LILIES OF THE FIELD

 A SERMON FOR THE 14TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”

When our blessed Lord tells us to do something, it’s a good idea to obey.  In today’s Gospel he instructs us “to consider the lilies of the field,” and so let’s turn our thoughts in the direction of these simple flowers for a moment, and see what we can learn from them.  It’s a very easy lesson.  Our Lord begins by describing them as basically useless: “they toil not, neither do they spin.”  And yet, he goes on, they are of great beauty, more glorious in their simplicity than all the rich garments worn by the king himself.  Not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these simple little lilies of the field.

From this comparison that our Lord makes, it is evident that we are meant to measure the worth of individuals, not according to their usefulness to society, but rather by something else more rudimentary. Our value to society can be a very tenuous one.  We should beware the very dangerous path on which such thinking sends us.  Let’s never forget how the Nazis upheld this false ideal and very early on started the systematic killing of the mentally ill, the elderly and the infirm.  And it didn’t end with them.  Their policy of eugenics is raising its ugly head again today, when countries like Iceland boast that they have eradicated Down Syndrome from their society by the simple method of having aborted every child who is detected as having it.  Or the increasing number of countries, and even American states, where euthanasia is becoming an accepted option for those who cannot afford or are not simply not prepared to bear the cross they have been given. 

Every individual is a child of God, a lily of the field in his own right, and as such, is a part of God’s glorious creation, whether they toil and spin, or not.  Each and every human being is of immeasurable value, because he is beloved of God, so beloved that God sent his only-begotten Son to die for him.  All human beings, rich and poor, and yes, even good and evil, are born at least as children of God, glorious in their innocence and simplicity, and destined for eternal life.

That eternal life, however, is left to us to choose whether we want it or not, whether we’re going to use our free will to do whatever’s necessary to achieve it.  We are all born as beautiful lilies of the field, but alas, as we get older and develop the use of reason, we so often waste our time trying to acquire more beauty—artificial beauty—to make ourselves more attractive, more popular.  But “which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?”  Such attempts are nothing but vanity, and these imagined improvements we make to our outward appearance, or the graceful and witty airs we put on to impress other people—all these are nothing more than a pretence, vain attempts to improve on God’s creation, to make ourselves that which we are not, and for the sole purpose of boosting our own ego. 

Like the grass, which, as our Lord says, “today is, and to morrow is cast into the oven,” all these vain attempts to make ourselves appear better than we are shall ultimately fail as we grow old, infirm, wrinkled and cranky.  Ultimately, as we lie on our deathbed and look back on all our wasted energy, will the realization of our own vanity hit us too late to be of any use?  Let’s hope not.  Let’s pray not.

Meanwhile, let’s resolve to abandon such attempts to pretend to be better than we are.  Instead, let’s take advantage of the help God gives us through his grace, to make ourselves truly better than we are!  Let’s improve our behavior, make better moral choices, lead a more holy life, increase our love for God and our neighbor.  Let’s concentrate on improving our soul, and abandon our silly, vain and worthless pampering of our physical appearance, our obsession with our own popularity, and our never-ending quest to acquire more and more money and material possessions.  Let’s do all we can to be that lily of the field.

As our blessed Lord tells us, it’s all about making this fundamental choice.  “No man can serve two masters… ye cannot serve God and mammon.”  So we pause in our life today, we take a deep breath, and we assess where we are with this, the most important decision we can ever make.  Am I going to spend my life serving God, or do I waste it away on mammon, the vain, frivolous things of this world, and the artificial illusion of satisfaction they provide?  Most people never stop to think about this choice.  They just go their merry way, and are lost on the road to perdition.  How so?  Because by simply following their own instinct, they will naturally do the things they want to do.  And that’s going to lead them to a place where, as our Lord says, they will come to hate the one master, which is God, and love the other, which is mammon.  We priests often watch this happen, powerless to do anything except counsel the sinner and pray for his conversion from the path he is on.  So often though, our efforts meet with nothing but the slow but steady aversion to God and the things of God that accompanies the sinner’s downfall—their gradual rejection of the sacraments, the more and more infrequent attendance at Mass, until one day we realize that we’ve lost them altogether. 

