O GODHEAD HID!

A SERMON FOR PASSION SUNDAY

What a grim and lonely feeling this morning as we walk into our church to find all our images and statues hidden.  Hidden beneath these gloomy purple drapes, taken away from our reverential gaze for a while, removing from us, it seems, the last vestiges of consolation left in our lives, as we enter this the most solemn and austere of the Church’s seasons which begins today, the climax of our Lenten penances, the holy Season of Passiontide. 

Why do we hide our crucifix and our images today?  The brief answer is to be found in the last few sentences of today’s holy Gospel, when the Jews took up stones to cast at our Lord: “but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple.”  Jesus hid himself.  And as he hid himself from his people in those days before his Passion, so too today he hides himself and all his saints with him behind all these purple veils.  God is hidden from his people.

If we look around our chapel this morning, we may be tempted to think that the opposite is also true, that his people are hiding themselves from God.  But it would not be true.  If we are few in number today, it’s for a good reason. It is not because we are abandoning God in these difficult times.  No more than God is abandoning his children when he hides himself and goes “out of the temple.”  No more than God will forsake us when we too must go “out of the temple” and give up for a while our weekly visits to church.  Sometimes, it is more important to give up our “togetherness” for a greater need.  We have seen this for ourselves in these past few weeks, as we all try to distance ourselves from each other, rather than coming together in impressive displays of unity and mutual support.  It’s not the first time we’ve been called on to love each other from a distance.  Similar things have happened many times in the past, as, for example, when, in time of war, husbands and fathers of families have had to leave their wives and children to go off to do battle with the enemy.  Sometimes, to protect those we love, we must leave them for a while.

And in these times of lockdown and quarantine, isolation and solitude, what happens to us when we stay home and hide ourselves from our neighbor?  Do we waste our idle hours with vain distractions?  Do we lie around all day, fearful and depressed?  Or do we use this time alone as an opportunity, a time to recognize that we are alone now with God? Our friends, colleagues, sometimes even our own family members are separated from us.  Our dear friends in heaven, the saints, our consolation and help in this life of suffering, are likewise hidden from us behind these purple veils.    We must now stand alone and face God alone.  We must lay bare our souls to our Creator, and humbly acknowledge our nothingness, confessing our sins, thanking him for taking those sins upon himself, and carrying our cross for us.  We must acknowledge the fragility of our human condition, praying that he will heed our blessed Lady’s prayers for us now and at the hour of our death.  Take these opportunities this week.  Stand alone before God.  Go to Confession if you can.  Repent your sins.  Vow to lead a more godly life.  Start now, because next Sunday, we’ll be taking it to the next step.  We must remember the sufferings of our blessed Lord, and how we were separated not only from each other, not just from the saints, but even from God himself.  And why?  Because we have sinned against him.  It is a separation that could have been eternal, if it had not been for the extreme love shown by our Saviour suffering and dying.  This alone was able to restore us to God’s favor and open heaven’s gate.

God watches over each and every one of us from heaven and gives us still, even at this late hour, the graces we need to save our soul.  That is all we need.  God may be hidden from us in these dark days, but he IS just as much as he has ever been.  God may be hidden under these purple drapes as we live through the turmoil and fear of a great pandemic, but God is still with us.  It is up to each of us to find him.  “O Godhead hid!  Devoutly I adore thee.”  Make your peace with God, and then make your Communion with him.  If you do this, God may still be hidden, but he will be hidden within you, filling you with the invisible graces that will inspire you to wondrous feats of holiness, sealing you with the unseen love that will make your yoke easy and your burden light.

THE ROYAL BANNERS FORWARD GO

A HYMN FOR PASSIONTIDE

Vexilla Regis, by Venantius Fortunatus, 6^th C.

The royal banners forward go:
The Cross shines forth in mystic glow,
Where he in flesh, our flesh who made,
Our sentence bore, our ransom paid:

Where deep for us the spear was dyed,
Life's torrent rushing from his side,
To wash us in that precious flood,
Where mingled Water flowed and Blood.

Fulfilled is all that David told
In true prophetic song of old:
Amidst the nations, God, saith he,
Hath reigned and triumphed from the Tree.

O Tree of beauty!  Tree of light!
O Tree with royal purple dight!
Elect on whose triumphal breast
Those holy limbs should find their rest:

On whose dear arms, so widely flung,
The weight of this world's ransom hung,
The price of humankind to pay,
And spoil the spoiler of his prey.

