"It's amazing what you can do
with an army behind you"
with an army behind you"
So said one of our Dominican Tertiaries, in a reflective moment, during the retreat of the previous weekend. Today he says that he doesn't know where that comment came from (although on the material level, as an officer in the US Army, it's truth is apparent enough to him).
However, on the spiritual plane, I believe it's meaning is captured by the cover of the Legion of Mary Handbook:
And if anyone is ever confronted with the usual nauseatingly condescending comments about celibate men (ie: priests) should not guides to the moral life of married couples, let Henri Lacordiare put the drivel to rest. After the group read Life of Mary Magdalene, there was hardly a dry eye in the house. If you wish to energize and revitalize your marriage (or avoid entering into a dead one), this is a book for you.
During the pontificate of the great Pope Pius XII, Stalin famously asked, "How many divisions has the Pope?" Pope Pius replied: "Tell my son Josef he will meet my divisions in heaven."
ReplyDeleteIt should also be noted regarding Napoleon of Pope VI who excommunicated him: "Does he think the world has gone back a thousand years? Does he suppose the arms will fall from the hands of my soldiers?"
ReplyDeleteIt was Cardinal Newman who described the final outcome of that story: "Within two years, on the retreat over the snows of Russia, as two contemporary historians relate: 'Famine and cold tore their arms from the grasp of the soldiers...' and 'destitute of the power of raising them from the ground, the soldiers left them in the snow.' "
Napoleon's Army had met its match.