View of Popes and saints on a future time of Church triumph
This prospect of triumph of the Church, it should be reiterated, is alien to every form of millenarianism condemned by the Church.
Author: Editorial | Source: Family Action

View of Popes and saints on a future time of Church triumph
This prospect of triumph of the Church, it should be reiterated, is alien to every form of millenarianism condemned by the Church.
The idea of a historical epoch of triumph of the Church and the Christian civilization goes back, before San Luis María Grignión of Montfort and Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, to saints like Saint Bonaventure, and in our century it was adopted by another great Mariano's Apostle ran, St. Maximilian Kolbe.
This prospect of triumph of the Church, reiterate, is alien to every form of millenarianism condemned by the Church. Indeed, it is a historical period that precedes not only the Pariah, but the very dominion of the Antichrist, and proposes no "Visible Kingdom" of Jesus Christ on Earth. The visible presence of Jesus Christ would return useless the mission of the Church.
The thesis of Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira is another: The Kingdom of Mary will be an age when the Church, mystical body of Christ, will have an influence and play a primatial role as never happened in history. Although one wants to apply to the Kingdom of Mary the enigmatic stretch of the Apocalypse, in this does not enter millenarianism, since the social reign of Jesus Christ and Mary predicted by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira does not exclude the presence of the original sin or the action of the demon
"As concrete, evident and tangible as the earthly reality of the Kingdom of Christ, as it was for example in the 13th century, it is necessary not to forget — writes Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira — that this kingdom is only a preparation and a proem. In its fullness, the Kingdom of God will be realized in heaven: "My Kingdom is not of this world" (Ju. 18.36).
"The Church teaches us, in effect, that this land is a place of exile, a valley of tears, a battlefield and not a place of delight. (...) So imagining a world without struggles and adversities is like conceiving a world without Jesus Christ. "
In his expectation of this blessed time, the Brazilian thinker is accompanied by many ancient and modern saints and theologians. Cardinal Ratzinger established a parallel between the "City of God" of St. Augustine, enunciated during the crisis of the Roman Empire, and that "culminating moment in the Christian way of thinking history", represented by the Collationes in Hexamerón of San Buenaventura.
In this work, Saint Bonaventure tries to do something similar to what Saint Augustine had done in the "City of God": "to make comprehensible the present and the future of the Church from its past".
St. Bonaventure, known as the "Seraphic Doctor" for his lit writings of faith and love for Jesus Christ, was one of the Saints who adopted the idea of a historical epoch of triumph of the Church and Christian civilization
The glory of the "seventh age", of which the Seraphic Doctor speaks in the Hexamerón, refers to a temporary triumph of the Church located in the world and history.
"The Theology of Buenaventura's history culminates in the hope of an era, within the history, of God-given sabbatical rest. (...) It is not that peace in the eternity of God that will ever end and that will follow the ruin of this world; it is a peace that God will on this very Earth, spectator of so much blood and tears, as if it still wanted to show, at least at the moment of the end as it could or should have been in reality according to its designs. "
Cardinal Ratzinger's statements concerning the theology of the history of St. Bonaventure can also be well understood in the light of the thought of Saint Thomas. Indeed, if as the Doctor Angëlico teaches, man is by his nature a social being, he is evidently called not only to his sanctification but to the sanctification of society; and if human history did not reach this boom of social perfection, this would damage the glory of God which is the ultimate goal of creation.
This theological and philosophical foundation is implicit in the eschatological perspective of many twentieth-century saints.
"A great time is coming!", announces the blessed Luis Orione: "We will have Novos Conovam et terram. The restored society in Christ will reappear younger, brighter, reappearing reanimated, renewed, and guided by the Church. Catholicism, full of divine truth, of charity, of youth, of supernatural strength, will rise in the world and be put at the head of the resurgent century, to lead it to honesty, faith, happiness, salvation. "
San Maximiliano Kolbe
San Maximiliano Kolbe
"We live in a time — write in turn St. Maximilian Kolbe — which could be called the beginning of the age of the immaculate." "... Under her banner will fight a great battle and we'll raise their flags on the fortresses of the king of darkness. And the Immaculate shall become the Queen of all the world and every particular soul, as the blessed Catherine Laboure foresaw. "
"Then the class struggles will disappear, and humanity is approaching, as much as possible on this Earth, to happiness, to a foretaste of that happiness towards which each one of us naturally tends. That is, to unlimited happiness, in God, in Paradise. " "Indeed, when this happens, the Earth will become a paradise. Peace and true happiness will enter the families, in the cities, in the villages and the nations of all human society, for wherever She reigns, the graces of conversion and sanctification and happiness will also appear.
Pius XII himself, instituting the feast of Mary the Queen and ordering the annual renewal on that day of the consecration of human gender to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, put in this act "great hope that a new age can emerge, rejoiced by the Christian peace and by the triumph of religion" and affirmed that "the invocation of the Kingdom of Mary is (...) the voice of faith and Christian hope", reaffirming in one of his last speeches the "certainty that the restoration of the Kingdom of Christ by Mary will not fail to be realized.".