This past Saturday, I arrived at Parliament Hill at about 11:40AM.  Our little Rosary event was to happen at Noon as part of the Rosary movement known as Canada Needs Our Lady, so I had about 20 minutes to wait.  Some kind of gathering was ending but I was not sure what it was.  So as I stood there, I thought I would offer up a Rosary while I waited for everyone to arrive.  I reached into my pocket and pulled out my Rosary…kind of.  As I pulled out the beads, to my great dismay the beads started bouncing on the stone tiles.  6-7-8…There were so many of them bouncing around that I could not hope to track them all as they ricocheted everywhere. I don’t think I was able to spot even one of them.  They were brown and black. Good luck with that.

I was not a happy camper.  At all.

That was a very special Rosary for me as it featured an image of St. Joan of Arc as the central medal of the Rosary and I came to treasure it because of the small group I founded in her honour.  I had ordered it online and had the back of the Crucifix engraved, “Veritas Prima” or “Truth First”…something desperately needed these days in the Church.

Anyhow, as I stood there somewhat annoyed at my predicament, I quickly shoved the Rosary back into my front pocket, trying to figure out what to do next.  As I prayed I pulled out the Rosary again, and what do you suppose happened?  Well, it’s what you were thinking was going to happen: more beads flying all over the place as more of them made a beeline to the “cracks” of Parliament Hill’s stone tiles.  Mercifully, people started arriving and as I explained their fearless and bumbling leader’s predicament, one of them was good enough to let me borrow her spare Rosary for the event.

After the prayers were over, I reached into my pocket a third time, but this time I wasn’t upset at all.  In fact, I felt as if what happened and what was going to happen were supposed to happen.  So as I pulled out my Rosary, half the beads were still on the wire.  I pulled them all off so that all that remained was the St. Joan of Arc medal, the Crucifix and the five beads between them. One of the participants kindly volunteered to re-string and re-bead my Rosary for me.  Well, I thought, if we’re going to fight in a war, sometimes our weapons are going to get damaged.  As for the rest of the beads which were now in my hands, I “launched” them on the tiles like mini-spiritual hand grenades, so they too could find their resting place between the cracks.  I did, however, keep three beads as a memento.

Why do I recount this rather inconsequential story?  One reason is that nothing, absolutely nothing in life is inconsequential, even the seemingly innocuous things can have profound significance.  First of all, we like to say as Christians that our battle is not against flesh and blood “but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, and against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Eph.6:12).  This is true, but it is not the full story.  You see, for us Catholics, the battle is not merely spiritual, but sacramental.  That is, our battle is not purely in the spirit but involves incorporating the physical world. That’s why our Faith is a sacramental faith and not merely a spiritual one. We are not mere spirits. We are spirit and matter, and so the war is also waged on this front as well. It matters that we engage with the sacraments and sacramentals. In fact, we won’t win without them, and the Devil knows that. In fact, over the last 60 years, he has masterfully disarmed us as we foolishly abandoned our sacramental weapons including the Holy Rosary and even the Eucharist itself.

It’s also important to take back the land, the physical spaces that the enemy has pushed us out of. We need to reclaim Canada by reclaiming its land – hence the need to pray publicly in public places – on street corners, in public buildings and streets, and yes, on Parliament Hill. It’s more than a spiritual or symbolic battle. It’s sacramental.  And the enemy sure knows that, too. That’s why they colonize us with their blasphemous flags as a way of intimidating us. So what is our response?  To hide? To cower?  To be pushed into the closet?  No!  We meet them with our own more powerful sacramentals. The only thing keeping us from victory is the cult of human respect which we are all apart of and which we need to leave.  It’s the Whore of Babylon in our hearts – this hidden desire to be part of another communion which serves our pride rather than God.

And what were those bouncing beads on Parliament Hill meant to signify?  Simply this: if Canada wants to prosper again, it has to repent and turn back to Jesus Christ. There was a time when we knew Him.  There was a time when our country acknowledged the Queen of Heaven, too. There was a time not too long ago, a forgotten and glorious Christian history, when we were once represented by the most Catholic region on earth itself which was, of course, Quebec.  What could have been for the rest of the country if we had stayed faithful?!  The Devil, of course, knew our threat to him and so he had to take us out. Canada’s chapter in salvation history is not inconsequential.  How could it be when we were such a spiritual giant in the Catholic world?  No way this over for us as Canadian Catholics. I refuse to believe it. It is time to assert ourselves.  Even now at this late hour, Our Lady is beckoning us back to her Son through her Immaculate Heart, through her intercession as Queen of Intercessors, the Lady of the Cape.  If we but turn our gaze back to Her son’s face, and pray the Rosary as a Confraternity, she promises us to use those Rosary beads to intercede for us so that God can seal up the cracks in our hearts and in our Land, to heal, to restore, and to bestow on those words in our national anthem a real and revived meaning: true, north, glorious, strong and free.

In her Immaculate Heart,

John Pacheco

St. Joan of Arc Community

p.s. Check out the new statue erected at St. Pat’s Basilica.  Our Lady of the Cape!  Oh…my friends…I tell you most solemnly that Our Lady is on the move in this country.

If you wanted a picture of how the story of Genesis 3:15 ends (which started with the Woman, the fruit, and the Serpent), it’s this one.

That red fruit under her foot and in the Devil’s mouth is the fruit of Our Lady’s womb who is Jesus Christ.  Satan can’t swallow it because Our Lady prevents him from obtaining the divinity he so wanted. She is the vessel for Humility Himself, and he cannot have any part in that.  Doesn’t taste too good for his refined pallet.

As the Devil tricked Eve into consuming that poisonous fruit, turnabout, as they say, is fair play.  The Serpent, blinded by his own arrogance, can’t seem to swallow the new Eve’s fruit. It’s stuck in his throat.  So he chokes on it forever. (How we so under-appreciate God’s awesome sense of justice. It should cause us to tremble but also marvel at it.)

There is a certain poetic divine justice here. The Devil caused our Fall through a poisonous fruit, while God permits us entry back into life by also eating a fruit – the fruit of the New Eve’s womb who is Jesus Christ.  Only those who believe and trust in Jesus can swallow this fruit, but alas for the Devil and his offspring, they can’t. There is no hope for them because they can’t eat the life-giving fruit, the only antidote to the poison of sin flowing through us.

We blindly trust in modern medicine without the slightest doubt (or at least we did until our eyes were opened during the last three years) because we believed it provided us the antidote to our sicknesses and poisons.  It became a symbol of Man’s arrogant reliance on His technological accomplishments and ultimately on Himself and not on God, and yet here is God providing us with the Eternal antidote to sin – Jesus Himself – and yet so few recognize or submit to his saving medicine which is His flesh and blood itself.