The Coming Persecution of the Church
by Cardinal Henry Manning

The history of the Church, and the history of Our Lord on Earth, run as it were in parallel. For three-and-thirty years the Son of God incarnate was in the world, and no man could lay hand upon Him. No man could take Him, because His "hour was not yet come". There was an hour foreordained when the Son of God would be delivered into the hand of sinners. He foreknew it; He foretold it. He held it in His own hand, for He surrounded His person with a circle of His own Divine power. No man could break through that circle of omnipotence until the hour came, when by His own will He opened the way for the powers of evil.

In like manner with His Church. Until the hour is come when the barrier shall, by the Divine will, be taken out of the way, no one has power to lay a hand upon it. The gates of Hell may war against it; they may strive and wrestle, as they struggle now with the Vicar of Our Lord; but no one has the power to move Him one step, until the hour shall come when the Son of God shall permit, for a time, the powers of evil to prevail. That He will permit it for a time stands in the book of prophecy.

 

We have need, then, to be upon our guard. It shall happen once more with some, as it did when the Son of God was in His Passion - they saw Him betrayed, bound, carried away, buffeted, blindfolded, and scourged; they saw Him carrying His Cross to Calvary, then nailed upon it, and lifted up to the scorn of the world; and they said, "If He be the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the Cross, and we will believe Him" (Matt. 27). And so, because the Church seems weak, and the Vicar of the Son of God is renewing the Passion of his Master upon Earth, therefore we are scandalised, therefore we turn our faces from him. Where then, is our faith? But the Son of God foretold these things when He said, "And now I have told you before it comes to pass; that when it shall come to pass, you may believe" (John 14).
 

Now the Church has had to undergo already two persecutions, one from the hand of the Jews and one also from the hand of the pagans; so the writers of the early ages, the Fathers both of the East and of the West, foretold that, in the last age of the world, the Church will have to undergo a third persecution, more bitter, more bloody, more searching, and more fiery than any it has undergone as yet, and that from the hands of an infidel world revolted from the Incarnate Word. As the wicked did not prevail against Him, even when they bound Him with cords, dragged Him to the judgment, blindfolded His eyes, mocked Him as a false King, smote Him on the head as a false Prophet, led Him away, crucified Him, and in the mastery of their power seemed to have absolute dominion over Him, so that He lay ground down and almost annihilated under their feet; and as, at that very time when He was dead and buried out of their sight, He was conqueror over all, and rose again the third day, and ascended into Heaven, and was crowned, glorified, and invested with His royalty, and reigns supreme, King of Kings and Lord of Lords - even so shall it be with His Church.