A Leaven In The World… The Power Of Images And The Truth Of Christmas
By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
The Devil uses images.
A comment by Cesare Sacchetti on Twitter: “In the last week a Netflix fiction on ‘gay’ Jesus (sic) was followed by a poster that portrays Jesus as a pedophile; and, finally, a picture in Sweden that depicts the Genesis in a gay key. Western society is not ‘secular.’ Western society is simply anti-Christian.”
In response, this: “And he also omitted a Norwegian advertisement that mocks the virginal conception of Jesus by Mary. Under Christmas, Satanist hatred breaks out,” by “Looking Forward” on Twitter.
These Catholics on social media are speaking out against recent additions to the growing catalogue of blasphemies, perpetrated by advertising agencies in collusion with public officials with their hands in the public till, all in a hegemony of evil. I thought I had seen the worst of it until the poster on a bus stop shelter in Rome around mid-December popped up on the Internet, to which Sacchetti refers in his tweet. I didn’t dare describe it to my parents because I wanted to spare them the image thereafter malevolently lodged in their heads, inviting further evil through the pollution of memory and imagination.
Never believe you’ve seen the worst. It places you in a weakened position in fighting the Evil One.
And that is precisely why the ancient enemy uses the cooperation of both the malevolent and the weak in the multiplication of impure images, especially at this time of year. “Looking Forward” on Twitter alludes to this in the comment on Sacchetti’s reporting. Once Satan gets a perverted or inverted image, that is, an evil picture, into the mind of a person, it can result in a nuclear chain reaction in the memory, imagination, and then the will of a soul.
Whatever plants a seed to turn the intellect and the will away from God is a victory for the Devil. Grace becomes repugnant to a soul drunk on the flesh through lust or any other impure thought. It is therefore usually through sexual perversions of the sacred that Satan’s minions attack the holy. Often these offensive images are taken directly from Catholic iconography with just the smallest twist of evil necessary to turn the viewer away from graced meditation.
Bishop Joseph Strickland rightly called for Catholics and all those of goodwill to cancel subscriptions to the movie streaming service Netflix as a protest against the movie depicting an “SSA” Messiah. Giorgia Meloni of the Fratelli Italia party demanded that the offensive poster in Rome be removed and it happened eventually, but not after who knows how many people were exposed to the blasphemous image.
And that’s the point. Each soul that falls victim to the ploy of associating evil with good and good with evil comes that much closer to falling away from a state of grace. The Devil uses confusion, inversion, and perversion to pollute the mind and make it pliable to his further manipulations. Images which twist the good and the holy into their opposites can work powerfully upon a soul to separate him or her from Christ.
The evil one uses images to cancel out the good God has placed in our minds. The more shock in the reaction of a faithful Catholic when our most treasured images are inverted gives more power to the Evil One to enter a soul. Thus the direct attacks on Our Lord and Our Blessed Lady.
The war on the sacred includes a denudation of the sacred from all public spaces, especially during the Christmas Season. Believers have taken to placing Nativity scenes on shop driveways and on private property in Rehoboth Beach in Delaware, added last year to the list of towns enforcing Christianity-free holiday displays. One couple parks their pickup truck with a Nativity scene on its bed in various public venues, near city hall and the bandstand, thus bringing the image of the Lord at His birth to public view.
“Et Verbum caro factum est.” And the Word became flesh.
The Lord Jesus Christ born in Bethlehem is the “image of the invisible God.” In Him God who is Love is one with us. He comes to restore our relationship with Him endangered by our embrace of evil through sin. In Christ, God’s forgiving love and mercy abide with us and comfort us. He changes our inner being by His life of grace transforming us in Christ.
Our eyes look upon our Savior incarnate to restore the image of the holy to our sin-darkened minds. The Child-Savior born for us invites our imagination to embark again upon the cleansing path of forgiveness as we meditate on His words and works recorded in the holy Gospels.
Above all in the Holy Eucharist, at the Masses of Christmas and all year long, we look upon God truly present to purify us and make us holy. The word Bethlehem means “house of bread.” At every Mass our churches become a Bethlehem for us, a house of the Bread of Life. This Bread is God for whom no sin is not forgivable and for whom no soul is beyond redemption no matter how blackened by impurity or vice.
Many insist on only sending those customary Christmas cards adorned with the image of the Baby Jesus. The Word is proclaimed thus anew in each home where these are received.
In many homes the creche continues to be a feature at this holy season of God’s plan to restore the mind and heart. All of humanity, once again, by looking upon the Holy Family at Nazareth, even just for a moment, contemplates thereby the invitation to enter by faith into the Body of Christ in the life of the Church.
Above all in Christ, the newborn Lord, God invites us to see all of life once again with vision renewed by the life of grace, no matter what sins may litter the road behind us. In a memorable line in the film Diary of a Country Priest, the curé says, “Blessed is sin if it teaches us shame.” Despite the concupiscence which remains after Baptism, we are ever called to see and embrace in ourselves, in seeing and embracing Him, the truth all that He has made is good.
At Christmas, the darkness of suffering and the infirmity of the mind weak in the face of temptation are overcome by the light of the truth that Christ is born to save us from our sins. And to save us from the greatest suffering of eternal separation from Love in Hell.
Those who are offended by the image of God as He took on flesh in the Child of Bethlehem need to take it up with Him. We are simply proclaiming and adoring Our Lord and Savior as ordered.
A blessed and holy Christmas Season of faith, hope, and love to you and all your loved ones. Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, our newborn Savior, now and forever.
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