After consideration, I have concluded there are four things that are sacred in this world.

• the Holy Mass
• marriage
• women
• children

Each one was designed to be revered and protected by all of us–but especially by men.

“Why single out the men?”, you may ask. I believe it will become clear as you read.

If the selfishness of sin darkens our intellect and weakens our will (Rom 1:21-23), then it is exceedingly clear that we live in a time of grievous sin. Given the mass confusion of moral and intellectual darkness all around us, one can go so far as to say that degeneracy has been institutionalized and enmeshed into the very fabric of our culture.

Thankfully, God comes to us through our senses to bring us back to our senses.

Yet He is so far beyond our senses that we cannot fully comprehend Him. This is where our first sacred good, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, comes in.

Since the Mass makes present again the greatest act of love God ever did for us, we can be spiritually fed and, if properly disposed, receive His divine Son into our bodies.

No other religion on earth can make that claim and back it up with evidence.

Although it’s nice to be surrounded by Gregorian chant, candles and incense, it is Jesus Christ who makes the Mass sacred–not the music, the choir, the priest, and certainly not us. These things are only meant to point to the invisible reality of Jesus Christ made visible for our benefit.

The sacredness of the Mass has been confirmed time and again by the profane: Various attempts have been employed throughout the ages to dismantle, oppress, infiltrate or eliminate it altogether by powers from without (and from within).

Think of all the immoral Medieval popes, the thousand years of Islamic conquests, the French Revolution, the various totalitarian governments of the 20th century, and the Cristero War that I wrote about in my last blog post, just to name a few.

All were aimed at corrupting or subverting the Holy Mass.

Perhaps the most obvious and obnoxious example today is satanists’ attempts to procure consecrated Hosts for their blasphemous “black masses” and other various occult practitioners who seek to desecrate the Eucharist every day (while completely ignoring Protestant worship services).

It is said that the earth and all its creatures would not be able to sustain itself without Jesus being offered at Holy Mass around the world every minute of every day–that it would have imploded long ago due to mankind’s sinfulness. Such is the power and glory of Jesus Christ who is all, and in all (Col 3:11).

Perhaps the most under-appreciated yet profoundly sacred institution is the sacrament of matrimony. It is the first and only supernatural and unchangeable union created by God (Gen 2:24) between one man and one woman (Gaudium et Spes, n. 48).

This gives it a “sacred status” that should not be tampered with.

Yet I would argue that marriage is the number one sacred good that is under attack in our world today.

A valid marriage has four cardinal characteristics that make it impossible for us to negate it in the eyes of God: it’s permanent (until death), fruitful (open to life), freely consensual (including freedom from impediments) and faithful.

Fatima seer, Sister Lucia dos Santos prophesied the final battle between Christ and Satan will be over marriage and the family. In her letter to Cardinal Caffarra before her death, she wrote: “The final battle between the Lord and the kingdom of Satan will be about Marriage and the Family. Don’t be afraid, because whoever works for the sanctity of Marriage and the Family will always be fought against and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue.”

Since men and women are made to complement each other in every way, without marriage you simply cannot have a family.

Yet this is the Luciferian plan: To abolish the family is to abolish the most basic building block of human civilization.

The homosexual and transgender movements are therefore nothing more than attacks against the fruitfulness, faithfulness and permanence of marriage.

Perhaps a less subtle (but no less scary) example of this is the communist agenda in higher education. The University of Pennsylvania, for instance, is unabashedly offering a course titled simply, “Abolish the Family”.

If we ask ourselves: where would we be as a society without intact loving families? All we have to do is look out the window. Our youth hunger for the stability that can be found in the sacred home of a loving marriage.

When a society no longer recognizes the sacred it doesn’t protect the things worth protecting.

It is well-known that the health of a culture is revealed by the way it treats its women.

If men are calling themselves women and babies are being murdered at their most vulnerable stage of life, that should give us a pretty good idea.

The international movement to effeminize men has dark and disastrous consequences because it leaves women in particular vulnerable to spiritual, mental and physical harm.

Since men are the heads (leaders) of families, when they surrender their responsibilities, women are left unprotected from predators who want to exploit them.

The abortion industry plays into the hands of this as it only benefits men who abandon their responsibilities to the children they helped bring into the world, and encourages them to deny their sacred duty to protect them from harm.

At this point it should be fairly obvious that if we continue down this path, we are destined for cultural genocide.

Yet when we tolerate everything, we cannot live in harmony; the profane always militates against the sacred, and the sacred displaces the profane.

So how can men better protect women?

We know that Jesus condemned violence by declaring that “those who live by the sword die by the sword” (Mt 26:52).

He also refuted false acceptance and tolerance of evil, showing He does not want us to live harmoniously with each other at all costs: “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Mt 10:34-36).

This seeming contradiction is perfectly in line with true Christian living–especially for men–as they are made to protect, provide and lead.

He exhorts them to fight evil, not by evil means, but by preserving the sacred through the virtues of courage, self-control, intelligence, prudence and sacrificial love (2 Tim 1:7).

These virtues make up manly spiritual knighthood, which God demands of every man. If pride was the sin of Eve, then passivity was the sin of Adam, because he failed to protect her from the dragon.

Our culture is like the great Titanic sinking in the frigid waves of the sea, but I believe there will be brave men casting “lifesavers” of truth and helping people to safety with “rowboats” of courage, for the next generations to come.

These men who stand firm to the end will be the “spark” for a new culture of life to begin.

And finally, few of us would argue that children are God’s gift to the human race. They are not only our future but they embody all that we should seek to preserve in ourselves: humility, child-like dependence and trust, innocence, unrestrained affection and love.

They are sacred because they are the only creatures on earth that most closely resemble Christ.

Children reflect qualities we have lost as adults, reminding us to ask God to heal us so we can be constantly restored and once more become His child.

As they grow, these childlike traits slowly disappear because of the sins of others around them, and they become hardened by the world.

Due to their inherent helplessness and dependence on others, children are vulnerable to evil. This vulnerability should move us to protect them at all costs.

Many of us (myself included) before having children were blind to our own selfishness. This is part of the gift of children–they are the remedy for this, and a big part of working out our own salvation; they expand our hearts, saving our own souls in the process. In a word, they force us to stop serving ourselves.

So why did I leave out the men on my list of sacred things?

If you haven’t noticed already, men are drawn to the sacred.

Because of this, Christ has entrusted men with the noble task of becoming the most like Himself: protecting all that is sacred in this world–even at the cost of laying down their own lives.

What a challenging and life-giving mission God has given them! Thinking about this fills me with joy and gratitude for the men God has placed in my life, knowing they have an important role to play in God’s divine plan of salvation.

And because of this, no matter what happens, we can have hope for the future.

Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary, pray for us!

Source: G.k. Chesterton, Illustrated London News, Jan. 14, 1911. The Society of G.K. Chesterton, https://www.chesterton.org/quotations/war-and-politics/.