CLEANING HOUSE

A MESSAGE FOR QUINQUAGESIMA

Today is Shrove Sunday, and our thoughts turn with greater urgency to cleaning house, both literally and spiritually, before Lent begins later this week on Ash Wednesday.  Tomorrow actually used to have the name of “Clean Monday,” as we scurry to rid our homes of all those half-empty bags of candy and other tempting goodies that lurk in our pantries ready to allure us into breaking the Lenten fast.  By all means, let’s clean things up tomorrow so we can finish everything up on Mardi Gras!

As faithful Catholics, our more serious attention must be given to our spiritual preparations for the penitential season of Lent.  On Ash Wednesday, we remember that we are nothing but dust, and unto dust we shall return.  A sobering thought, which, if we give to it the assent of faith, must surely inspire us to turn away from our usual bodily comforts, and provide the right food for our souls instead.

God, in his mercy, allows us the transitory pleasures and vanities of this earthly life as a passing relief from the arduous test that we are all undergoing.  They were never meant to replace the true happiness of eternal life with God, for which this life is meant to prepare us.  Shrovetide is meant to remind us of our priorities.  It’s up to us now to commit to those priorities according to the degree of love we have for God.  Ash Wednesday sometimes comes as a bit of a shock when we realize just how little we do love God, and how little we are prepared to do for him!

Let’s remember that God made us to know him, love him, and serve him in this world so we can be happy forever with him in the next.  Know, love, and serve God—the three keys to happiness.  At the Last Judgment, our Lord will judge us only on the degree to which we have used these three keys to unlock the chains binding our souls to our own interests rather than God’s.  These three last days of Shrovetide are all that’s left for us to turn these three keys and commit to knowing, loving and serving God by making a good Lent and following his Son up that steep road to Calvary.

Let’s make a good confession today, receive our Lord in Holy Communion, and prepare our souls for a commitment to penance and self-sacrifice with all the generosity our poor love for God admits.  A very blessed and fruitful Lent to all.

Father Hall

TAKE UP THY CROSS

A HYMN FOR QUINQUAGESIMA

“Take up thy cross,” the Saviour said,

“If thou wouldst my disciple be;

Deny thyself, the world forsake,

And humbly follow after me.”

Take up thy cross, let not its weight

Fill thy weak spirit with alarm;

His strength shall bear thy spirit up,

And brace thy heart and nerve thine arm.

Take up thy cross, nor heed the shame,

Nor let thy foolish pride rebel;

Thy Lord for thee the cross endured,

And saved thy soul from death and hell.

Take up thy cross then in his strength,

And calmly sin’s wild deluge brave,

‘Twill guide thee to a better home,

It points to glory o’er the grave.

Take up thy cross and follow Christ,

Nor think til death to lay it down;

For only those who bear the cross

May hope to wear the glorious crown.

To thee, great Lord, the One in Three,

All praise forevermore ascend;

O grant us in our home to see

The heavenly life that knows no end.

William Charles Everest, 1833

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY

A SERMON FOR QUINQUAGESIMA SUNDAY

Today’s Gospel for Quinquagesima Sunday has two parts.  In the first part we listen to the words of Our Lord as he prophesies his own passion and death.  It is a remarkably accurate prophecy:  “He shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on:  and they shall scourge him, and put him to death:  and the third day he shall rise again.”  But the Twelve Apostles “understood none of these things.”  Perhaps we should not be surprised that they did not understand the prophecy before it happened.  After all, Our Lord had performed many miracles, and they perhaps thought he would be able to avoid the terrible things of which he spoke.  But looking back today, with the knowledge of hindsight how Our Lord’s words were fulfilled, and the events of Good Friday, now we wonder why these same Apostles did not remember Our Lord’s words, why they didn’t keep their faith during those dreadful days surrounding the crucifixion.

But they lost their faith in the horror and shock of Our Lord’s death.  And they were blinded to the realization that these awful events were simply the fulfillment of the prophecy that Our Lord had made in today’s Gospel.  Not until they saw with their own eyes the glorious body of the risen Lord on Easter Sunday did the eyes of their faith re-open, and they saw again that Christ was truly the Messiah, the Son of God.

The second half of today’s Gospel follows seamlessly from this consideration of the blindness of the Apostles.  Indeed, he performed this miracle partly in order to impress on their minds the lesson they were eventually to learn from their sad abandonment of their faith.  It is the story of the curing of the blind man.  When the blind man heard that Our Lord was passing by, he called out to him for mercy.  Here was a man who truly had the faith.  So much faith that when they tried to silence him, he called out all the more “Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me.”  And Our Lord did have mercy, and did cure him of his blindness.  And then he made his point:  “Receive thy sight,” he said.  “Thy faith hath saved thee.”  If only the Apostles had heeded this miracle.  If only they had had the invincible faith of this simple beggar.  If only we had this same faith!

