This past Sunday, at Notre Dame Cathedral, about 50 faithful souls (mostly hip young adult Catholics and a few old fogies like myself) endured chilly but bearable weather to honour St. Joseph and call on his intercession for Canada and for the Church.  More than ever, we need St. Joseph’s very powerful intercession because we in Canada are in a very bad way.  I had four strapping young lads carry the statue of St. Joseph at the front of the processional line and everyone filed in right behind them with yours truly bringing up the rear with the megaphone.  With the brisk wind and the flags firmly stretched in the wind, it was a pretty impressive sight to see all of those flags representing Christendom.

They received some curious stares from the general public and, surprisingly, encouragement.  One gentlemen who was not Catholic expressed his appreciation of them. You never do know who you are going to touch.  Flags represented included the Canadian Flag, Holy See Flag, The Immaculate Heart, St. Joan of Arc, the Fleur-de-lis with the Sacred Heart, St. Michael the Archangel, the Holy Face Banner and my favourite, this beauty:

We Catholics have been losing ground in the public square for decades now.  And that’s because we’ve let it happen.  We need to reclaim the land for Our Lord and Our Lady.  Yes, that’s right.  We need to be physically present in public, making public profession of our Faith. It is necessary for many reasons, not the least of which is spiritual blessings that fall upon a nation when its people make a public profession.  It points to a greater allegiance than the one we owe to the State, and that message is going to be more and more necessary as the months and years go by.

Yes, indeed it was a glorious sight to see all those flags.

Flags represent your identity. Flags represent what you believe.  Flags reject what you are not.  Flags represent your side in the battle.  Flags represent your claim when you stake the land for the Lord.

So let the flags fly!  To war!  For the Lord has brought us to this point of a decisive battle to usher in a new age of the Immaculate Heart with a great victory.

Below you can read my opening reflection and mediations before each of the Joyful mysteries we prayed, as well as the video of the procession.

In her Immaculate Heart,

John Pacheco
St. Joan of Arc Community

• YOUTUBE VIDEO OF EVENT
• LITURGICAL PROGRAM

 

Opening Reflection @ Cathedral

We are here to honour St. Joseph, patron of the universal Church and our country whose feast day we normally celebrate today but this year we celebrate tomorrow. This year’s Procession is for the intentions of reconciliation, restoration, and revival. Over the past month or so, we’ve seen some interesting manifestations of revival in the U.S.  And I believe that restoration and revival is coming in due course.  But before it can come, our hearts need to be cleansed, prepared, and reconciled, for the Holy Spirit only truly comes to worthy tabernacles.  To be worthy tabernacles means to be humble enough to admit the truth of what is happening in the culture and in the Church and to repent and make reparation.  That’s a couple of other “R” words that we need to focus on too but is rarely spoken of with any seriousness in the Church today.  That needs to change.

We are witnessing the apostasy from God in favour of a “pseudo science” and its illegitimate mother, the Biomedical State which is drunk on greed, ignores natural prudence, is not informed by Christian ethics and which tramples upon individual and conscience rights. This pseudo-science has been co-opted by a totalitarian state to promote fear, secrecy and deception; being used as a lethal force for division in families, friendships, and all of our social institutions. It ignores the injury and death it has caused which has resulted in the loss of trust in all major institutions of society including law, politics, medicine, media, science, economics, and even the Church. What has transpired in the last three years is an unveiling – a revelation into the coldness and cruelty of men’s hearts.  Indeed, we seek and pray for reconciliation in the face of this division, but reconciliation can only be authentic when it is obedient to the truth.

The lies, tyranny, greed, corruption and the attacks on human conscience we have experienced over the past few years are not an isolated occurrence. It’s all connected and has the same source.  As the last few weeks have demonstrated, we as a Church are once again now facing our old foe, the Communist Dragon who seeks to attack Canada’s sovereignty as a free and Christian nation.  Of course, this has been going on for some time, but only now has the unveiling of this evil been exposed to the public.  I confess to you that despite being almost unrecognizable, Canada is still a Christian nation by virtue of the martyr’s blood which soaks its soil.  By our presence here today and with all the Canadian Saints and Blesseds, and in particular, St. Joseph our patron saint who is known by the title as “Terror of Demons”, we are here to reclaim our land through his intercession.  With St. Joseph, we’re here to tell the Dragon: “You shall not pass.” 

