THE LITURGICAL YEAR

Sermons, hymns, meditations and other musings to guide our annual pilgrim's progress through the liturgical year.

Sunday, May 27, 2018

IN HIS IMAGE AND LIKENESS

A SERMON FOR TRINITY SUNDAY


Last year on Trinity Sunday, we turned our thoughts to Ireland.  We remembered how the patron saint of the Emerald Isle drove out the Triple Morrigans, those three she-devils who had possessed the land.  How he held up a simple shamrock, and taught the Irish people to worship the three Persons in one true God.  This year, we are saddened to see that the majority of those Irish people have voted to reject their faith in God by legalizing the murder of innocent babies in the womb, restoring their ancient druidical practice of child sacrifice to their pagan gods.  If only they had kept their eyes on the shamrock…  
Why?  Because the humble shamrock grows, with its three leaves, in the image and likeness of the Blessed Trinity.  In this it is perhaps the greatest example of how God created not only Man in his image and likeness, but the whole of creation.  Take a look at the great, vast universe around us, and see it for what it is. One unimaginably immense and complex creation in the image and likeness of God.   I don’t speak merely about the great sizeof the universe.  I don’t speak just about the complexity of its solar systems, its endless galaxies, the billions of stars and planets and moons, all with their various orbital paths, endlessly repeating through the ages.  No.  Today, I want us to look at something closer, something we can comprehend more easily, the natural world around us.  
This nature is nothing more than a reflection of its divine Creator.  It is a world composed of two elements or dimensions we encounter every minute of every day, and which in fact constitute the whole of our physical experience.  I speak of the dimensions of Space and Time.  Because right here in the very essence of what constitutes the natural world in which we live, in Space and Time our loving God has given us the key to a better understanding of the concept of the Blessed Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.  Sure, the Holy Trinity shall be forever a mystery to us.  But there is a key that can help us understand this mystery just a little bit better.  It is a key shaped like the number three, the very “shape”, if you will, of the Trinity itself.
Let’s start by looking at Space.  I don’t mean space in the sense of outer space.  But rather in the sense that everything we can see around us occupiesspace.  My toothbrush, the tree in the back garden, Mount Everest, the postman. They all take up space.  They all have dimensions.  And how many dimensions does everything have?  Three!  This is how we measure and perceive all material things.  We see and measure height, breadth, and depth.  Three dimensions.  Once you have a being with three dimensions it is a complete structure. Something with only two dimensions is not complete.  It is only a picture of a shape, a bunch of lines, a two-dimensional image of the real thing.  But give it a third dimension and it is complete.  It now occupies space.  The triangle has become a pyramid, the square is turned into a box.  Just as God is a Trinity of three persons in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, everything we see around us is a trinity of three dimensions, height, breadth and depth.
And now let’s take Time.  Just like space, Time is composed of three parts:  Past, Present and Future.  Everything we experience either has happened already, is happening now, or will happen in the future.  There are no other possibilities in time for something to happen.  And so we can say that past, present and future represent the totality of Time.  We cannot conceive of anything outside these three elements of time, any more than we can conceive of something occupying space that does not have height, breadth and depth.  
Space and Time, which really represent the whole of reality as we know it, were created by God as trinities. They were made on the first day of Creation, when God created light.  Light lit up the great void that had covered the face of the deep, so that it was no longer void but occupied space.  Light spread out at the speed of light, taking time to move from its source to eventually illuminate everything we can now see.  You can measure this speed, in miles per second, the miles being Space, the seconds Time.  
In his own image and likeness did God create man, and not only man but the whole universe of space and time as we know it.  Absolutely everything that we experience in our lives take place in this space and time that God created in his own image and likeness. Everything around us occupies the length, breadth and depth of space.  Every one of our thoughts, words and deeds occupies the time it takes to think, say or do them.  Even our sins of thought, word and deed take up our time.  And if we can only remind ourselves to see that faint glimmer of God in our sins, that spark of love that prevents us from losing him forever, we will surely repent our past sins by confessing them in the present, and resolving to sin no more in the future. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
And isn’t this the reason, after all, why God created the universe in his image and likeness?  So that we might find, if only we look for it, that image of God in everything we perceive with our five senses, and at every second of the day.  We can know God through his creation.  And if we know God, we must surely love him.  And that, of course, is the whole reason for creation in the first place.  That we can reciprocate the love that God has for us and unite with him forever in a world beyondtime and space.
God did not stop with these two trinities, time and space.  Trinities abound in our everyday life, and if only we stopped to contemplate these wonders for a moment, we would perhaps have a much better understanding of the Triune God.  When God created living creatures he made three types:  Angels, Men, and Animals.  At one end, Angels have an immortal soul but no body.  At the other the animals possess bodies but no immortal soul.  And Man, in between the two, has both a body and an immortal soul.  
Or if we look at only bodily creations, we can divide up everything we can see into Animal, Vegetable or Mineral.  Animal in this sense includes Man also, as well as any creature capable of locomotion.  Vegetable includes all plant life from the blade of grass to the mighty oak.  While Mineral is simply everything else:  the rocks, the dust of the earth, even man-made objects like a Styrofoam cup or a metal park bench.  Some people might prefer to divide these bodily things into another trinity of solid, liquid, and gas.  But either way, God created them so that everything we know fits into three categories.
If we look at the world of music, we find that all composers base their works on three things:  Melody, Harmony and Rhythm.  Or switch to the world of art, and you’ll find that painters are limited to just three primary colours, red, blue and yellow.  Try and imagine a colour which is not either a primary colour or a combination of these three primary colours.  It’s impossible for the human mind to invent or conceive of a new colour outside this spectrum!
