Archbishop Fulton Sheen, as a watchful observer of reality, pointed out that the core of all crises that are taking on the planet present is the fact that people have rejected the teachings of the Cross. In his book “Cross and Crisis”, he concluded a prophetic imagination of the fall of our civilization—which, like a prodigal son, will abandon the Father's goodness completely and fall into the arms of the abyss of hell. But there is simply a way back. What, as a society, do we gotta do to climb it?
“Soon afterward, a younger son, taking everything...” These are the words of the Gospel, which attest that the apostasy of the heart is gradual. Man is not yet out of control erstwhile he indulges in pleasures but is not possessed by vices and sins.
It took a young man a fewer days to take everything. erstwhile he gathered all this together, he went to a abroad country. And in fact, only the country in which there is no God is simply a stranger. With wealth and the thrill of being freed from his father’s authority, the young man initially feels that the door to all the pleasures of the planet is open to him.
However, they are momentary delights—transient madness from the delirious dream of a prodigal son. Sin and its associated pleasures were only adequate to tempt, ignite, and spoil him throughout his life, but never to give him pleasance for 1 day. The request for further sensations did not disappear. The appetite grew as he ate, but the satisfaction of successive pleasures was decreasing each time. He was like a man whose appetite grows constantly, but the food supply available to him is constantly shrinking. Sin was a promise of delight, and brought only what he truly had to offer: Your disgusting presence.
The Marine boy is Western Civilization
The moral application of this parable is apparent and results from its very content. However, it is besides possible to make any historical references in which the spiritual experiences of the modern planet are shown. It can be assumed that The younger boy in the parable is Western civilization. In the 16th century, she went to the spiritual father of Christianity, the politician of Christ, and asked for her share in the estate, the precious capital of wisdom and tradition gathered for 15 centuries of dense trials, persecution and prayers. For 15 centuries the spiritual father kept the fine capital left by Christ, enriched by the teachings of the apostles, the tradition of the Church's fathers, and the synthesis of scholastics. Maintaining this heritage was not always easy. Sometimes you had to pay for them with blood and even with life. It was, of course, not about wealth in gold and silver, but about infinitely more valuable The Capital of God’s Truths, speaking of the inspired character of the Holy Scriptures, the necessity of sacramental communion with Christ, the request for infallible authority, the divine nature of Christ, the presence of God, and the necessity of religion.
Western civilization, like its younger son, enjoyed the gift of freedom, which is inseparable from humanity. So she could leave her home, and she did. Taking under her arm the legacy of crucial spiritual truths, she went to a abroad country where she did not gotta perceive to any orders and instructions of her spiritual father, but only her own whims and desires. In the first moments of unfettered freedom, only independency was said. Children of Western civilization who broke up with their spiritual father, They prided themselves on rejecting the “chains of Rome” and the “slavery of dogmas”. In awe of false freedom, Western civilization began to spend its spiritual inheritance. In a nutshell, it can be said that the past of the last 4 centuries is the past of the waste of wealth or the fatherhood which Christ entrusted to his Church. This property did not step down in 1 minute in 1 place, nor was it passed with 1 group of friends. The capital obtained in decline was thin centuries after the century. In retrospect, we can find precisely erstwhile the individual parts of it were released. In the 16th century, Western civilization squandered belief in the necessity of power.
In the 17th century, she squandered her religion in the Bible as the revealed word of God. In the 18th century, she squandered her religion in the deity of Christ, the necessity of grace, and the full supernatural structure. In the 19th century, she squandered her religion in the existence of God as Lord, Ruler, and eventual justice alive and dead. In our day, she has spent the last of her money – she has squandered her religion in the necessity of religion and work to God. She truly wasted her luck surviving a wasteful life.
The witness to the spiritual fall of Western civilization is 2 very crucial phenomena: mass departure from Christ and mass departure from God.
The passage comes from the book “Cross and Crisis” by Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Esprit Publishing House
