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Lent is a time when we condition our souls for deprivation; we do without certain things that we are accustomed to having all the time in the spirit of penance, a spirit of joy.
It's good to practice penance in advance of need because if you wait until disaster strikes, it will be well-nigh impossible to start practicing penance with anything like joy.
Can you imagine a protestant, a woman whose whole life has been among friends and preachers who have filled her mind with the spirit of denial of Catholic doctrine such as Purgatory, and the merit of spiritual works. She has never learned to deny herself legitimate pleasures with a joyful spirit during Lent because protestants do not believe in Lent. And then one day she's in an automobile accident, where she's coming home from the market and accidentally crosses over the double yellow line while distracted by her cellphone ringing in her purse. She isn't going fast, maybe 15 or 20 mph, because she's planning on turning left 500 feet ahead, where her house is on the corner there, and her daughter is home, waiting for her to return. But another car with a young couple on holiday from out of state is coming in the opposite direction at 25 mph, and the driver isn't looking in front of the car for a fraction of a second, but turns his head to look at his wife and share a laugh at the instant they would have passed the oncoming car but for the fact that the oncoming car was crossing over the centerline by eighteen inches at that moment. And there was a head-on collision. Emergency paramedics are called because the young couple is injured, but the protestant woman is not. But she is very upset, and worried. A passer-by approaches her to ask if there is anything he can do for her, and she replies, "Yes, go to that house up ahead on the corner and tell my daughter I am here and this has happened." He does this, which takes about 5 minutes, and he returns, to say her daughter is on the way. Then he suggests that they pray together and she agrees. He begins, "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee..." The protestant woman is shaking her head, NO. She wants nothing to do with any "Hail Mary." He suggests to her that she might try to offer up her discomfort and anxiety to God as a voluntary gift of reparation for sin, and she says, "NO! My pastor told me there is no merit in works!" You see, it's too late for her to do what would be natural at this time for a Catholic, because she's in the HABIT of not doing voluntary penance. She's in the habit of not saying the Hail Mary. So she wants no part of any of that, and she sinks into a morass of self-pity.
The man can do nothing more, so he leaves, lest perhaps the woman's daughter shows up and finds a way to sue him for getting her mother upset. Three months later, the man returns to the house to find workers nailing plywood over the windows. He asks them what happened, and they say that the mother and daughter who had lived there lost the house to foreclosure because they had a car accident and their insurance had lapsed, so they couldn't pay all the bills.
They had endured their own, personal EMP explosion. And they were not ready in any way, not even spiritually.
I met 2 protestants on Ash Wednesday who wanted to talk to me about religion, and so I had asked them if they know what day it is, and they did not. They knew it was Wednesday, and they knew it was March, and they knew the number of the day (this year it was the fifth), but they didn't know anything else. I had asked them if they were Christians and they said, "Yes." Then I asked them if they have ever heard of Ash Wednesday and they said, "No." Upon further consideration they said, "It has something to do with the Atonement." The Atonement, they said is what Christ did, but it's not something we can do. In fact, nothing that we do has any merit for the reparation of sins. I informed them that if they don't even know what Ash Wednesday is, they can't really call themselves "Christian." They were shocked. The most important day of the year for Catholics who observe the spirit of penance in recognition of our inexorable mortality, and the day that begins our season of voluntary self-denial which we joyfully undertake annually, such that we might be better able to cope with our own personal EMP when it comes -- and these two so-called Christians have no idea that it's happening, and no idea of the principle of self-denial or the value or merit of spiritual works.
When an EMP happens, protestants will be entirely at odds with the challenge. And it will be a great opportunity for us to give testimony to them in regards to what they've been missing. Because if we don't do so, they will have no idea that it even exists.
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Topic: How to prepare for EMP attack (Read 6836 times)