All of this—and I could continue with many more examples—all of this is God’s good nature.  Nature the way God made it.  In his own image and likeness.  For just as surely as all these examples point to a totality of three which encompasses all possibilities, just so the Blessed Trinity is a totality of three Persons, complete and at peace within themselves, the whole and total concept and substance and essence of God himself.
The Devil, of course, will do his best to upset these trinities, although most of them form such an intricate part of the very essence of nature that he is incapable of doing toomuch harm.  But when the triple dimensions fall within man’s power to change, you can be sure the devil will tempt man to do just that.  Go back to the triple elements of music—melody, harmony and rhythm.  Listen to most modern music, and you’ll find that the element of melody, which is the most noble of these elements, has now often disappeared, dominated by the vulgar drumbeats of rhythm.  
More importantly, the three elements of the family—man, woman, children—have been overturned in every which way imaginable.  The link between man and woman is severed by divorce and ever worse perversions.  The link between parents and child is gradually disappearing, as families have fewer children thanks to abortion, contraception.  Feminism places a role in this too, as women move into the workplace and place increasing importance on a career rather than raising souls for God.  That perfect society of husband, wife and children is becoming the exception in our mad world.  How ironic that the Irish would vote for abortion on the very eve of Trinity Sunday!
And the Novus Ordo Church, what has it done to help the Devil undermine the fundamental relationship of Creation to Creator?  Take a look at the Mass.  What was the first trinity in the Mass they decided to rip out?  Was it perhaps the triple repetition of the Kyrie Eleison?  Or was it the triple Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, for each of our sins of Thought, Word, and Deed?    The constant triple repetitions in the Gloria in Excelsis Deohad to go of course.  As did the triple Domine, non sum dignusbefore Communion.  Each omission represented a watering down of the notion of the Blessed Trinity.
The last great sacrilege of this kind to be perpetrated on the poor folks of the Conciliar Church was done by John Paul II when he desecrated the Most Holy Rosary.  When the Blessed Mother appeared to St. Dominic, she gave him, in her great wisdom, 15 mysteries of the Rosary divided into three categories.  She knew that for those who do God’s will, life is composed of three chief elements, joy, sorrow, and eventual glory in heaven.  Sometimes, by the grace and mercy of God, we are blessed with joys.  But in this life, there’s no such thing as permanent joy.  These joys are nothing more than fleeting happiness, which passes and goes by.  And the sorrows of life replace them.  That’s all for the good.  It’s as it should be.  Because it’s by accepting these crosses, these sorrows, by accepting the will of God rather than our own, that these sorrows can then be transformed into eternal glory.  Joyful, sorrowful, and finally glorious.  And we see all this when we think about the chief events in the lives of Christ and his Blessed Mother.  This is why the Rosary is such a divinely inspired and essential instrument of prayer and heavenly grace.  
But clever old John Paul imagined in his arrogance that he could go one better than the Holy Virgin herself, and so he presented to the world the so-called Luminous Mysteries.  Named after the Illuminati sect of freemasonry, the idea was to illuminate, to enlighten our medieval triple notion of a life of joys, sorrows, and glories, and banish forever the “darkness” of this old-fashioned superstitious devotion to Our Lady, adding to it the notion that Man, with his great wisdom and power, has something to add to the nature created by God.  John Paul wanted to shed his light on what Our Lady had given us.  As if he could outshine the Star of the Sea!  He might just as well have tried to create a new colour, or to build a house without height or breadth or depth, or in fact to do anything at all outside of past, present or future.  To replace the three types of mystery of the Rosary with four, he might just as well have declared himself to be the fourth person of the Blessed Trinity.
Time and time again in his own lifetime, Our Lord gave us a triple reason for knowing of the existence of the Holy Trinity.  At his very birth, three wise men came from the Orient, bearing three gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.  In his life of 33 years, he spent three of them in his sacred ministry. And at the time of his Passion and Death, three times St. Peter denied Our Lord.  It took three nails to fasten Our Lord to the Cross, one through each of his hands and another through both his feet.  The words of the inscription above the Cross were written in three languages, Latin, Greek and Hebrew.  And most significantly of all, after spending three days in the tomb, on the third day Our Lord rose again from the dead.
I don’t want you to think that all this just amounts to some superstitious kind of numerology.  I point out this recurrence of the number three in the universe around us, in Christ’s life, and in our own lives, just as a reminder that God gives us signs in the things we can see and hear.   Signs in the visibleof things that are invisible, that we cannot see or hear, or even understand. Even the Most Blessed Trinity itself which is infinitely beyond our comprehension, can be imagined at least in a small part by observing the things around us.  This long list of threes, it represents the Holy Trinity, God himself in all his glory.  Because God is everywhere.  And he created this universe the way it is in order to show you that he is everywhere and in every aspect of our lives.  There is nowhere where he is not.
Meditate on these things.  We will find many other examples, and experience the joy of finding God in places we had not thought of, in every little corner of our life.  Today is not a day for asking things of God.  It is a day that has been set aside for one purpose only, and that is to adore God.  And therefore let us join with the holy Angels today as we sing our threefold Holy, holy, holy.  Let us join with the saints in singing our Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost.  And let us join with all the other sinners of this world as we come humbly to the Communion rail, repeating three times O Lord, I am not worthy
Yesterday was the last day of Eastertide, and after Vespers last night we began again our singing of the threefold daily Angelus.  When all is dark in this our world of sin, and when we cannot even see the signs of Blessed Trinity in all the things around us, perhaps when the cry of the Triple Morrigans echoes in the empty spaces of the night, let the triple incantation of Our Lady’s Prayer, the Angelus, remind us always of the might and power of our heavenly Father, the infinite mercy of her Son, and the love and blessings of the Holy Ghost.  Unto whom be the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever.  Amen.

