Routine —including prayer— is the common atmosphere of the lives of serious people who love God.

Portugal Symposium. Thursday, 1/24/1991

 

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“A Roman and Apostolic Catholic, the author of this text submits himself with filial devotion to the traditional teaching of Holy Church. However, if by an oversight anything is found in it at variance with that teaching, he immediately and categorically rejects it.”

 The words “Revolution” and “Counter-Revolution” are employed here in the sense given to them by Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira in his book Revolution and Counter-Revolution, the first edition of which was published in the monthly Catolicismo, Nº 100, April 1959.

 

Audio (in Portuguese)

At the closing of a symposium for young people of the Portuguese TFP (January 24, 1991), Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira spoke about the Catholic approach to daily life, especially with regard to the most important activities, that is, those concerning the interests of the Holy Catholic Church and, therefore, our eternal salvation, true interior life, the counterrevolutionary apostolate, etc., etc.

 

Imagine a piano with a feature that pianos don’t usually have. A piano has a normal but ordinary sound with nothing extraordinary about it. The remarkable thing about the piano is the foot pedal. As soon as it is pressed, its sounds become melodious. They not only increase in intensity but are also melodious. Owning a piano with these qualities would be a magnificent thing.

Now, Our Lord plays the role of the piano in the internal and external daily lives of Catholics in their relations with their neighbors and others, and so do members of the Group individually, with one another, and with third parties.

There are situations in which, when thinking about something, we feel a consolation, joy and satisfaction greater than any satisfaction that can be had on earth. Whether talking to a brother in the vocation or being at our seats in our ambience, we find great satisfaction. When dealing with third parties, we give the impression that we are overflowing with contentment, joy and satisfaction, which is real. In fact, we are flooded with joy because of our vocation.

However, there are times when this supernatural action of grace in our souls ceases, and we return to the ordinary, shabby little tune the piano plays when the marvelous ‘pedal’ of grace does not help.

This produces a big gap between the two ways of feeling and doing things. This leads us to ask what to do in the face of this phenomenon, which God ultimately causes.

Because of Original Sin, we often feel our own littleness and displeasure. We often feel bad in our skin and are eager to contact others to avoid being left to ourselves. We even imagine that others are fine and cozy in their skin, but we feel very displeased inside. We want to connect with others to see if they can bring us a little freshness and well-being, which we believe they possess. But grace is the one producing in others this communicative effect that we seek disguisedly, like beggars reaching out to obtain something.

This often occurs during prayer. Some days, we say a prayer and are amazed by its beauty. Other days, we say the same prayer and the reflections that left us amazed and flooded with contentment the day before no longer mean anything. Although we know the prayer is beautiful, we do not feel it and become completely arid and dry.

How many communions, rosaries and other things happen like this?

In the life of the Group, there are times when we have the impression we are on a mountain peak inhabited by angels or heroes. We say, “Oh! How beautiful!” The next day we come in and think: “Oh, is it that thing again?! It’s always the same routine every day in every way! Couldn’t Our Lady give me that consolation every day? Dr. Plinio has explained that God took it away, but look at the state He left me in! Is this how I am supposed to live? A life without the marvelous pedal being pressed?”

Sometimes one becomes scrupulous and thinks it is a lack of fervor on one’s part. At other times, people fall into a kind of discouragement and lethargy that overwhelms and prostrates them. As a result, when many in the same group go through the same stage together, the convivium tends to deteriorate.

Someone may think: “Today I feel really slow and here comes that member of the Group, my brother in the vocation, but a pain in the neck! How horribly boring it is to deal with him! He shows up and immediately asks me to do a difficult job, so I cut him off: ”Not now! Maybe later. Ask me later, and  I’ll decide.”

You get the impression the poor fellow is waiting for the right moment to ask if we can do the job he needs. The poor fellow is our boss, whom we owe collaboration and obedience. Yet he is the one we treat as a poor fellow, and since he cannot fight with those under him and ‘squeeze’ his subjects as they did in the monasteries of old…

In the old days, a misbehaving friar was sent to a monastic prison called aljube and remained imprisoned for as many days as his superior decreed. In earlier times, some religious orders freely used an instrument called a whip, so the friar took care to behave, because otherwise the consequences would be terrible! The Church abolished this.

Today, there is no such thing; the superior cannot do anything of the sort and thus ends up pleading from below, and the inferior ends up lording from above.

