Dear Friends Who Love Tradition (as I do, too),

First, I’d like to say: this is an opinion piece. If there’s something wrong in it, I hope someone will tell me.

I think we all agree: things have gotten pretty tough. Everything that is holy has been under vicious attack–for how long now? Every area of life has been affected, and we all want to to see things set right.

But I’d like to ask a question today:

Have we, ourselves, fallen prey to a sleight-of-hand trick? Are we often caught up in the narrative? Or are we doing what we should, and daily taking up our best weapons for turning it around?

In football terms, are we spectators engrossed in the play-by-play? Or are we the players–focused on God in each moment and waging war, through the spiritual weapons He gives us, against the enemy, for the sake of the Holy Father, the Church, our families, and our own souls?

We can’t think our prayers and sacrifices are less powerful than decisions made further up the chain of command. When God designed the Church, He put a huge amount of influence towards Her well-being in the hands of the laity, through things the Church Herself teaches us to do–namely holy living, prayer, fasting, and offering our sufferings, in a way only Catholics know, for those who offend or wound us. We all remember what potential rests in that role, which sets us in the place where our prayers are closest to the Cross. However difficult it is, that place is a gift we’re given, whether those who impose it know it or not. It’s a chance to have the best thing to offer God.

We all know this, but I think it’s so easy to get caught up in “putting out fires” in the day-to-day, and lose sight of the eternal importance this moment holds for prayer.

The Holy Father and the upper hierarchy may make big decisions, but it’s the laity who support their holiness with our prayers and penances, to help them make good ones. There’s only one Holy Father, while there are nearly 1.4 billion of us in the laity. If we knew any one person had 1.4 billion people fervently praying and fasting for his sanctity, wouldn’t we expect to see it bear fruit? Are we using the great gift God gave the laity, by structuring the Church this way, to the fullest? And, by the way, are we all praying in Latin as much as possible?

When decisions are bad in the upper levels, do we each look for places in our own lives where we could add prayers or penance? If we think we’ve done enough, can’t we hear St. Paul saying, “You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood?”  I think some of us have gotten soft. I know I have. It’s pretty comfortable here behind this keyboard, with my coffee and chant music and the sunlight streaming in. But what have I given, at my own cost, today? This past hour? Right now?

And when the chips are down, and we can’t see how this is going to work out for the best, do we thank God for whatever He’s doing, even if it’s through tears, and trust Him?

We’re not just “on the bottom rung of the ladder; the laity is the foundational level of the Church, and if we want the Church to be built up and the world to be sanctified, we have to go first. St. Paul says we’re all members of the same body, and it follows that what one member does affects everyone else in the Church. No one’s efforts are without effect, and every Ave has a power we cannot measure. If we look up and see complacency or sin above us, there we have it: we’re the ones who see the problem, so the prayer and penance for it are on us right now.

Let’s link arms, here at the bottom—but very widespread—level of the Church’s structure, and make sure we’re forming the strong base we were meant to be. We have to, as one great collective group, take the most powerful steps towards God we can–steps so holy they’ll make the ground shake. For God, for Holy Mother Church, for the Holy Father, for our families and our own souls. There’s not a moment—or a breath—to waste.