Please don’t even set foot on this path.  If you think you’re slipping, stop now before it’s too late.  Make the firm and conscious choice to seek first the kingdom of God and, as St. Paul says, walk in the Spirit.  “They that are Christ’s,” he says, “have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.”  To crucify the flesh takes effort, energy, hard work and sacrifice.  It won’t just happen.  You have to cooperate with God’s graces and make it happen through an act of the will.  Our choice is placed before us today.  Think about it, please.  Choose God, not mammon!  Because you can’t serve them both.

FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT WITH ALL THY MIGHT

 A HYMN FOR THE 14TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

By John S. B. Monsell (1863)

1 Fight the good fight with all thy might;

Christ is thy strength, and Christ thy right:

Lay hold on life, and it shall be

Thy joy and crown eternally.

 

2 Run the straight race through God's good grace,

Lift up thine eyes, and seek his face;

Life with its way before us lies,

Christ is the path, and Christ the prize.

 

3 Cast care aside; upon thy Guide

Lean, and his mercy will provide;

Lean, and the trusting soul shall prove,

Christ is its life and Christ its love.

 

4 Faint not, nor fear, his arms are near;

He changeth not, and thou art dear;

Only believe, and thou shalt see

That Christ is all in all to thee.

TAKE NO THOUGHT FOR YOUR LIFE

A REFLECTION ON THE 14TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST AND FEAST OF THE BEHEADING OF ST. JOHN BAPTIST

When you read through the annals of Church history you’ll find a vast array of saints.  Among them, indeed towering above them all, is the man about whom our blessed Lord said these remarkable words: “Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist.”  Today, as we commemorate St. John Baptist’s martyrdom at the hand of the wicked King Herod, we should pause and ponder upon what made this man greater than any other born of women.

St. Paul’s Epistle offers us the comparison between the children of darkness, those who “walk in the Spirit” and the children of darkness, those who live merely to “fulfil the lust of the flesh.”  The latter are not merely those who fall into the actual physical sin of lust, but rather, as St. Paul himself confirms, those who “do the things that they would,”—in other words, those who are slaves to their own fallen human nature which inclines them towards a life of self-indulgence.  The Apostle goes on to list the works of the flesh, and if we think about the life and death of St. John Baptist as we read through this list, we can see how the cousin and forerunner of our blessed Lord represents the very antithesis of every single one of these evils.

Far from living a life of self-indulgence John the Baptist is described as dwelling out in the desert, wearing clothes of camel's hair, and living on locusts and wild honey.  Far from indulging in a life of lust, he actively condemned the adultery of King Herod Antipas, who, after divorcing his own wife, was now openly living in sin with the wife of his brother.  This of course got him into trouble with the king, who ended up having him put to death at the insistence of his mistress Herodias.  But despite knowing the power over life and death the king had over him, John the Baptist did not hesitate to rebuke his sinfulness by speaking “truth to power.”  Before our blessed Lord had even uttered the words in today’s Gospel, that ye should “seek first the kingdom of God,” St. John Baptist had already fulfilled them by his own life, his actions, and ultimately, his death.

As the Last Gospel in our Mass proclaims, John “came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.  He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.”  Our Lord’s cousin was indeed the first of the children of light.  Since his beheading, there have been many other children of light, and even today, I hope that all of us might dare to lay claim to this title, despite our many sins.  By bearing witness of the “true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,” we remain members of that noble band of men and women who “seek first the kingdom of God,” a mixture of saints and sinners certainly, but whose first focus is on saving their souls by putting God first in their lives, their neighbor second, and their own earthly happiness last.

NEVER WAS IT KNOWN

A SERMON FOR THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY

The terrible earthquake that struck Haiti last Saturday, in which about 2000 people have so far been reported dead, reminds me of a story I heard about another earthquake. 

This one happened in Japan several years ago.  As rescuers were frantically searching for survivors in the ruins of the city, they reached the shattered home of a young woman.  Through the cracks in the ruptured walls, they could see her dead body inside, a sad but increasingly familiar sight to the rescuers.  But there was something different about this body.  The women was in a kneeling position, leaning forward as though in an act of worship.  The house had collapsed around her, and had crushed her back and her head.  Although she was obviously dead, the leader of the rescue team managed to put his hand through a narrow gap in the wall to reach the woman’s body. He was hoping against hope for some sign of life, but the cold and stiff body confirmed that there was nothing more that could be done for her.

