It is a well known fact that the antagonists to the true Faith work overtime in plotting and drowning out any semblance of common sense and moral virtue by shouting down the faithful souls, whipping the crowds into a frenzy against those who stand for right. It is a scene so similar to the angry crowd who cried out "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!" and mocked our Lord and Savior all the way to the summit of Golgatha.

    Just as there are only a few still standing with the True Mystical Body of Christ today, there were only a few who still stood with Christ through His darkest hour of humanity. We know who they were from holy writ, a number you can count on two hands and yet, only those identified could be counted on one hand: His most Blessed Mother Mary, St. John the Beloved Disciple, St. Mary Magdalen, a woman identified as Salome, and another Mary, the mother of the Apostle St. James the Lesser and Joseph of Arimathea. The latter two sons were not present, however Joseph did assist Nicodemus in securing a proper sepulchre for Jesus.

    Yes the faithful few have reached Calvary. Like Christ we are stripped of our rights and the garments of justice for grave injustices are about to be carried out once again. Now Christ does not hide Who He is, nor should we hide that we are faithful Catholics. Like the early Christian martyrs and all the martyrs down through the ages, stand proudly and boldly in upholding the truth. Yes, we know the nails await. Are we ready? Really ready?

"My soul hath been long a sojourner. With them that hated peace I was peaceable; when I spoke to them, they fought against me without cause." (Psalm 119: 7)

    So laments the Psalmist David as he soldiers on in his cause for fulfilling God's holy Will. So also today we must soldier on as the dwindling, but dedicated infantry in the front lines for the Church Militant.

    The war has brought us to the peak. You could consider the small army of Traditional Catholics as P.O.W.'s for Christ. Willing ones at that for we have not been dragged to Calvary, but for love of Him Who sacrificed everything, we have fallen in step with Him through the grace He, as the Son of God, has bestowed on us to clearly see the path ahead and, in our free will, say 'yes, Lord, we will follow Thee for we want to be nailed with Thee to the cross. Lead on.'

    Not many are willing to go that far. That is the mark of grace to go forward into the valley of death, if you will, without fear of man but out of love for God; with no shame of being stripped of temporal things, no shame of what the world thinks; then hoisted up, there nailed to Christ for all to see. The important thing is that God sees and knows. Nothing else counts. That had been the motive of the Church Militant fighting for Christ and His Church from the time of Saint Stephen being stoned for what he believed through the reign of His Holiness Pope Pius XII when countless Catholics were martyred behind the Iron Curtain and during and after World War II because they would not compromise with diabolic interests, would not offer incense to the false idols of Lenin, Hitler, Stalin and other antichrists. They remained focused only on Jesus Christ, their Lord and Savior.

    Catholics, still faithful today to all that the Church has always taught, could be collectively considered the Good Thief. Think about it. We are all thieves because of our fallen human nature. It is only through the merits of Jesus Christ in His victory over death in granting God's grace, bestowed so abundantly through the Sacraments of Penance and the Holy Eucharist for our salvation, that faithful Catholics have been able to stay above that fine line between good thief and bad thief. Without the only propitiatory worship where the bread and wine can be truly confected into the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ through Transubstantiation at the Consecration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass by a consecrated priest acting as an alter Christus in offering up the immolated divine Son to His heavenly Father on our behalf (the purity of this sacrifice is not possible at a Novus Ordo service), one would have a most difficult time trying to stay above that line.

    Thus, on the right side we have the Good Thief, and on the left the Bad Thief. Appropriate since the left equates to progressive, radical and leans toward the apostasy of elevating man above God, while the right refers to conservative, standing firm to tradition, and giving God His due as always first without Whom we wouldn't exist.

    We can see so clearly who the bad thieves are today, the very ones who do not love our Lord because they do not keep His Commandments as He asserts in St. John 14: 15. In fact, the beloved disciple goes further in identifying the bad thieves as "antichrists" as he affirms in 1 John 2: 18, 22. In fact, St. John says in 2 John 1: 7-11:

"For many seducers are gone out into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh: this is a seducer and an antichrist. Look to yourselves that you lose not the things which you have wrought: but that you may receive a full reward. Every one who recedeth, and continueth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God : he that continueth in the doctrine, he hath both the Father and the Son. If any man come to you, and bring not the doctrine, receive him not into the house, nor say to him, Hail. For he that saith to him, Hail, communicateth, with his wicked works."

