The Justice of God

The Servant of God Prosper Guéranger's "The Liturgical Year" has a small commentary for each day of Septuagesimatide. This is part of that for "Thursday of Sexagesima Week":

God promised Noah that He would never more punish the earth with a deluge. But, in His justice, He has many times visited the sins of men with a scourge which, in more senses than one, bears a resemblance to a deluge: the invasion of enemies. We meet with these invasions in every age; and each time we see the hand of God. We can trace the crimes that each of them was sent to punish, and in each we find a manifest proof of the infinite justice wherewith God governs the world.

It is not requisite that we should here mention the long list of these revolutions, which we might almost say make up the history of mankind, for in its every page we read of conquests, extinction of races, destruction of nations, and violent amalgamations, which effaced the traditions and character of the several peoples that were thus forced into union. We will confine our considerations to the two great invasions which the just anger of God has permitted to come upon the world since the commencement of the Christian era.

The Roman Empire had made itself as pre-eminent in crime as it was in power. It conquered the world, and then corrupted it. . . . .

When, later on, the Christian nations of the east had lost the faith which they themselves had transmitted to the western world; when they had disfigured the sacred symbol of faith by their blasphemous heresies; the anger of God sent upon them from Arabia, the deluge of Mahometanism. It swept away the Christian Churches, that had existed from the very times of the apostles. . . . .

And we, the western nations, if we return not to the Lord our God, shall we be spared? Shall the flood-gates of heaven's vengeance, the torrent of fresh Vandals, ever be menacing to burst upon us, yet never come? Where is the country of our own Europe, that has not corrupted its way, as in the days of Noah? That has not made conventions against the Lord and against His Christ? That has not clamoured out that old cry of revolt: Let us break their bonds asunder, let us cast away their yoke from us? Well may we fear lest the time is at hand, when, despite our haughty confidence in our means of defence, Christ our Lord, to whom all nations have been given by the Father, shall rule us with a rod of iron, and break us in pieces like a potter's vessel. Let us propitiate the anger of our offended God, and follow the inspired counsel of the royal prophet: Serve ye the Lord with fear; embrace the discipline of His Law; lest, at any time, the Lord be angry, and ye perish from the just way.

It's difficult to believe Dom Guéranger died in 1875. His admonition seems to have the 21st century in mind.