O Cross, our one reliance, hail!
This holy Passiontide avail
To give fresh merit to the saint
And pardon to the penitent.

To thee, eternal Three in One,
Let homage meet by all be done:
Whom by the Cross thou dost restore,
Preserve and govern evermore.  Amen.

BEFORE ABRAHAM WAS, I AM

A REFLECTION FOR PASSION SUNDAY

When our blessed Lord spoke of knowing Abraham, an Old Testament patriarch who had been dead for thousands of years already, the Jews mocked him.  How could he possibly know someone who lived so many years before he, Christ, was born?  And when our Lord answered, they were scandalized by what he said: “Before Abraham was, I am.”

In terms of being good English, it doesn’t really make sense.  It flouts the grammatical rule of the sequence of tenses, and worse yet, it displaces nature by making something in the present tense, “I am,” occur before what had already happened in the past, “Before Abraham was.”  But the Jews understood exactly what our Lord meant by this statement.  He was claiming that his own existence belonged outside the dimension of time, that it was eternal.  While we can refer to Christ the man in the past tense, for example, “Christ was born, he died, he rose again from the dead,” and so on, we cannot properly refer to Christ as God other than in the eternal present.  God “is”, period.  He “is,” and this is how it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.  He is eternal, as only God can be eternal.

So when our Lord told the Jews that he “is” before Abraham “was,” they were in doubt as to what Christ was telling them.  He was saying “I am God.”  This was such a dire blasphemy to them that they took up stones immediately to cast at him.  Their hardened hearts could not take into account that this man before them was the fulfillment of the ancient prophecies, the one who would redeem the people of Israel from all their iniquities.

What lesson is to be learned from today’s Gospel?  It is perhaps the simplest and most important lesson of all, namely, that Jesus Christ is God.  From this most essential truth of our faith, everything else flows.  Just as from the spilling of his Most Precious Blood, all graces flow.  The graces of repentance, of conversion, of a life spent loving and serving God.  The grace of our redemption.  Nothing else matters.  In these times when life seems so fragile, we find our only real comfort in the knowledge that Christ is God and that by his life, death and resurrection he has purchased for us the rewards of eternal life.

FEAR OF THE LORD IS THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM

A SERMON FOR THE 4TH SUNDAY IN LENT

When we summon up the courage to turn on the television, the scenes that greet us from around the world are alarming.  They remind me of those classic science fiction movies that show famous places all over the globe empty and deserted, the panicked chatter of newsreaders in different languages alerting people to the dangers of the alien invasion or whatever it might be.  One such movie was based on a book by H.G. Wells, War of the Worlds.  Its plot has become the template for nearly every alien invasion movie ever since—one moment, people are going about their usual routine, and then, all of a sudden, momentous events change everything.  We all end up in fear and panic, and things become very very bad.  Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?  The difference between War of the Worlds and the other books and movies that followed is in the ending—the aliens are defeated, sure, but how?  By millions of tiny microbes to which the aliens are exposed for the first time.  They’re infected by a virus.  Germs.  God’s tiniest living creatures saved the planet.

Like so many of H.G. Wells’ books (Animal Farm, 1984, to name but two), War of the Worlds was not only insightful, but prophetic.  God has unleashed his little creatures once again.  And I believe he has done so not to punish us, but to save us.  We have been warned many times—take a look at the Spanish Flu that decimated the world at the end of the First World War.  Have we ever thought about the timing of that Spanish Flu?  It happened right after the apparitions of Fatima!  Our Lady warned us then, and she told us what was needed to avoid the great chastisement of mankind—the Rosary.  Did we heed her warning?  Did we do as she commanded?  John XXIII failed to publish the Third Secret of Fatima in 1960, which, according to those who have read it, predicted terrible things in the Church and the world.  He failed to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  Instead, he pursued his path of destruction—first in the Church with his new Vatican Council, and then in the world, by allowing Russia to spread her errors throughout the world.  What country today continues the spread of those Marxist atheistic errors?  China.  Do we begin to see how this is all working out?

Nevertheless, this is not a time to be looking back at history.  We are far too preoccupied by what’s happening here and now.  By what’s going to happen in the future, no longer the foreseeable future by the way, because we can’t foresee it.  It is an unknown future, and because it’s unknown, it terrifies us.  We have all come to understand exactly what Franklin Delano Roosevelt meant when he said “there’s nothing to fear but fear itself.”  It’s not the coronavirus directly that has emptied our streets, levelled our economy, closed our churches, and changed our lives beyond recognition.  All this has been caused not by the little germs, but by our fear of those little germs.  I’m not saying we should not take precautions; God gave us an intellect and hopefully the virtue of prudence to go with it.  But deep inside of us, we should not allow ourselves to be taken over by fear.