FATHER MOST HOLY, MERCIFUL AND TENDER

A HYMN FOR TRINITY SUNDAY


1 Father most holy, merciful, and tender;
Jesus our Savior, with the Father reigning;
Spirit of mercy, Advocate, Defender,
Light never waning;
2 Trinity blessed, Unity unshaken;
Deity perfect, giving and forgiving;
Light of the angels, Life of the forsaken,
Hope of all living;
3 Maker of all things, all Thy creatures praise Thee;
Lo, all things serve Thee, through Thy whole creation:
Hear us, Almighty, hear us as we raise Thee,
Heart's adoration.
4 To the almighty triune God be glory:
Highest and greatest, help Thou our endeavor;
We, too, would praise Thee, giving honor worthy,
Now and forever.
By Percy Dearmer, 1906

JUDGE NOT...

A MESSAGE FOR THE FIRST SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST


Today’s great feast of the Most Holy Trinity is always celebrated on the First Sunday after Pentecost.  In a certain sense, this is a pity, as the very significant Gospel of the First Sunday is always relegated to the Last Gospel at today’s Mass.  It’s a warning from God that we must not be hypocrites. Our Lord asks: “Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”  We hate to admit it, but we’re all guilty at one time or another of finding fault in others while behaving blatantly in the same way ourselves.

