https://respicestellam.org/letter-from-broadstairs-september-2026/LETTER FROM BROADSTAIRS September 2026Nova et veteraTo keep the Faith one must fightTaken from Mgr Louis-Gaston de Segur’s work 1872 ‘The Good [Fight for the Faith,’ chapter 2.]“I have fought the good fight, I have kept the Faith,” wrote Saint Paul shortly before his death. Would that each of us could say as much at the moment of death.
The Faith is like life; it is not preserved all alone. We have received it and it needs to be preserved and defended, as we would do for bodily life. Indeed, we must do still more for this superior life based on the Faith, the supernatural life, the life of Faith.
This true life comes from the sanctifying union of our souls with Christ Jesus, just as human life comes from the vivifying union of our bodies with our souls. Our Lord is the celestial and divine life of souls. The Faith is its light which the Holy Ghost infuses in us by grace.
So it is that no cost is too great to pay in order to remain faithful to Our Blessed Lord, to remain in His grace, and to preserve the divine treasure of the Faith.
And this in spite of the numerous interior and external difficulties. Heaven is won by conquest; the Christian life is a combat; Christ Jesus is the chief of the army, and the Church is a militant society. The world is the great arena where Satan and his minions fight relentlessly against Our Lord and His soldiers.
Hence in order to conserve the gift of the Faith we must fight. We march surrounded by enemies: bad examples, the contagion of indifferentism, the modern errors of naturalism [=anti-supernaturalism] and the spirit of revolt which is all pervading. We need to fear and to avoid the snares of evil doctrines, of false politics of false teaching, of bad reading.
In addition we need to struggle against the interior enemies which are no less dangerous which, if given free rein, are capable of altering, then dimming, then diminishing, then extinguishing entirely the divine lights of the Faith in our baptised souls.
What a combat! It encompasses every aspect of our existence and nothing escapes it, neither age nor condition. This fight is obligatory. He who lays down his arms is lost. The enemy is always there seeking by countless means to lead us into his traps so as to make us lose the life of the Faith first of all, and then the Faith itself.
We have the happiness of understanding the heavenly gift of the Faith both for ourselves and for others. “Charity begins at home,” says the proverb, and so if we want to conserve the Faith of our brethren we must begin by preserving it in us and around us.
If we desire to re-animate the Faith of others then let us begin with ourselves by using all the means capable of making of us true faithful. Nobody can give that which he does not have, hence if we do not start with ourselves then we cannot combat effectively, for the good of others, in the good fight for the Faith.
Given the revolutionary times in which we live this vigour is more indispensable then ever. In our poor country (France), ravaged for more than three centuries by so many errors and negations, we are like those inhabitants of marshy regions whose unhealthy atmosphere poisons the blood and easily brings on fever.
The most malignant fever, so pernicious that it threatens us all, is rationalism, pervading everywhere like a toxic gas. It insidiously saps in each one of us the life of Faith, the reign of Christ Jesus in our souls.
The danger is universal. Pope Pius IX warns us about this in his well known Encyclical of 8
th December 1864 [Quanta Curia with Syllabus of Errors*, condemning 80 erroneous propositions]. Let us be on our guard as we are obliged to live in this poisonous atmosphere; let us take all the necessary precautions, and whatever the cost, let us preserve our Faith.
* The docuмent is divided into ten sections targeting specific modern errors:
– Pantheism and Naturalism, which say that God is identical to nature or that a Supreme Being distinct from the universe does not exist
– Rationalism, which claims that human reason is the sole judge of truth and morality without any need for God or divine revelation
– Religious indifferentism, which says that every person is free to embrace any religion or none, or that all religions lead equally to eternal salvation
– Socialism and Communism and secret societies, which threaten the Church and the social order
– Modern progress, which want the Church and the Pope to be reconciled with progress, liberalism and modern values.
[to be continued. Next time: True obedience to the See of Peter]
+ Paul Morgan
Topic: To Keep The Faith, One Must Fight (Read 47 times)