Catholic during the Great Apostasy

*Vere dignum et justum est, aequum et salutare*

**1. Service to God should be the fundamental trait of your being; serving God is a matter that is worthy, just, equitable, and salvific.**

It is a **WORTHY** matter. The dignity and nobility of a creature lie in the fact that, according to its nature, it is a revelation of God’s magnificence.

This dignity will find its fulfillment if, not only by your nature but also by your disposition, you become a revelation of the Creator. The more your thoughts align with God, the more sublime and valuable they become.

Whoever seeks to glorify God adopts God’s thoughts and intentions.

Nothing is great, neither in heaven nor on earth, unless it aims to honor and glorify God.

Christ knew no other purpose in life on earth than to become, through His life, suffering, and work, an instrument of God’s honor and glorification.

Submission to God is the foundation of all perfection and the source of true happiness. It makes a person wise, prudent, courageous, sacrificial, truthful, upright, courteous, and content. Nothing is more pleasing than this virtue, which refers everything to God; nothing is more repulsive than a person who seeks only themselves in everything.

All those who do not seek God are servants of idols: some serve the idol of vain glory, others the idol of self-interest, and still others the idol of pleasure.

The noblest person is the one who has drawn all conclusions from the truth that they are a creature of God and arranges their entire life according to this truth.

It is better to let thousands of worlds fall into the abyss than to blink an eye against the most holy will of God.

**2. Service to God is also a duty of **JUSTICE**.**

You do not belong to yourself but to God; God must regard you as His own, for He cannot do otherwise. He could only have created you for Himself, for His glory. Everything belongs to God; nothing belongs to you. Beware lest you appropriate what belongs to another.

When, turning away from God, you seek your own honor and comfort, you rob God of what is rightfully His; you infringe upon God’s inalienable right.

The necessity of belonging to God does not stem merely from some external office or state; it lies in the depths of every creature’s essence. It is the foundation of all other duties, the foundation of both personal and societal happiness.

To fear God and keep His commandments is the nature, task, and primary duty of humanity; it is humanity’s history, greatness, glory, and happiness.

Thus, our primary concern should be to establish this truth as the unshakable principle for all our aspirations and plans.

This is what law and justice demand. Do good and fear no one.

**3. Service to God is, moreover, a duty of **EQUITY**.**

It is natural that all greatness and authority receive appropriate recognition. How much more must I acknowledge the greatness and authority of God, which infinitely surpasses everything and is so close to me!

Is it not equitable to humbly lift my gaze to God when He looks upon us with love?

Is it not equitable to offer Him thanksgiving when we continually receive so much goodness from Him?

Is it not equitable to pray to God? After all, we expect our happiness from Him.

The more the world strives to strip God of the honor due to Him, the more zealously we should render that honor to God.

The prevailing spirit of our time, which dominates daily life, industry, politics, art, science, and even religion, is a spirit of revolution against the living God.

In place of God, humanity is now elevated—a humanity that, in itself, is merely a vessel of misery and weakness.

God is either entirely ignored or regarded as something meant to satisfy human demands, serve as a policeman, or safeguard the interests of the state.

The modern world does not acknowledge the living God; it does not recognize the Creator of heaven and earth, who gave commandments, whom we must serve, and who will one day hold us accountable. It may still acknowledge God as the architect of the world but despises any moral law that comes from God.

If the modern world acknowledges God at all, it is a God who, whether out of a love for comfort or excessive concern for His own dignity, cares about nothing; intoxicated by His own greatness and bliss, He gives almost no sign of life. When praised, He pays no heed; when prayed to, He does not listen; when loved, He does not reciprocate; when offended, He does not grow angry; when blasphemed, He feels nothing.

The world acknowledges a God who stands like an immobile statue, indifferent to vice and virtue, looking with the same eye upon the pious and the godless. Such a God, to whom no nation since the beginning of the world has ever built.Concurrent a temple, is the object of the religions to which these people subscribe.

And what is humanity according to them?

Mere matter, a body, nothing more than a machine, slightly more sophisticated in its organization than an animal, with which it shares the same origin and end. Humanity exists to eat; it eats to live; it lives to soon pass away. Driven by bodily needs, governed by instinct, torn by passions, it never errs because it never sees the truth; it never does wrong because it does not know what is good; it deserves neither punishment nor praise because it always succumbs to fate.

This falsified notion of God, which is the great crime of our times, renders the modern worldview so impotent.

Who would not feel moved to offer worship to the true God in the face of such falsehood? Who would not be inflamed to make their heart an altar to the true God?

**4. Service to God is finally a **DUTY** for our own sake.**

Above all, humanity should strive to attain the happiness for which it was created.

God governs us to make us happy through Himself and in Himself. We should surrender to God so that we may find ourselves in Him. Only in God can humanity be happy, for it is destined for God. Hence, the human heart remains restless until it rests in God.

Those who seek themselves will, after chasing every illusory pleasure, find only themselves; those who seek God will, after every trial, find God.

God has justly decreed that those who refuse to submit to His loving governance will fall under the cruel governance of themselves.

When we serve God, not only is truth within us, but also peace, for we feel we are on the right path, occupying the proper stance toward God, who constantly reminds us of His laws through our conscience. Yet this peace is not idle lethargy but a strength that continually urges us to fulfill God’s will more perfectly.

God cares for our happiness to the extent that we care for His honor.

Thus, the title of “servant of God” brings more honor and benefit than royal crowns.

The cause of all evil in the world is independence from God, opposition to the Creator. Satan was the progenitor of this. Adam, too, desired to be, of himself, what he could and should have become only in dependence on God.

“Every day this year, every hour this day, and every moment this hour,” prayed the pious Suso, “I desire, O Lord, to praise and love You more than any saint has ever praised or loved You.”

*Fr. Tilmann Pesch, SJ, Christian Philosophy of Life, Vol. I, Second Edition, Kraków 1930, pp. 93–98.*