“And unless those days had been shortened, no flesh should be saved: but for the sake of the elect those days shall be shortened.” —Matthew 24:22
Do you enjoy sins of the flesh? Are you greedy? Do you believe in the Catholic Faith but are lukewarm? Are you born into a non-Christian faith or part of a Christian denomination in rebellion against the Church that Christ founded? Do you deny that God exists?
The world has developed in a way where it is almost impossible to avoid mortal sin without the overwhelming grace of God. Everywhere you look and everything you try to do bears the stain of evil. We are encouraged to do evil to make a living, in our romantic relationships, in our private time, in our homes. We are told that evil is normal, that it is just, that it is right. We are given the means to pervert ourselves and our bodies and to forget about God until He can be discarded.
We are told that evil is the price one must pay to be functional in the world today.
The world, in rejecting Christ, is merely fulfilling His prophecies. When He said, “Unless those days had been shortened, no flesh should be saved,” what else could He have been speaking about?
This can be illustrated by thinking about a newborn child. This child, if he follows the accepted program, will go to school for many years. In school, he will be told that sodomitical relationships are normal, that men can be women and women can be men, that tolerance means more than truth, that false beliefs about God should be given equal weight with the true Faith, that masturbation is natural, that science has disproven God.
When away from school, he will imbibe in a culture that sees premarital sex as normal and faith in God as silly. He will be encouraged to judge himself based on his skill in choosing fashions, the success of his career, the amount of money he has, and how sexually desirable he is. Digital media will stream poison under the guise of entertainment into his brain.
What chance does the average child born today stand of weathering this storm?
The days themselves are corrupt, as Christ said. To make matters worse, the number of faithful priests and zealous parishes, both of whom still exist, is dwindling.
If Holy Mother Church were strong — if the seminaries were full of faithful priests, if Church doctrine were unchanged, if the laity were zealous about loving God — that child would have a powerful counter-witness to the evil of the world, and that child might stand a chance. But a weakened Church grown frail and timid in the face of modernism can offer that counter-witness only in the small number of parishes where the priests are faithful and the laity devout.
The difficulty for the elect in finding those faithful priests and parishes is of itself a sign that we are in the days that Christ, in His mercy, warned us about. Truly, the number of flesh saved in these days, with its overwhelming embrace of evil, is small and hurtling toward zero.
The air itself is fouled with the stench of Hell. We await Christ to shorten these days in an act of mercy to save the souls of His elect. The elect can rebel against the foulness of the night only by holding fast to tradition.
The Gates of Hell not prevailing against Christ’s Church and the days being shortened for the sake of the elect are sister verses telling us the same thing. Large parts of the Church will be compromised, but there will always be faithful priests and parishes to offer the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass so that the souls of the elect can be saved.
But let no one be confused as to where we are.