At his wonderful website Spirit Daily, Mr. Michael Brown has just posted yet another excellent article on the zeitgeist; the spirit of coldness which is envelloping our society like a damp blanket and which is suffocating the Spirit. Here it is:


'HOME INVASIONS' SPUR FEARS OF A FUTURE THAT WITHOUT PRAYER WILL YIELD ANARCHY

"Our society has grown cold. Have you noticed the spirit? There is a prevailing wind. There is 'attitude.' A proud spirit moves, and we feel the chill in the way we conduct ourselves. Perhaps it is because everyone has money. One calls an airline and goes through five minutes of impersonal recorded messages before waiting another ten minutes for an actual human who clearly doesn't want to deal with you.

It isn't just airlines. We are a voice-mail-e-mail-I-Pod-in-your-face nation.
That impersonality has coupled with decades of violence on television (and at the movies) to generate truly unnerving prospects.

Kids are assaulting kids. Teens kill at the drop of the hat. The other day, a boy from a town not so far from us murdered his grandmother for less than $200 in drug money while another assaulted someone with a spiked bat.

How often we look for signs of the times on the global stage and ignore the signs in our own culture and neighborhoods.

Will there be a time of chaos? Will there be a period of anarchy? Are we seeing the glimmerings?

There are those who have had visions of a societal breakdown in which natural or economic turbulence leads to a dismantling of the infrastructure -- and people fighting over a gallon of gas.

Might there come a time when there is an eruption of civil conflicts -- when various groups in various regions wage war on each other, or when a breakdown leads have-nots to invade the homes of those who have temporarily adequate resources?

Without prayer, and conversion, that answer is yes.

It may tend toward the 'paranoiac' and yet we do see disarming cases of home invasion.
Increasingly, vandals and robbers are entering residences while the owners are inside -- a level of boldness that marks a change in behavioral patterns. Consider that:
Last Sunday, in Daytona Beach, a grandmother was dragged from her own home at ten in the morning (as her son helplessly watched), forced to withdraw money from an ATM, and murdered brutally for a pittance.

In a town to the west, several young people were slain in a home over a CD player and other minor possessions two years before.

In November, three men who broke into homes in the Albuquerque, New Mexico, area and were shot dead by homeowners.

In December, in Tucson, an eighty-year-old had to grab a gun and confront intruders -- again, during broad daylight, in the morning.

In Lauderdale Lakes, Florida, another man celebrating the birth of his son was fatally wounded in a drive-by shooting after showing off pictures of the newborn at a friend's house.

In Denver, a pro football star was killed in another "drive-by." The cases go on: doors that are jimmied when homeowners are home, masked men at the back door, abductions, carjackings.
How do we protect our homes?

There are the obvious ways, of course (good locks, an alarm system), and then the not-so-obvious. Many are the accounts of menacing strangers kept at bay because the person they targeted was in prayer -- and seemed to be protected by an actual force, sometimes in the form of an angel.

That protection is heightened through sacramentals (medals, crucifixes throughout the home, statues of the Archangel Michael, Holy Water, Blessed Salt on the property). One expert at deliverance covers his property with a special blessing.

'In the same way the strong man marked out the four corners of his property with stone towers, I increase the perimeter of protection surrounding my home with four rocks,' says this Catholic lay minister, Robert Abel. 'I have anointed the rocks with oil and placed one in every corner of my yard. In the spiritual realm the canopy looks like a bullet-proof dome.'
Strange as it may seem, those of an evil bent are actually repelled in the presence of something that is holy.

Superstition?

There is power when we pray and power when we are surrounded by blessed objects.
Such especially comes through the Blessed Mother -- who has said that with prayer and fasting we could even stop wars, never mind local violence. 'No weapon fashioned against me will stand,' says Isaiah 54:17. 'Greater is He Who is in me than he who is in the world,' adds 1 John 4:4.

Such is especially crucial to know at this time.

It is to be remembered that an atheistic professor from northern Kentucky named Howard Storm once wrote about a dramatic near-death brush during which he claimed he not only became convinced that God and eternity exist but also was shown the future by what he described as angels.

He has told his account on many national shows, including Today, and his testimony helped convert famed writer Anne Rice, who once wrote about vampires but now writes (if controversially) about Jesus.

Whatever the merits of that, it was Dr. Storm's assertion that the future he glimpsed included a breakdown in America and a civil uprising that led to anarchy. This is the end result of materialism. It is the end result of an obsession with money. It is the end result of putting life on earth before life with God in Heaven."

Well said indeed. And what does Vatican II have to say about this spirit of coldness and those who profess to be Catholic? Lumen Gentium, No. 14 teaches us that:

"All the Church's children should remember that their exalted status is to be attributed not to their own merits but to the special grace of Christ. If they fail, moreover, to respond to that grace in thought, word and deed, not only shall they not be saved but they will be the more severely judged."

Paul Anthony Melanson