St Louis University - Archive Yearbook (St Louis, MO)

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corporate order based upon the Papal Encyclicals iias ruthlessly crushed, afford a tragic historical lesson. And men are saying that it is perhaps too late to hope for a new Christendom. But our stirring watchword and consoling doctrine must he that it is never too late to strive for Christocracy, even as it can never be too late while men are on pilgrimage to return to Christ. What political, economic and social forces can stand in the ivay of Christocracy? Can they stand in the ivay if Christians will to be Christians? If our efforts as Christians ivorking on the temporal plane are frustrated, if our endeavors as Christians teaching in the practico-spiritual plane are scarcely heeded, — and countless failures must never lead to failing the virtue of bound- less hope — let us be encouraged by the knowledge that our striving as Christians in the purely spiritual plane, is always more fruitful than we can realize. Let us not give up the struggle to build a corporate order and a new Christendom until every effort is doomed. Let us not give up the struggle to maintain, strengthen and propagate Christocracy, the headship of Christ the King, until we are willing to deny our faith. Christocracy is a vocation of vocations. In our various ways we are called to participate in special vocations. But let us first dedicate ourselves to the common task of reaching for the peace of Christ in the reign of- Christ. Let us fulfill the Ignatian ideal of deep interior personal reformation, complete acceptance of Christ as Sovereign, and let us, in fact as well as word, devote ourselves to an ardent apostolate for love of the God-Man, Jesus Christ, the Savior of Mankind.

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' rstag ?■ »avi - ' iSK ' sXi ■S CHRISTIANS we must ever strive for Chr ' tstocracy. Here is the simple yet inexhaustible message, beautiful in its simplicity, overwhelming in its inexhaustibility, given us by the marvelous interplay of stained glass hues and harmonies. Christocracy for us should mean nothing if not the sovereign sway of Christ. Let it mean the reign of Christ the King in the individual hearts of integral persons living liturgically in Christocentric commu- nities. Let it mean the infusion into the life around us, of the spir- itual sap bountifully bestotved upon us so that everywhere wherever there is Christianity, there is Christocracy. Where Christ is, let Christ rule. Today men, even Christian men too often, are almost in despair at the prospect of achieving a new Christendom in the West. At this anguishing historical moment we may indeed be tempted to lose heart at the gigantic task of rebuilding completely Christian order, where Christian principles of thought and action might permeate every phase of the social fabric. For many potent hostile historical forces in the political and economic spheres have been gathering momentum for so tnany decades and centuries now that the task may well appear insuperable. Those countries where the beginning of a

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Jf oretDorti Saint Louis University confers on her graduates an education profoundly Christian, profoundly humanistic. The graduate must integrate this into a genuine Christian humanism. The synthesis of the vast realms of arts and science and philosophy, even though it may issue into classic liberal education, is not yet Christian education until it is per- meated with the sublime precepts of the Gospels, the sacerdotal wisdom of the Fathers and Doctors — not until Christians manifest what they profess in thought, word, deed. Today it is exceedingly difficult for Christians without stamina to live in a bitterly anti-Christian world insisting on compromise at every turn. Many of us are tormented by the problem of recon- ciling a legitimate life of security with a courageous manifestation of uncompromising Christianity. We are driven to ask: Are we really required to be uncompromisingly heroic Christians. ' ' When we make this plea we betray our utter failure to grasp the spirit and purpose of Christian university edu- cation. We cannot expect every man to strive for extraordinary heroism soaring toward sanctity. We can expect every man to strive w ith might and main for Christocentric humanism, for purposeful litur- gical living. The vsisdom and inspiration of Saint Ignatius should still imbue those fortified with Ignatian education. He called, and still calls, for counter-revolutionaries, integral humanists, uncom- promising apostles to reconquer and rebuild a shattered Christendom for Christ and the Church. Ar- mored by this example we can really and heroically forward Christocracy.