I caught myself doing this just the other day, when I became more than a little annoyed at members of a certain political party, calling them “treasonous” for being so mechanically hostile to the country’s head of state.  And yet, I realized, if the other candidate had won the last presidential election, I would be doing exactly the same thing. Such are the dangers of being over-zealous in our opinions, and so entrenched in our own way of thinking that we give way to a certain lack of tolerance for the views of others.

We should always try to see the good in our neighbor.  Admittedly, these days, that’s an increasingly difficult challenge, as political and yes, religious viewpoints become more and more outrageous and impossible to ignore.  But Christ will ultimately judge us on the spirit with which we view our opponents—a motivation guided by the love of God and love of the truth, rather than hatred and intolerance and anger.  Loving the sinner and hating the sin is a nice way of summing it up, but in practice, a difficult art to master.

Nevertheless, much depends on our ability to overcome our own self-righteousness and hypocrisy.  We must make a serious attempt to follow our Lord’s admonition, “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven.”  Obviously, our very salvation hangs in the balance here, and we should keep a tight rein on our tendency to see the faults in others and not our own.

There are alwaysmitigating factors in the bad behavior of others.  Even when they seem to have no excuse for their wickedness, let’s look first to the mirror and remember all the awful things wehave done.  Do wehave an excuse?  Often we don’t, and if we are to be forgiven, then by golly, we had better excuse them that trespass against us!  “Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.”

Sunday, May 20, 2018

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

A SERMON FOR WHITSUNDAY


When our Lord ascended into heaven, his apostles were left speechless and gaping up to the clouds where he had disappeared. What were they going to do now?  As men do, when a crisis befalls them, they sought a stable refuge so they could sort out their confusion.  They returned to the nearby city of Jerusalem, to the place where our Lord had ordained them as priests on Maundy Thursday, where he had instituted the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and to which they had fled in fear on Good Friday.  Here in Jerusalem they waited, obeying the last instructions of their Master, hoping that his promise of a Comforter to come would soon be fulfilled.

Nine days later came the Jewish feast of Pentecost, the anniversary of which we celebrate today.  We know very well the enormity of what happened on that memorable day, with the coming of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, and the birth of the Church.  And it was fitting that our Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church should find its beginnings in the Holy City of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem was the ancient capital of the Jewish state of Judea.  Its status as the capital city of the chosen people derived from the holy mountain on which the city was built, Mount Zion.  Here, the temple of Solomon was constructed, and here, the great sacrifices of the Jewish people were made to their one true God, according to the laws given to Moses. These sacrifices were, of course, the precursors of the greatest sacrifice of them all, that of the only-begotten Son of God.  It is noteworthy that his Passion took place within the walls of Jerusalem, whereas his actual death was outside the city walls on Mount Calvary.  This transition from the city itself to the hills around Jerusalem was the Via Dolorosa, that sorrowful path taken by our Lord as he dragged his cross from Mount Zion to Mount Calvary, from inside the holy city of the Jews to a hill outside that city.  

It was a path that clearly shows the transition from the Old Testament to the New, as our Lord walked away from the old Temple, carrying the instrument of our Redemption, the cross, to a new Temple, where a new sacrifice would be fulfilled on the spot known as Golgotha in Hebrew, or Calvary in Latin.  In English, it is called the Place of the Skull, the burial spot of the skull of Adam. Here, the Precious Blood of our Saviour would seep down from the cross to wash the skull of Adam and cleanse him and all his children, Jew and Gentile, from their sins.

As the Master showed the way from the Old to the New Covenant, so the disciples were to follow in his footsteps.  Once they received the Holy Ghost on that first Pentecost Sunday, they left the Holy City of Jerusalem, dispersing to the four corners of the known world, spreading the Gospel and converting people to the Catholic Faith.  They had a strong message, one given them by the Saviour himself, that no one could possibly come to the Father except by him.  That outside the Church that he had founded for us, there could be no salvation. 

