If the Son of God came to dwell in this world it was in order to save it. Had He, Who is Eternal Wisdom, had in mind a greater beauty for His creation and a greater manifestation of the divine goodness through His Incarnation? What is certain is that a pressing reason directed this glorious work and determined the means to be taken: it was our Redemption through the Cross that the Divine Word had at heart. He came to expiate the sins of the world and thus free us from the powers of hell which, before Him, apart from Him and against Him, aspire to world domination.
The event of the Sacrifice of the Cross cuts human history in two: before it reigned darkness, slavery to sin, corruption and death; after it reigns light, peace, joy, freedom, and even now eternal life. The Cross divides the world into two cities, one of which must be repudiated if we wish to belong to the other: the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan, one day to be eternal Heaven and eternal Hell.
1. The phalangist’s vision of a world without God is sombre indeed, but perhaps not so pessimistic as that of our ancestors, marked as it was by the Augustinian tradition. But he will never be optimistic about man; he will not marvel at his natural goodness or at the naive simplicity of primitive peoples not yet corrupted by power, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau would have it. The phalangist is wary of all that has not been touched or sanctified by Christ; he pities the wretchedness of infidels and combats them in their arrogance and aggressiveness.
2. On Christian peoples, the inhabitants of the City of God, and himself, the phalangist casts a confident but lucid regard. He knows that God’s grace and strength are with them, but only through the application of the merits of Christ and the continuous gift of the fruits of the redemption. They are thus raised above themselves by the virtue of the sacraments and owe the constancy of their fidelity to Christ, to the benefit of His prayer, His life, and His example. Only thus can they hope to vanquish the Evil One and progress in their vocation as sons of God.
3. In the Christian combat the Mass occupies the central place. Christ’s sacrifice ceaselessly renewed for His Church is not an optional rite but the phalangist’s daily nourishment at the heart of the Catholic community. It is in this sacrifice that Christ Himself gives His pardon, grace, strength and joy to those who are His own and cements their fraternal charity in the bond of His Body and Blood.
Jesus Christ is true God and true man. He is the Lord, our master and our saviour. Such is the sacred, absolute, objective, universal and definitive truth, which reduces all contrary theories and sentiments to nothingness. Whoever believes this, is in the truth, the way, and already the life eternal. Whoever disbelieves this is in error, injustice, and the road to perdition. Whatever tolerance may be conceded to the disbeliever for reasons of prudence or the desire to be charitable, the fact is that he lacks God, he lacks fraternal community and his own good; he has no right to remain in that state, nor can Christians be resigned to leave him there.
1. Jesus therefore is King. The truth of this has been proven and made manifest, or else God can only have been unable to make it so! He is the Unum Necessarium, the One Thing Necessary. All the beauty of the new creation is made visible in Him through the example of His life. Divine goodness pervades the world through the sublime work of His Cross. His reign is the temporal and eternal salvation of humanity as well as of each man in particular. Through His infinite perfections, His works of wisdom and the merits of His passion and death, Jesus Christ is truly King of the World and the only hope of the human family.
2. Fashioned by the lessons of the Gospel, fortified by the grace of the Cross, and gladdened by the glory of the Risen Lord, the phalangist wishes to be subject to this King of Glory. His thoughts, affections, commitments, and all his actions are ruled by Christ. Therefore, he can only live by Him, with Him, like Him, in Him, and for Him. And that not by an individual, arbitrary, and reversible choice, but by a free and definitive personal recognition of Jesus Christ’s sovereign authority and therefore of His absolute and universal right over every creature redeemed by His Blood.
Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords, with His triple crown of power, wisdom and love by virtue of His creation, redemption and sanctification of mankind. The phalangist enthusiastically engages himself in the service of Jesus Christ, that He may reign in an absolute way over every creature in the world in every age, and that every knee should bow before Him in Heaven, on earth, and in hell.
For the phalangist there exists, therefore, a Christian philosophy, a Christian ecology, etc., because in every domain there is no integral truth outside of Christ, and because Christ’s truth is not optional, partial or relative, like the others, but the most profound and vast, its fullness filling all in all.
1. The phalangist judges the true worth of all philosophies, sciences and moral teaching by their relationship to Christ. No human power, will or knowledge is satisfactory in itself. Being incomplete, they lack certain higher principles, for want of which they are awash with contradictions, uncertainties, impotence and anarchy.
2. The Gospel, on the other hand, is the complete answer to every ultimate human question, an answer that is definitive, ennobling, conquering, and supernatural. This pure wisdom, beauty and goodness is a gift from Christ to the one who believes. The only integral humanism is Christian and the only fruitful revolution is that of the Gospel.
