Dear Reader,

“We have not here a lasting city, but we seek one that is to come.”

Since “we pray as we believe,” the key to understand the Social Kingship of Christ here on earth, and all the efforts that have been made to establish it over centuries, is simply to look at its model and end, the kingdom of Heaven, as we pray in the Our Father: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”

St. John, who was privileged to see and described for us the celestial beauties of that heavenly kingdom, highlighted the fact that, in Heaven, everything, absolutely everything, is centered on the Lamb:

“And every creature, which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them: I heard all saying: ‘To him that sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb, benediction, and honour, and glory, and power, for ever and ever’” (Apoc. 5:13).

It is not surprising then that also on earth, around the altars and the churches built over them, Catholic villages, cities and whole civilizations have sprung up as a prelude to Heaven, our true fatherland. St Paul showed how the great saints of the past never lost sight of that:

“For they, confessing that they are pilgrims and strangers on the earth, do signify that they seek a country, a better, a heavenly country. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He hath prepared for them a city” (Heb. 11:13-17).

The longing to reach this Heavenly Jerusalem at any cost is another key to see and accept His will on earth in our daily lives. As the liturgy sings, we are the living stones with which that Heavenly Jerusalem is built up on high:

By many a salutary stroke,
By many a weary blow, that broke
Or polished, with a workman’s skill,
The stones that form that glorious pile;
They all are fitly framed to lie
In their appointed place on High.

Archbishop Lefebvre understood and expressed that perfectly well in his famous Golden Jubilee sermon:

“Keep the Mass of All Time! And you will see civilization reflourish, a civilization which is not of this world, but a civilization which leads to the Catholic City which is Heaven. The Catholic city of this world is made for nothing else than for the Catholic City of heaven.”

Fr. Daniel Couture