And eventually, the chief of the twelve Apostles came to Rome.  He became the bishop of that city, making it the new capital of the chosen people. Rome, built not on one hill like Jerusalem’s Mount Zion, but built on seven hills, representing the seven sacraments which are the foundation of our faith and worship.  In Rome, he was joined by St. Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, and on June 29, in the year of our Lord 67, they were both put to death, St. Peter by crucifixion and St. Paul by the sword.

Their martyrdom in Rome took place in the year 67, the year after the Jews back in Jerusalem had rebelled against their Roman occupiers.  Think of this uprising as the last desperate attempt by the Jews to preserve their now broken covenant with God.  They had not accepted their Messiah when he lived amongst them, teaching, healing and performing miracles.  And now they would suffer the consequences of this rejection, as their rebellion of Jerusalem against Rome, Old Testament against New, was met by a disaster unparalleled in the entire history of the Jewish nation.  To quell the rebellion, Emperor Nero dispatched a great army under the command of General Vespasian.  In the year 70 A.D. the city of Jerusalem, along with its temple, were completely destroyed, and the Jews were dispersed in what became known as the Great Diaspora, losing forever their tribal identity and priesthood in the process.

And so Jerusalem was destroyed about the same time that the new Holy City of Rome was coming into its new greatness as the capital of the Catholic Church.  The curse, which the Jews called down upon themselves and their children when they rejected their Messiah, became a blessing unto the new Christians.  The Jews blasphemed that Christ’s Blood should be upon them and upon their children—and thus it was.  But meanwhile, the curse of Jerusalem was the blessing of Rome, as the Blood of Christ and the blood of the early Roman Martyrs were the source of such blessings on the Church that it would rise to be the powerful source of all truth and grace.

The history of man continued from that point on for many hundreds of years, with the apparent permanence of this status quo. The Jews were dispersed all over the world—poor, wandering Jews, who would be downtrodden and mistreated by their host nations, seemingly forever; and the Christians, blessed with the seven sacraments and salvation purchased by God himself.  It was a status quo which would meet with an upheaval in the twentieth century, however, when after two of the worst persecutions of the Jews ever to take place, the pogroms of Soviet Russia and the Nazi holocaust, the Jews finally did the unthinkable and returned to what they regarded as their rightful God-given land of Palestine.  In 1948, they founded the Jewish state of Israel.  They were still blinded of course by their persistent rejection of Christ and their allegiance to a covenant with God that had long ago been torn apart like the veil in their temple.

Israel was founded on May 14, 1948 and the Jews returned to Zion.  Exactly two weeks later, on May 28, 1948, Pope Pius XII appointed Fr. Annibale Bugnini as Secretary to the Commission for Liturgical Reform.  This may not seem like a particularly important event, but it was in fact absolutely catastrophic for the future of the Church.  In his new role, Bugnini immediately set about attacking the authority of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, and within two years he had begun his work of destroying the entire liturgy of the Catholic Church. He began by abolishing most of the Church’s most ancient ceremonies of Holy Week, including the Mass of the Presanctified on Good Friday.  And this was just the start.  His intention all along was to gradually whittle away at the unchanging character of the Roman Mass until he had completely destroyed it.  And sadly, it met with little resistance.  Even with the benefit of hindsight, several supposedly traditional groups embrace his early work of destruction, and thus participate in his conspiracy against the sacred liturgy of the Church.  We must not forget, however, that his intention all along was the complete destruction of the Mass, which is founded upon the Blood of the New and Everlasting Covenant between God and man.  His satanic ambition was no less than the nullification of the New Testament.

By 1967 Bugnini’s work was just about done. In June of that year, there took place, again not by coincidence, the Six-Day War in the Middle East, during which Israel captured part of the city of Jerusalem, laying claim again to that city as their capital.  By October of that year Bugnini presented his complete draft revision of the new Mass to the bishops for approval.  Again, the fate of the two holy cities of Rome and Jerusalem found themselves mysteriously intertwined.  The Devil continued his work of destruction against the new testament between God and man, while at the same time fulfilling the ambitions of those who persist in holding to the old testament.

In this week before Pentecost, the United States was the first country to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. What new attack should we expect on the eternal city of Rome as a result?  Perhaps the canonization of the new Mass in the form of the canonization of the man who foisted it upon us, Paul VI?  The pattern is there for all to see, and every day we take a step closer to the final battle.

