence to the contrary, shaken because we allowed the first temptation of Satan instead of giving him the contempt he deserves. 

A weak faith is easily scandalized. When we love, we do not doubt! To read past history of our popes is a test in itself. The scandal is not of God,  but the enormous evil which He does allow for our good if we take advantage of every opportunity to grow in His love, clinging more tightly to Him and His Mother for all that is necessary in any battle. If we kept our eyes on them instead of self how differently would be our perspective. The Master teaches in the school of sorrow. We learn in union with Mary at the foot of the cross the price of love. He died for us but asks so little in return for a proof of our own - our hearts, our mind, our will. WE don't realize how much or self love opposes Him. That is why he has to force what we are not willing to give on our own. Like Job we can reach that total abandonment - "Even though He slay me, yet will I trust Him". Perfect rust never entertains doubt. Truth triumphs as the senses recede. How much has not Satan's contradiction of "we must understand"contaminated us. Our Lord said "BELIEVE for the faith that is firm, immovable as a rock! Circumstances today are just that to build this firm edifice. 

We fear the wrong things. Self is the deadliest of enemies but poses as our dearest friend - the human spirit that "blinds" us in our own conceit. Love of faith embraces all truths in a whole. Obedience was loved as much as all our other treasures, the loss of which caused the greatest pain and suffering, the fear and trembling of a responsibility in interpreting rightly God's will when we no longer had this anchor to safely guide us. 

"Even the elect will be deceived" is a frightful warning with evidence all around us. We can so easily be misled through an attitude of "non serviam" that becomes a defiance and ends in obstinancy of will. The fear of God that protects us from ourselves is the self knowledge and conviction of our nothingness, our total dependence upon His graces and mercy that "trembles" at our own weaknesses and infidelities, pleading constantly for His help or the strength and wisdom to remain true to Him and our Holy Catholic Faith within its proper structure as instituted by Him.

To have experienced this danger, that of being deceived into an organization outside of the truth faith, has deepened this awareness of a peril most to be feared, that of schism. 

Father Grau who lived in times similar to ours, died in exile, wrote: "As regards those who at the sight of the scandals which reign in the fear either for her or for themselves, I say: their faith is weak and they are but little instructed in the events of previous centuries, if they are shaken by the events before their eyes. Have they forgotten the assurances given to His Church by Jesus Christ Himself, that the gates of hell shall never prevail against her, and the promise which He made to her pastors, to be with them even to the consummation of the world? Do they not know that the Church was born amidst the most terrible persecutions and that she grew by their very means was so cruelly persecuted St. Athanasius and the other defenders of the divinity of the Word, there has perhaps never been a century which has not offered the respectable, in the episcopal body, both of great virtues and of great vices, the murmurs of such souls and to reassure their wavering faith, I will bid them attend to Calvary. Who is He whom they see thus fixed to a cross as a blasphemer? Who are they who condemned Him to so infamous a death? Are they no the Pontiffs, the High Priests, the Doctors of the Law - in a word the Synagogue, which at that time represented, and indeed was, the Church among the Jews? Are they not those who sat upon the chair of Moses, and whose doctrine had been canonized by Jesus Christ Himself when He said to the people: "Do all that they tell you, but do not what they do"? And it was by this enormous scandal, by this Deicide, that was wrought the redemption of the human race. After this, is there anything with the power to shake our Faith?"

How can we, who know the importance of prayer and reparation in atonement for the offences against our Blessed Lord, fall victim to Satan's snare of rejecting the Holy Father? (Pope Paul VI) The general rebellion against him is the most serious consideration of reparation. Love knows that whosoever honors and love him honors our Lord, and by this filial love enraptures His Heart.

We need to deepen our truths for the loyalty of LOVE That conquers. Pick up any former book on the faith and see what is expected of us as Catholic in all trust, hope and confidence, the consoling doctrines of our belief: 

Faith of our Fathers: "The Pope in every age, like his Divine Master, has his period of persecution and his period of peace. Like Him, he has his days of sorrow and his days of joy, his days of humiliation and death, his days of exaltation and glory. Like Jesus Christ, he is one day greeted with acclamations as King, and another day crucified by his enemies." 

"But never does the Holy Father exhibit his title as Vicar of Christ more strikingly than in the midst of tribulations. If he did not suffer, he would bear no resemblance to his Divine Model and Master, and never does he more worthily deserve the filial homage of his children that when he is heavily laden with the cross!" 

Father Faber expressed our need of triumph: "We are vowed by the dominance of heresy. It tarnishes our faith. It chills our love. It chokes, checks us, and galls us, and unmans, us, at almost every turn. No on comes quite unscathed out of the trial,  least of all, those who think they do and have no fear." 

We need the SPIRIT of faith, the adoration that acknowledges the dominion of evil nowhere, nowhere leaves the devil to himself or in possession, withdraws from no ground, but everywhere plants Gd's banner, and everywhere makes open acknowledgement of His universal sovereignty. A mind, ever brooding on God, saturated with the thought of God, and tho whose reasons God is the swift conclusion of all premises, has a science of its own and is a power on earth to which neither rank nor genius may compare. They must like and dislike, unerringly, they know nothing, and yet the future will show that God's glory was concerned, and that they judged as love and truth and clear light would have had them judge.

Faith of our Fathers: "God estimates men not by their numbers, but by their intrinsic worth. It is no credit to us to belong to the body of the Church Catholic if we are not united to the soul of the Church by a life of faith, hope and charity. It will avail us nothing to be citizens of the Kingdom of Christ which encircles the globe, unless the Kingdom of God is within us by the reign of the Holy Spirit in our hearts."

"The Holy Father may live and die in the catacombs, as the early Pontiffs did for the first three centuries. He may be dragged from His See and perish in exile, like the Martins, the Gregories, and the Piuses. He may wander a penniless pilgrim, like Peter himself. Rome itself may sink beneath the Mediterranean,  but the Chair of Peter will stand, and Peter will live in his successors." 

Written by Helen Howell (1966)

Faith of our Father by Rev. Frederick William Faber
Based on Hebrews 11:6

Rev. Frederick W. Faber
Photo Credit: Henry Hering

Faith of our Fathers! Holy Faith!
We will be true to thee till death.

Our Fathers, chained in prisons dark,
Were still in heart and conscience free:
How sweet would be their children's fate,
If they, like them, could die for thee!

Faith of our Fathers! Holy Faith!
We will be true to thee till death.

Faith of our Fathers! Mary's prayers
Shall win our country back to thee:
And through the truth that comes from God
England shall then indeed be free.

Faith of our Fathers! Holy Faith!
We will be true to thee till death.

Faith of our Fathers! we will love
Both friend and foe in all our strife:
And preach thee too, as love knows how
By kindly words and virtuous life:

Faith of our Fathers! Holy Faith!
We will be true to thee till death.[5]