    I bring this up in this final installment on the Sorrowful Mysteries series for a reason for there have been many warnings about the great apostasy of our times when the Mystical Body of Christ would travel the Via Dolorosa enroute to Calvary. In our time today in 2010 we have arrived. Now, as alluded to above, we are being nailed to the cross.

    Not something most are willing to submit to. Only those who love God more than themselves are willing to make such a sacrifice. As mentioned, it cannot be done on will alone but by the combination of will and grace. Again, that grace can only be garnered if a soul is in the state of Sanctifying Grace for without that, a soul is dead. That is why it's called "Mortal Sin."

    Now consider the grave repercussions of the Scribes and Pharisees of these modern times who have so mislead the faithful. They have been the very ones who Christ, as well as St. Paul and St. John warned us of. Did not the conciliar ''popes' from John XXIII through Benedict XVI acknowledge and hail those who brought not the doctrine? That is documented hundreds of times. Did not these men, considered by us to be antipopes and by St. John as antichrists, preach a gospel other than what St. Paul preached? That also is documented. And we know how we should treat those who do such, who do not seek to please God but rather seek to please men. The Apostle of the Gentiles said it quite clearly twice in Galatians 1: 8-9: "Let him be anathema."

    And yet, those who follow the Apostles' words to the letter are persecuted by those who should be setting the example but are not for they have chosen to follow the course of the Bad Thief.

    In referencing St. John we also have the Book of the Apocalypse which lays out these very times of the Great Apostasy and the counterfeit church of conciliarism which apes the true Catholic Church founded by Christ. That is the devil's way. Just as three is the Trinitarian number, satan uses the number 6 and we know the Mark of the Beast is 666 as St. John affirms in Apocalypse 13: 17-18. It is also in this last book of Sacred Scripture in which he identifies the false church in the end times.

    Whether these are the end times or an end of an era, no one can know for sure except for God, but we do have signposts that point to the very times St. John is referring to when he indicates the "great harlot" who will act as a "Mother" and lead her children astray as the seventeenth chapter of Apocalypse describes. Remember how the evil one apes God and His appointed ones. So also the harlot apes not only the Mother of God Mary most holy, but holy Mother Church. as we see in verses 3-7.

    Verse 8 speaks of the beast coming up from the bottomless pit and it reminds us of Pope Leo XIII's vision which prompted him to compose the Prayer to St. Michael in 1888 after his startling vision as to the future of the Church. This prayer was dedicated for the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel exactly 1,448 years from the date of the election of the first Leo - Pope Saint Leo the Great. Everyone is familiar with the short prayer which was mandated by His Holiness as part of the Leonine Prayers after every Low Mass. After Vatican II, in legion with the devil, the antipope paul vi outlawed this necessary prayer. Does one wonder how "the smoke of satan" got into the sanctuary? The conciliarists wanted to make sure the words within the longer prayer would never see the light of day again for in it Leo foretold what would happen: The shepherd would be struck, the sheep scattered:

"That wicked dragon pours out. as a most impure flood, the venom of his malice on men of depraved mind and corrupt heart, the spirit of lying, of impiety, of blasphemy, and the pestilent breath of impurity, and of every vice and iniquity. These most crafty enemies have filled and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the spouse of the Immaculate Lamb, and have laid impious hands on Her most sacred possessions. In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck the sheep may be scattered. Arise then, O invincible Prince, bring help against the attacks of the lost spirits to the people of God, and give them the victory."

    In verse 9 of Apocalypse 17, we see the identity of the harlot for it is Modern Rome that has usurped and, basically eclipsed Eternal Rome. We can at least discern this from what holy Mother Church has discerned. As Catholics we are not to interpret the Word as we think it is, but rather rely on the discernment of the Church which has been passed down by the holy Fathers and Doctors of the Church, often found in the Haydock Commentary of the Douay-Rheims version. Yet, because few could foresee these times of which St. John and St. Paul prophesied, they, for the most part, attributed much to the time of the Roman persecutions, equating the events to recent times to them. Yet time has proven there is much more meaning in those words of Divine Revelation and much more devastation of souls today than even in the early Church. Therefore, with those times having passed and considering the circumstances today we have to gage St. John's words on the evidence we have before us and apply his words to the Great Apostasy we encounter in these times.