3. This divine totality of Christian humanism is not the crowning of a worldly, scientific, natural order, the work of experience and reason, already perfectly constituted. Christian grace and wisdom are not superfluous ornaments with which to decorate a human, monolithic, perfectly constructed and universally accepted Tower of Babel. Secular sciences and philosophies oscillate between the empiricism of disparate discoveries and the temptation of utopian syntheses. The Gospel alone can make a synthesis of all these discordant sciences, wills and powers, so that they become a primary, new and eternal wisdom. It is what Soloviev called the sublime theandry, the radiance of divine glory on the face of men become the sons of God.
Jesus has saved the world from Satan’s bondage, and each man from the burden of his own offences, through the human expiation and the divine pardon of the Cross. Thus constituted as our mediator, He has restored us to life and re-opened Heaven to us by His Sacrifice. He is the author of our salvation and His Cross is its means. Because He has saved us, we are in His debt. He has acquired rights over us, or rather He draws us to love and obey Him. Whence the phalangist’s devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and His Holy Cross.
1. The Heart and the Cross are our emblem and also our entire programme. For Jesus is already for His disciples the object of their adoration, their contemplation, love and imitation. The glory of God radiates from His outraged face; the love of God overflows from His pierced Heart; the beauty of God is in His conversation; the grace of God is in His hands. The phalangist dreams of nothing other than of being His living imitation, like another Christ.
2. This mystical aesthetic becomes a code of ethics, which in turn becomes a drama. To find the Father through the Son is to reach glory through the Cross, to seek happiness in trials, riches in poverty, life in sacrifice and death. Such are the evangelical Beatitudes, such is the revealed mystery of divine wisdom, "which is folly in the eyes of men", but truth and blessing for those who believe.
The law of Christian holiness transfigures the Mosaic Law, which was already an improvement on natural religion and its carnal prudence. But to him who renounces everything, including himself, and enters on this path, there is promised a hundredfold in this world and eternal life in the next.
1. The phalangist practises the Lord’s commandment, which is that of charity. The love of the heavenly Father and the love of Jesus Christ, his Saviour and therefore his closest neighbour, lead him to love his human brethren. There is no perfect love of God without the grace of Jesus Christ and no love of Jesus Christ without love of one’s neighbour. And every man, at least in hope, is our Christian brother. For Jesus has made a law of His example: He loved us first who as yet did not love Him, and He loved us with the greatest love to the extent of giving His life as a ransom, that He might have us for His brethren.
This divine charity comes and goes from the Saviour to all men redeemed through His Blood, from the innocent to the criminal, from the nearest to the most distant, including the very poorest, the most abandoned of infidels, and every man, even the cruellest enemy.
2. The obstacle to charity is pride – pride of race, caste or superiority. Salvation belongs to the humble, to those who know themselves to be objects of mercy and who are themselves merciful. Salvation is refused to those who erect walls and in their self-sufficiency cut themselves off from other men and from God. From the time of Jesus Christ there has no longer been any chosen people or messianic race, a caste of the perfect, pure and wise; and there never will be a race of supermen. The Pharisees of the past, the Stoics and Cathars of former times, the followers of Nietzsche, the elitists of today, and all those others who declare themselves to belong to a superior blood, people, culture or class, an elect with no need of redemption, owing no pity or mercy to anyone, and remaining outside the communion of Christian charity – all these incur eternal malediction.
The phalangist, recognising the gifts he has received from birth, civilisation and grace, shows his pleasure in humility, a Christian virtue and a promise of blessedness. With magnanimity he makes his talents increase in the service of his fellow humans, in mercy and – in accordance with Christ’s word and example – in the forgiveness of injuries, the supreme mark of fraternal love.
The phalangist, the disciple of Christ, no longer lives for this passing world but for the Kingdom to come. He knows that to serve this kingdom demands detachment from him. Was not Christ tracked down and surrounded, to be finally "raised up from the earth", by ambitious and avaricious men – Judas, Caiaphas, Herod and Pilate? The phalangist knows that the evil of this world lies in its lust for power, its ambition for domination and honours, and its unbridled quest for the wealth to support such aims. He has heard his Lord curse money as a dangerous instrument, a subtle and fearful means of perdition. He welcomes this insistent lesson of his Master’s and puts it into practice.
