To My Dear Friends At The Wanderer:
As Christmas approaches, I extend my heartfelt gratitude to the many readers who have supported me over the past year. Your support has been absolutely crucial — your prayers as well as the contributions which you have so kindly provided to help my family. Your gifts have literally kept us in our home for the past two years.
Especially humbling are the many thanks for my work over the past decades for The Wanderer, and also the expressions of solidarity from those who are enduring similar trials themselves or in their families. Believe me, I do keep you in my prayers as you have asked.
I continue to watch as best I can the work of the Holy Father, and I have complete confidence in Pope Francis’ ability to lead the Church. I remind my friends, who might be unsettled about possible changes to Catholic doctrine in these troubled times, that Pope St. John Paul II has written in stone the unchangeable truths of the Catholic faith regarding marriage and family — for our time and all eternity.
These days, I spend most of my time in bed, and though I read little, I read over and over again some of the works of the great Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, archbishop of Westminster (1808-1892), often the same paragraphs over and over again, particularly on the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the Vicar of Christ. I offer to you this little reminder from Manning as a Christmas offering:
“This promise [i.e., Christ’s words to St. Peter ‘that thy faith fail not’] is the pledge of perpetual stability in faith; and as the endowments of the body are the prerogatives of the head, so the illumination which is diffused throughout the whole body of the Church resides eminently in the Episcopate, but resides preeminently and above all in the chief of Bishops, the Pastor of pastors, the Vicar of the Incarnate Word Himself.
“Here then we have the fulfillment of the prophecy; for what is the Vicar of Jesus Christ but the representative of Jesus Christ — the true, special, personal witness — the very presence, so to speak, of the Son of God on Earth? And as the prophecy of Isaias was accomplished when the Son of God was incarnate and rose up to teach in Nazareth, anointed by the Holy Ghost, so His representative and Vicar now stands in the midst of the world, the true, special heir of those promises; and on his anointed head rests the Spirit of God, never to depart, and his mouth the word of God, which cannot pass away. He is the oracle, the organ, and the living voice through whom the Spirit of God accomplishes to this hour the prophecy and the promise. . . .
“When this divine voice comes, we must listen with our ears open, and with a flexible will and a docile heart; lest the divine voice should come into the midst of us, and we should be found with ears that cannot hear, and hearts that will not believe.
“If these words are awful, they are also consoling; and there is for the weak and ignorant, and the timid and the doubtful, a sure hope of eternal life. There is a path and a way, which is called a holy way, and the simple and the learned shall not err therein. All they need is this: to follow with docility that divine voice. It is the way of truth, it is the way of grace, it is the way of the Precious Blood, it is the way of life eternal. All that is needed is a docile submission to the voice of the Holy Ghost.”
I would very much appreciate hearing from all of you, by email, snail mail, or telephone. Here are the coordinates: phone: 607-582-6650. Email: paullikoudis@empacc.net. Address: P.O. Box 236, Hector, NY 14860.
I would also like to remind my friends that I have (somewhat) completed what I call An FTM Sampler, a collection of what I consider some of the best From the Mail columns over the decade September 2001 to 2011. If you would like an electronic version of the Sampler, please let me know by email.
I am reluctant to add this: but — my wife and I are very much dependent on your continued financial support while I face growing challenges. If you are able to help, please send any aid to my home address printed above. Again, if anyone would like to call, please do. I am almost always at home, except for weekly hospital visits.
To all readers: A Blessed Christmas and a Healthy and Holy New Year.
Sincerely,
Paul
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