Contra Tenebras — “Against the darkness.”
To the clergy and faithful of the Old Roman Apostolate,
and to all who seek the truth of Christ,
grace and peace in Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Carissimi, Beloved in Christ,
Once more, as the Church’s year draws toward its close, we find ourselves surrounded by the encroaching shadows of a world losing its sense of the sacred. The nights grow longer, and with them, the moral twilight deepens — confusion spreads, faith wanes, and the human heart grows cold. It is to this hour that the words Contra Tenebras — “Against the Darkness” — speak most urgently. They are not merely a motto for an edition of Nuntiatoria, but a summons to spiritual arms, a call to fidelity in an age of forgetfulness.
The Darkness of the Age
Every generation of Christians must face its own darkness, yet ours is peculiar in that it no longer recognises darkness for what it is. What was once seen as sin is now exalted as liberation; what was shameful is paraded as virtue; what was holy is mocked as superstition. The Enemy has learned that it is easier to extinguish lamps by convincing souls that night is day. The present age, with its “quicksand of approximation and post-truth,” as even the Holy Father has observed, thrives on blurred lines, moral relativism, and the cult of self-expression unrestrained by truth¹.
In such an atmosphere, words lose their meaning, consciences lose their compass, and man — made for light — stumbles willingly into shadow. False compassion excuses evil; sentimentalism replaces moral courage; and the voice that should call to repentance is silenced for fear of offence. This is the darkness we are sent to resist — not only around us, but within us, where compromise so easily takes root.
The Light of the Saints
The Church, however, has never been overcome. In every century, when corruption and cowardice seemed to reign, God raised up saints who stood contra tenebras: Edward the Confessor, ruling with justice rooted in sanctity; Wilfrid of York, labouring for unity in the true faith; Gall, bearing the Gospel into the pagan forests of Europe; Hedwig and Margaret Mary, radiating the light of Christ through penitence and devotion. Their courage was not born of optimism but of faith. They saw the world as it was — and yet trusted that grace could transfigure it.
To be a traditional Catholic today is to take our place beside them. We are not called to lament the darkness endlessly, nor to curse it from afar, but to bear the light into it. Every confession made, every Mass offered, every rosary prayed, every soul guided toward truth is a strike of light against the encircling gloom.
The Church’s Witness
As the Bride of Christ, the Church has but one duty in the world: to reflect His light unclouded. When she compromises with the world, she dims the lamp entrusted to her; when she proclaims the truth with charity, she fulfils her mission. The crisis of our time is not the world’s unbelief — for the world has always been unbelieving — but the Church’s hesitation to believe what she teaches. The so-called “pastoral” approach that denies doctrine its edge betrays souls into darkness under the guise of mercy².
Our Apostolate, therefore, must hold firm to that apostolic torch handed down through the centuries — the unbroken faith of our forefathers, preserved in the ancient liturgy, the perennial magisterium, and the moral clarity that flows from divine truth. Let others chase novelty; we will keep the flame.
Christ the Light Unconquered
When St. John writes, “The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it,” he declares not merely a poetic truth but a metaphysical one. Darkness has no substance of its own; it exists only where light is absent. Evil is not creative; it is parasitic. Thus, every time a soul allows the grace of Christ to enter, darkness is driven back. We are not powerless. Even a single candle, lit in faith, defies the entire abyss³.
This is our vocation: to live so transparently in Christ that even the smallest act of fidelity becomes luminous. Parents teaching their children to pray, clergy offering the Holy Sacrifice with devotion, young men and women resisting impurity, the elderly offering their sufferings in union with the Cross — all these are rays of divine light, imperceptible perhaps to the world, but seen clearly from Heaven.
Hope Beyond the Shadows
My dear brethren, the Church was born in a world darker than ours. The catacombs, not the palaces, were her cradle. Yet through the faith of a few, the world was converted. Do not be disheartened, then, if our numbers are small or our influence slight. We stand in the same line as the martyrs and confessors who faced emperors and ideologies with nothing but the truth on their lips and Christ in their hearts. The light that shone in them is not dimmed; it burns now in us.
Let this, then, be our resolution for the coming season: that we will not yield to fear, nor despair, nor the temptation to compromise, but will live and labour Contra Tenebras — against the darkness — until the Light Himself appears.
Haec est Via.
✠ Jerome Seleisi
Titular Archbishop of Selsey
Primus of the Old Roman Apostolate
Footnotes
¹ Pope Leo XIV, Address to Media Representatives, 2025: “The quicksand of approximation and post-truth” — a warning against the spiritual corrosion of false narratives.
² Cf. Pope St. Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), on the Modernist distortion of doctrine and the confusion of pastoral method with doctrinal compromise.
³ St. Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John I, 9: “The light shines in the darkness; the darkness does not grasp it — because it resists being illumined.”
Leave a Reply