It is proper for the Warrior to assume his enemy's plans are cunning and determination adamantine. It is upon this assumption that he strategizes. He does not expect his blunders to be his advantage but ‘the soundness of [his] provisions.’ Furthermore, we ought to believe that superiority is the companion of he who trains in the severest school.
Thucydides continues, "These practices, then, which our ancestors have delivered to us, and by whose maintenance we have always profited, must not be given up. And we must not be hurried into deciding in a day's brief space a question which concerns many lives and fortunes and many cities, and in which honor is deeply involved,—but we must decide calmly. This our strength peculiarly enables us to do."
We labor day and night, guided by the light of our Guardian Angels, with fear and trembling, longing greatly, and hoping intently, to assimilate correctly what our forefathers toiled to bestow upon us— tradition. The task will not be the fruit of a day's action nor several months or years. This Counter-Revolutionary campaign is generational, indeed, this is how great warriors of the Revolution see the battlefield. “In our ranks," says the Permanent Instruction, the stratagem manual of the Freemasonry, "the solider dies and the struggle goes on.”
Thus the artist admires the glorious array of art left behind, discerns its spirit, prunes the imperfections, redeems the gems in the rough, and creates something in continuity with the past but still novel. Like the artist, the artisan, the soldier, the diplomat, the merchant, the writer, the intellectual, and so on walk through the darkness of our age illuminated by the spiritual and cultural treasures he has inherited. How do we restore and bring these treasures to greater heights? Questions like these become the dominant occupation of their mind. Their lifetimes of sagacious toil for Mary's Reign in their respective professions will serve us, who upon reaching spiritual maturity, will also ask the same question and boldly move forward with the works they begun.
The Holy Ghost will guide these men and their successors as they restore the ideas, sacral customs, and sentiments of old, or in a word, tradition. They must, however, take care to move forward cautiously, for a man with too much zeal and little knowledge misses the way as the Wise Man says. Or to hearken to Thucydides, they must not be hurried to make changes in tradition but retrain themselves and remain calm. Thus, the town, with its manner of speech, must not be so quick to simply adopt the neighboring town's manner. Whatever the tradition may be all men must exercise caution.
Ceaseless and severe toil, generational war, and sagacious and calm action are crucial tactics without which the Reign of Mary is not possible. These tactics must become integral parts of our character for such a society to be established and maintained by the grace of our Lady so be it.
Source: Thucydides. The Peloponnesian War. London, J. M. Dent; New York, E. P. Dutton. 1910. Section 1.84.4.
Painting: Konstantinos Volanakis’ The Burning of a Turkish Frigate.
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