Once again this year, Mr. Melvin Sickler, one of our Full-time Pilgrims and tireless apostle on the road, is the champion for subscriptions with 4,556. During our Congress on Saturday, September 5, Mr. Sickler spoke with his heart of an apostle and gave a brilliant speech on the importance of the Work of "Michael" and of being an apostle in this Movement:
Your Eminence Cardinal Agre, Your Excellencies, Reverend Fathers, Professed religious, distinguished guests, fellow Pilgrims of Saint Michael:
It is with feelings of joy and happiness that we are gathered here today at this International Congress of the Pilgrims of Saint Michael to celebrate another year of apostolate work well done. A warm welcome to all of you, especially to those who have traveled long distances, even from different parts of the globe, in order to be with us at this Congress.
When we meet together, we are always happy with the time we spend together because the "Michael" Journal is a refuge for those who wish to remain on the right road. "Michael" has given us a strong Faith that can move mountains. And the Social Crediters practice the state of grace, the state of friendship with God who gives peace and joy. This is why it is always a joy to meet with the active apostles after having devoted themselves without salary to convert and save the families by distributing our leaflets and by subscribing others to our incomparable journals.
This year we are celebrating the 70th Anniversary of the foundation of our French journal Vers Demain, the 60th Anniversary of our white beret, and the 10th Anniversary of our Polish "Michael" Journal. Personally, I am celebrating my 34th Anniversary of being a full-time Pilgrim, having officially joined the organization on September 5, 1975.
As Pilgrims of Saint Michael, we always wear the white beret when doing apostolate work or when attending "Michael" functions, being it is the habit of our Order of Saint Michael. It is an outward sign that we are convinced Social Crediters, that we bear witness to this truth.
The book on our beret denotes that it is by study and teaching the truth that we shall work to save souls for Heaven and free the countries and our societies from the dictatorship of High Finance, Freemasonry, and Communism. The color white on the beret signifies the purity of the goals pursued and the means employed by us to reach these goals. The Pilgrims of Saint Michael apply themselves to be pure from all stain of pride, selfishness and betrayal to the objectives of the Movement. The red flame signifies the fire of the apostolate. It is a symbol of the great liberty of the apostles to profess the truth in all spheres, rending account only to God, of whose Commandments we closely adhere to. The gold represents the pure gold of wisdom. And of course, these colors also signify the mysteries of the Rosary.
One of the first things that impressed me about the Pilgrims of Saint Michael when I visited them for the first time 34 years ago was the fact that they took time out each day to pray a fifteen- decade Rosary as a community, as well as consecration prayers and the Chaplet of Saint Michael. Many times I comment on the fact that many people today no longer pray, or they pray very little.
Years ago in the Province of Quebec, it was a point of honor for every Catholic household to pray the daily Rosary right after completing the evening meal. And it did not matter if there was a sports event in town, it did not matter if company came, the Rosary would be recited in the home, even before doing the supper dishes.
And because of this beautiful devotion to the Rosary, many religious orders were founded in the Province of Quebec, including our Order of Saint Michael and the churches were filled to full capacity at all the Sunday Masses. But today, because many households no longer pray, only a small percentage of the people in the Province of Quebec practice their Faith on a regular basis. This is very dangerous because those who shut Our Lord out of their lives and do not pray are in danger of losing their souls.
How important our apostolate is, especially the Rosary Crusade, where we visit the sanctuary of the families and encourage the daily recitation of the Rosary. We often receive letters at the office from people who tell us that they have gone back to the practice of prayer and the recitation of the Rosary every night after having had the visit of two White Berets who passed by their home to pray with them. What a joy it is to read these kind of letters!.
Once again this year, we had a large delegation from Poland at our Congress. This September, our journal in Polish celebrated its 10th anniversary. From left to right: Michal Baran, Stanislaw Cop, Szczesny Górski, Jerzy Lesiuk, Janusz Lewicki (au micro), Dr Jan Wilk, Marian Jurczynski, Kamila Zagajewska, Donata Wilk, Ewa Winkowska, Teresa Reyes, Jacek Morawa.
When I joined the organization 34 years ago, I was what you could call a green thumb, being I was not raised in the Movement and therefore had no experience with the Work. But gradually, as I learned how to do the apostolate and the value of the apostolate, I learned what it means to have a true love for your neighbor.
And as I began to understand more about what the Work of "Michael" was all about, about the social doctrine of the Church and how the philosophy of Social Credit fit in with this doctrine, I began feeling like a millionaire who had found a great treasure, a treasure so valuable that you could not put a price on it, this treasure being the philosophy of Social Credit.
One time our deceased Directress, Mrs. Gilberte Cote-Mercier, gave an inspiring speech in which she stated that we should rejoice in the fact that we are so wealthy. At first, I did not understand what she meant, for at the time I was as poor as a church mouse, owning just the clothes on my back. But then I began to realize that we are indeed very wealthy, having an established organization with all kinds of means at our disposal to reach people all over the world.
