Saint of the Day, Wednesday, June 14, 1967
“A Roman and Apostolic Catholic, the author of this text submits himself with filial devotion to the traditional teaching of Holy Church. However, if by an oversight anything is found in it at variance with that teaching, he immediately and categorically rejects it.”
The words “Revolution” and “Counter-Revolution” are employed here in the sense given to them by Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira in his book Revolution and Counter-Revolution, the first edition of which was published in the monthly Catolicismo, Nº 100, April 1959.
Today it is a feast of great significance for us: Saint Elisha, prophet and father of the Carmelite Order, the successor of Saint Elias. It is also the feast of St. Basil the Great, bishop, confessor, and Doctor of the Church. Of him, the Martyrology says, “With irresistible energy, he defended the Church against the Aryans and Macedonians in the fourth century.”
St. Elisha is of particular interest to us because, as you know, he was the successor of St. Elias. And Saint Elias, historically spoken, can be considered the first devotee of Our Lady. The devotee who certainly received a form of devotion to Our Lady, which was a prefigure and forerunner of the true devotion of St. Louis Grignion de Montfort, himself an Apostle of the Latter Times.
As we know, Elias must come back in the latter times. Only then? No, he must go back also in the last days of human history to fight against the Antichrist. So we consider Elias at the same time a predecessor of our apostolate and the one in whom the struggle in which we are engaged will culminate.
Now, Elisha asked for the spirit of Elias, received it, and is a follower of Elias. His request contains this mysterious and beautiful reality of the transmission of a spirit. How is a spirit transmitted? How does a grace pass from one person to another, causing the latter to become an alter ego of the former? How are these relationships of soul by people participating in the same spirit?
Here there is a whole firmament of spiritual beauty about we will not go into greater depths now but which we can glimpse in the episode of Elias ascending to Heaven in a fiery chariot and throwing his cloak to Elisha. And, with it, communicating his own spirit to Elisha.