A member who did this thought he would be coming out ahead, but that must have been like the taste of the forbidden fruit in the mouths of Adam and Eve. I don’t think human lips have ever tasted anything as unpleasant as Adam and Eve did when eating the forbidden fruit. It must have been terribly difficult for them to digest! They must have tried to wash the bad taste and smell from their mouths, but it didn’t work. They thought of replacing their jaws but realized it would be painful, and they could not do it, so they rolled on the ground.

This is how those who allow themselves to be carried away by this state of mind end up. That is how a group goes through a spell of aridity, which is felt in everyone’s convivium.

Does this description seem real to you, or is it unreal? Those who think this is real, raise your arm a bit so that I can get an idea.

This attitude shows a fundamental ignorance of the following: Since God is the one who gives grace and takes it away, He cannot do something that does not contribute to our good, so He does this for our good. We may not realize it, but we somehow profit from this.

And since He did not create a situation in which everything reflects the action of the marvelous pedal, it follows that if that pedal were being pressed at all times, it would harm us. Moreover, we would be alarmed if there were a room of perpetual pedals where we could feel them continuously. We should say: “God does not give this to everyone. There is something God does not usually give in this room. Isn’t this bliss inside the room a diabolical fraud?” And we should not go in.

We happen to have been conceived in Original Sin and must feel the boredom of our own persons within ourselves. We must feel the drudgery of our lives within ourselves. We must feel and bear the weight of routine. Routine is the typical atmosphere of the lives of serious people, those who love God.

We must become accustomed to routine as a condition of happiness. Anchor this statement firmly in your mind. You see people who lead a routine life, occasionally interrupted by a moment of temperate, calm leisure or one or two days of rest, which are also calm. Those who endure the routine well can enjoy pleasure.

But a person who does not endure the routine well is insatiable for pleasures, delights, and tastes. He continually wants a new delight and taste and feels miserable if he does not have it. Nothing can make him happy. In extreme cases, he risks committing suicide like Onassis’s daughter because he does this and that and the other, and nothing gives him pleasure, so, bang! Then he goes to hell to learn what gives him pleasure for all eternity!

We must understand that we are here on earth to atone, that life is a vale of tears, and we must have the strength to shed the tears we must shed and endure the weight of life.

When we make this honest deliberation and endure all types of things, the small pleasures Our Lady sends us from time to time make us happy. Our souls rejoice, especially when they are not material pleasures like eating or drinking, music or the like, but rather graces, internal consolations on specific occasions when we pray the Rosary, receive Holy Communion, or anything else. It is the greatest happiness life can offer.

As a consequence, we must resolve to endure the routine with courage and desire to live in peace with it. We must understand its tedious but necessary aspects and recognize that it is a repetition of things we already know, but we must do it courageously because God wants it done, so we offer it joyfully to Him.

“Lord, Thou hast given me life. Thou hast given me this immortal soul, which I know will be happy for all eternity if I do Thy will. I know the sufferings in this life are great, but this life is short. In comparison with eternity, it is but an instant. Help me get through it to cross this valley—give me strength. I will bear this well, and I know that, through Thy goodness, I will have consolations even in this life!”

This is the very definition of courage.

A person must pray to maintain this state of soul; I’ve just said this implicitly. Prayer, for example, the daily Rosary, is routine. If any of you were  to tell me, Dr. Plinio, “I always feel so happy whenever I pick up my rosary!” I would answer, What happiness can you feel when you lie? You’re lying, there’s no such thing!

If someone were to tell me, “Dr. Plinio, I saw you today pulling out your rosary, and although the room was somewhat dark, I thought I saw a look of joy on your face, because you are an apostle of the rosary, and so Our Lady has filled you with delight!”

I would say: “My dear friend, that’s not true. You’re delirious! I picked up this rosary in aridity, intending to pay attention to what I was saying, but knowing that my attention, through no fault of my own, would escape me repeatedly, and I would reach the end in aridity. I wanted this dryness since Our Lady only wanted dryness for me. That’s it!”

This is also true of Holy Communion. When the time for communion arrives, I say: “I am going to receive Our Lord Jesus Christ. I remember Cornelius the Centurion’s prayer: “Lord, I am not worthy, etc.”

I think my soul will feel delight thinking of Him, the Lord, the Dominus . . . Domine non sum dignus ut intres sub tectum meum, sed tantum dic verbo et sanabitur anima mea!” Yet it’s not like that at all! That happens once in a hundred or two hundred times! The normal thing is to receive Holy Communion without feeling anything and say: “My Lord, I had nothing else to offer Thee but my aridity and imperfection. Thou gavest me dryness; I created the imperfections. I accept the former and tolerate the latter. Have mercy on me!” That’s it.