Easier said than done, you might say.  But I’ve been harping about this ever since I’ve been speaking from this pulpit.  If you’re in the state of grace, there is nothing to fear and you should have peace in your hearts.  So long as you remain in that state of grace, the worst thing that can possibly happen to you is that you will die a little earlier than you would have liked.  But is that so bad, to pass from this short life, this test of your loyalty to God, into an eternity in his blessed presence, a life of blissful glory that will never end?  This is the consolation for us loyal Catholics who 1) remain faithful to the Church Christ founded, who 2) remain faithful to his commandments, and who 3) regularly receive Christ himself in the Blessed Sacrament.  Do these three things and you will save your souls.  What else truly matters?

If you’re in the state of grace, go about your business and live your live as best you can in the midst of all the restrictions and hardship we’re being called upon to endure for a while.  Let not your hearts be troubled, as the good Lord advised us when times start getting rough.  And if you’re not in the state of grace, or simply want the extra graces that come from the sacrament, I will be hearing confessions after Mass for as long as it takes.  Who knows, this may be your last opportunity to go, so make the most of it.  During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the lines for confession outside the Catholic churches went round the block.  Today, in our consumer age of 2020, people are still lining up, not for confession, but for toilet paper.  If you think about it, there’s something rather symbolic about that, isn’t there?  Let’s rethink our priorities…

I mentioned a few minutes ago, that God has unleased his tiny little Covid-19 creatures to save us rather than as a punishment.  They do so through that fear that currently pervades the population of the entire planet.   As Catholics, we can try and put this fear out of our heads through Confession and remaining in the state of grace.  But think of the rest of the world who are without this source of peace and assurance...   

Many of them, it’s true, have a kind of Christian faith.  They might believe they’re saved, and we can only hope and pray that their souls are truly ready to be judged.  But none of them can have that “blessed assurance” they sing so nicely about, that they will actually save their souls outside the Church.  So I would beg you that as you say your Rosary in these times, and I know many of you are doing so, and very fervently, you will pray hard for all those outside the Church who have no sacraments by which they can cleanse their souls and be certain they are temples of the Holy Ghost. 

And what about the rest of humanity?  Those teeming millions who are ignorant of the Gospel and Christ’s message, who live their lives according to their own pleasures and interests?  In these times, many are turning to God.  Fear drives them, like nothing else could, into his arms.  That’s why this fear is a grace from God.  Their understanding of who or what God is may not be perfect.  It might even be very far from the truth.  But if they’re sorry for the bad things they’ve done, and ask God, in whatever form they may imagine him, then who’s to say the true God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, will not take pity on their prayers and welcome them into his eternal kingdom.  If they really love God, and have perfect contrition, then hopefully their love will, as our Lord said, cover a multitude of sins.  God is all-knowing, all-just, and all-merciful.  Let’s commend them all into his mercy—“lead all souls to heaven,” we pray in our Rosary, “especially those most in need of thy mercy.”

Whatever the case, it is our duty to pray for our neighbor.  To love our neighbor as ourselves.  Finally, finally, we’re realizing that we do not love our neighbor by hugging him.  A superficial display of affection is not love.  Love is sacrifice, and we must do what we can to sacrifice our time, our energy, and yes, our safety, our health, and if need be, our lives, for our neighbor.  By doing so, we will truly be loving our neighbor as ourselves.  And “greater love hath no man than that he lay down his life” for his neighbor.  You don’t need to be told these are hard times.  But hard times call for great sacrifices, acts of heroic virtue.  So stay in the state of grace yourselves, and go and do good things.  Be a hero—for your family, your next-door neighbor, whoever you come in contact with.  They are all afraid, many of them don’t have our faith.  But now we are all humbled by the fact that it’s God’s smallest living creature, an invisible enemy, a mere virus, that has brought down the mighty from their seat, that has done so much harm to us proud and mighty human beings.  Our Tower of Babel has been brought low, and people live in fear.  That fear is the grace of God.  It may indeed be their “saving grace.”  “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” says Holy Scripture.  You are the instruments of the Lord now.  So be heroes, do what you can, by prayer and example, and help bring the world along that path from fear to Faith.