For it is to us today that the Gospel speaks.  Because today it is we who are blind, or as St. Paul says in today’s Epistle “who see through a glass darkly.” It is we who need to ask God for mercy.  “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us.”  Give us that strength of faith that cured the blind man, that we may see God’s plan in the awful events that have befallen Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church, during these past fifty years or so; that we may not lose our faith, but may accept the plan of Divine Providence; that we may calmly get on with what we need to do during these sad times; that we may save our souls.  It is for this that God’s Providence made us to be born at such a time in history.  He has chosen us, Catholics who keep the faith, no others, to react appropriately to these events, according to his holy will.  Not to run around complaining, not bemoaning the apostasy in the Church and the wickedness in the world, not looking back in anger, or nostalgia, at what was.  No, to us is given the task of dealing with this crisis as our own state of life permits.  We are the ones chosen to fight this fight.  So let us ask God to lift the scales of blindness from our eyes.  And then let us take a look at how we can find God’s will in our lives, and how we can cooperate with God’s will in this fight.

One of the most effective cures for our blindness is knowledge.  The lack of knowledge (ignorance) is a sure cause of blindness, as we grope for the meaning, the significance of things we don’t understand.  For example, we don’t know, we don’t understand, why God is allowing this tremendous apostasy since Vatican II.  If that is the case, we should not sit back and wallow in our ignorance, trying to pull ideas from thin air.  All we have to do is listen to the prophecies that God has provided for us as a warning.  Just as Our Lord warned the Twelve Apostles of his coming Passion and Death, so too we have been warned about the crucifixion of his Mystical Body the Church at the end of time.  The warnings first appeared in Holy Scripture and they are many.  Let’s not forget about the “abomination of desolation standing in the holy place.”  Just read your scriptures and you’ll find plenty of other examples.  And if scripture isn’t enough, how many times has our Lord sent his Blessed Mother to warn us?  Are we to just ignore her warning at La Salette, for example, that “Rome shall become the seat of the Antichrist?”  Are these just idle words for us to pretend they will never happen?  What about the Third Secret of Fatima, so explicit in its dreadful description of Vatican II and its consequences for mankind that the popes entrusted with revealing this message have flagrantly disobeyed her command and kept its dire words of warning hidden to this day?  We may not know the details of this message of Our Lady of Fatima, but it is very clear that mankind must change his ways, or terrible things would happen.  There are countless Catholic prophecies speaking of Rome and its loss of faith in the end times.  God has known this would happen from the beginning of time, just as he knew he would be crucified to redeem mankind.  Vatican II and the tidal wave of godlessness that flooded the Church in its aftermath should not have been to us either.  But we were blind, and in spite of all the prophecies we did not see it coming.  Now we turn to God, and ask him to cure our blindness, so that we can see God in this new Calvary.  “Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.”

The prophecies of these times may help us with our blindness, but they are not enough.  Nor is the understanding they give us of these mysteries.  Knowledge is not enough.  Not even faith is enough.  Again, this morning’s epistle from St. Paul to the Corinthians makes this very clear, and tells us what we truly must have in order to survive these times and save our souls: “Though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.” 

And what is charity?  It’s the virtue by which we love God and our neighbor.  It is another name for “love.”  And what is love?  Certainly not the sentimental emotion of lovey-dovey love that attract people to each other.  Love is sacrifice, the sacrifice of our own desires, pleasures, happiness, so that we may please God first and foremost, and so that we may fulfill the legitimate desires and pleasures and happiness of others.  We must give of ourselves so that others may find the happiness we ourselves so fiercely covet.  We must love our neighbor as ourselves.

Fasting shows God that we are prepared to give up things for him.  Almsgiving shows God and our neighbor that we are ready to share our good things with others.  But neither is enough.  Both must be done, yes, and especially during the Lenten season that is upon us.  But they must be done out of love.  Again St. Paul: “Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.”  

We can begin to see how this thirteenth chapter from the latter epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians contains the absolute bottom line of what God expects from us this Lent and during our whole life.  Let’s read this chapter again and again, meditate upon it, make it the basis of our nightly examination of conscience.  Let’s compare the demands of charity described by St. Paul with our own pathetic response to these demands.  How much we must displease God with our transgressions of charity!  Let’s end by listening again to these demands of charity, love, and let the Apostles’ words be seared into our mind, re-igniting within us the overpowering desire to love God and neighbor completely and with our every breath:  “Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.  Charity never faileth.”