But our obligation is to be persistent and never give up! Then, if we fully adopt this style, the following happens: without perceiving, we begin to treat others with great gentleness because the bad mood will disappear from within us. Complaining, bitterness, feeling that things are not going how I wanted will disappear! We keep enduring, enduring, enduring!

Without realizing it, we eventually exude kindness and gentleness toward others. How a man deals with his bad humor can be a factor in the good mood of the poor fellow he is in contact with.

The whole ambience changes. And certain things that can happen in a group—you will tell me whether or not they happen in the Portuguese Group—those things disappear.

What happens when an individual does not resign himself to the routine?

When the individual is resigned to the routine, and there will be a meeting, he thinks: “This meeting may be monotonous because so-and-so is going to speak, and I find him extremely boring. Therefore, in this case, Our Lady wants to multiply monotony by monotony. I will have an extremely monotonous meeting, but I offer it to her for a soul she wants to save. It may be my soul, the soul of a person I do not know, but I have a special grace to help someone. It may be a young man wandering the streets of Vilnius or Moscow, for the future Lithuanian, Russian, Afghan or Kirghiz TFP. He does not know I am suffering for him. When we meet, neither he nor I will know I rescued him. But when I did that during that meeting, grace visited him as he walked alone on a mountain. He thought such a thing, grace suggested something, and it was the beginning of his conversion.”

This is how you do apostolate.

What does a soul do when unwilling to do this?  It sits down and says, “Well, this topic should not be addressed because so-and-so, the present quidam, does not know how to choose topics. If he only would consult me, I could tell him what the topic should be and how good it would be for the cause of the Group. I know many things I could tell him, which would make the Group a world of good. But this fellow doesn’t realize my worth; he doesn’t know or recognize my talent, much greater than his! I realize that my talent is much greater, so I will interrupt him during the meeting whenever I can ask a disruptive question, and support anyone I see opposing him: “Yes, you’re absolutely right!”

I will make my superior’s life miserable. Or, if someone I don’t like is sitting next to me and says something, I will answer, ‘No, that’s not true!’ I interrupt the meeting to argue with him in front of others. Chaos ensues, and the meeting comes to nothing! Why? I entered the meeting to stand out and see if I could escape my boredom and routine. At least once, I will play the prominent and representative role I am eager to play.”

Have no illusions: everyone has self-love. When someone comes up with something and displays self-love, eight or ten others immediately jump to hunt him down, and the fighting begins. He then exercises what he sees as “legitimate self-defense,” and the meeting becomes unbearable. When it ends, everyone is convinced that “Things are not going to work!”

Am I describing possible situations adequately?

(Unfortunately, they are real.)

I’m sorry, but it’s real.

Then you have petty quarrels and fights because one person gives an opinion, another disagrees, and the more trivial the case, the more bitter the correction the individual sustains. For example, at a meeting discussing a caravan’s itinerary, one person says, “We’ll pass through Aljustrel and then on to I don’t know where.”

Another person says, “That’s not where Aljustrel is!”

“Where is it?”

“It’s in the far south!”

“No, it’s not!”

“Yes, sir, it is! I’ve been there. I’ve been to Aljustrel!”

He’s obviously lying to sustain that Aljustrel is where he says. A cat-and-mouse game begins. Everyone leaves angry with each other, ecumenical with all kinds of outside riffraff they encounter, and uncomfortable within the Group to the point that sometimes one says, “I feel more comfortable outside the Group than inside.”

Once this feeling is created, the devil stands outside the door, inviting: “Come! There’s something reserved for you over here!” You know what he has reserved for you! I don’t need to tell anyone. He continues: “Look, here they recognize, praise and exalt you, a girl even recognizes your worth better than all those people! Come and have fun. You’ll have a pleasant Saturday,” and so on.

Where did this come from? In most cases, Providence wanted to test us with aridity. We refused to bear the cross of aridity, and temptations came.

These things can ruin everything in the activity that the TFP will undertake following this symposium. With Our Lady’s favor, I found our symposium very fruitful, but I have no illusion that this was due to a quality of mine, to the presence of Prince Bertrand, my dear secretary [Fernando Antunez], or anyone else. It was the presence of grace. It became tangible among us countless times, and we realized the joy of those who have God among them, God dwelling among us.

Naturally, the resolutions, explanations, etc., everything seemed sweet. Had it not been for grace, I could have said precisely the same thing, and these meetings would have been torture! Have no illusions on this point.

However, if Our Lady wanted our martyrdom, we should be ready.

