Crisis In Christendom, No. 11 of 17 No. 11 of 17

The National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation with the National Council of Catholic Men, presents the Catholic Hour. Today's program will consist of music by a unit of the Polis Corristers and an address by Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen. Of the poor antifans to the Blessed Virgin, Learvae Regina Cielorum is the one prescribed during this Latin season. The Polis Corristers open the Catholic Hour, singing Guno's Ave Regina Cielorum. The Polis Corristers open the Catholic Hour, singing Guno's Ave Regina Cielorum. The Polis Corristers open the Catholic Hour, singing Guno's Ave Regina Cielorum. The Polis Corristers open the Catholic Hour, singing Guno's Ave Regina Cielorum. The Polis Corristers open the Catholic Hour, singing Guno's Ave Regina Cielorum. The Polis Corristers open the Catholic Hour, singing Guno's Ave Regina Cielorum. The Polis Corristers open the Catholic Hour, singing Guno's Ave Regina Cielorum. The Polis Corristers open the Catholic Hour, singing Guno's Ave Regina Cielorum. Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen of the Catholic University of America will now deliver the 11th in his series of 17 addresses on the crises in Christendom. His discourse today is entitled, Evil Has Its Hour. I present Monsignor Sheen. Friends, the charioteers of evil are on the march. The last red embers of a sun set on his sorrowful generation. During the last world war, Lord Gray of England said that the lights of the world were being put out, and they would not be lighted again in our generation. The first in spectacle of the Holy Father was entitled, Darkness Over the Earth, in which he likened our times to the darkness that hung over the earth when Christ was crucified and the sun that high noon hid its face in shame. In the face of the evil of the present day, some are tempted to doubt either the goodness or the existence of God. They feel that war and hate and the triumph of power over virtue puts God in difficulties and all believers in him on the defensive. But this is because they do not understand the nature of God. They falsely assume that the supreme business of God is to ensure prosperity. Like the thief on the left of our Savior, they refuse to admit that God is good unless he can unhook a thief from across and let him go on in his business of deceiving. It is not our aim here to reconcile the existence of God with evil. For evil is due, as we know, to the abuse of God's gift of freedom. It is the price we have to pay for divorcing freedom from God. We shall indicate this more clearly next Sunday. Rather we seek here to justify the stockling thesis that God permits evil from time to time for the sake of the good so that in the language of Saint Paul, where sin abounded, grace does not abound. For sons, salutary lessons in these darkened hours, let us the company in our minds hire the Savior into the garden of Gethsemane. Three companions went with him, Peter James and John, called three yet strengthened for this our deal by revealing to them his glory on the mouth of the transfiguration. No one in God's kingdom is ever called to glory unto honor except for the sake of tremendous responsibilities. Bidding them watch and pray, he went as far away from them as a man could throw a stone, what is significant way to measure distance. And pray to the heavenly Father pledging to drink the chalice of redemption to its very draves in ratification of his divine will, pulling down upon himself the burden of the world sin as if he himself had been guilty of it, thrusting into his hand every open deed of evil and every secret deed of shame as if he himself had committed them. He breaks out into a bloody sweat as the crimson drops like so many words, writes on the pages of earth, it's great a story of love and its fondest hope. After he had prayed, he came back to his chosen three and he found them wrapped both in their cloaks and in sleep. In return for his love, he had asked only one small thing that they fall not asleep. He baddened stay awake like sentries of earth and he baddened pray like sentries of heaven. Everything's slept about them. The city with its white washed walls, falling over the hills was asleep. And all the houses of all the cities of the world men were sleepy. Perhaps the only ones awake were the deep enamels in the dark, or a found mother at the bedside of her sick child or a sophomore accused over a cup of wine in a dimly lighted cavern asking, do you really think God exists? Why did the Apostle sleep? Men sleep when they are tired, but they never sleep when they are worried. But these men slept, and for only one reason, because they were not conscious of the awfulness of that hour, they were prepared for external dangers, for Peter was sleeping with his swords, but they were not prepared against themselves. One can be armed and still be asleep. Armed because one fears his enemies, asleep because he is not worried about his sins. Danger is physical, evil is moral. Are we in America like Peter? Do we think of our times solely in terms of a physical war? Do we think of the Nazis and the Japanese as being our only enemies? If so, as our Lord told Peter, the sword is enough. But suppose that they are only symptoms of evil and Satan. And? And will the sword be enough? When we have defeated them on the field of battle, will we have defeated the godlessness from those whom they have come? Will we in reality be cutting off only the evil fruit, but not uprooting the evil root? Do we realize how evil the times are? Do we realize that man is at war with his brother on the battlefields of the world, because man's first war with gods on the battlefields of his own soul? This war involves suffering because it first involves sin. If we think of our only as a physical combat as Peter did, then we need to be aroused as Peter was aroused by the Savior and reminded of two other arms. Watch and pray. Watch. Be vigilant on the outside. Pray. Be armed on the inside with the arm of god. And taunting Peter's false confidence in this power alone, our Lord asked, Could you not watch? One hour with me? In other words, Peter, there are twenty-three hours a day you may spend with your swords and your armaments, but can you not give one hour to invoking divine aid and imploring divine forgiveness? This plea of our Savior is the one that we have made the keynote of all these broadcasts. That is why every Sunday we ask the Jews and the Protestants and the Catholics to set aside a holy hour a day for prayer and meditation. And we ask the Catholics to assist at mass every day and receive communion and make them both a part of that holy hour. And to anyone of any faith who was interested in a little book of prayers and title the shield of faith, we will gladly send them to you. But you ask, why watch and pray? Because in time of crisis, evil can be more awake than goodness. Evil never sleeps. And across the hill comes an evil man. Judas is his name. He leads a band of soldiers, sadducees and Pharisees, bearing ladders and torches and weapons. And Judas had already given the sign. He said to them, whomsoever I shall kiss. That