In the upper world hell once rebelled against heaven. But in this world heaven is rebelling against hell. For the orthodox there can always be a revolution; for a revolution is a restoration.
– GK Chesterton
Where is our unity? It’s difficult to see. It is nowhere in the cumbersome hellscape of political self-interest where there exist very few partisan absolutes. When the qualifiers of what constitutes patriotism can be as varied as falling snowflakes, we are inherently left with a muddy snowmelt. If you are bold enough to stand athwart this political landscape, it is more likely you will have your good reputation severed in a Reign of Terror.
It is often said that the United States of America is an ‘idea’. To an extent, it is an idea put into practice. But the Fraternity that joins people together in the pursuit of the Common Good does not last because of an idea. Every 80 or so years a massive war erupts that forever changes the country and we drift further away from that founding ‘idea’. It is the secularism of our society that tempts us away from our Faith and curtails the cohesion of commonfolk.
Tolkien wrote in a letter to his despairing son, “Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament… There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth, and more than that: Death.” And there it is. Something more than an idea. A tangible reality that excites, unites, and pours love into every soul and returns us to the awe and wonder of childhood.
As Catholics we are unified in our Baptism, but beyond being sanctified by those waters, we drift in and out of sinfulness. We rely upon the Sacrament of Reconciliation to restore us from our error. And yet, it is only before the Blessed Sacrament that all knees bow. The problem is not that we cannot understand this but that we are often beset by a kind of spiritual dementia in the strained interactions and afflictions of everyday events.
We read in this Times or that Post of revolutions, attempted revolutions, and planned revolutions. All those revolutions insist on giving power back to the people, but that power usually looks like being pinned under the heels of the revolutionaries’ velvet loafers. It might be said that the fall of man was Satan’s second revolution against God. But it is not humanity’s place to be under the heel of Satan or his revolutionaries. The devil waged his revolution to bring sin into the world and succeeded, but that revolution is over. The revolution to restore man’s kinship with God is the restoration.
In Orthodoxy Chesterton wrote, “In the upper world hell once rebelled against heaven. But in this world heaven is rebelling against hell. For the orthodox there can always be a revolution; for a revolution is a restoration.”
The coming together of a community, every Christ-like act, every defense of the true and the beautiful are responses to the physical reality of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. A people broken into political and societal disarray can be re-forged through the revolution to restore our kinship as a common people. Rather than trudging through the world in anxious rumination, we should hearken back to the motto of Pope St. Pius X, “To restore all things in Christ”, where we enjoy eternal infancy and never tire of the sun shining the same way day after day no matter who holds the reigns of temporal power.