O FOOD OF MEN WAYFARING

A HYMN FOR THE 4TH SUNDAY IN LENT

By St. Thomas Aquinas, Translated By Athelstan Riley, 1906

1 O Food of men wayfaring,

The Bread of Angels sharing,

O Manna from on high!

We hunger; Lord, supply us,

Nor thy delights deny us,

Whose hearts to thee draw nigh.

2 O Stream of love past telling,

O purest Fountain, welling

From out the Saviour’s side!

We faint with thirst; revive us,

Of thine abundance give us,

And all we need provide.

3 O Jesu, by thee bidden,

We here adore thee, hidden

’Neath forms of bread and wine.

Grant when the veil is riven,

We may behold, in heaven,

Thy countenance divine.

WHENCE SHALL WE BUY BREAD?

A REFLECTION FOR THE 4TH SUNDAY IN LENT

It was not an easy decision to suspend the distribution of Holy Communion, even for a short time, during this health crisis.  People need the Blessed Sacrament, and perhaps never more than when they live in fear.  This is the sacrament that gives us strength, that gives us the graces to get through an emergency of these dimensions.  So it goes against the grain for us to deprive the faithful of these sacramental graces.  We do not it willingly.

We are told that the coronavirus is highly infectious, much more so than the common flu, for example.  Its mortality rate is also much higher, so the risk of dying if we catch it is substantially greater.  We are told that it is now spreading through the community and that thousands, if not millions, might be infected.  These factors contribute to providing us with a proportionate cause for taking such an unwelcome step as suspending Holy Communion.

It is not a sin to skip going to Holy Communion.  So you may do so in all good conscience if there is proportionate cause.  The Church’s normal practice throughout most of her history was not to distribute Communion at every Mass—only the celebrant received the sacrament.  Our purpose in attending Mass is to offer sacrifice to God.  The great multitude followed our Lord into the wilderness “because they saw his miracles which he did on them that were diseased.”  They didn’t follow him so they could eat a good meal.  The point is, they ended up not only seeing a miracle, but being the reason why our Lord actually performed the miracle.  The Feeding of the Five Thousand is one of the greatest and most well-known miracles of Christ’s ministry, and was the result of people depriving themselves of food for a higher cause.  In our own case, that higher cause is Charity, the protection of our neighbor’s health.

In return for our sacrifice in not receiving the graces of the sacrament, it is not presumptuous of us to ask our blessed Lord to provide us instead with graces even more abundant.  As we starve spiritually in this present wilderness, we should never lose faith in him.  He will not let us faint along the way, but will surely feed us with as much grace as we need, so many, in fact, that there will be many baskets left over.

UNCLEAN SPIRITS

A SERMON FOR THE 3RD SUNDAY IN LENT

Today has been declared a National Day of Prayer.  For once though, the American people do not have to be told to pray.  In the face of peril our thoughts turn naturally to God.  When there’s little we can do beyond washing our hands to protect ourselves from a potentially fatal bug, at some point something in our human nature makes us realize that the created things around us aren’t worth anything at all, and we turn toward God.  He is our protector, our salvation and our hope. 

And so we have a national day of prayer.  Who should we be praying for?  Not only for ourselves and our loved ones, but for the most vulnerable around us, those who are elderly, or who have medical conditions that make them prone to infection.  We pray for all those who are already suffering from disease and sickness, and for their families on whom they depend, or who depend on them and love them.  We pray for the souls of those who are dying, and for the repose of the souls of those who have already succumbed.  We should not forget to pray for each other, all our neighbors far and wide, who share our anxieties and live in fear, who find themselves isolated and in need of help.  For our doctors and medical staff who devote themselves, tirelessly and selflessly, to the care of the sick, placing themselves in harm’s way.  For all those who have to leave their homes and loved ones to maintain law and order, to keep our homes supplied with water and electricity, who deliver food and the other necessities of life.  For all these and others known only to God, we pray today and commit them to the loving care of the divine Healer.

Our Gospel today deals with the question of demons, and how we must cast them out.  Demons work the same way as a virus.  Instead of spreading sickness, however, they roam about the world seeking the ruin of souls, sowing moral evil and depravity, infecting people with lies, hatred and division.  Like a virus, it starts out small—just a quirky idea in somebody’s head.  Karl Marx was one of these men who had a virus-like idea.  It tried to appeal to the masses, promising them free stuff that would be taken from the rich upper classes who didn’t deserve it.  This kind of Marxist and Socialist ideology is now rising again in popularity among the same kind of people who have already had their beliefs infected—like a virus that gets into their system, it starts small but quickly builds up into something far more serious.  From climate change, open borders and the gradual suppression of free speech it transmutes into gender denial, gay rights, and eventually the total abolition of God.  Some ideas are more deadly than others, but they all work together, infecting the minds of our people and turning them away from God.