He and the rest of his team couldn’t afford to waste any more time there.  The recovery of the dead was of secondary importance during this crucial time when their search and rescue mission could still find survivors amidst the rubble.  So they left this poor woman’s house and continued to the next collapsed building.  But for some reason, the team leader felt driven by a compelling force to go back to the ruined house of the dead woman.  Again, he knelt down and pushed his hand through the narrow cracks to search the little space under the dead body.  That’s when he let out a scream of excitement, “A child! There’s a child here! “

The whole team rushed back and worked together, carefully removing the piles of rubble and fallen masonry around the dead woman.  Under her body they recovered a 3-month old little boy wrapped in a flowery blanket.  This woman had made the ultimate sacrifice to save her son, using her own body as a cover to protect him from the house falling on top of them.  The little boy was still sleeping peacefully when the team leader picked him up.

They immediately sent for the medical doctor who quickly arrived to examine the little boy.  After he opened the blanket, he saw a cell phone next to the baby. There was a text message on the screen that the boy’s mother had managed to tap out as her worst fears began to be realized.  The doctor read the words and passed the phone without being able to speak.  The message was simple.  It said,” If you can survive, you must remember that I love you.” As they passed the phone from one hand to another, each of these hardened first responders in turn was reduced to silent tears.” If you can survive, you must remember that I love you.” Such is a mother’s love for her child!

Today is the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  Mary, the Mother of Jesus.  This was the Mother who presented her Baby to God in the Temple of Jerusalem, and whose Immaculate Heart the prophet Simeon warned would be pierced with the sword of sorrow.  As her beloved Son looked down on her from the Cross, we can never imagine how sharp that sword was.  With a mother’s love, she watched her Son endure the most terrible sufferings, and unlike the mother in Japan, she was completely powerless, with no means whatsoever to protect him.  Or perhaps she understood an even greater truth, that actually it was in her power to save him?  Perhaps she knew that all she had to do was beg God for the Crucifixion to stop, to beg him to send down the legion of Angels her Son had already declined to summon, and that by doing so, God would acquiesce to her prayer, and our Lord’s sufferings, as well as her own, would be brought to an abrupt and merciful end.  The terrible swift sword of justice would scatter his enemies, and no longer pierce her own heart.  God would refuse her nothing that she asked.  And yet, as she looked up at her beloved Son, she knew that even though it was within her power to prevent what was happening, it was not God’s will that she should prevent it.  Her heart was torn in half between what she could do and what she knew she should not do, between what she wanted and what she knew God wanted.  As always, she chose God.  “Be it done unto me according to thy Word.”

And then her Son spoke to her.  Not what we might imagine to be words of consolation, and yet they gave her the strength to deal with this intense suffering.  He looked down at his Mother, standing next to his beloved apostle St. John, and he said, “Mother, behold thy son.”  From that moment on, the Blessed Virgin Mary has been the Mother of us all—you, me, everyone who follows St. John in accepting our Lord’s next words, “Son, behold thy Mother!” 

This is no ordinary mother that we’ve been given.  Her love for us soars above the purely natural love of a mother for her child.  Her love is super-natural.  It is the divine love for her own biological Son, Son of Mary and Son of God, that fuels her love for us.  Her Immaculate Heart, so tormented by her inability to protect Jesus, now knows no bounds in its love for us.  She has been given this mission by her Son in his last moments on the Cross.  It is his dying wish that she should be our Mother, and thus she will make it her supreme task to protect us.  All we have to do is to simply place ourselves beneath the cloak of her protection.  Here we are safe from the world crumbling around us.  Here we are protected from our enemies, spiritual and temporal.  No matter how often we get ourselves in trouble or how deeply we fall into sin, no matter what ills we experience, what sorrows beset us, our blessed Mother, like our own mother, is ready to wipe away our tears, ready to forgive us, ready to protect our body from all harm and our soul from eternal death.  She protects us by praying “for us sinners, now and (especially) at the hour of our death.”  We should never forget her love for us, and pray the Memorare every day “that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thine intercession was left unaided.”  

Whatever happens in this world around us, the Immaculate Heart of Mary will love us and protect us as only a mother can.  But it’s up to us to remain under her cloak, like that little baby in the earthquake.  It’s up to us to remain in the state of grace by hiding beneath our Blessed Mother who is “full of grace.”  And then don’t ever forget the love of her Immaculate Heart.  “If you can survive, you must remember that I love you.”

