"O Mary, mighty Virgin, You great and illustrious citadel of the Church; You marvelous helper of Christians; You terrible as an army arrayed in battle; You alone have destroyed all heresies in the world; in our anguish, in our struggles, in our sorrows, defend us against the enemy, and at the hour of our death welcome our soul to paradise." (Saint John Bosco) 

"Long Live the Warfare" is daring, even scandalous... some would say. And yet, today, this word is both important in the carefree world of the "boomers" as they say (which doesn't prevent them, on the contrary, from being all the more cruel for being carefree) and commonplace in view of the violence on all levels, physical and moral: Either we fight or we die today (and if not physically, then certainly morally, by abdicating our duty as fathers, citizens or Christians, for example; or by ostracism, compromise, or worse, by conformist servility to all laws and regulations, especially unjust).

For the reality of the total struggle in which we live—of the terrible, relentless fight—is obscured by modernity, which wants to erase it and cover it with a prudish veil... There's no need for authority or vigilante justice then, because, everyone being "nice", there's no need for punishments or constraints, only rewards.

So what does it mean to proclaim "long live the warfare"? It's two things:

1) It's a reminder of our fundamental reality on this earth, which is a never-ending struggle: first against ourselves and our intrinsic disorder due to original sin. We are constantly fighting against our evil inclinations, and against temptations, and against evil, which we would like to avoid but which we commit, again and again, in order to do good, which we see, but which we flee. 

It's important to remember this reality of total struggle, to which is added the eschatological struggle of God and his legions of angels against the demons, who constantly attack us Christians - according to the famous image, a monastery is invaded by demons who tempt the holy monks, whereas in the pagan or lukewarm world, demons are rare and idle: they don't need to lose people who lose themselves! 

"August Queen of Heaven and Mistress of Angels,
You who have received from God
the power and mission to crush Satan's head,
we humbly ask you,
send the celestial legions so that, under your command,
pursue the demons, fight them everywhere,
suppress their audacity and drive them back into the abyss.
Who is like God?
O good and tender Mother,
you will always be our love and our hope.
O divine Mother, send the Holy Angels
to defend me and drive away the cruel enemy.
Holy Angels and Archangels, defend us, guard us.
August Queen of Heaven and Mistress of Angels." (Father Cestac)

The disorder of our wounded nature thus creates this struggle for the restoration of our natural and supernatural order (we are made by God and for God): this struggle essentially consists in letting grace do its work, breaking down the obstacles in our soul to its work, and living virtuously in an integral way. First restoration.

But this disorder of our nature is going to spread to every part of human society, political and religious: the struggle thus extends throughout society, into our political societies, for we are never finished restoring the order willed by God in marriage (and ours first), in religions (in the ancient sense of religious orders), in all the political societies that are the parish, the village, the political action group (not the party).

And this struggle begins with the order of an "army ranged in battle": a political body constituted with its head, and which moves as the head wishes for victory! The royal body politic, the mystical body of Jesus Christ, has this particularity, difficult to imagine with the bodily analogy, that its members have a will and an intelligence, and a free-will that enables them to obey the general's plans even better... Like a real army, each regiment, each squad, with its particular leader, must know how to take initiatives when necessary, and for the sake of the final victory, in accordance with the army leader's plan, the objectives of war, and the rules of honor.

So, yes, long live the warfare! For this reality of the total struggle in which we live, of the terrible, relentless fight, is obscured by modernity, which wants to erase it and cover it with a prudish veil: for the modern carefree, war doesn't exist, we're still as we were before the Fall, and everyone kisses each other... There's no need for authority or vigilante justice then, because, everyone being "nice", there's no need for punishments or constraints, only rewards.

So let's open our eyes to this war that's going on, and see what we're risking: losing our souls! So let's get ready, let's become knights in the army of the King of kings, under the command of the Queen of the Universe.

Of course, all this is false, and our reality is there to prove it. And there's no arguing with facts! In this sense, we're living in a happy time when the perfidy of the Enlightenment and the revolutionaries, who benefited from very Christian times and the fruits of a harmonious society, were able to make people believe that fighting was no longer necessary, that war didn't exist, that neither the devil nor the wicked really existed, In an impressive dialectical twist, revolutionaries of all stripes will say that all authority is intrinsically tyrannical, so all we have to do is abolish all authority and we'll have the perfect democratic society! And by destroying all authority, we destroy all order through the suppression of leaders, and therefore all search for good, and all preparation for the war we are living through...

The damage is there, today, in democratic and egalitarian society: everyone, without saying so, is waging war against each other with terrible violence, taking as their enemy the wrong enemy (whom they pretend never to name). We're not fighting against vice, sin, the devil or the wicked, but revolutionary liberal democracy is fighting against truth, the common good, starting with the supreme good, which is God, and beauty...

So let's open our eyes to this war that's going on, and see what we're risking: losing our souls! So let's get ready, let's become knights in the army of the King of kings, under the command of the Queen of the Universe, and let's work to forge our weapons, our rosaries, our prayers, our sacrifices and our fasts. It's virile, i.e. virtuous (according to etymology). 

The amorphous modern thinks he's out of this war: he's mistaken, it's a denial of reality that turns a blind eye to his own degradation and inner struggle. It's another way of burying one's head in the sand and ignoring what's happening everywhere. The naïveté of a youth who has experienced nothing and who has not been taught anything other than sly Rousseauism cannot last more than a few years in the face of harsh reality - and if it does, it's because there's a degree of willful blindness involved.
This denial of reality is catastrophic: you have masses of amorphous combatants who refuse to fight, and who find themselves in the "no man's land" of the two armies. They are crushed and shot like rabbits... 

