Note: Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, declared Venerable by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012, will be beatified on September 24, 2026, at a Mass in St. Louis. His “pearls of wisdom” have inspired many to enter the Catholic Church and to grow as disciples of Jesus.
Christ’s Church will be attacked, scorned, and ridiculed, but it will never be destroyed.… Politics has become so all possessive of life, that by impertinence it thinks the only philosophy a person can hold is the right or the left. This question puts out all the lights of religion so they can call all the cats gray. It assumes that [people live] on a purely horizontal plane and can move only to the right or the left.
Had we eyes less material, we would see that there are two other directions where people with a soul may look: the vertical directions up and down. Both figured in the crucifixion of our Lord. Even those cruel men who crucified him knew that these were the directions that counted. They shouted to him, “Come down,” and we will believe. That echo has been caught up and is being bruited about the world today. “Down with religion!” “Down with capital!” “Down with labor!” “Down with reactionaries!” “Down with progressives!”
Have we not been tearing down long enough? Can one build a world with the word “down”? Did not the captain Christ give another cry? “If I be lifted up, I will draw all things to myself.” But where shall we be lifted? To the cross, the prelude of the empty tomb, the cross of Christ our Redeemer. Hear that word “up.” Shout it abroad! “Up from class hatred; up from envy; up from avarice; up beyond the margin of the world; up beyond the troubled gateways of the stars—Up… Up… Up to God!”
From “Fulton J. Sheen: Seven Pearls of Wisdom” (C2209A). Available from Liguori Publications. To order, call 800-325-9521 or visit Liguori.org.