    An interesting and disturbing point about the Book of Apocalypse is that Protestants target the Catholic Church as the "whore of Babylon" and a pagan religion that worships idols and has veered from Sacred Scripture. This is one of their greatest arguments and there are too few Catholic theologians who have taken the time to refute this fallacy that has served as a roadblock to converting many non-Catholics because of such dangerous old-wives tales. What we can see of what has occurred over the past 50 years, especially in rereading the Book of Apocalypse and applying St. John's words to what we encounter today, we can better understand and see more clearly who the "whore of Babylon" really is: the counterfeit church that poses as the Mystical Bride. One problem: the Mystical Bride is spotless, whereas the Bride of the devil is spotted and lacking totally in virtue, dead to God, dead to any source of grace. The fruits over the past fifty years from the church masquerading as the true Church are totally lacking in any good fruit as statistics have proven repeatedly. Yet should anyone be surprised considering our Lord's assurance that a bad tree cannot yield good fruit? Of course not.

    What we do know is that the good guys win in the end because any fight against the Lamb of God will end in defeat for the enemy. We have Christ's Word on that, reaffirmed by St. John, our Blessed Mother, and the entire Church Triumphant.

    There have been many messengers now in the Church Triumphant who, when receiving Heaven's warnings as members of the Church Militant, confirmed what the Scriptures portend. Thus, moving from Sacred Scripture, this time of persecution and crucifixion for the Mystical Body of Christ was foretold also by numerous saints, and our Lady at Quito when she appeared as Our Lady of Good Success in the Church-approved messages to Venerable Mother Marianna de Jesus Torres in the 17th Century. Two centuries later she appeared at Rue du Bac and the remote village of La Salette in the French Alps where she alerted all through the visionary Melanie Matthieu Calvat that "Rome would lose the Faith, and become the seat of the antichrist." We can see the truth of that prediction presently.

    However, that is not the only warning for, besides Mary's plea at Fatima and the aforementioned vision Pope Leo XIII, this was foretold many, many times over the course of Church history. Consider St. Vincent of Lerins who fought the battles on the wrong side at first as a Semipelagian in the fifth century, even to opposing St. Augustine and, later realized his grave error and Augustine's words, "Wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it; and right is right even if no one is doing it." Vincent saw the light, arriving at the following wise advice:

"What then should a Catholic do if some portion of the Church detaches itself from communion of the universal Faith? What choice can he make if some new contagion attempts to poison, no longer a small part of the Church, but the whole Church at once, then his great concern will be to attach himself to antiquity (tradition) which can no longer be led astray by any lying novelty."

    Down through the centuries there were countless warnings, and it would take volumes to list them all including the prophesies of St. Bridget of Sweden and Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich to those examining them, they applied them more to their own times, and, if they did not equate to their situation, they, for the most part discarded them for another time. Ah, but what and wehn is that other time?

    Well, before the Protestant Revolution of the 16th Century there was a prophesy that holds great weight today, warnings imparted to one who was truly a holy mystic, the first saint to receive the visible Stigmata. That would be the prophesy of the humble friar and founder of the Order of Friars Minor St. Francis of Assisi who wrote:

• The time is fast approaching in which there will be great trials and afflictions; perplexities and dissensions, both spiritual and temporal, will abound; the charity of many will grow cold, and the malice of the wicked will increase.

    Has there not been great trials and afflictions, perplexities and dissensions both in the visible church and state, especially here in America in this last year? Has not the charity of many grown cold? We can see that by the lack of donations and invectives of e-mailers calling us every name in the book. Can you say the malice of the wicked has increased? While this could be referring to the Western Schism a century later or the Protestant Revolution three centuries away, we can see by the events in our times that it more readily applies to this present era.

• The devils will have unusual power, the immaculate purity of our Order, and of others, will be so much obscured that there will be very few Christians who will obey the true Sovereign Pontiff and the Roman Church with loyal hearts and perfect charity. At the time of this tribulation a man, not canonically elected, will be raised to the Pontificate, who, by his cunning, will endeavour to draw many into error and death.

    Have we not seen the dissolution of Orders, the perversion of the Dominicans, Franciscans, Benedictines and especially the Jesuits? "At the time of tribulation" cannot refer to the Protestant Revolution but rather our present times and when we see the infiltration of the Modernists, we can only ask: Who has obeyed the true Sovereign Pontiff with loyal hearts and perfect charity? Surely not those men who posed as pompous pontiffs since the death of Pius XII.