And what is our role in all this?  Simply to do what the Church, the trueChurch of Christ, wants us to do.  That is to reject every attack on the Church’s sacred liturgy, especially the work of Annibale Bugnini, and instead to preserve the traditional Sacraments.  These are our seven pillars on which our faith is founded, the seven “hills” of Rome. The Mass especially, in which Christ’s Blood once again and in its daily celebration, provides the source of all the graces we receive from God.  Let’s be quite clear: we can never dare to call ourselves truly Catholic unless we are firmly dedicated to the continuation and restoration of the authenticliturgy of tradition.  How can we think of ourselves as Catholic if we accept to worship according to the rites devised by the enemies of the Church? 

The battle we fight is on a higher plane than we perhaps realize.  When we consider the history of Rome and Jerusalem, we see the hand of God and get a small glimpse of his serene intervention in the affairs of man.  Today especially, this day on which we celebrate the birthday of our Church, this Pentecost, let us pray that God will again send to us his Spirit, and that he will renew the face of the earth. That he will in fact renew the New and Everlasting Covenant, and restore true faith and worship to the eternal city of Rome and to the world.

COME HOLY GHOST, OUR SOULS INSPIRE

A HYMN FOR WHITSUNDAY 


1 Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire,
And lighten with celestial fire;
Thou the anointing Spirit art,
Who dost thy sevenfold gifts impart:

2 Thy blessèd unction from above
Is comfort, life, and fire oflove;
Enable with perpetual light
The dullness of our blinded sight:

3 Anoint and cheer our soiled face
With the abundance of thy grace:
Keep far our foes, give peace at home;
Where thou art guide no ill can come.

4 Teach us to know the Father, Son,
And thee, of both, to be but One;
That through the ages all along
This may be our endless song,

5 Praise to thy eternal merit,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.


            By Rabanus Maurus, 8th-9th cent.; translated by John Cosin, 1627

SPEAKING IN TONGUES

A MESSAGE FOR WHITSUNDAY


God does not perform miracles without a purpose.  Miracles are not conjuring tricks for the entertainment of those watching.  Never once will you find our blessed Lord performing a miracle in order simply to impress someone.  Indeed, when Pilate sent him to King Herod, this man was very keen to see our Lord perform a miracle.  But Christ’s answer was dignified silence.

There are certain Protestant sects, and today, sadly, even those within the conciliar Church, who profess to speak in tongues.  At their meetings, you would be startled when one of them stands up and begins to babble in some kind of gibberish, that someone else then pretends to interpret.  Why would God do this?  The purpose of speech is to communicate, so why would God have someone communicate in a language no one can understand (except of course for the one enlightened listener, who will gladly reveal all for your amazement).  

Today’s account of the first Pentecost gives us a very clear picture of what the Apostles were doing when they spoke in tongues.  Jerusalem, the center of the Jewish faith, was a place of pilgrimage, and particularly on the great feasts of the year, of which Pentecost was one.  The city was full of men “out of every nation under heaven.”  Naturally, they all spoke their own language, and many would not have understood the Apostles when they spoke “the wonderful works of God.”  And so the Holy Ghost allowed the Apostles to speak in such a way that those listening heard them in their own language. This was no silly parlor trick, but an effective way of spreading the Gospel quickly before the crowds dispersed.

Last week, we approached the whole idea of speaking as the oracles of God. Today, we remember that the first and most important objective in speaking is to communicate effectively. Whether we are speaking of the “wonderful works of God”, or merely making polite conversation, it is not worth opening our mouths unless we can put across to our listener what we want him to hear.  And in keeping with God’s will, what people hear us say should always strive to be spiritually or at least emotionally uplifting.  For like all the gifts that come from God, speech should have as its purpose the drawing of souls towards their eternal source and final end.

Speaking in tongues like the Pentecostals does nothing to raise a soul to God.  But we might want to learn how to speak so that those hearing us understand what we’re trying to say, and can actually learn something of those “wonderful works of God.”

Sunday, May 13, 2018

HAIL, QUEEN OF HEAVEN!