O MARY OF GRACES

 A HYMN FOR THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY

Translated by Fr. Douglas Hyde

O Mary of graces and Mother of God
May I tread in the paths that the righteous have trod
And mayest thou save me from evil's control
And mayest thou save me in body and soul.

And mayest thou save me by land and by sea
And mayest thou save me from tortures to be
May the guard of the angels around me abide
May God be before me and God at my side.

O Mary of graces, oh answer my plea
Under crosses in trials, to thee do I flee
O teach me sweet mother to follow His will
To journey with courage up Calvary's hill

O Mary my Mother and Mother of all
Be my guide and protectress that I may not fall
And mayest thou lead me to heaven above
With saints and angels I'll share in thy love

May a smile of thy mercy from heaven come down
When my heart would leave thee and cleave to the ground
And when this poor body returns to its sod
May thy loving arms bear my soul to its God.

DEO GRATIAS!

 A REFLECTION FOR THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY

As we celebrate the feast of the Immaculate Conception today, we run the risk of ignoring one of the most important Sunday Gospels of the year.  So please give it the attention it deserves by following it in your missal as it’s read at the end of today’s Mass.  It’s the story of the healing of the ten lepers.  All ten are cured of their disease but only one comes back to our Lord to thank him properly.  The message of course is about gratitude, that we should offer our own thanks to God regularly and with heartfelt sincerity.

 

In this country, we have a special day set aside for this purpose, the Thursday of Thanksgiving in the month of November.  But really, is one day out of 365 sufficient to express the gratitude that is owed to the Lord our God for all the things he has given to us?  If truth be told, we should be on our knees every minute of the day expressing our appreciation for his love and for every good thing that has proceeded from this love.  But of course, we have other things to do, far less important certainly, but which nevertheless have to be prioritized because of our duties of life.  So let’s make it a point to say thank you to God whenever we do have a spare moment and “have nothing better to do.” 

 

At the very minimum, let’s say our Grace after Meals.  It’s called “Grace”, not because it has anything to do with grace, but because it comes from the Latin word gratias, which means “Thanks.”  This should come as no surprise, as we begin our Grace after Meals with the words “We give thee thanks, Almighty God, for these and all thy benefits which we have received from thy bounty.”  Get into the habit of saying this at the end of every meal, and make it a minimum first step towards expressing the gratitude to God that we owe him.

 

On this feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, we can find the inspiration to give thanks in the prayer of our Lady called the Magnificat.  She who had more reason than any other human being to give thanks to God, did so with all humility and in awe at the enormous privileges she had been granted by her Creator.  The clergy repeat this Canticle of the Blessed Virgin, the Magnificat, every evening at the Office of Vespers, and it would be a wonderful addition to everyone’s night-time prayers.  Here is the text of the Magnificat for those who would like to include our blessed Lady’s own Act of Thanksgiving in their own prayers:

 

My soul * ✠ doth magnify the Lord.

2  And my spirit hath rejoiced * in God my Saviour.

3  For he hath regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden: * for behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.

4  For he that is mighty hath magnified me; * (Bow your head for the rest of this verse) and holy is his Name.

5  And his mercy is on them that fear him * throughout all generations.

6  He hath shewed strength with his arm; * he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

7  He hath put down the mighty from their seat, * and hath exalted the humble and meek.

8  He hath filled the hungry with good things; * and the rich he hath sent empty away.

9  He remembering his mercy * hath holpen his servant Israel.

10  As he promised to our forefathers, * Abraham and his seed for ever.

11  Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, * and to the Holy Ghost.

12  As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, * world without end.   Amen.

 

ARK OF THE COVENANT

 A SERMON FOR MARYMAS

In the Litany of Loreto, we ask our blessed Lady to intercede for us.  We list her titles, one by one, titles that describe various aspects of our Lady and her beatific status.  We call her “Mother most pure,” “Virgin most prudent,” and so on, and we ask her to pray for us, understanding that we who are not “most pure” or “most prudent” very much need her prayers.  But then we come to a series of invocations that are not so obvious, “Mystical Rose, for example, “Tower of Ivory.” These require a bit more thought to figure out their meaning, and I wonder how many of us take the time to dwell on these deeper and more problematic titles of our Lady as we rattle off our litany.  Probably, most of us are content to just entrust our prayers to her, not knowing what the titles mean or why we’re praying them.  Today, though, we’re going to give one of those titles the closer look it deserves.  It’s the one where we refer to our blessed Lady as “Ark of the Covenant.” 

