Wake up, O man!

Rousing the Catholic faithful from their present slumber

Expergiscere, homo: quia pro te Deus factus est homo. Wake up, O man! For your sake God has become man (Augustine of Hippo, Sermo 185).

Awake, O slumbering Church! You have been lulled asleep by twelve years of numbness, discouraged by the onslaught of evil coming against you from the very ones who ought to be your shepherds, driven to such despair that you desperately hoped and still hope that a bad tree could have somehow borne good fruit in the conclave of 2025.

Padre Pio of Pietrelcina foretold it in the 1960s: “Satan has been introduced into the bosom of the Church and within a very short time will come to rule a false church.”

Can you not see it? Do you not sense how something is wrong? Do you not feel how everything “looks” right and yet somehow the heart and soul, the essence and urgency, have been removed from the Gospel?

The North African writer Tyconius prophesied it in the fourth century in his description of the end times in his Commentary on the Apocalypse: “The bishops do, under the guise of a gift of the church, what advances the will of the devil.”

Guise (noun): an external form, appearance, or manner of presentation, typically concealing the true nature of something.

The more it is dressed up in a form that pleases you, the more they are confident you will keep sleeping. The more it appears to be what you understandably hope for, the more they are confident you will remain frozen in your hopeful slumber.

The children of Fatima described what was coming, just over a century ago: “We saw in an immense light that is God: ‘something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it’ [that is, in reverse] a Bishop dressed in White.” But bishops do not wear white. And if today you met your bishop and he was wearing white, you would rightly wonder why he was trying to dress like the pope when in fact he is not. A bishop who dresses in white would externally resemble the pope but would not enjoy the charism given by the Holy Spirit to the Successor of Peter; his words would appear to be from Peter but could in fact lead the sheep away from Christ’s true teaching - accomplishing a purpose exactly opposite to that for which Christ instituted the Petrine ministry - a mirror image of a pope, a pope in reverse.

Fulton Sheen foretold this very thing in 1948: “[Satan] will deceive even the elect. He will set up a counterchurch which will be the ape of the Church, because he, the Devil, is the ape of God. It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. It will be a mystical body of the Antichrist that will in all externals resemble the mystical body of Christ.”

But how could this possibly happen? By deception and fraud, the perennial marks of the Evil One. What notes and characteristics would a false and fraudulent church need? Liturgical rites, external beauty, splendid vestments, hierarchical pomp, obedience and order, a conclave or two, and yes, a visible head to whom all will look as the voice of Peter himself, for Satan hates Peter — he seeks to sift him like wheat — and thus Satan desires to use deception so that the faithful will also resent and hate Peter.

Behold, the fruit of the last twelve years: a downplaying by ostensibly Catholic thinkers of the gift of papal infallibility, a constant explaining away of the words and actions of “Peter” that so blatantly contradict the Gospel and the perennial Tradition, a growing sense that “Peter” is not such a great gift to the Church after all but rather a necessary annoyance that in many ways the Church would be better off without. Such twisted thinking, which many of the faithful have effectively embraced, has been Satan’s goal all along. But if the papacy is effectively an obstacle and stumbling block to true believers, then the Catholic faith, which tells us that the pope is the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity of the entire Church, would be wrong.

And yet we know the Catholic faith — all of it — is true. Therefore, it cannot be the case that Jorge Mario Bergoglio — the great divider and destroyer of the unity of the Church, the one who venerated the Pachamama idol in Saint Peter’s Basilica, the one who declared that all religions are equally valid paths to God, the one who approved the blessing of same-sex couples in the name of Jesus Christ, the one who formally changed the Catechism to condemn the death penalty in contradiction of the entire Catholic tradition, the one who demanded under obedience first the cessation of all Masses and Sacraments in 2020 and then the cessation of the traditional Latin Mass in so many places — was ever “the pope,” except to be a pope “in reverse,” to undo unity and cause confusion. Nor can the one who was clearly carefully selected to succeed him and now affirms every aspect of the Bergoglian counter-gospel be anything different. A bad tree cannot produce good fruit. Bergoglio was, as if in a mirror, a bishop dressed in white. He himself said at Fatima on May 12, 2017, that he travelled there “as bishop dressed in white [como bispo vestido de branco].” The spirits always reveal themselves to those who have ears to hear and eyes to see. Are you still asleep?