A SERMON FOR THE SUNDAY IN THE OCTAVE OF ASCENSION


In this season of Ascensiontide, when we celebrate the return of our blessed Lord to his Father in heaven, we acknowledge at the same time the kingship of Christ over the Church, our world, our nation, our family and our own hearts. From his heavenly throne he rules over his creation, not with a rod of iron, but with the gentle benevolence that he granted to us with the use of our free will.  He asks for our loyalty, but does not enforce it.  We are free to be loyal to him and to receive his graces, and ultimately his heavenly reward.  We are equally free, in a certain sense, to refuse to be loyal, to disobey his commandments whenever we feel like it, and to choose loyalty to ourselves rather than our king.

This freedom, while it is real enough, has the power to delude us.  It is a mirage, placing before us the imagined notion that happiness is to be found in sources other than the source of all goodness, God himself.  If we choose to misuse our free will, then our future is, alas, certain, and inevitable. Christ is King, and we are his servants. It is our duty to obey, even though we might have the impression he is turning a blind eye to our failures in that regard.  After all, when we sin, there is no thunderbolt, no sudden death or misery to befall us, that would give us warning that God is enforcing his laws.  Our warning is clear enough, nevertheless, and is found in God’s holy Word. That alone should be sufficient.  Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell.  It is clear we shall die, we know that we shall be judged. We fear hell.  But what about heaven?  Do we want heaven?  Really want it?  Are we afraid of losing it?  Or do we simply presume that we’re good people and will go there no matter what? If so, we’re in for a big surprise!

This year, Mothers’ Day falls on this Sunday within the Octave of the Ascension. As we crown our blessed Lord as King, it is fitting then, that we should at the same time crown his Mother as Queen. And why?  Because the mother of a king is always a queen.  She who gives birth to the king holds a very special place in the homage of a nation.  Some of you will remember the reverence with which the Queen Mother was held in England. And yet, there is a difference between a dowager Queen who is the mother of the king, and a Sovereign Queen, such as we have in England today, who is the head of state and rules over the nation. This is where our blessed Lady differs from these earthly queens.  She is at the same time both the mother of the King, and yet at the same time she is the Queen who rules over us all.

Look at her litany, and you’ll see invocation after invocation to her as Queen.  Queen of Angels, Queen of Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, Martyrs, Confessors, Virgins, Queen of All Saints.  Over all the angels and saints, she is the one who occupies the highest place.  The good angels who did not rebel submit to her rule and are happy to do so.  The bad angels who did rebel, did so because they could not abide the thought of a mortal woman being given greater homage than they demanded for themselves.  And so now, this same mortal woman stands above them, “clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet”, as St. John tells us in his prophecy of the Apocalypse.  And she is crowned.  “Crowned with a crown of twelve stars.”  And she crushes the head of the rebellious angel with her heel.  
She who was prophesied in the first book of the Bible after the fall of man, is prophesied in the last book of the Bible after the restoration of man to his heavenly destiny.  She occupies a place in the story of our Redemption that stretches from the first Joyful Mystery of the Rosary to the last Glorious Mystery, and for this reason we hail her as Queen of the Most Holy Rosary.  We hail our Lady as did St. Gabriel at the Annunciation, as “full of grace”.  We hail her as did her cousin Elizabeth with the words “Blessed art thou among women.” We voice our assent to her own words that “all generations shall call me blessed,” because she is indeed blessed. Blessed to be the Mother of Christ, blessed to be the Mother of a King. Blessed to be assumed into heaven, there to be crowned as Queen of Heaven and Earth.

Any denial of her royal prerogatives is to blaspheme Christ himself, for how could a king be born of a commoner?  Queens are chosen from royalty, and royal marriages were always arranged between the crowned heads of the European nations in order to preserve the royal bloodline of those families.  Christ chose our blessed Lady from the royal house of David.  She gave birth to him in David’s royal city, Bethlehem.  And if that were not enough, she had been granted the unique privilege of being conceived without the stain of original sin. When she died, her body was assumed into heaven along with her immortal soul, there to be crowned and to reign over all the angels and saints, and over us all.