    And we see from the very lips of the beloved St. Francis that a man "not canonically elected, will be raised to the Pontificate who, by his cunning, will endeavor to draw many into error and death." Let us count the usual suspects: Angelo Roncalli, Giovanni Montini, Albino Luciani, Karol Wojtyla and Joseph Ratzinger. Have they not all drawn many into error and death of sanctifying grace? Not to mention the physical deaths Roncalli, Montini and Wojtyla enabled by their betrayal of the Church in compromising with Communism. And what of the recent revelations of Ratzinger's complicit cover-up not only of the entire rotting conciliar carcass over the sodomite and demonic sex scandals, but his own involvement when an ordinary in Bavaria.

• Then scandals will be multiplied, our Order will be divided, and many others will be entirely destroyed, because they will consent to error instead of opposing it.

    Have we not witnessed the Franciscans being torn asunder from the pull of the world and the establishment of philosophies embracing the Marxist social justice agenda which another Order, the Society of Jesus ran with in ramrodding Liberation Theology down the throats of parishioners worldwide, taking responsibility for the transition of South and Central America to Marxism. Countries have been overthrown and destroyed by radicals. Indeed, as holy Francis foretold in avering St. Paul's words in 2 Thessalonians 2: 10-11, "And in all seduction of iniquity to them that perish : because they receive not the love of the truth that they might be saved. Therefore, God shall send them the operation of error, to believe a lie. That all may be judged, who have not believed the truth, but have consented to iniquity." Is no that "operation of error" the very conciliar construct having as its benchmark the very " "abomination of desolation" Christ foretold in St. Matthew 24: 15? Is it not true that the vast, vast majority have been dumbed down, if you will, to believe the lie that the current hierarchs occupying the Vatican are Catholic?

• There will be such diversity of opinions and schisms among the people, the religious and the clergy, that, except those days were shortened, according to the words of the Gospel, even the elect would be led into error, were they not specially guided, amid such great confusion, by the immense mercy of God.

    Again, all is playing out as Jesus identified throughout his prophecy in chapter twenty-four of St. Matthew on the end times. He begins in verse 4 with the warning: "Take heed that no man seduce you." That is what has happened and yet, there is hope if we trust in God and His mercy. But there is no other way to get to Heaven other than through Calvary. It's the Catholic's itinerary. Those who shy away, well, Christ illustrates their fate only too clearly in the last verse, "There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." The entire chapter is worth meditating on often to better understand these times and to gain strength to persevere.

• Then our Rule and manner of life will be violently opposed by some, and terrible trials will come upon us. Those who are found faithful will receive the crown of life; but woe to those who, trusting solely in their Order, shall fall into tepidity, for they will not be able to support the temptations permitted for the proving of the elect.

    We can clearly see how the once strong and fervent Orders no longer produce good fruit for they have grafted onto the bad tree, eschewing the good tree because of the lure of the serpent. Whatever tree they have latched onto, they have poisoned it. However, God has protected the good tree, allowing it to shed its leaves and seemingly not only dormant, but dead. Yet we know that the Truth, the Way and the Life soars through the veins of the trunk and will replenish the branches once the way is clear to blossom again when the blight is abated.

• Those who preserve their fervor and adhere to virtue with love and zeal for the truth, will suffer injuries and, persecutions as rebels and schismatics; for their persecutors, urged on by the evil spirits, will say they are rendering a great service to God by destroying such pestilent men from the face of the earth. but the Lord will be the refuge of the afflicted, and will save all who trust in Him. And in order to be like their Head, [Christ] these, the elect, will act with confidence, and by their death will purchase for themselves eternal life; choosing to obey God rather than man, they will fear nothing, and they will prefer to perish rather than consent to falsehood and perfidy.

    Jesus foretold just this in St. Matthew 24, warning that even the elect could be deceived (cf. St. Matthew 24: 24) and pronounced the course those, who remained faithful, would have to follow. It is the narrow path, where they will persecute "those who preserve their fervor and adhere to virtue with love and zeal for the truth" refuse to compromise with the world, the flesh and the devil For that be prepared to be persecuted and labeled with nasty names such as schismatics and crazies. Did not our Lord say that if they have persecuted Me, how much more they will persecute you? Yes, and the fruits of that await with the assurance of everlasting life if we stay the course.