Father Denis Fahey, C.S.Sp. - Small book - 96 pages
When Jesus Christ, our King and Master, taught us how to pray to His Father and Our Father, he used the phrase “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” In heaven God’s will is perfectly accomplished, but here on earth, fallen mankind cannot fulfill God’s will without the constant assistance of sanctifying grace communicated to the world through the sacraments of His church.
After the fall of Adam, a world perfectly ordered to God’s divine will was corrupted and dis-order became the ‘natural’ state of mankind and the created universe. It was the role of the Messias to re-order this fallen world—to bring a new state of order to the world His Father had created. The means for establishing that order by which a fallen world may return to God is the Catholic church and the life of sanctifying grace. As Christians newly born into the life of grace—a ‘supernatural’ state of being—we are all called to bring as much order to this world as is possible, all the while never forgetting that this world is in a fallen and corrupted state and that a ‘utopia’ is not possible here on earth. The church of Christ is constantly opposed in this mission by all of the forces of ‘naturalism’ or dis-order, that is those forces opposed to the supernatural life of divine grace. It is the duty of all Christians of the Church Militant to battle against these forces.
This calling of Christians to the battle for order was the motto of the pontificate of Pope Saint X. That motto was Instaurare Omnia in Christo, “to restore all things in Christ”, taken from Saint Paul’s letter to the Ephesians 1:10. The modern popes have frequently warned us of the dangers of ‘naturalism’, which denies the supernatural life of grace and militates against it, and they have called us to fight in our private and public lives against this pernicious error. No priest has heeded that call and risen to defend the supernatural life of grace as clearly and as vigorously as Father Denis Fahey. He truly understood, and explained why, there is no salvation outside the Catholic church, either for individual persons or for the life of society and of nations.
A clear image of just what the life of a Christian in a society imbued from top to bottom with the social principles of Christ the King would be like, is not a widely shared understanding in much of the Christian world today, especially in America. We must remember that Christianity is a religion of world conquest! We are called to conquer the world for Christ and to do all that we can to subdue persons and nations to His will. A Catholic undertakes this battle first within himself and then within his family. Soon the influence of many families begins to pervade the community and then the nation or state. If Christian people do not have the full picture in their mind of exactly what God’s Plan for Order in this world would look like in its accomplishment, then they can have no long-term strategy for victory and little hope of achieving it. We have all of the tools required and all of the powers of heaven backing us. Let us take into our hearts and our minds the full plan and its potential for the realization of peace in the world and Christ the King of heaven and earth will bless our efforts. This was the permanent admonition of Fr. Fahey.
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