These demons must all be cast out.  But if we try to do so in the name of Beelzebub, another demon, then our exorcism won’t work.  We will simply be a house divided.  For example, we cannot drive out socialism with an unbridled capitalism that exploits the working man just to make a very few very rich.  Pope Leo XIII, over a century ago, proposed a Catholic approach to social and economic politics that would cast out the demons of socialism very nicely if only the world would adopt it.  The Church has the right answers too when we’re discussing the other vexing questions of the day.  Truth comes from God, not from the will of the majority.  Just because a country has a referendum to legalize abortion or same-sex marriage does not make these horrors any more legal or moral in the eyes of God.  Rather, it is just a sign that a majority of the people has been infected.

The present crisis is an opportunity.  There are no atheists in fox holes, and we certainly seem to be in a bit of a fox hole right now.  So many people are turning to God right now.  They seek protection and help in their need.  As we join our prayers to theirs, it’s a good time to extend a helping hand, and set aside any differences we may have.  People who were once hostile are more receptive to those little acts of kindness.  Their vulnerability, their weakness, is something God can use to create unity out of division.  There are even signs of growing bipartisan cooperation in Congress.  Help foster this spirit of unity with charity and truth.  Look for ways to help your neighbor, and in doing so, you will be helping to cast out their other demons—replacing hatred with love, lies with truth, and Beelzebub with the finger of God. 

THROUGH THE NIGHT OF DOUBT AND SORROW

A HYMN FOR THE 3RD SUNDAY IN LENT

By Bernhard Severin Ingemann, translated by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould

1 Through the night of doubt and sorrow

onward goes the pilgrim band,

singing songs of expectation,

marching to the promised land.

2 Clear before us through the darkness

gleams and burns the guiding light;

pilgrim clasps the hand of pilgrim,

stepping fearless through the night.

3 One the light of God's own presence

o'er his ransomed people shed,

chasing far the gloom and terror,

brightening all the path we tread:

4 One the object of our journey,

one the faith which never tires,

one the earnest looking forward,

one the hope our God inspires:

5 One the strain that lips of thousands

lift as from the heart of one;

one the conflict, one the peril,

one the march in God begun:

6 One the gladness of rejoicing

on the far eternal shore,

where the one almighty Father

reigns in love for evermore.

7 Onward, therefore, Christian pilgrims,

onward with the cross our aid;

bear its shame, and fight its battle,

till we rest beneath its shade.

RISING TO THE TRANSCENDENT

A SERMON FOR THE 2ND SUNDAY IN LENT

The 2^nd Sunday in Lent is often called “Transfiguration Sunday” because of the Gospel we have just read.  What a far cry it is from last week.  If we were to give a name to last Sunday, it should probably be “Temptation Sunday,” as you’ll remember the Gospel described the three temptations of Christ.  From Temptation to Transfiguration seems like quite a leap, doesn’t it?  And yet there’s a certain flow here, a certain cause and effect, even, which we can use as a help in our own path to salvation.

Look at the third and last of the temptations of Christ in the wilderness last week: “Again,” the Gospel tells us, “the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain.”  And then in this week’s Gospel, “Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John, his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart.”  In each case, the prelude to the action, as it were, is the ascent of a high mountain—last week “an exceeding high mountain” and now this Sunday “an high mountain apart”. 

These are by no means the only two times in Holy Scripture that men ascend high mountains to receive some great revelation.  We have only to think of Moses receiving the Ten Commandments at the summit of Mount Sinai, of Elijah finding God on Mount Horeb, not in the fire, nor in the whirlwind, but in the “still small voice of calm.”  After the chastisement of mankind, Noah’s Ark came to rest on the summit of Mount Ararat, and for the redemption of mankind, Christ died on the summit of Mount Calvary.  Even in modern times, when St. Francis wanted to prepare himself for the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel, he went up to the heights of Mount Alvernia, and there he fasted forty days and forty nights, during which time he received our Lord’s stigmata in his own hands and feet and side.

One may wonder why we must first climb high before the reason for the climb is revealed.  Does it have something to do, perhaps, with the rarified atmosphere as we reach the heights far above sea level?  Is it that the air is thinner up there, so that our physiology is more susceptible to visions of heavenly things?  Or is it simply that on the mountain tops, we are “nearer, my God, to thee?”  Nearer to God, our Father “who art in heaven?”  But I don’t think either one of these explanations fits the bill.  Surely, God would not trivialize the great events that happened on these mountains, by restricting them to a specific altitude, whether altitude is meant to signify either their distance above sea level, or their distance below heaven! 

