As the Emperor Hadrian lay dying, he composed a poem addressed to his soul—his “animacula,” or little soul.  This had been with him, he pondered, in so many experiences during his lifetime. What now would happen to it when his clay grew cold and his soul became an exile without a home?

     At some time, no doubt, the thought has occurred to us. Have we a soul and how do we recognize it? Will it survive us after death?

     By a soul is commonly meant a spiritual principle within us which informs our bodies, renders us human and distinguishes us from animals. Being spiritual it is not composed of parts as our bodies are, and hence within it there is no tendency for the parts to fall apart. And as such we regard our spiritual and major component as beyond death and corruption. In this sense the soul is said to survive the body.

     How is it to be recognized, and what does it do? If it is a spiritual reality then we must not expect to see and touch it. At times it has been suggested that bodies should be weighed before and after death, and the difference between the weights (if any) would demonstrate the presence or absence of the soul. But that is a view of the soul that sees it as a sort of material vapor and not as a component simple in constitution because free from parts and above the laws of matter.

     The best way to encounter the soul within us is, like the Emperor Hadrian, to seek its action within the experiences of our lifetime.

     It is when we seek to evaluate our experience that we encounter the soul in action. Some of our experience cannot be understood if we are only higher animals.

     Let us begin with man’s capacity for love. Our instinct is to love what is good. If we were only material, then the good we would seek would be those which satisfied our material needs.  You would think then that if man had enough good food, money, prestige, recognition, a good wife, a good marriage relationship, a good family—that he would have achieved everything and should be unconditionally happy. But in fact we desire health and we experience sickness; we amass money and leave it all behind when we die. Death appears to end all the good things we want; we keep wanting better things—more out of life than it ever quite gives. In brief we are never satisfied totally and continually.

The soul’s restless search

     Now why is this? It can only be because our capacity for love is greater in its demands than the satisfaction things can offer us. We want life and what it more abundantly. We want happiness and we want it unconditionally. What is it in our make-up which makes us want the best and continually leaves us dissatisfied because the best is forever just out of reach? The Christian answer is that the Good we strive for, which things cannot give us, is the hunger of the soul for the Good we call God.

     We all hate to be aimless.  We want to have a purpose in our lives—something to aim for, a good, a goal, an end. On this material plane this is most easy to understand. A hungry man works for food; a starving man makes the acquisition of food his sole object; a man marooned in the desert looks for water.

     These objects are felt as needs.  Now there is an inner need of a special kind which belongs to the soul of man. This is our need to have a master purpose in life, a last goal, a final end, from which all our striving for lesser ends will derive its purpose.  It you build a house you start from the foundations. To the unskilled the first brick and the second and third bricks you lay do not seem to have any purpose. But they have. The laying of each brick derives its mean from your final purpose, the construction of your house. That is the master purpose that creates order out of the chaos of all the building materials lying around.

     In the construction of our lives the reality that gives purpose to our actions is the possession of some master end to which all our actions are subordinated. The end of any action that we do is either complete and final itself, or it leads us on to another end which is final or leads to still another end. Eventually we are driven to wanting something which is so worthwhile in itself that it can be subordinated to nothing higher. When we have reached this, we have found God.

     It is here, too, that we encounter that soul of man in action. Its needs, unlike those of the body, are never satisfied. For our will that loves, even the best is not good enough; for our mind that knows, there is an irresistible search for truth. Our common experience of these needs is felt in our search for happiness—to love and be loved, to know and be known, onwards towards ecstasy.

No substitutes for God

     Now it is just here that substitutes for God let man down. First, he takes some object or person, investing it with a magic it does not possess—the millennium, for example, that a Marxist works for; the achievement of social prestige; the amassing of a fortune. These substitutes, however, are relative things. The let down comes when he starts treating them as if they were absolute things.

     Secondly, he maintains the fraud; and here he is his own propaganda agent and perhaps his own executioner. What he has chosen as the main purpose of life may indeed be a good thing in itself, but our experience teaches us that even the best is not good enough.  Yet he has to convince himself that the good thing is the best thing; and, of course, things promise us nothing.  Finally, he goes in one of two directions. If he is resilient when his object or person has let him down, then thee are plenty of fish in the sea and he goes off fishing for something else to keep him busy. If he is not, however, and the market has crashed, or the perfect woman let him down, or he has failed in the public eye—well, the weekly newspapers are full of accounts of suicide stories.

Modern idolatry—the godless state

     In poor humanity’s search for happiness all the substitutes have been tried and in the end found wanting. Nothing outside us is really good enough.  If we are to be perfectly happy then we must be possessed in our souls of all good, and only the Supreme Spirit Who is all goodness, all truth, and all beauty can do it.  Our hearts are restless, said a great Saint, and they will not rest until they rest in Him.

     The weakness of some of us to deify objects or persons is the weakness of some countries too.  It is strange that the political theories which have the strongest hold on their peoples are those which have a pseudo-religious character. Take Communism, for example.

     Throughout its history the human race has always dreamed of a society in which there is full and perfect happiness because there is perfect justice and equality.  Despite the dream and the wish, the sad fact is that in any society there is some injustice, discord, and rivalry.  But man’s know knows that there is a certain ideal pattern of justice in which wrongs are righted, responsibilities accepted and discharged, and the rights of men respected. Angered with the injustices that they see, some men turn to Communism as supplying the answer.

     As Marx saw the problem it was this.  The fact of Capitalism must beget its contrary; that is to say, the oppression of the many workers by the few rich would cause in the end a revolution by which inevitably and automatically power would pass to the workers.  They in turn would establish a dictatorship and this dictatorship would be vested in the state.  The state, however, was to be only a temporary establishment and of its own accord it would wither away. Why? Because the revolution would have destroyed private ownership and thus there would no longer be any reason for class struggle. In the absence of class struggle there would be no need for a state to defend the interests of the proletariat.