Now, let’s move on to the execution [of our plan]. I am sure there will be a few moments of noticeable grace and others of undeniable aridity as we go about it. If the Portuguese TFP receives numerous dry spells well, it will fly like a rocket because you will water the action you are developing with sacrifice.

On the contrary, if you begin to reject the routine and fabricate artificial consolations to lead a pleasant life, you will bury your enterprise. But then, do not blame Providence. Strike your breast and say: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

On one occasion, I was riding with one of them (in a bad mood) in his car up Avenida. At one point, I figured it would be better to turn one way, but he wanted to turn the other way. I said kindly, “Wouldn’t it be better to go the other way?” He responded with this amiability: “Idiot!”

I kept quiet and waited for ten years to remind him of this. He told me he remembered perfectly well and knew he had done wrong. However, he would have exploded had I mentioned it before those ten years.

These souls are unsatisfied with everyday life’s aridity and its sibling, the Chinese River. When something does not work out and everyone thinks it will, they feel it is a disaster. “You see? This is not going to work, it’s just the way it is! What are we going to do? Providence has abandoned us, etc.”

“No, sir, that’s not true. Let’s trust in Our Lady. If Providence has abandoned us, let’s ask for forgiveness and try to atone.”

“But I don’t see what I did wrong!”

“Then rejoice, be happy, as your conscience does not blame you for anything. Our Lady wants to test you as she tested the Prophet Job. Praise her for that.”

“Those are empty words!”

“They are words from Scripture…”

“Here you come again with your logic!”

My God, if even logic is a reason to reject someone!

He has the state of mind of those who do not want to carry the burdens of life, especially the banal burden of everyday life, God’s delays and when He seems like a deadbeat debtor, so, as it were, we have complaints about God. Scripture reveals such complaints in the Psalms in a very curious way. A psalm is sung very well in São Bento: “Quare obdormis? Oh, God! Why sleepest Thou? Why is this Chinese river here? Why dost Thou not straighten its course? Art Thou sleeping as the years pass by and I remain stuck on this path?!”

Let it be, let it be, let it be . . . confide, confide, confide! Just think of Our Lady and nothing else. Do not doubt that this is the most direct path. It is seemingly a Chinese river, but it is not the real Chinese River.

We will be men with an interior life if we mind these things of grace and have a supernatural spirit, understanding the preponderance of the supernatural factor over all others in all occasions and circumstances, and how we must be continually in God’s hands with much greater discipline than this handkerchief. God willed it; therefore, it will work out accordingly.

If I do it this way, I will be a man with an interior life, for this is interior life. My apostolate will be fruitful because it will be full of graces, and I will be an invincible apostle praised by Dom Chautard. If I do not do it, I will not have a true interior life, no matter how much I pray. I will be sterile. As St. Paul says in one of his epistles, I will be a tinkling brass that sounds but says nothing and touches no one.

The fruitfulness of the apostolate depends on our having this attitude. The bearability of our life depends on our having this disposition. When we don’t have it, nothing works. This is how things must be to work out.

This must be true not only for matters within the spiritual order that directly concern the Church but also for matters of the temporal order that concern the Church less directly.

 I remember something I touched on when speaking to you about this subject. When you study the history of Brazil, at least from the Brazilian side, and you get to the period immediately before independence, you realize there was a climate of friction between Brazilians and Portuguese, which had a curious effect on both sides, not uncommon in the history of revolutions: fighting, fighting, and then breaking up. Some time after breaking up, both sides come to their senses and realize they broke up primarily for futile reasons. The devil tormented both parties with misunderstandings, malicious gossip and meddling, creating an unbearable environment.

This would not have happened a hundred years after independence. At the time it happened, it was somewhat uncontrollable. Why? Coexistence between two peoples soured thanks to small differences and ways of being, minor complications, etc., as can happen in Brazil.

(Also thanks to Masonic factors).

Freemasonry stirs all this up by manipulating demons. In Freemasonry, it is much easier to be a man of inverted interior life than to have an upward-pointing interior life in the Church.

So, these frictions significantly increased the trouble, etc.

We also see this in the history of the monarchy. A hundred years after the fall of the monarchy, it is much easier to talk about a plebiscite than it was at the time of its fall, when friction and all kinds of imbecilities overthrew it. However, a dictatorial republican government at the time prohibited the plebiscite, and the republicans found it natural. Only a hundred years later, a climate was created in which people said, “It’s true, we need to hold this plebiscite!” and are now going to do it.

This is created by friction and misunderstandings, and not just deep-seated enmities.