Let’s face it though, the great height they all have in common cannot be a coincidence.  There’s a reason, isn’t there, why, in order to be close to the Most High Omnipotent Good Lord, we must ourselves ascend to the heights.  Why we must leave behind the lower things of the earth so we can reach the higher things of heaven, so we can replace the material with the spiritual, the natural with the supernatural, the things of creation with the things of the Creator.  And so we climb above these lower things.  The mountains that our Lord climbed, and Moses and Elijah and St. Francis, all symbolize this rising above the things of this world into the higher world of the spirit, the higher world of God himself.

But there’s danger up there in the mountain tops.  The danger of having a better view of the world beneath us, with all its worldly distractions.  The Devil knew this, and last week he took advantage of it to take our Lord to the top of an exceeding high mountain.  There, he “sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them.”  From the heights of the spiritual we too can look down on the material things of this world and see “the glory of them”, but we must view this glory with spiritual eyes, realizing that its glory consists only of the fact that it is a creation of God.  Otherwise, it isn’t worth a hill of beans.  When we focus on God and the things of God, we can compare the things of this world to the perfection that is God, and we can see them for what they’re really worth—mere distractions from what is really important, temptations that take us away from God.

On the summit of this high mountain, Satan offers our Lord all these appealing distractions of earthly beauty, money, power, and pleasure; and he saith unto him, “All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.”  Here Satan reveals his ultimate temptation to which these material things will eventually lead all of us if we seek them alone.  The mountain top of spiritual perfection has this one last temptation, in that we can see everything that can be ours if we forsake God.  Satan took our Lord up to the mountain top, so that he could see it all and have it all, if only he would acknowledge Satan as God, and adore him. It’s a clever plan, “diabolically clever” as they say.  But as Christ was himself God, he knew very well who this imposter was, that this tempter was the fallen angel who had once before likened himself unto God and had been thrown out of heaven for his insolence.  Satan now found himself thrown out a second time as our Lord admonished him: “Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”  His example for us is clear—we too must recognize the material things of this world for what they are, the path to destruction, the temptation that leads us to place the world, and the Lord of the World, Satan, before God.

This week, it is our Lord’s turn to take his three favorite disciples up a “high mountain apart”.  He does not take them there in order to show them all the kingdoms of the world and offering them to Peter, James and John.  He does not tempt them with earthly things.  He does not demand that they worship him.  He simply shows himself to be God, something that Satan, of course, could never do.  “His face shone as the sun and his raiment glowed, white as snow.” 

Yesterday was the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the smartest men who ever lived, a doctor of the Church.  The saint received a vision of Christ crucified, and heard a voice saying, “Thomas, thou hast written well of me.  What reward wilt thou that I give thee?”  And instead of asking for an even greater insight and deeper understanding of the things of God, St. Thomas Aquinas replied simply, “None other, Lord, but thyself.”  God offers us himself.  Between the devil’s offer last week of all the riches of the world, and our Lord’s offer today of himself, there lies a choice that we must make every single time we are tempted.  Shall we choose Creation, or the Creator?  Today we behold a glimpse of the face of God himself in all his glory.  It is the only reward our Blessed Lord offers us, but it is enough!

'TIS GOOD, LORD, TO BE HERE

A HYMN FOR THE 2ND SUNDAY IN LENT

By Joseph A. Robinson, 1888

1. 'Tis good, Lord, to be here,
Thy glory fills the night;
Thy face and garments, like the sun,
Shine with unborrowed light.

2. 'Tis good, Lord, to be here,
Thy beauty to behold
Where Moses and Elijah stand,
Thy messengers of old.

3. Fulfiller of the past,
Promise of things to be,
We hail Thy body glorified
And our redemption see.

4. Before we taste of death,
We see Thy kingdom come;
We fain would hold the vision bright
And make this hill our home.

5. 'Tis good, Lord, to be here.
Yet we may not remain;
But since Thou bidst us leave the mount,
Come with us to the plain.

