Roberto de Mattei
RadioRomaLibera
November 9, 2020
A famous line from William Shakespeare’s play As
You Like It, goes like this: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and
women merely players” (Act II, scene VII).
There is wisdom in this sentence, but we could say more precisely: “All the
world is a battlefield and all the men and women are immersed in this war.”
This is always true, but it is particularly true
today. There is no denying it.
The elections are just over in the U.S.A. But are they really over? The President in office until January 20 is officially Donald Trump, who has not conceded the victory to his adversary, already enthroned as the new president by the mainstream media. What will happen from now until January 20? In addition to the pending legal battles, America is split in half into two political parts which have become two visions of the world, wherein it will be difficult to find ground for compromise. The electoral result probably gave the victory to Biden, but Trump appeared more solid and Biden weaker than everyone expected. The political system in the U.S.A., considered a model since the time Alexis de Tocqueville described it in Democracy in America (1831), today, manifests all its fragility, and a scenario of civil war (raised a number of times by the British historian Neil Ferguson) appears less far-fetched than may first seem.
But the prospect of a civil war won’t spare
Europe. From Nice to Vienna, the streets and squares of Europe are the theatre
of a religious conflict that overnight could involve the peripheries of the
great cities, according to the dramatic picture painted by the journalist
Laurent Obertone in his novel Guerilla : le temps des barbares
(Ring, Paris 2019). Alongside the asymmetrical war, which could be induced by a
sudden revolt of the urban peripheries, the analysts also foresee a return of
“symmetrical conflicts”, with the possibility of wars of States against
States.
The Paris government, for example, has increasingly
conflictual relations with Erdogan’s Turkey, but also with China, especially
after what happened in New Caledonia, when in the secessionist referendum of
October 4, the people voted to remain French, rejecting entry into the Chinese
orbit. But Communist China will not renounce its expansionism in the Pacific, and
it could well take advantage of the
chaotic situation in the United States by attempting to invade - if not
the entire territory of the Island of Taiwan - at least some islands that are
dependent on it. How would Joe Biden or Donald Trump respond ?
But the world is also at war against an
invisible enemy which made its appearance at the start of 2020: a biological
war joined the ongoing political, cultural and psychological war. The pandemic
is destabilizing the West and could induce its social collapse.
Furthermore, instead of seeking to understand
the Divine designs in history, Pope Francis seems to be accelerating the
catastrophe, with appeals to a utopian world devoid of religious identity and
national origins, which would mark the obliteration of Western and Christian
civilization.
Is total war at the gates? And what is our place
in this battlefield? The answer is simple. Our place of combat is where Divine
Providence has allocated each one of us at the present moment. Our lives are
made up of countless instances following one another, but we fight in the place
and moment, which, day by day, Providence assigns us. “Sufficit diei malitia sua” (Mt 6, 34): “Sufficient
for the day is the evil thereof”, as everyday demands a painful struggle,
against ourselves, the devil, and the world, with God’s grace always assisting
us.
Combating at the present moment then, means fulfilling
our duty and accepting the difficulties of each day with virility, in the concrete
historical situation God wants us in. The temptation is to desire a different
place of battle than the one we are in and to rebel against the events, instead
of seeing in them the wise hand of God, Who orders everything towards a good
end, even the evil attacking us and our entire society.
Let us not be engulfed then by the precipitant river
of events, but anchor ourselves to the Rock of Divine Wisdom, Who judges the
things of this world in the light of eternity, by allowing the waves breaking
furiously after each other to disappear, while God, Who is the Eternal Rock,
never changes and is always there.
Dom Francesco Pollien says: “Knowing how to accept what God does, the
events that he disposes, what happens to you every day, convinced that
everything comes from His hand, is a sweet science for the generous heart, and
a closed science for the selfish heart” (Cristianesimo vissuto,
Edizioni Fiducia, Roma 2017, p. 115).
Let’s maintain our place then in the battlefield
and combat generously, with no anger or rancor, immersing ourselves in the
infinite sweetness of the Divine Promise given at Fatima: “In the end my
Immaculate Heart will triumph.”
Source: https://www.radioromalibera.org/il-nostro-posto-nel-campo-di-battaglia/
Translation: Contributor, Francesca Romana