The real battle in what we face does not exist in only one dimension. It starts in the spiritual realm and works its way up to our social and political institutions. However, we need to engage this battle where our vocation demands it. And for most of us, that’s in the spiritual realm. And everyone can be a good soldier for Christ.  In fact, our job is the most important one since politics and culture are merely a reflection of our spiritual health. So let us focus now on the cause and not the symptom.  We need to pray.  We need to appeal to God’s mercy and fight. The Rosary is a weapon. There’s the “R” word again.  Remember, every political battle is also a spiritual battle.   That’s how the Rosary was introduced in France to St. Dominic who Our Lady promised victory over the Albigensian heresy in the thirteenth century.

Reflection on Mysteries of the Rosary

• Annunciation – During the Annunciation, let us recall the position St. Joseph found himself in. On the one hand, he loved Our Lady and could not believe she would dishonour the Lord, but on the other hand, He was an obedient Jew who followed the Law.  Not wanting to expose Our Lady to public disgrace, he resolved to divorce her quietly.  So let us pray for everyone who has suffered from a crisis of conscience these past three years, being forced to choose and violate their own conscience. Let us also pray for those who put innocent people in these difficult situations that they may repent and respect the dignity of every human person, and finally let us pray for our leaders – political and religious – that that they may have the courage to speak out to defend the defenseless.
• Visitation – In this mystery, let us remember that in Our Lady offering St. Elizabeth her Charity, it was St. Joseph who accompanied her and made the substantial and necessary preparations for the trip. O good and noble, St. Joseph, always in the background doing his job and fulfilling his role as father, protector, and provider for not only the Holy Family but also in the charity it blessed others with.  In this mystery, let us recall the importance of individual charity which sustains the love between persons and let us eschew the State’s interference which seeks to come between the citizens of this country in offering that charity.  No State can replace individual charity and remain free and accountable to its citizens.  So let us pray to recover the virtue of direct and intimate charity with one another, taking back the responsibility and accountability to personally respond when others are in need, and to pray to God to protect our personal financial resources from the State in order to do so.
• Nativity – In this mystery, we remember the poverty in which Our Lord was born.  We love poverty not for its own sake, but because it allows us to identify with all of humanity which material wealth discriminates against.  It is not the wealth itself that is the problem but the love of it.  It is not the poverty itself that is the virtue but the love of it.  The love of poverty points to the wealth which is being stored up in heaven and which we choose to share with our brothers and sisters.  What is this wealth?  It is their dignity as human beings and the inherent freedom in Christ which no man may legitimately deprive them of.  So let us stay close to St. Joseph who learned a paradoxical lesson on that cold night in Bethlehem 2000 years ago:  to be truly free and wealthy in the kingdom of God is not what we store up but what we empty ourselves of.
• Presentation in the Temple – In the presentation in the temple, we learn from Our Lady and St. Joseph the respect for obedience and religious submission to God’s law. Joseph travelled to Bethlehem to register for Caesar’s census.  He obeyed legitimate authority in both the secular and religious jurisdictions.   Let us therefore be good and faithful servants both to the Church and to the State, but always remember the witness of our Sacred Tradition that where there is a divergence between the two, our allegiance is to God alone.  We are, as St. Thomas More said all those years ago, “the King’s good servant, but God’s first.”
• Finding in the Temple – For three days, St. Joseph and Our Lady searched Jerusalem for Our Blessed Lord. What relief they must have felt when they found him among the doctors and teachers of the Law.  Our Lord’s response to them was instructive:  Did you not know that I would be in my Father’s house?  Like Mary and Joseph, let us realize that if we really want to find God, we must return to the Father’s house because that is where fulfillment, peace, and joy truly are.  We will not find our purpose or true happiness in what the World or the Cult of Human Respect offers, but only in returning to the Father’s house.