Life is not a dream, and death is not its ending

David Warren writes,

we live in a fallen world, in which the good, the true, & the beautiful, need defense.

Beauty, truth, goodness, are allied; as too, their opposites.

I have long noticed that as the post-modern (or more precisely, post-conciliar) Church has been putting her legacy out in the trash, the secular world has been picking through the pieces. The incomparably magnificent musical heritage of Holy Church survives, for the most part no longer in the churches, from where it was banished after Vatican II; but outside, on things like CDs. It has become “classical” music, & against all expectations, holds some considerable ground in competition with the “popular” music of the street & the gutter. Churches that have been emptied out by the liturgical “reforms,” fill up again for secular concerts of the music that was discarded.

That trumpet makes no uncertain sound. It calls us to battle. It flies upon Satan’s greatest lie: that our lives are inconsequential. It attacks all the corollaries of that lie: that we are helpless in ourselves, that we cannot help each other, that we cannot bolster one another in prayer; that our dead lie beyond the reach of our love, & we beyond theirs. It provides a vision of the Last Judgement in which all of the consequences of our acts coalesce. And by necessity, it is terrifying: because life is not a dream, & death is not its ending.

Without the clarion call to repentance, of course the churches empty out. Why bother listening to preachers who are not sure what they have to say? Who dress a part they cannot play? Who, standing even before the altar, turn their backs towards our Christ. And play their nursery tunes, & speak as if we were a kindergarten class.

But take heart. The little men cannot keep the Rex tremendae majestatis out of our chapels. They haven’t the strength. They cannot hide our Lord from us, for we can look past them. For consider, that the trumpet will sound, through all the sepulchres of this earth; & the sheep & the goats will be parted.