1. Besides those disciples who sell their goods and distribute them to the poor for the Kingdom of Heaven, there are other servants of God who live in this world without ambition or avarice and who hold it an honour for each one to stay in his condition without seeking to rise and without falling. The phalangist will take his inspiration from this highly virtuous tradition of Christian civilisation and will administer his inheritance for the good of his own and for the use of all, without attaching his soul thereto.
2. But the spirit of the Gospel will go even further and will prevent him from yielding to the depraved appetites which stir in men in these times and shake the very foundations of civilisation – appetites which make worldly honours, sharing in power, and the accumulation of wealth the principles of politics and economics, not to say the supreme laws of human morality!
The phalangist will reject any system where the pursuit of honours, the exaltation of power and the love of money come first.
3. In contradiction to these worldly passions, the Phalange will apply itself to practising strict evangelical poverty. It will live by the generosity of its members without contracting debts of gratitude towards anyone and without falling under the protection of any power. Nor will it grant to its most dedicated servants and leaders any worldly honours and any rights to participate in the direction of the Phalange through flattery, lest its independence be thereby lost.
Finally, the Phalange will remain faithful to the spirit of the Gospel by working to establish and strengthen those political and social institutions and powers that are most alien to the tyranny of money. For itself, it will never be a path leading to honours, power, or the sources of wealth. For the Master came not to be served but to serve, not to dominate but to experience the abjection and humiliation of a poor man.
Christ readily pardoned sinners and yet it was at the cost of a cruel passion and the shedding of His Blood that He expiated for their crimes. By His example and that of His Blessed Mother He thereby inaugurated this change of life, this new creation for which the pagan and apostate peoples sigh in vain, where flesh and blood are the matter of a perpetual sacrifice pleasing to God for the salvation of the world. A new spiritual existence has begun, in this earthly and temporal flesh, which is however brought under control, sanctified and purged of all its fevers, as though already risen and transfigured.
1. The phalangist necessarily shares in this new life and, without it being for him an impossible burden, he not only accepts the purity prescribed by the Church as a rule of life, for each according to his condition, but he loves, esteems and recommends it. And if he should fall or relapse into any fault, still more if he should have the misfortune to be excluded from the community of the faithful through some public sin, he will seek absolution in order to re-enter into grace with his Lord and his brothers, without ever contesting the law of the Church law or doubting the superabundant power of divine grace.
2. Hence in any community of which he is a member, the phalangist will wish and even demand that this evangelical law be proclaimed and observed as the very law of nature and human civilisation, the practice of which is made possible for all through the aid brought by Christ and distributed by the Church.
If the "carnally minded" should protest against such demands as intolerable, instead of yielding to their desire that the law of our Christian societies should reflect pagan morality, the phalangist will protest that the law must lead to the faith and that the faith requires the life of the sacraments, full of strength and grace, whereby alone the Lord’s command becomes sweet and His burden light, raising the human morality of men to the perfection of holiness befitting the sons of God.
The phalangist knows the Father in the Son and he draws his joy from the glory appearing on the Face of Jesus crucified, risen and ascended into Heaven, from whence He will come again to seek out His own and to lead them to their eternal blessedness.
1. The major inspiration of the Phalange may, therefore, be read in the Face of Christ. The Phalange heeds the lessons of His Sacred Heart, and it finds their illustration in the Virgin Mary of the Immaculate Heart, in the disciple loved by the Lord, in Saint Mary-Magdalene, penitent and mystic, and in many other saints.
These devotions feed the phalangist’s personal piety but also give the Phalange its spirituality, which is that of Father de Foucauld: the cross in this life to obtain heavenly glory, and the heroic and mystical life open to all… for the combat waged by the Counter-Reformation and the Counter-Revolution, but also for the future Renaissance of the Church and the restoration of Christendom on the day of Christ the King’s world triumph.
2. The phalangist, therefore, will venerate both the Heart and the Cross of Jesus together, that is to say, suffering and death inspired by love, beauty in grief, joy in pain, honour in service, glory in humiliation, final beatitude in persecution and martyrdom.
The phalangist, whose standard bears the Heart and the Cross, will ceaselessly remember that the resolute but loveless sacrifice of pride is sterile; that egoistic love, which refuses any sacrifice, is mendacious. He will learn mortification of the flesh and renunciation of the spirit without, however, losing his peace of soul, that exalting feeling derived from the eternal life and glory already commenced.
3. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, whether he takes part in it physically or spiritually, will be for him the daily memorial of the mystery of Jesus, the renewal of His passion and death wrought by Himself in His Church as a constant reminder of its lesson and as a means of communicating its grace and strength to all His brethren.