THE HEAD IS SICK, THE HEART IS SAD

The Passion of Christ’s Mystical Body

By a Carmelite Nun
Part One

“The whole head is sick and the whole heart is sad.” Isaias 1:5

Such was the lament of the Prophet Isaias when he foresaw the terrible suffering of Christ in his passion.
Such is also the lament of those who sympathise with the Catholic Church in the terrible ordeal through
which She is passing.

This passage is full of meaning in these present times when the corruption of the hierarchy and especially
of the Vatican is becoming more and more openly manifest. Contemplative nuns, (like myself), can verify
that all those who are really trying to live a cloistered life of prayer and penance, whether it be a physical
enclosed garden, or the cloister of the heart, are indeed sad at heart to witness this corruption and the
widespread apostasy from the true Catholic Faith. Indeed, it must surely grieve the heart of any Catholic
who is taking their Faith seriously; but for those who are called to act as the heartbeat of the Church and to
focus exclusively on the welfare of Christ’s Mystical Body, the present situation is even more
heartbreaking.

Truly it would seem that the Catholic Church as She existed for so many centuries, is now on the verge of
extinction. If one were to judge by appearances only, it would be quite right to say that the gates of hell
have finally prevailed against the Church. But since we have faith in Christ’s promise,1 we know this is not
the case. How then does one reconcile this apparent contradiction between the words of Holy Scripture and
our present situation?

For this it is necessary to go beyond appearances and to distinguish

between the visible and the invisible Church as Dom Columba Marmion
has done in the following words:

“We may consider the Church in two ways: first as a visible

hierarchical society, founded by Christ to continue His sanctifying
mission here below; she appears thus, as a living organism. But
this point of view is not the only one; to have a complete idea of
the Church, we must regard her as the holy and invisible society
of the souls that share by grace in Christ’s Divine Sonship, and
form the Kingdom He won by His Blood.”2

Truly this “visible hierarchical society” can scarcely be recognised as “a

living organism” anymore, so infected has it become with the poisonous
errors of modernism, naturalism, communism and many other “-isms.” It
is therefore the other aspect on which we must place the emphasis since it
is all too often overlooked; the Church as the “holy and invisible society”
of souls adhering to the Faith handed down from the Apostles; the
unchanging Magisterium; the true and sound doctrine received from Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Dom Marmion agrees with the importance of this aspect:

“It is true that the invisible Church or the soul of the Church, is more important than the visible
Church...”3

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In normal times they were inseparably united – to separate oneself from the visible hierarchical society
meant separating oneself from the Catholic Church. But now we are living in that time foretold by Saint
Paul:
“For there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine; but, according to their
own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears: and will turn away their
hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables.” 2 Tim. 4:3,4.

We are now living in a time in which the visible Church is so disfigured by the corruption affecting so
many of Her members, that many people wonder how they could remain loyal Catholics without becoming
infected likewise. It is only by adhering to the soul of the Church, which is pure and immaculate, that we
can escape this corruption.

Our Lord Himself says:

“And I say to you, my friends: Be not afraid of them who kill the body and after that have no more
that they can do.” Luke 12:4

From these words we can gather that the enemies of the Church will never harm Her soul, “the holy and
invisible society,” regardless of what they do to Her body, “the visible, hierarchical society.” Just as the
leprosy covering a person’s body, however ugly and repulsive it makes them appear, does not make them a
bad person (for it is the soul which determines this), so also the corruption affecting so many members of
the Church does not mean that She Herself, is corrupt. On the contrary, She is the pure and spotless Bride
of Christ and this is manifested in Her soul, in Her unchanging doctrines received from Christ Jesus which
can never be corrupted.
“Because thou will not leave my soul in hell; nor wilt thou give thy holy one to see corruption.”
Psalm 15:10
In order to more fully comprehend why God has permitted this present crisis of Faith which many people
have referred to as the Passion of the Church, it is very helpful to recall the doctrine of the Mystical Body
of Christ, which is the Church,4 as explained by Our Lord Himself and by many others after Him; from St.
Paul in his Epistles to Pope Pius XII in his encyclical “Mystici Corporis Christi.”

“ From the outset it should be noted that the society established by the Redeemer of the human
race resembles its divine Founder, who was persecuted, calumniated and tortured by those very
men whom He had undertaken to save.”5

Just as Our Lord in His Sacred Passion became “despised and the most abject of men, a man of
sorrows,”6...”as it were a leper, and as one struck by God and afflicted,”7 – so much so that “From the sole
of the foot unto the top of the head, there is no soundness therein,”8 – so likewise the Church, His
Immaculate Bride, has suffered Her Passion ever since the Second Vatican Council. It is not surprising that
She should thus imitate Her Spouse, although it can be hard to visualise this as Her Passion for those who
know little about what really went on behind the scenes.

There is abundant evidence to prove that Vatican II and its so-called “reforms” were really the result of a
planned attack on the Church by the Freemasons. Their apparent success in aping all the true Sacraments
of the Catholic Church and especially formulating a new mass which is, at best, a Protestant service; in
causing such widespread departure from Catholic doctrine and finally in having so openly heretical a man
as Jorge Mario Bergoglio, or Francis of Rome, hailed as the “Vicar of Christ”; has all contributed to the
disfigurement of the outward appearance of the Mystical Body of Christ, and can be likened to the tortures
inflicted upon Christ’s Physical Body in His Sacred Passion.

