Trust is a powerful word entrusted to us by the Most Powerful. We, as
individuals and as a nation are committed to God's care. He has placed us
in the environment we are in for our safekeeping. It is His responsibility
to care for us. It is our responsibility to respond to that loving care by
totally trusting in Him for everything!
Our founding fathers seemed to have it right when they charged that our
nation be founded on the principle of a deep trust in God, thus they
instructed that most monetary units would have the inscription "IN GOD WE
TRUST." Oh, how far we have sunk over these last two hundred years plus!
For if we truly lived those words as a nation, abortion would not be so
prevalent; neither would drug addiction; nor AIDS; nor freemasonry; nor
pornography; nor murder; nor homosexuality; nor condoms; nor immorality of
all types; nor feminism; nor corruption; nor nuclear threats; nor lies and
exploitation; nor crime and covetousness, nor hundreds of other heinous
vices in which our country is mired from the White House on down.
Our country, dedicated and consecrated to the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is in big trouble. If you think we're just "whistlin' Dixie" look around you.
Devastating hurricanes, floods, heat and cold spells that have set all-time
records over the past year, droughts, fires and earthquakes. Is God trying to tell us something?
You can bet on it! But, in His Mercy, He is trying to warn us in the
gentlest of ways. Don't blame it on El Nino or La Nina. The blame lays squarely in our own lap. He has allowed natural and man-made disasters, which have left a wake of material destruction, yet have only taken a minimum of
lives. We are all too hung up on material things and the welfare of our
bodies, and not enough on spiritual things and the vital welfare of our
souls! Look back at the numerous hurricanes over this past decade - so few lives in what could have
been disastrous. Remember the World Trade Center? What would have been
the mortality rate had the bomb gone off during the business day? Recall
how few actually lost their lives in the great Midwest floods last summer.
Recollect the tremendous damage done by the west coast fires and LA
earthquake and see how many deaths were recorded. Very few. The Oklahoma City Federal Building was another story, but out of this, too, God brings good. When you
compare the death tolls of recent earthquakes, the "less than 50" in LA is
diminutive compared with the thousand who died in the El Salvador quake of
1986, or the 6.6 five years ago which killed nearly 1500 in India, or the
2,800 registered deaths in the '82 Arabian Peninsula quake or the tens of thousands rendered homeless in Columbia just recently.
Yes, our country has been fortunate. We have not experienced any massive
death count in the thousands from natural or man-made disasters, even though the recent cold
snaps have claimed some lives. But compared to what it could be, God is
indeed merciful; in fact, no foreign country has penetrated our shores in
war, nor has this great nation of ours really known want over the last
fifty years. The American death toll in the Gulf War was miraculously
minimal.
Why? Is it because we're special? That nothing can happen to us? That
we are indeed 'immortal'? Some may think that. How wrong they are. Can
anyone truly believe that a country which has sold out to greed, lust and
murder through legalized abortion does not deserve the Justice of the Father's
Hand? Yet, the U.S. goes on thinking God doesn't have any part of
this - that it's just "Mother Nature". Wrong! It is the Father - God the
Father, and He's trying to tell us something but we don't listen. He has
sent His loving daughter, the Mother of the Son, and Spouse of the Holy
Spirit to forewarn us of what is yet to come. But we dismiss it as mere
private revelation - and yet the majority of what has occurred here in the
United States and in the world was foretold by Our Lady through these
private revelations, which are so easily dismissed in favor of "higher
finite intelligence!"
For nearly two centuries the Blessed Mother has kept repeating the urgency of her messages, the
urgency that we respond as a nation to God's commandments. But, we are not
responding. Just as in Sacred Scripture when the chosen people veered off
the track God had set them on, He sent prophets to warn them. If they
heeded the prophets' admonitions, such as Jonah and Nineveh, God spared His
people. But if they disregarded the prophets' counsel, God was swift in
His Justice. Witness the accounts of Isaiah and the subsequent captivity
of Israel as well as many other narratives in the Old Testament.
Whenever our predecessors, from ancient time down through the centuries to
our present modern age, placed their trust in man rather than God, they
were betrayed. See Pat Ludwa's View from the Pew today for some excellent examples of this.
So also will those be deceived who place their trust in the present
Administration who have betrayed our trust more times than we can count, or on material things, or on modern icons such as entertainment or sports celebrities. When we put an emphasis on the wrong
things, we lose focus of the true goal - the sole reason why God entrusted us
to this earth. Our sole reason for being here is to love, honor and obey
Him so that we can be happy with Him in this world and the next. It may be Baltimore Catechism rhetoric but it still applies, more than ever!
How can we love, honor and obey Him if we don't know Him? How can we
trust Him? God will not let us go wrong if our trust in Him is strong and
sure. That is why He left us His everlasting Church here on earth with its
Magisterium; that is why He gave us the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass so that
once instituted at the Last Supper and offered on and merited on the Cross
may be endowed to us. That is also why Jesus left us the Holy Spirit --the
Sanctifier and Paraclete.
God has given us gift after gift. Are we grateful? Are we taking care of
the gifts He has bestowed on us? He trusts that we are. To let God down,
to betray that trust is something none of us want to face.
Next installment: Part Two of "IN GOD WE TRUST."