“the foundations of social order have been demolished”

Blessed Ildefonso Schuster, the great liturgist, Benedictine and once Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, has an interesting comment in his entry for today’s Mass, for the Wednesday of the 3rd Week of Lent.  He takes a cue from the Oratio super populum… the Prayer over the People which follows the Postcommunion on weekdays of Lent.  Here’s the prayer, first, and then Schuster.

Prayer over the people
Let us pray.
Bow your heads to God.
Grant, almighty God, we beseech You, that we who seek the grace of Your protection, delivered from all evils, may serve You with untroubled minds.
Through Jesus Christ, thy Son our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end.
R. Amen.

Note: The Station Church is San Sisto Vecchio which is where the body of Pope Sixtus II is found.  He is the Pope murdered with his deacons, one of whom was St. Lawrence.

Schuster:

In the final Blessing the priest—as though still moved by the cruel death of Sixtus II and his deacons who were martyred not far from there–again implores the protection of God, that being freed from danger we may with an un-troubled mind devote ourselves to his holy service. Respect and deference to parental authority, which is the first of all natural authorities, are the essential conditions and the basis of all social order. The child—and in many ways humanity is still a child—before he can understand must believe in the authority of those who teach him and guide him. Without this obedience all education and progress is impossible. If modern society is now beginning to realize all the horror of the state of anarchy into which it has fallen, it must seek the first cause of this evil in the fact that the foundations of social order have been demolished, and that the law of egoism and the worship of the State have taken the place of the Decalogue.