When Christ, in his final moments on the Cross, gave her to St. John to be his Mother and ours, he gave us the great privilege of having a Queen for our Mother.  We were to be permitted a share in the royalty of Christ.  We are all the Children of Mary.  Today, one of us is given yet another honor of being chosen to crown our Blessed Lady as our Queen. We are all children of Mary, but it is surely it is our actual children who are the most like her in innocence, purity and goodness. This is why it is the tradition that a young girl should crown our Lady, and what an amazing honor it is to be chosen.  I know a lady who wanted to crown our Lady when she was a little girl.  She prayed very, very hard that she would be chosen, so hard in fact that when the day came, God guided the nuns to pick her for the honor.  She told me that this was the happiest day of her life, and one that has stayed in her memory to give her courage and comfort through all the hardships that she later endured.

Finally, let’s remember that this blessed Mother is the patron of all mothers everywhere, whose special day is celebrated today.  Each of you mothers should follow in the footsteps of St. Mary, ruling over your household as queen, and venerated by your obedient and humble children as their queen and mother.  Your crown may not be given you in this world, but I assure you, there is a special place in heaven for those who have shown such love and sacrifice that only a mother knows.  God bless you all this day!

CROWN HIM WITH MANY CROWNS

A HYMN FOR THE SUNDAY WITHIN THE OCTAVE OF ASCENSION


1 Crown him with many crowns,
the Lamb upon his throne.
Hark! how the heavenly anthem drowns
all music but its own.
Awake, my soul, and sing
of him who died for thee,
and hail him as thy matchless king
through all eternity.
2 Crown him the Lord of life,
who triumphed o'er the grave,
and rose victorious in the strife
for those he came to save;
his glories now we sing
who died and rose on high,
who died eternal life to bring,
and lives that death may die.
3 Crown him the Lord of love;
behold his hands and side,
rich wounds, yet visible above,
in beauty glorified;
no angels in the sky
can fully bear that sight,
but downward bends their burning eye
at mysteries so bright.
4 Crown him the Lord of years,
the potentate of time,
creator of the rolling spheres,
ineffably sublime.
All hail, Redeemer, hail!
for thou hast died for me;
thy praise shall never, never fail
throughout eternity.
By Matthew Bridges, 1851

SPEAK AS THE ORACLES OF GOD

A MESSAGE FOR THE SUNDAY WITHIN THE OCTAVE OF ASCENSION


We can’t wait to open our mouths and join in the conversations that go on around us.  Conversations about current events, deep theological matters, moral dilemmas, political controversies, even the most banal of subjects.  Sometimes we indulge in gossip, reluctantly perhaps, or maybe not. Our words are sometimes truthful, sometimes exaggerated, at other times, downright lies.  We talk to show off what we know, to pass the time, to keep others company, to get to know someone better.  We talk to the people we are with, and now with the help of technology, we talk to people on our cell phones, via Skype, or often simply by texting. We express our likes and dislikes, our opinions, our hopes and fears, our beliefs, our love and our hatred.

Considering that we were given two ears but only one mouth, it might seem that we give that mouth an inordinate amount of exercise.  Our first pope, St. Peter, in today’s Epistle, admonishes us that ifwe open our mouths to speak, we should speak “as the oracles of God.”  It would be most appropriate for us in our nightly examination of conscience to consider the words we have spoken during the course of the day, comparing them to the exhortation of St. Peter.  Has our speech been constantly as the oracles of God?  I think that if we were diligent in this examination, the lines for confession would be a lot longer on Sunday morning.

We might wonder what it is to speak “as the oracles of God.”  We could go into many details and distinctions on our tone of voice, our depth of meaning, the foundation of our words in charity and truth, our motivation for speaking to someone and the kindness with which our words are uttered.  But it all boils down to one thing: that when we speak, we do so with “the ability which God giveth, that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ our Lord. This does not mean that every single conversation should be aboutGod specifically.  But it does mean that our every word should reflect something of God’s love, and never anything that would draw our hearer away from Him.  To do so would be true scandal, and would not be befitting for a Catholic gentleman or lady.

So let’s think before we open our mouths.  What is our motivation for speaking?  Do we have anything worthwhile to say?  Do we know that what we say is true and charitable?  This pause before you speak is worth more than all the words you are about to spew forth, so take the time to make that pause, and only then, let your words be as the oracles of God.