Worse still, for the baptized, who are de facto incorporated into God's army, as for the non-baptized who are de facto chained to the yoke of Satan and the robots of his army, not to fight is to desert, which compounds the fault. Worse still: not to fight for God is already to fight de facto for Satan, disorder and sin...
So let's get out of this false and treacherous underworld and into our own regiment, wherever God calls us, whether in the elite corps of religious orders, or in the spiritual military schools of sacramental practice and parish life. It doesn't matter: we all have our place, from the estafette to the special forces, from the private to the general, from the staff strategist to the cook.

At least in war, we know who's fighting whom, and we know we can make peace: better still, we respect our enemy, because we ourselves know what it costs to fight, to train, to respect the rules of honor.

2) There's a second reason. Open warfare is a school of realism and great virtues. I'm talking here about real as well as spiritual warfare: the great warrior nations, by force, cultivate rules of honor (which may be erroneous and exaggerated, but which have the merit of existing), an order in training and combat (because otherwise you're defeated and slaughtered) and a culture of natural virtues such as courage, strength, honesty and loyalty (because otherwise you're slaughtered).

The order of an army arrayed in battle is "beautiful": it's not for nothing that so many contemporary films and games, aware of this beauty, don't hesitate to present immense chivalric battles, where even the bad guys are as if "forced" in their very wickedness to demonstrate a certain order - because otherwise they're defeated even before opening battle.

It's a fact that the great warrior nations, more ordered in their disorder even by the formation of very powerful "feudal" political bodies, welded together by quasi-natural bonds (which are often as strong as the bond of blood) of loyalty and corps working together for the natural common good of their community: victory and protection, the glory of the leader which falls on all, like his happiness in arms, from which all benefit, as much as all find themselves victims and unhappy under the yoke of the enemy in the event of defeat...

It is also a fact that these warlike nations, such as feudal Japan, Imperial Rome or Celtic Gaul, are more apt to convert and have converted to Christ : because, whatever their degree of "civilization", violence or barbarism, the fact of being confronted with death, of loving order and natural virtues, while knowing the impassable limits of a fallen nature (its own limits on the one hand, but also the acute awareness of the fragility of our existence and our decrepitude, plus the disgust that can only come when faced with so much slaughter, violence and harshness) make even the proudest and proudest warriors feel like a crack of humility, which can shatter the mask of pride in an instant and allow conversion.

It's much harder for faith to break through in a totalitarian, warrior-free society, which loves commerce, money and the false peace of "no waves": everything is much more controlled, less frank, less realistic, and the pride is more subtle and deeper... all obstacles to true conversions.

At least in war, we know who's fighting whom, and we know we can make peace: better still, we respect our enemy, because we ourselves know what it costs to fight, to train, to respect the rules of honor. Respect for the enemy can quickly turn, with Christianization, into charity for the enemy...

In all this, I've spoken only of pagan wars, harsh and terrible: in Christian lands, with a just war, Catholic chivalry and an effort by all to live as good Christians, even physical war is Christianized between Christians, and becomes a simple extension of justice, against a brother whom we correct and no longer against the barbarian whom we must exterminate - or, better still, we also fight for our enemy, because he survives as a freeman, and is no longer simply the barbarian to be enslaved or colonized (a vision that contemporary imperialism has resurrected, with the revolution at European level first...); modernity is quite simply the return of the pagan order against the Christian order! With all its harshness...). 

So long live the warfare! Because in war, we deserve, we can perform exploits, we can die for the leader we love, for the King of kings, and participate, however feebly, in his eternal glory!

It's another world, the restoration of the just struggle against sin, for God, against the devil, for justice and in charity without the dross of fallen nature: this will be the subject of another article another day.

In any case, war, combat and struggle are an integral part of our daily reality, and of our human reality: we are on and in a total battlefield, and war is total.
Let's be aware of this, and take the necessary steps to fight well, rather than letting ourselves be slaughtered.
And even if we have to fight, let's fight as God wants us to, for Him, and against our evil inclinations and our inner disorder, and the disorder of our political societies: that's the good fight.

For, knowing that war is here, and that we must wage it, we might as well wage it in a Christian way, to prevent the pagan wars of which the twentieth century is like a caricature, aggravated by the general apostasy, from happening again...

And if we could have gone to heaven without fighting in a world without original sin, that's no longer the case: we have to fight, that's the way it is, it's a fact and a reality, however terrible it may be. Better still, the good Lord has given us the natural ability to fight - pagan man without revelation has sufficiently demonstrated this in history - but we, his adopted sons, have still added the weapons of grace, and the sweet comfort, in sorrow, fatigue, trials, tears and suffering, that a good merciful Father is watching us and supporting our arm - and, for those who have gone over to the other side (which we've all inevitably done at one time or another...), there's no need to be ashamed. ..let's face it), we know that this good Father always opens the ranks of his legion to us.

And we know that the real Christian victory over the enemy is not his extermination, but his conversion: is Christianity anything else? When the vast majority of men in a given time and place are in Christ's army, the few intractable villains can no longer act, and can no longer form an army, nor act in broad daylight: peace is made for lack of opposing combatants, knowing that the demons, if they fight, have already lost, are powerless to bend our will, and are there to give us the opportunity to deserve! 

So long live the warfare! Because in war, we deserve, we can perform exploits, we can die for the leader we love, for the King of kings, and participate, however feebly, in his eternal glory!

For God, for the King, for France
Paul-Raymond du Lac

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