And this was not just the physical wealth that I thought about. I also thought about the invaluable friendships that I had made when I became a full-time Pilgrim, friendships with people who were pure of heart, friendships with people who did not work for positions nor worldly honors, but simply for the good of their neighbor. And the more I worked with these Social Credit apostles, the more I realized what a lucky man I really was, for the goal of the Social Crediters is the good and prosperity for all people upon earth, with the application of the Social Credit principles into the laws of every country in the world, bringing a peace and prosperity never known before in the history of mankind. This is what it means to build the Kingdom of the Immaculate. Yes, we are truly wealthy!
And then I meditated on our name: the Pilgrims of Saint Michael. It was on Mercy Sunday, 1962, that this name was officially chosen to represent our organization. And they chose right, because we actually are pilgrims on a pilgrimage to Heaven. And Saint Michael the Archangel is our patron.
When we leave to do a tour of apostolate, we become real pilgrims, having to ask for our meals and our places to sleep in the families that we meet. The road literally becomes our home; whoever receives us where we do our apostolate work, that is our home. And as we travel from town to town, begging for our needs, we put everything in the hands of Divine Providence. And we find many beautiful people who receive us in their homes as if we were a part of their family. When we come back in the area to continue our apostolate work, they are again happy to receive us, for these people understand that those who receive the apostle receive the merits of the apostle.
So we became pilgrims, missionaries, apostles on the road. For my first tours of apostolate, I have to admit that I was a little awkward and shy because I had not yet fully understood what a great thing it is to be an apostle. But the more I did the apostolate work, the more the graces that I received to understand the Work. And it is then that I began to understand what Mrs. Mercier meant when she once said: "Rejoice to have been chosen!"
Rejoice to have been chosen! The vocation of an apostle is so great that Our Lord, when He was upon earth, only chose 12 among so many. And these apostles of the early Church gave us the inspiration to be the apostles of these latter days.
The apostolate is the road that will lead to holiness. The value of an apostle is immeasurable. An apostle is a spiritualized man. He is a person of discipline. He makes objectives to keep himself motivated and to encourage himself. An apostle learns to put human respect aside and to cultivate a love for truth and justice.
The Gospel speaks of us as children of light and the salt of the earth. Our Lord is the light of the world and He passes this light of Faith on to His disciples. The earth is full of the darkness of evil, but through our apostolate we bring the light of Faith into the world so souls can be converted to see their way. We are the salt because we add love to flavor life and give it a purpose in following Our Lord.(...)
During this past week of study on the philosophy of Social Credit and the social doctrine of the Church, we have had many testimonies from clergy now visiting us from Africa, on how poor millions of people throughout Africa are not able to sufficiently buy all of their necessities to live. In many of the Third World countries, there are no social programs to assist the poor and hungry, there are no secure avenues given by the governments to guarantee the necessities of life to the people. Many of them have to live on garbage scraps in order to survive.
In the back issues of our journals, we wrote many articles about the problem of poverty on a global scale. The experts have stated that on the world scale, over one billion seven hundred million people barely get enough food on a daily basis to keep alive. One human being in six lives in a poor shack with no running water and no electricity. Every day on earth, over 40,000 children die of hunger or of diseases that had not been cured because of a lack of money.
And even here in our countries of North America, we are seeing massive lay-offs with more and more people losing their livelihoods and consequently their homes. People who used to make good salaries now line up in soup kitchens for their daily food. More and more banks are declaring bankruptcy. Government coffers are becoming empty with no money available for various social programs, for road construction, for new hospitals, etc. The needs exist, the materials exist, the skilled laborers exist, but the money does not exist to meet the needs, to make these projects a reality for the people.
As Christians and Catholics, we know it is a duty and an obligation for everyone to work for the establishment of a better economic system. In fact, we will all be judged on what we did to help our brothers and sisters of the world in need. Our Faith teaches us to see Christ in each of our brothers and to love our neighbor as we love Christ.
We could send donations to help the poor in the Third World countries to buy food. But when the money is all spent, we are back to the same old story – starvation and hunger amidst an abundance of production because there is still no money, there is still no financial security for the people to buy their necessities to live.
God has given all of the natural wealth that is needed to feed everyone. But because of the lack of purchasing power, because of a lack of money, the production is not meeting the needs. Mountains of food in many countries is decaying under the gaze of millions of starving people.
According to the teaching of the Catholic Church, the aim of the economic and financial system is the service of man. The goal of an economic system should be the satisfaction of human needs; the production of goods, and the distribution of goods so that they can reach the people who need them. Social Credit proposes a technique that would make the producing and financial system’s serve their purpose. (...)
We do not want to make money a god, but we have to put order in our financial system. The population must demand that the Bankers be at the service of the people with interest and debt-free money. It is only when the population as a whole is educated and united that any progress can be made in this area, for the intentions of the Bankers is now to control the entire world with a one-world government, to bring all the peoples of the world into slavery.