Rouse yourself, O man! Realize that fire that has engulfed the edifice that you have thought of as your home. They have set your sanctuary on fire (Ps 74:7). Widen your eyes, open your ears, and allow the Word of God to call you forth. For if an Enemy has set your home on fire, then you cannot remain where you are, or you will be destroyed. You have been gently lulled into accepting compromise, you have watched passively as your birthright has been sold for a mess of pottage, you have settled into a certain complacency that has now turned deadly. You believe that you are part of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, and indeed you are. But if you wish to cling to Christ, you can no longer passively accept the false church as the true one. No man who loves his bride can accept an imitation, however beautiful or attractive. The longer you remain asleep, the more you are slowly being asphyxiated.

“But,” you say, “we belong to the One True Church, founded on Peter’s confession of faith. We cannot leave her.” Indeed, you cannot. But look around you: silently and stealthily, imperceptibly, the Enemy has seized hold of all the external trappings in which you trust, including the glorious and beloved Vatican, with all its splendid appearance, even as you think that all these external characteristics are synonymous with the Bride of Christ. But this is exactly the deception of which we have been warned by Tyconius, Padre Pio, and Fulton Sheen. Wake up, O man! “Do not put your trust in these deceptive words: “The temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord! . . . You put your trust in deceptive words to your own loss!” Jer 7: 4, 8.

Wake up, O man! For your sake God has become man. The Incarnate Word of God is now rousing you. He calls you to bear witness during the greatest persecution of the Church in her long and storied history: the persecution that comes from within. So deeply are you inside the deception that it is likely you have not recognized it. This is by devilish design. But ask yourself: if what Sheen and Pio foretold has now arrived, what must be the response of true believers who awake and find themselves within the confines of the false church ruled by Satan? If there really is a counter-church coming with all the notes and characteristics of the true Church but in reverse, don’t you think it would look very similar to what we are now experiencing? And if in fact you have been unknowingly living within a false church since at least 2013, would this not explain why so many things have seemed off, incorrect, and downright confusing? It is actually by far the simplest explanation for “what’s wrong with the Church.”

It is Christ who rouses you. His Incarnation is the great Truth which the Church must proclaim in all of Her acts and witness: the coming of the Eternal Son of God among us, His birth of the Virgin, His miracles, His saving Death and Resurrection, His sending of the Spirit calling men to repent and believe in the Gospel, His ushering in of His Kingdom that is not of this world. And, as in a mirror, the counter-church works to reverse the Incarnation: reducing Christian witness to fraternal charity, marginalizing Jesus as one religious leader among many, denying the miraculous, forbidding evangelization, never speaking of repentance or conversion except in regard to caring for the environment, keeping the focus on this world and social progress, compromising with all that the world applauds, lulling souls into a peaceful and happy slumber.

Wake up, O man! Christ Incarnate, our Passover, is rousing you, inviting you to come with Him. This is the hour of the Exodus for God’s pilgrim people. It is the Church’s “Final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his Death and Resurrection” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 677). Nothing will be the same again. No doubt you have a million questions. More will be revealed as the Spirit speaks to you and leads you. But this can only happen if you are first awake. Look around you. Become aware. Pray in the Spirit. Consecrate yourself to Our Lady. Ask Her to give you Her protection for the journey. Pray that you may be ready, as Abraham was, to go wherever the Lord leads you, and to do whatever He tells you to do. Even if He asks you to offer up Isaac.

Come, Holy Spirit.