Having departed from the sound doctrine of Christ (the Church’s Invisible Head), the popes from John
XXIII until the present day, have promoted a manifestly different and harmful religion which is centred on
man rather than on God. This is aptly pictured in the analogy of the sick head used by the Prophet Isaias to

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describe the falling away from the Faith by God’s chosen people, and the sufferings to be endured by the
Redeemer as a result.

Truly the visible head of the Church is sick. And yet all the same it remains a part of the Mystical Body
regardless of those dead souls affected by the loathsome cancer of modernism, which have so greatly
disfigured its appearance and prevented it from functioning as it should for the well-being of the rest of the
Body, the Catholic Church.

Pope Pius XII explains it well:

“And if at times there appears in the Church something that indicates the weakness of our human
nature, it should not be attributed to her juridical constitution, but rather to that regrettable
inclination to evil found in each individual, which its Divine Founder permits even at times in the
most exalted members of His Mystical Body, for the purpose of testing the virtue of the Shepherds
no less than of the flocks, and that all may increase the merit of their Christian faith. For, as We
said above, Christ did not wish to exclude sinners from His Church; hence if some of her members
are suffering from spiritual maladies, that is no reason why we should lessen our love for the
Church, but rather a reason why we should increase our devotion to her members.”9

Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano in a public statement released in December 2019, gives an excellent
summary of the Passion of the Church. In it he refers to our present situation as the “new Gethsemane of
the end times”. We, however, prefer to consider this as the vigil
kept by Our Lady from the evening of Good Friday until the
dawn of Easter Sunday because while the past half a century has
seen the re-enactment of Christ’s Passion taking place within the
Church, today it would seem that the “visible, hierarchical
society” has already breathed its last. And what is left? The
lifeless mangled Body, still visible, though scarcely recognisable;
and as it were, in the catacombs or in the tomb. In this too, She
resembles Her Divine Spouse. And why, one might ask, has this
Body, this Mystical Body of Christ, taken on the pallor of death,
why does She look so anaemic; Her limbs weak and even
lifeless? The answer may come as a surprise to some. Just like a
physical body to which the Church is likened, She, the Mystical
Body has, for close to fifty years, been almost totally drained of
Her Divine Life-giving Blood. This Mystical Life-giving Blood
is none other than the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass – the True Latin
Rite Mass which was suppressed in the late 1960’s and replaced
by a vernacular Novus ordo missae or watery meal-type celebration. Without this Life - this Divine Life-
giving Blood from which all the Church’s members receive their nourishment and life - how could Her
members possibly remain in good health?

Some may object that the Body and Soul of the Church cannot be separated. A revelation made by Our
Lord to Saint Catherine of Siena concerning His own Passion and Death may help us to understand how
we are to regard the Church’s present condition.

“To help you understand things better I will give you an example. Whoever would have thought that when
My Body was suffering and dying on the Cross, and then lay there with all the life gone out of It, It had the
life inseparably united to It hidden in It all the time? Not only the uncomprehending and the evildoers but
My own Apostles too who had been with Me for such a long time, were unable to believe this: they all lost
faith and hope. Nevertheless, although it is true that My Body was not alive with the life It had received
from the Soul, It was still united to the unending Life by which all living things live; and by virtue of this,
at the time determined from all eternity, My own Spirit was reunited with It in more fullness of life and
virtue than It had had before.....”10
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With this hope of a similar restoration of the Mystical Body of Christ, we shall conclude the first part of
this article. As the subject of the Passion of Christ’s Mystical Body is a very large and deep one, much still
remains to be said, especially regarding Our Lady, and likewise Contemplative nuns and their role in this
spiritual passion of the Church. This will be covered in Part 2.

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SICK HEAD, SAD HEART
By a Carmelite
The visible head of the Church is sick
With Modernism’s infection;
The hidden contemplative heart is sad
At seeing the clergy’s defection.

The Church hierarchy have lost the Faith,

Preferring to be with thieves
Who rob poor souls of life and grace,
While the heart, in silence, grieves.

The clergy seek for base rewards

Of comfort, wealth and power;
Loving bribes more than their souls
And enjoying the devil’s hour.

The Spirit of God which filled the earth

Has been withdrawn of late;
For men who’ve turned away from Truth,
This is a fitting fate.

The faithful are like orphans now,

There is no Pope to guide;
While wolves run rampant in the flock
To scatter and divide.

The Church, though once a joyful Bride,

Now as a widow grieves;
But still the clergy pity not,
And Satan still deceives.

Some cloistered nuns, the Church’s heart,

Have seen through this illusion;
They mourn for those who’ve lost the Faith
Because of the confusion.

And all the while, their prayers arise:

“Come, Lord, delay no more,
For Thou alone canst heal the Church
And perfect health restore.”

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“.....The whole head is sick and the whole heart is sad.
Thy princes are faithless, companions of thieves: they all love bribes, they run after rewards. They judge
not for the fatherless: and the widow’s cause cometh not in to them.” Isaias 1:5,23
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1
Cf. Matt.16:18. Notice it is the Church, not Peter/the papacy, to which this promise refers.
2
Christ the Life of the Soul p.93
3
Ibid.
4
Encyclical letter of Pius XII, “Mystici Corporis Christi.” http://www.vatican.va/content/pius-
xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_29061943_mystici-corporis-christi.html
5
Ibid.
6
Isaias 53:3
7
Isaias 53:4
8
Isaias 1:6
9
Mystici Corporis Christi – paragraph 66
10
The Life of St Catherine of Siena by Bl. Raymond of Capua. Pp. 77-78