If we think about it for a few seconds, we should be able to piece together at least some superficial reasons why she is called by this name.  The word “Ark” means vessel, like Noah’s Ark, the vessel that not only carried but protected mankind and all the animal species from extinction in the Great Flood.  But then there’s the original Old Testament Ark of the Covenant itself.  This was also a vessel.  It carried three items, three things that were sufficient to represent the covenant between God and man.  They symbolized the three most important aspects of God’s interaction with mankind, the covenant that he had established for the Jews of the Old Testament, symbols of God’s protection, nourishment and guidance of man, who would thereby be saved, not just from drowning in a physical flood, but from spiritual and eternal extinction.

For us today, we should be thrilled to be reminded once again that what God did for the Jews in the Old Testament was merely a shadow of what he would do for us in the New.  Our blessed Lord established the new Covenant with man by shedding his Most Precious Blood as the sacrifice of reparation for our sins.  This new and everlasting covenant is continued to this day and will continue into the uncertain future we now face.  It continues through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  So now… how does this apply to the Blessed Virgin Mary?  Why do we call her the Ark of this new and everlasting Covenant?

For a start, it’s obvious that our Blessed Lady was also a vessel.  She was the vessel that contained, in her womb, the Son of God himself, the Saviour of mankind.  Like Noah’s Ark before her, she was the vessel that would save mankind from destruction.  And like the original Ark of the Covenant, the Deliverer she carried within her would save mankind from eternal death, from the eternal punishment due to our sins.

But what, you might ask, were those three precious items contained in the Ark of the Covenant?  And how do they apply to the Blessed Mother?  This is the most fascinating thing of all.  For we can compare these three contents with the holy Child our Lady carried within her, and see just how closely the first Ark prefigured this Mother of God who was to be the second Ark, the Ark of the New Covenant between God and man. 

Inside the Ark of the Covenant, there were first of all the two tablets of stone containing the ten commandments given to Moses on Mount Sinai.  The words on these two stone tablets had been written by the hand of God himself, so that by obeying his laws, the Jews might save their souls.  And how did our Lady fulfill this prefiguration of the Old Testament?  Because there, in her womb, were not merely the words of God written on stones, but the living Word of God himself, the Word made flesh, forming over the course of nine months into the Son of Man who would fulfill all the law and the prophets.  This Word of God would tell us that the Ten Commandments and all the other laws of the Old Testament depend upon only one law, which is to love the Lord thy God with all thy soul, all thy mind, and all thy strength.  And our Lady was the chosen one, sinless and immaculate, who accepted her role to carry this Child without hesitation or deviation from her innocence.  She is truly the Ark of the new and everlasting Covenant.

But there are two other items within the original Ark.  The Hebrews, following Moses through the wilderness towards the Promised Land, had been fed directly by God.  He did not permit them to starve in the desert, but rained down Manna from heaven, what they called Manna, or the “Bread of Angels.”  One of these pieces of Manna had been carefully preserved and was placed in the Ark of the Covenant as a reminder of how God had nourished his children in the wilderness, and protected them from starvation and death.  Our blessed Lady carried within her not Manna, which was after all the mere foreshadowing of something infinitely greater that was to come, but the fulfillment of that shadow, the true “Bread of Angels.”  We think of the tabernacles in our churches and the Real Presence that dwells in them, the Eucharistic miracle of the Real Presence.  Holy Mary was the first such tabernacle, holding within her body the living Bread, giving birth to this bread in Beth-lehem, the “House of Bread.”  As our Lord himself told the Jews, “I am that bread of life.  This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever.”

