Archbishop Viganò: Easter 2023

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Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò: REGNAVIT A LIGNO DEUS: God reigns from the Cross

gloria.tv | April 7, 2023

Vexilla regis prodeunt, fulget crucis mysterium: The insignia of the King advance, the Mystery of the Cross shines forth. These are the words of the hymn which we have sung during the moving liturgical celebration of Good Friday, when the Blessed Sacrament is carried from the Sepulcher to the altar for the Communion of the priest. And these same solemn words were adopted in 1793 as the hymn of the Vendéean Army during the heroic Catholic uprising against the French Revolution.

At that time too, in the face of the antichristic fury that raged against Catholic Kingdoms and against the Church, the faithful people rose up to oppose the destruction of the Christian Civilization. And at that time too – as later happened in Mexico with the Cristeros against the liberal Masons or in Spain against the Communist atheists – only a few rose up, and among them were many who fell as martyrs. It is the destiny of the pusillus grex, of the little flock, of the remainder, the remnant. The destiny of the Holy Maccabees. But what a fate, to fight under the insignia of Christ!

Those who fight the good fight today – and you are among these – find themselves facing a no-less tremendous enemy: rebel governments, institutions devoted to evil, conniving judges, hordes of fanatics who hate Christ, just as has always happened throughout the course of History. The enmity between the offspring of the Woman and the offspring of the serpent invariably recurs, and every attempt to impose a forced coexistence between Good and Evil is destined to fail. Our Lord has said this: Whoever is not with Me is against Me (Lk 11:23). Because even the choice not to do good is some way a help to those who do evil. One cannot be neutral in the war between God and Satan.

In America – but also in many other Western Nations whose governments are in the hands of emissaries of the subversive elite of NATO, the UN, and the World Economic Forum – a war is underway against Christ and against Christians: not only against the Catholic Church, but also against any Christian denomination that still preserves the principles of the Gospel and the Natural Law. A war that wants to cancel – just as in the Vendée, Mexico, Spain, Communist Russia, or Pol Pot’s Cambodia – any trace whatsoever of the Good, even to the point of affecting life itself with abortion, gender mutilation, euthanasia, and genetic manipulation. The present is cancelled for those who want to live honestly following the Commandments; the past is cancelled in order to tear people away from their Christian roots and history; and the future is cancelled by indoctrinating our children in perverse and corrupting ideologies. And what is most painful is that in this infernal work of establishing the Kingdom of the Antichrist there is even a part of the Catholic hierarchy actively cooperating, betraying the mandate received from Christ and abandoning souls to damnation.

We feel powerless, just as Our Lord’s disciples felt helpless during the terrible days of the Passion; just as the Martyrs massacred before the pagan crowd in the circus felt powerless; just as the Cristeros or the Spanish Catholics shot by the Masonic army felt, or the Orthodox believers who were exterminated by Stalin.

And yet, look at what remains of Herod, Nero, Diocletian, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, Robespierre, and Pol Pot: nothing. They are all dead, and along with them their ideologies and their armies. While the followers of Christ are still here, and with them the Church that Christ has founded on earth as the one Ark of Salvation. They continue suffering, enduring, dying: seeing their churches burned, their Creed derided, their pastors persecuted. But they are always there, as the Mystical Body of Christ, completing in their flesh what is lacking in Christ’s sufferings for the good of His Body which is the Church (Col 1:24).

At the foot of the Cross, which we have adored in the silence of Good Friday, we lift up our eyes to the Lord who offers His life to the Father for us. We do not listen to the shouts of the crowd, the cries of his enemies, the offenses of the Sanhedrin: that God who seems defeated, in the darkness of the Ninth hour, as he breathes his last breath; He who precisely because He is the Son of God does not descend from the Cross, because he wants to fulfill the Father’s will even unto death, resurrect from the dead three days later, triumph over Satan who believed that he had defeated Him on Calvary, ut qui in ligno vincebat, in ligno quoque vinceretur, that he who seemed to conquer by the Tree would by the Tree be defeated.

Let us therefore celebrate, dear Friends, this Holy Easter of the Resurrection with the certainty of the victory of Christ. A victory that the more impossible it seems – and it certainly is impossible to resurrect someone who is dead – will be all the more dazzling and total. Because that victory is accomplished on the Cross: regnavit a ligno Deus, God reigns from the wood of the Cross, which is His throne of glory, the same throne that we will see shine forth on the Day of Judgment, as Saint John describes in the Apocalypse.

George Soros will also die, as will Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and all those who today seem to be powerful and invincible, but who cannot add a single moment to their lives. And when their corpses are resurrected on the Day of Judgment, they will find themselves before the terrible and tremendous Face of Christ the Judge, and the abyss of unquenchable fire prepared for them will open before them, if they remain obstinate in their sins.

Let us ensure that the radiant Face, the same one that illuminated the Dawn of the Third Day, will find us worthy of the Glory of Heaven after following the Divine Master along the Way of Golgotha. And let us remember that the first person to whom the Risen Lord wanted to reveal Himself was the Magdalene: a great consolation for those who, like us, are sinners and seek the Lord in order to anoint His Body with the balsam of penance and the spices of repentance.

Mors et vita duello conflixere mirando, we will sing during the eight days of Easter: death and life have contended in a terrible duel. Dux vitæ mortuus regnat vivus: the Lord of Life, who died, reigns alive. And so may it be.

+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop

9 April 2023

Dominica Resurrectionis