The subject of the one-world government is not a pleasant one, but we all know that the technologies are now in place to make this global system a reality. (...) Our leaders are already making plans for the demise of Mexico, the United States, and Canada in the forming of the North American Union. Under NAFTA, these three countries are the targets for a takeover. And under this one-world plan, all the citizens of these three countries will lose their sovereign rights that were guaranteed by their Constitutions, becoming puppets of the New World Order. This will be brought about by a fake emergency that will precipitate Martial Law and the U.S.A. executive orders that are in place, giving power over to a foreign army.
With the latest technology for capturing pictures of people, it is easy for the One World people to have a profile of everyone in the country. They can track which church you go to, which banks you visit, what stores you shop in, etc. With such an invasion of privacy, they will be able to make a list of people that need to be silenced for the New World Order.
In the future, new health-care controls will require smart cards and then microchips in the body to gain health benefits and eventually any government benefits. Christians know through Revelation that the Antichrist, when he comes into power, plans to control all the peoples of the globe with chips, forcing everyone with a chip in them to worship him instead of the true Christ. If you wish to save your soul, you cannot under any circumstances receive this chip in your body.
Yes, this is not a pleasant subject. But as Social Crediters, we are people of hope, people of action. As Social Crediters, we know that Heaven will assist us in this greatest spiritual warfare for souls that has ever taken place in the history of mankind. Yes, Heaven will assist us!
We have the Faith! And we also have the beautiful solution of Social Credit. This past week, we studied in detail the Social Credit propositions and how this philosophy would wonderfully solve the financial crises all over the world – to eliminate world poverty, to assure the necessities of life to every human being upon earth. With the three main propositions of Social Credit (the new creation of money without interest according to production, the national dividend and the compensated discount) applied into the laws of every country, the financial system would again be at the service of man and not man becoming enslaved to the dictatorship of money.
But the question always comes up: how are we going to reach Social Credit; how can this dream of monetary reform become a reality? And of course, the answer is actually quite simple: by enlightening the people, forming a public opinion in the sense of truth and justice. The enlightened population will push the authorities to act.
How do we enlighten the people? By taking subscriptions to our journals. It is very important to subscribe everyone. When we ourselves subscribe to "Michael", we become supporters of the Work by the fact that our subscription helps to form a force. And as a subscriber to "Michael", we can encourage those around us to also subscribe to the journal, telling them that "Michael" does fights that must be made, that there are very educational articles in the journal, that there are things in the paper that you could not find anywhere else. Let us all make the beautiful "Michael" Journal known.
Another way to enlighten the people is to do leaflet assaults, covering all the houses in your area with each new leaflets that comes out. And get young people to help you. We are a school, a spiritual university where we teach with our journals and our leaflets. And it is with pure truths that we teach. No salaries for anyone. No advertising allowed. No controls of any kind to keep us from spreading the truth. What a wealth we have with all of the literature at our disposal to teach the population with!
And then there is the iron structure of our Movement: the Rosary Crusade; to visit the sanctuaries of the families to encourage daily prayer and to subscribe the people to our journals. What a joy and happiness it is to visit our brothers and sisters of the world with the beautiful truth found in our literature.
And last but not least, to reach Social Credit, we have to storm Heaven with many prayers, especially the daily family Rosary. As full-time Pilgrims of Saint Michael, we make it a point of honor to say at least a fifteen decade Rosary every day, in our chapels, in our cars, in the homes, etc. And being that Saint Michael the Archangel is our patron, we also recite the Chaplet of Saint Michael every day, asking the nine choirs of angels through the intercession of Saint Michael to assist us and intercede for us.
When the apostles and their disciples wanted to elect Our Lord as their King, He hid Himself, telling them: "Make others Christians, and you will have Christianity." As Social Crediters, we could also say: "If you want Social Credit, make more Social Crediters." Be apostles in taking subscriptions to "Michael" around you, in distributing leaflets by the millions, in doing the Rosary Crusade, in reciting the daily Rosary. Let us put the Social Credit spirit everywhere. Let us form an enlightened public opinion.
Volunteer work is God’s force. At one time, our communities of religious brothers and sisters, grandfathers, grandmothers and teachers, were all people who devoted themselves to strive for the common good. Consequently, they helped to save many souls and built nice countries. But today, many are becoming the slave of a very corrupt financial system. They are becoming enslaved with the salary.
Let us ask God for the grace to be freed from all the ties that keep us from being active apostles. Let us pray to the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Family, the billions of angels, our holy patron Saint Michael the Archangel, the millions of martyrs who have founded the Church, the millions of saints and our dearly departed to free us from the slavery of money and to give us the freedom as children of God who will work for the service of truth and justice.
Let us pray that the full-time and local Pilgrims of Saint Michael become more devoted. Let us pray that more people of all age groups will become active members of our Order of Saint Michael. Let us pray that the people, in general, will have the grace to respond to our apostolate. And, above all, let us pray that someday all of our families will be White Berets.
Love your journal! Love your Movement! Love your Directors! Learn to love doing the apostolate! Thank you! May God bless each and every one of you!
Melvin Sickler is a remarkable apostle. He does the door-to-door Rosary Crusade all over Canada and the United States to solicit subscriptions to Michael, and hold meetings.
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