is the layhold on him. And lead him away carefully. And then throwing his arms about the neck of our Lord. He blistered his lips with a kiss. That kiss was the most horrible telling of lips which had pronounced the most heavenly words ever heard on this mad earth about. Play the holy things must always be prefaced by a mark of affection. The kiss was the use for the first time in the history of Christianity of the Trojan horse. Oh, how religion must God itself. Our games, those wicked influences, which say that they are favoring religion. And after the kiss, our Lord said to the chief priest and the magistrates of the temple and the ancients, on those that were come out to him, are you come out as it were against a thief with swords and clubs. When I was daily with you in the temple, you did not stretch off your hands against me. What this is your hour and the power of darkness. Your hour. The hour be trails, deceivers, crucifers, your hour. The hour for evil to put out the light of the world. For that is all it can do during that hour. The hour of wolves for scavenging the sheep and seizing the shepherd. The hour of power and might and swords and clubs were in innocence and truth or bees into the ground. The hour of concentration camps, guest up hos, or gay pay-use, the hour of the raking of Poland, the hour of sending a peace envoy with a kiss while preparing an attack at Pearl Harbor. You're not because your weapons are stronger, nor because you come armed to seize me, but because in obedience to the father's will, I deliver myself into your hands. That evil having done its worst and therefore exhausted might be overcome by goodness rising from the dead. Our Lord here tells us that God permits evil which the rebellious hearts of men begate to have its brief holiday, even at the expense of God Himself. Why have you surprised? Did He not say evil would have its hour? It is not God's goodness we should doubt. It is our own. Evil does not come from God. It comes from our sin, our pride. Our ecotism therefore it will have its hour. And are we not living at such a moment in the world's history now? When evil has its hour, do not the times in which we live belong to Satan on the power of darkness? But if evil has its hour, how will it be overcome? It will be overcome not for the sword alone. That was what Peter's thoughts. Profiting by the confusion of the guards, he suddenly came to himself and sleep through his sword and struck malchus, the serpent of the High Priest. It was a very poor blow, or it got only his right ear. Action is so often a poor substitute for prayer. So there are many who think that the way to conquer an evil's enemy heart is to cut off his ear. That untimely action would repudiate it by our Lord, addressing Peter, he said to him, put up a game thy sword into its place. For all that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Where did not our Lord use the sword? His own defense, certainly not because by using it, he might be caught in military defeat. For think a star he said to Peter that I cannot ask my father, and he will presently give me more than twelve legions of angels. His motive in rejection to the sword was not because he would not have been a match for his adversaries. His certainty if he did take it up, he would win an easy victory. Yet believing that he still refuses to use it and why, because a physical enemy can be conquered by a sword, but a moral enemy can be overcome only by a cross. Armaments will defeat a foe, but they cannot conquer evil. That is why he refused to use the sword in an evil hour. And because that sword is not enough, therefore, we speak of the Holy Hour. And today I wish to give it a very special emphasis. There are a number of children who listen to me, and hundreds of good sisters who teach these children the ways of God. To them I address myself in a very particular way today. I want to call your attention to the sad flight of some other children in another part of the world. Bishop Golina, the chief of the Chaplains of the Polish Army, tells us that there are 500,000 Polish children under 16 years of age in Russia. These children once lived in houses like you and me. They once slept in beds like you and me. They once sat down to tables with knives and forks, and food to use them on, like you and me. They once used to dress for school and come home to their mothers and fathers, like all school children. But today, three out of four of these children are orphans. They are dying for the hundreds for one of a piece of bread, which we would throw to a dog under our table. They are too sick to be homesick, too tired to play, too hungry to laugh. Their flight is undoubtedly no worse than the hundreds of thousands of their little fellows in German occupied Poland. They have only one thing in common with you. The faith. Would you pray for them then every day at home and at school? And at an invocation to our lady of Chesterhoewa, the patroness of Poland. Ask our lady to intercede to her divine son that they one day may be freed from their exile and brought back home again. As Mary once lost her own child for three days, so she has now lost 500,000 of these children for three years. Tell her not to look in the temple for them, for there are no temples for them to hide in. Tell her to look for them in a land where they do not belong. Do that. Please. The pearls are a great people. They have suffered much in this evil hour. Would you want to be back home if you were a prisoner in Japan? Well, these little ones want to be back home again. So I say pray. Pray. Pray. Evil has its hour. Can you not watch one hour for them? God love you. O Lord Jesus Christ, who inviomers He hears the prayers of sinners, for a fork with a sea of oil graced and blessing upon our country and its is. We pray in particular for the Presidents, for our Congress, for all our soldiers, for all who defend us in ships through weather on the seas or in the skies, for all who are suffering the hardships of war. We pray for all who are in peril or in danger. We pray for the troubles of this life into the haven of peace. We unite us all together forever o dear Lord, in thy glorious, heavenly chain. The address you have just heard was entitled, Evil Has Its Hour, and was delivered by Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen of the Catholic University of America. This was the 11th in Monsignor Sheen series of 17 addresses on the crisis in Christendom. A copy of today's talk, as well as of the booklet referred to by Monsignor Sheen, the shield of faith may be obtained by writing to the National Council of Catholic Men, Washington DC, or to the station to which you are now listening. The Catholic Hour closes with the Horton Rowe setting of the hymn, Soul of My Savior. Next Sunday at this time, Monsignor Sheen will deliver another address in this series entitled, Power as a Judgement of God. Your answer, John Patrick Costello. This program has been presented by the National Broadcasting Company and the independent radio station, associated with the NBC network in cooperation with the National Council of Catholic Men and came to you from New York. This is the National Broadcasting Company.