Finally, the third item contained in the Ark of the Covenant was the staff of Aaron.  Aaron was the brother of Moses.  When Moses complained to God that he had a speech impediment and would have a hard time delivering God’s message to Pharaoh, God appointed Aaron to be his brother’s spokesman, the intermediary between God and man.  And isn’t that the very role our Blessed Lady plays, interceding between us and God, placing our prayers before the throne of God and asking him our behalf to answer them?   Aaron, who was of the tribe of Levi, was eventually established by God as the first priest, appointed to offer sacrifice to God in the name of the people.  His appointment created the institution of the priesthood, and Aaron’s sons and descendants, and the Levites continued to offer sacrifice in the temple of Jerusalem until, born of the Virgin Mary, our Lord came to offer the ultimate sacrifice of all.  Again, the priesthood of Aaron was the Old Testament shadow of the true priesthood of Christ.  Their sacrifices of lambs and oxen merely prefigured the infinite sacrifice of Mary’s Son who was also the Son of God.  He was the one and only true Priest, for he alone was capable of offering the only sacrifice that was sufficient to make reparation for the infinite number and magnitude of the sins of mankind.  While the staff of Aaron contained in the Ark of the Covenant was merely the symbol of this priesthood which was in turn merely a symbol of what was to come, the child our Lady carried was the actual fulfillment of that priesthood, whose Precious Blood spilled on Calvary was the Blood of the New and Everlasting Covenant, the Redemption of all mankind.  

To sum up, then, the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament was pointing forward to a far greater Ark of the Covenant in the New Testament, Mary, who carried the living Word of God, the living Bread of Angels, and the one true Priest and Saviour.  How could we even think for a moment that this new Noah’s Ark, this Ark of salvation would not herself be saved from sinking beneath the waves of death?  Like the Ark of Noah, when the time came, she would finally come to rest upon a safe haven, not upon a high mountain like Mount Ararat, but even higher, in the most exalted heights of heaven itself.  Like Moses on Mount Sinai before her, she would be taken up into the clouds to be greeted by God himself, not with tablets of stone, but the Word made Flesh, her beloved Son in all his glory.  The Bread of Angels which had come down from heaven and rested in her arms as she fed him now carries her back into heaven where she finds her rest in his arms.  His sacrifice on the Cross, beneath which she had stood and offered her own sacrifice of sorrow, still continues as the Sacrifice of the Mass, the same source of all grace which all along had made everything possible, from her Immaculate Conception to her Assumption into heaven.  Like the Son she once carried, she is now carried by him, body and soul, into heaven. 

O GLORIOUS MAID, EXALTED FAR

 A HYMN FOR THE FEAST OF THE ASSUMPTION

From the Sarum Breviary

 

1 O glorious Maid, exalted far

Beyond the light of burning star,

From him who made thee thou hast won

Grace to be Mother of his Son.

2 That which was lost in hapless Eve

Thy holy offspring did retrieve:

Thy tear-worn sons of Adam's race

Through thee have seen the heavenly place.

 

3 Thou wast the gate of heaven's high Lord,

The door through which the light hath poured.

Christians rejoice, for through a Maid

To all mankind is life conveyed.

4 O Jesu, Virgin-born, to thee

Eternal praise and glory be,

Whom with the Father we adore

And Holy Spirit, evermore. Amen.

A WOMAN CLOTHED WITH THE SUN

 A WOMAN CLOTHED WITH THE SUN

As we’re all very well aware, death is something that cannot be avoided.  It is something that we have a tendency to fear, as it’s something unknown that none of us have ever experienced firsthand, and none of us know anyone else who has experienced it for themselves either.  In his Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul explains to us that death is the result of sin.  And heaven knows, we’re all sinners.  Even the greatest of saints, every single one of them, were sinners to some degree or other.  They may have sinned a lot less than we do, but their souls were all stained with at least original sin, and probably quite a few actual sins too. 

All of them, that is, except one.  The one whose feastday of Marymas we proclaim today with great solemnity, the Assumption of the blessed and glorious ever-Virgin Mary, Mother of God—she alone neither committed any actual sin, nor was she even stained with the original sin of our first parents.  She was conceived immaculate, her life, her morals, every fiber of her being was immaculate, free of the stain of any sin whatsoever.  And for that reason, the end of her earthly life was also like none other.  She was free from sin, and therefore free from the punishment due to sin.  The decay and corruption of the grave was not permitted to stain the body of one whose soul was never stained.

