I am an Acolyte – a partisan of the Mother of God, indifferent to my life and death in this world for the sake of Christ.
I am the ghost of the old world, coming back to haunt these pitiable times — being born in this age, I have rejected its shameless insurrection against God, and not only have I rejected it but I have made of my life a sign of contradiction against it. I am the Counter-Revolution.
The Acolytes have come to harrow this faithless age as Christ harrowed Hell after His Passion. Death expected to receive only a man – it encountered God, and was cast down.
This era of history thought it was receiving a hopeless and dissolute generation – it will encounter the Acolytes, and because of this will soon come to its conclusion.
Where there is one Acolyte, there is the complete death of today’s faithless world. One Acolyte life is one casualty for the dying culture, whose demagogues believe that they will direct the course of history because they have brought such a great amount of people into the dark. But as ‘love covers a multitude of sins’, so the sacrificial life of one Acolyte covers the profligacy of many. A person who would be discouraged from the fight even if he were the only one alive in the world who still remembered God, is not to be found in our ranks.
Lord, you have told us:
And then shall many be scandalized: and shall betray one another: and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall seduce many. And because iniquity hath abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold. But he that shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved.
Matthew 24:10-13
And so we see that it is so. Grant us to persevere to the end, Lord Jesus. Let our charity not grow cold; let us love one another, for as You have said; “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another.
John 13:35
Therefore, I declare war against my own self interest, against that barrier between me and my God, between me and my brothers and sisters. In this warfare let me be a merciless and unsympathetic conqueror; but in my love for others and patience with their faults let me be most compassionate and lenient.
We’ve arrived at the point of ruin that past generations thought to be far away. Acolytes are those who will restore what has been lost – even though it’s too late. We haven’t arrived until now because if we came when there was still any hope, the rationalists could have predicted our victory. We have come late, long after it has became hopeless – so that the rationalists may be put to shame, and to show forth the ignorance of this world.
A new type of human being came to exist 2000 years ago – the Christian – who bears the name of Christ. The Christian lives not according to this world – he lives according to its coming end. Christ lives in the one bearing His name; the one who has Christ living in him has no need of any other life; much less the “life” offered to us by this age of indulgence, this life apart from God. Acolytes want to be living icons of the beauty of the Christian life, to give our lives in oblation.
The words of Padraig Pearse:
I have squandered the splendid years that the Lord God gave to my youth
In attempting impossible things, deeming them alone worth the toil.
Was it folly or grace? Not men shall judge me, but God.
I have squandered the splendid years:
Lord, if I had the years I would squander them over again,
Aye, fling them from me!
This is the essence of our movement. We are not like those who live in fair times when a home, a family, children, and a fulfilling life are not far out of reach. No, we live in times of disgrace. Even on a purely secular level, we are facing a privation of even the most fundamental parts of a happy life in a functioning civilization.
The state of our profligate, consumerist western world has gotten so depressing that there just isn’t any use anymore in intellectualizing about how bad it is. People have been doing that for a while. What is needed now is a group of people whose lives are so sharply set against this age, who are so annihilated to the love of self, so peacefully and sweetly reposed in their militant defiance of this dishonorable, calculating modern world that just the passive presence of two or three of such people is enough to put the whole thing in distress.
Perhaps we almost enjoy living in such shallow, depressing times; maybe we get some satisfaction in being surrounded by consumerism and getting to pretend like we are something or someone meaningful in the midst of it. Maybe there’s something romantic in this; but that isn’t the romanticism of the Acolytes. Our romanticism lies in our resolution; we want to tear down the images of our imprisonment – the products, the entertainments, the noise, the sin – with greater fervor than the fervor of those who can’t stand the holy images of our Faith, who look with apathy at the forgiving and saddened countenance of our Savior.
Our romanticism is of reparation; our lives and the vitality of our youth given up in a sacrifice of consolation to Christ.
Save me, O Lord, for there is now no saint: truths are decayed from among the children of men. They have spoken vain things every one to his neighbour: with deceitful lips, and with a double heart have they spoken.
Psalm 12:1-2