IT IS GOOD FOR US TO BE HERE

A REFLECTION FOR THE 2ND SUNDAY IN LENT

IT IS GOOD FOR US TO BE HERE

What an amazing sight at the top of this mountain of Transfiguration!  We can read about it in the Gospels, but if we want to see for ourselves a dim glimpse of the living and true God, we must go with these three disciples, Peter, James and John, and follow them.  Where else did our blessed Lord take these three disciples?  Was it not up another mountain, to a garden on the Mount of Olives, a garden called Gethsemane?  Here he was transfigured a second time, not in the glorified vision of the transfiguration, but into the “Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief” as the prophet Isaiah had foretold.  A mountain on which his face and body were covered with the sweat of blood, and his soul, as he told them, was “sorrowful unto death.”  This second vision by Peter, James and John was no less powerful than the one they witnessed today at the Transfiguration.  And yet, their reaction was to fall asleep.  If we want to see for ourselves that glimpse of God, we must follow them to Gethsemane, yes, but we must not fall asleep when we get there.  Behold instead this Man of Sorrows, and behold in him the terrible consequence of our own weaknesses, imperfections, and sins.

None of us like to dwell on the somber facts of life and death.  We don’t mind thinking about the good things of our faith, the beautiful Mass, the nice statues, our cute little rosary beads in their matching boxes.  We’re very content today to enjoy the weekly Sunday suspension of the Lenten fast.  We manage to “survive” Lent by thinking about the goodies we’ll enjoy at Easter.  We would join St. Peter in a heartbeat on the Mount of Transfiguration when he said “It’s good for us to be here.”  But when it comes to sorrow and suffering, it’s a different story.  We would prefer to fall asleep and not have to think about it.  Where was St. Peter as our Lord died on Mount Calvary?  He certainly wasn’t at the foot of the Cross, declaring that it was “good for us to be here.”  And yet we must be there.  We must keep vigil with our Lord on the Mount of Olives, we must comfort him on Mount Calvary, and yes, with him we must do battle against Satan on our own Mountains of Temptation.  It’s time to do the preparation now.  We know what that involves—to spend a full forty days and forty nights in fasting and penance, as we climb these mountains with Christ and experience with him the hardship, pain and sorrow of his own sacrifice.  Today, we’re permitted to enjoy with him for a short time the glory of his divinity and the promise of our own ultimate reward in heaven.  Let today’s temporary indulgences be our encouragement to do better tomorrow and the days after, reinforcing in us a determination to persevere in penance long after we are transfigured today, hopefully not by any over-indulgence in the food and drink permitted to us!  Our ultimate reward is of infinitely greater value than the transitory pleasures of this life, and today’s oasis is just that—a chance to take a breath before we plunge once more into the waters of strife.  Let’s not lose focus.  If we are to achieve that final reward in heaven, let’s remember that wherever the will of God takes us, “It is good, Lord, for us to be here.”

EVERY WORD FROM THE MOUTH OF GOD

A SERMON FOR QUADRAGESIMA SUNDAY

We stand at the threshold of Lent.  With forty days and forty nights of fasting and penance, culminating in the remembrance of the Passion and Death of our blessed Lord, it is not a particularly pleasant threshold to be standing at.  To give us a little fortitude for what lies ahead, to encourage us in our spiritual and physical endeavors, our Lord himself gave us the example by retiring to the wilderness and himself fasting for forty days and forty nights.  We’ve managed to get through the first four days already, and hopefully we’re all succeeding in following the Church’s fasting laws without cheating, maybe even adding a few voluntary penances of our own.  But before we congratulate ourselves that we haven’t dipped into the cookie jar the last few afternoons, today’s Gospel should remind us that our petty little temptations to break the fast are nothing compared to the temptation our Lord felt after forty days without eating anything.

“And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights,” St. Matthew’s Gospel informs us, “he was afterward an hungred.”  No kidding!  We’d be hungry too.  And if we hadn’t eaten for that long, do you think we could drive past McDonald’s without being tempted not to drive past, but to “drive through” and order a burger?  We might already be experiencing such temptations.  After all, it is quite within our power to turn the steering wheel into the drive-thru lane, pull a credit card out of our wallet, and then very much enjoy the fruits of our naughtiness.  We could, but by the help of God’s grace, we do not.  We remember our Lord’s reply to Satan, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”  Our Lord himself, you see, had higher powers than we do, and could easily change a stone into bread.  Just as easily as we could pull into McDonald’s.  The powers were higher, but the temptation was the same.  “I’m hungry but I’m fasting.  I shouldn’t eat, but I really want to.  I have the opportunity.  Will I or won’t I?”