     There is, of course, more to it than that. Marx was an out and out materialist.  He id not believe in free will, in the rights to ownership, or in God.  For him history was the product of the inexorable laws of profit and loss.  What a man was, what he could be and would be were all molded by the laws of exchange.  As a result there would always be a class war between the “have’s” and the “have-not’s”, the owners and the workers, the former protected by the state.

     Since he published Das Kapital, the history of the trade union movement and of social legislation has made nonsense of some of what he said.  Western democracies since the end of the last century have been correcting their most glaring abuses, and something like a balance has been struck between capital and labor.

 Communism vs. Christianity

     However, much of what Karl Marx taught has been modified by the Russian communists.  He main architect was Lenin.  He had doubts whether the process outlined above (sometimes called the Marian dialectic) would really work. He said that the proletariat needed guidance from without and that this leadership should be vested in a revolutionary vanguard called the Communist Party.  Marx had said that the state would wither away because in the absence of private ownership class struggle would disappear.  Lenin said that Marx was right, but the process would be a protracted one. In this way the Party was ensured powered and permanence. 

     The question remains, however, why is Communism successful?

     Part of the answer is that Communism gives a faith to men who have none.  It appears to give a master purpose to life—the restoration of justice in society.  It gives a sense of belonging to bewildered sheep who are starving spiritually on pastures made barren by science without God.  “Are you hungry, dispossessed, unhappy,” it asks of the three-fifths of the world who are underprivileged. “We will redress your wrongs, feed you, and make you happy by giving you Paradise on earth.”

     In this latter role, it assumes a pseudo-religious character.  This can be seen if we tabulate its answers as against the Christian answers to the questions that most deeply concern us.

     What is man’s origin? Communism answers, “You are the product of a blind process in matter called evolution.”  Christianity answers, “You were made by God as a result of His infinite love.”

     What is man’s pattern and purpose?  Communism answers, “To achieve revolution, and to know, love, and serve the state. There is nothing else.”  Christianity answers, “To revolutionize your thought and behavior in the knowledge, love, and service of God in this world and to enjoy eternal happiness in the next.”

     Who shall guide us?  Communism answers, “The state shall guide you. It is omniscient. If you are blind to teaching, you will go to Siberia or be liquidated. The state is the interpreter of Marx.” Christianity answers, “God Himself will guide you through His revelation. If you are blind to it, you must answer to God.”

     What is death?  Communism answers, “The end of everything.”  Christianity answers, “The beginning of eternal life.”

     What is life?  Communism answers, “A search for Paradise on earth.” Christianity answers, “A preparation for everlasting happiness with God.”

     Not long ago Communism was wrapped in a death struggle with Nazism, a war of ideologies, as it were, within the canvas of the Second World War. To the young Nazi, Hitler had said, “I will make you a hero”; to the young Communist Stalin had said, “I will give you paradise on earth.”  To each the struggle had become a crusade. The Nazi had lavished upon Hitler and the German race the honor that Christians reserve for God.  But this kind of love bred hate. The ideals of young Germans—patriotism and self-sacrifice—were directed to false ends, and all of us know the corruption that came upon Germany and the appalling disaster that overtook it.

     At the same time we remember what happened in Russia. If a million Ukrainians refused to be collectivized they were starved to death. In the Soviet satellites, slave labor, the concentration camp, brainwashing—all of these await the slightest disobedience.  The Communist search for justice has been as corrupting as the Nazi search for power.  The erst-while idealists have become fanatical tyrants.  They dictate what their people must think and rob them of their fundamental rights. In a Godless world, the striving for justice has defeated itself.

     In the last analysis, men can only be made “good” according to the brand of Russian goodness, by fear and threats.  But men can make themselves good if they know that God speaks to them in conscience, that they will have to answer to Him one day, and in Him they will find the goodness, the truth, the justice and the happiness for which they sought during their days. 

"My children, the world, your world cries peace, peace, when there is no peace, for they are looking for peace without their God. In their arrogance, as satan whispers to them, they believe that they have risen far above their God and can establish a utopia upon earth. They run about like chickens without heads, crying peace, peace, and love and brotherhood. Better that they get down upon their knees and ask their God for enlightenment." - Our Lady of the Roses, November 1, 1976

 

Our Lady of the Roses Bayside messages
These messages came from Jesus, Mary, and the saints to Veronica Lueken at Bayside, NY, from 1968 to 1995.

LITTLE   CHILDREN
"You will all keep a constant vigilance of prayer going throughout your country and the world. I admonish all parents now to spend at least fifteen minutes of your day reading the Bible to your children and your family. It is now a command from the Eternal Father! For the little children no longer know or recognize the angel guardians. The little children have no conception of the truth of the divinity or the existence of My Son. The little children are now being taught the ways of satan." - Our Lady, November 21, 1977

Directives from Heaven

D87 - Divinity of Jesus Christ   PDF
D96 - Conscience    PDF
D103 - Communism   PDF
D119 - Jesus Christ, Redeemer   PDF
D123 - Catholic Church, Part 1   PDF
D124 - Catholic Church, Part 2   PDF


 

Videos online:

Vatican II Watch here...	World Monetary Crash Watch here...	Deception of the Century Watch here...	Third Secret Fabrication Watch here...
The Miraculous Story of Bayside Watch here...	A Pilgrimage to Our Lady of the Roses Shrine Watch here...	Jacinta's Third Secret vision: She saw Pope Paul VI Watch here...	Consecrate Russia Watch here (Part 1) (Part 2)