I live in the Philippines, one of the few citadels of Christendom that
has not as yet ‘flung wide its gates’ to every evil; for example abortion is
still illegal here.
Perhaps the reason it remains relatively strong is the realisation that
on earth we are living in enemy occupied territory, there is a great confidence
and reliance on prayer not only for help and defence but also for offence as I
re-discovered last week.
I was in the shopping mall, a bit distracted and irritated, (I hate
shopping) and at noon, over the loudspeaker a bell rang, and everyone in the
place stopped dead in their tracks, like someone pressed pause on the remote.
And we began to pray the Angelus together.
A few minutes and suddenly the atmosphere had changed, people were
noticeably calmer, whatever was bugging me had gone too. Had we all just
refocused our hearts heavenward or had the demons fled? Both I believe.
I noticed the same thing on another day, this time at 6pm in the grounds
of a Catholic University in Manila. Again as the bells rang out over the
loudspeaker, everyone stopped, even the cars stopped and the security men at
the gates bowed their heads and those few thousand souls, (together with those
in every Catholic school in the entire country), as one, knowingly or
unknowingly, went into battle together.
The funny thing is that it would be quite easy to reinstate this
practice in all the Catholic schools and offices in the country; the benefits
would be greatly felt.
A samurai warrior (Miyamoto Musashi)
was onto something when he said “This is a truth: when you sacrifice
your life, you must make fullest use of your weaponry. It is false not to do
so, and to die with a weapon yet undrawn”.