Our Lord endures these temptations from Satan to show us that he shares our human weaknesses because he too is human in everything.  Everything but sin, that is.  Like us, he is tempted but, unlike us, he does not sin.  He gives us the example that although we may be human, we can remain free from sin too, if we don’t fall into temptation. 

Temptations are not bad in themselves.  On the contrary, they are our opportunity to earn our place in heaven.  In that sense, they are friends, the kind of friends our mother warned us about.  They’re friends to be avoided at all costs, as they will try to lead us into sin.  But no matter how hard we try to ignore them, they keep texting and calling and coming over to the house to get us to go along with them to do mischief.  They’re the type of friend where we learn, from their bad example, how to be good ourselves.

Our Lord suffered three temptations.  Twice, Satan uses Holy Scripture to tempt the Son of God.  All three times, our Lord uses Scripture to counter his temptation.  This is an important warning to us all, which our Lord enunciates very clearly in those words that we must “live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”  Satan may quote scripture by heart very cleverly, but Satan hardly lives by the words of Scripture, the words that come from God’s mouth—he merely uses those words against God.  He takes the truth and twists it to make it something entirely different, something that drives us away from God’s grace rather than encouraging us to live the life of grace. 

This is the danger of Holy Scripture, and one which the traditional Church was quite aware of.  The other Christian denominations rightly revere the Bible.  They hold it up as the divine Word, which it is, and they claim to follow it.  If they actually follow the true meaning of the words of Scripture and live by them, those words that proceed out of the mouth of God, they will save their souls.  “What’s that you say, Father? Protestants will save their souls outside the Church?”  No, I didn’t say that.  I said “IF they actually follow the true meaning of the words in the Bible, they won’t be Protestant any more.  They’ll follow the true meaning of “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church” and they will seek to become members of Christ’s true Church founded on Peter.  They will live by many other verses of Scripture that point the reader along only one road, and that’s the road to Rome.  The promise that our Lord made that he would send his Holy Spirit to guide his Church in all truth, that the Catholic Church, in other words, cannot err in matters of faith and morals.  They will live by our Lord’s words when he said that his Body is food indeed and his Blood is drink indeed, and that unless you eat this Body and drink this Blood you will have no life in you.  They’ll live by these words by seeking the Real Presence of Christ that is certainly not to be found in any Protestant church.  They will live by the Scripture when our Blessed Lady proclaimed that “henceforth all generations shall call me blessed, and they will stop calling her just “Mary” and start revering her as the Blessed Virgin Mother that is her true role.  If they live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God, they will be Catholic.

It escapes me how anyone outside the Catholic Church can ever possibly imagine they have the truth when it is left to each individual to interpret Scripture the way he wants.  It seems not to matter to them that they all end up contradicting each other with their own interpretations of the words that come from the mouth of God.  With no infallible Church to guide them, they are left with no real faith.  How can they have faith in something when the person in the pew next to them believes something entirely different.  It is a simple fact that two contradictory statements cannot both be true.  2 + 2 cannot equal 4 and 5 at the same time.  Only Christ’s Church, protected by the infallible guidance of his Holy Spirit, can give us the confidence that what we believe is truly the correct interpretation of Scripture.  And while Protestants may see this as just Catholics being arrogant, it is in fact nothing of the sort, but the humble acceptance that what Christ said is actually true.

Let’s not weaponize our faith, by refusing charity to those who are not Catholic.  On the contrary, our unique claim to truth bestows upon us the duty to be charitable to all men, a charity that is best shown by leading them into the truth.  They may live by some of the words that proceed from the mouth of God, but certainly not by every word.  If the Catholic Church claims to have the whole truth, it is up to us and only us to explain to other Christians the other words, the ones they do not live by.  For if we leave them to wallow in their ignorance of these truths, we can be sure they will end up living “by bread alone.”  Is this not what they end up consuming at their false communion services—bread alone?  And the Novus Ordo even, is this too not “bread alone” that ends up being passed around from layman to layman, hand to hand? 

There’s a message for our own day in this Gospel.  “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”  We can’t pick and choose, like the Protestants and the Novus Ordo folks.  So whatever we do, we must never fall into temptation, we must never settle for bread alone.  In the second temptation, our Lord reminds Satan, “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.”  And in the third, he drives out the devil with the words, “Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”  We must follow Christ’s example this Lent, and we must start by refusing stedfastly not to fall into temptation, and by driving out Satan so we can worship and serve God in the state of grace.  Once he’s gone, be assured that, as with our Lord in the desert, angels will come and minister unto us, bearing us up, and leading us back under the safety of God’s wings.