In today’s sermon, you’ll hear why our Blessed Lady is referred to sometimes as the Ark of the Covenant.  A further hint as to the reason why can be found in today’s Gospel reading of the Visitation.  The description of Mary visiting her cousin Elizabeth in our Gospel today is a strong reminder of something that happened in the Old Testament, when King David brought the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem for the first time.  Here is yet another example of the Old Testament looking forward to the New, with the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament looking forward to Mary as the greater Ark of the Covenant in the New Testament.  In the Second Book of Samuel, King David dances for joy (2 Sam. 6:5), while the unborn child John the Baptist leaps for joy in the womb of his mother Elizabeth (Luke 1:44).  In 2 Sam. 6:9, David cries out “How shall the ark of the Lord come to me?” while Elizabeth calls out in Luke 1:43, “Whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”  The ark of the Lord remained in the house of Obededom the Gittite a few miles outside Jerusalem for three months, and the Lord blessed Obededom and his whole house in 2 Sam 6:11, while Mary remained about three months with Elizabeth in Luke 1:56 a few miles outside Jerusalem.

As final confirmation that our Blessed Lady is indeed the Ark of the New Covenant, turn to the Book of the Apocalypse and compare the last verse of Chapter 11 with the first verse of Chapter 12.  Because they are separate chapters, they are very rarely considered together.  And yet these two verses immediately follow one from the other:  First, Apoc. 11:19 — “And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the Ark of his Covenant: and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail.”  And then, the famous verse of Apoc. 12:1 — “And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.”

DEAF AND DUMB

 A SERMON FOR THE 11TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

There’s a big difference between a person who gradually loses his hearing as he becomes older and a person who is born deaf.  Outwardly, they look the same.  But as soon as they open their mouth and speak, you know which is which.  The man who learned as a child to speak, when he was able to hear the speech of his parents, even though he has now gone deaf, still remembers what the words are supposed to sound like, and is still able to speak just as well as any one of us.  But the man who was born deaf, who has never heard the sound of a human voice, although he will pronounce the words as best he can, he’ll sound quite different.  How close he comes to resembling our own speech will depend on the quality of the speech therapy he received, and on his aptitude to learn from his teachers.  What the man born deaf says may very well be the same as the man who goes deaf later in life.  But how he says it will differ considerably, and we may have trouble understanding him.

Obviously, there should be no stigma attached to either person.  We can’t help the shortcomings we may be born with, nor with the physical imperfections that come with advancing age.  But just as obviously, it would be silly to deny those bodily defects or pretend they don’t exist.

Let’s compare this physical deafness with a similar impediment we may not have noticed.  It’s been about fifty years since Paul VI imposed his new Mass on the poor Catholic faithful.  And almost sixty years since the Second Vatican Council inflicted its profound deviations from the Catholic faith.  Today, you’d have to be at least in your sixties to remember attending the traditional Catholic Mass in your own parish church.  Those of us who are left to remember do so with nostalgia and a great deal of sadness at what has been lost.  The huge and beautiful churches filled to capacity every Sunday and  holy day, the sight of thousands of Catholics processing through the streets chanting Latin hymns and saying the rosary, the kindly old parish priest in his cassock, surplice and biretta reading his breviary or hearing confessions, the nuns in their habits ushering the children to their pews, the men in their best Sunday suits and ties and the women in their dresses and chapel veils, or hats.  All gone.  A greater void is that left by the loss of our trust in the clergy who took care of us so well back then.  We never had to doubt the validity of the priest, or be divided because of which liturgy he used or whether he was united with Rome or not.  We never had to wonder whether we could trust him to give us sound Catholic advice when we needed it.  We took it all for granted, and rightfully so, for it was our right as Catholics to expect it.

But what does that have to do with being deaf?  Well, over the course of the years, our memories, like our hearing, have gradually faded.  Today, they are distant and have become almost silent.  They are good memories, fond and pleasant memories of better days, and yet they are painful memories, similar to the memories we have of loved ones long passed away.  We reminisce about the “good old days”, knowing that they are gone, perhaps forever, and that our children will never experience what those days were like.  As we get older, the memories fade, and the voices of the past become ever more faint.  We can’t hear them so well any more.  We do still hear them, but we are becoming deaf.  And yet, despite the growing silence of our memories, despite our growing deafness, we still know how to speak and pray the words of faith because we have not lost those memories entirely and we remember how things are supposed to be.  So long as there are those who remember Catholic life before Vatican II and can speak of it first hand, there will still exist the authentic voice of Tradition.

But what about our children who never knew these times?  For Tradition to continue into their future, it is up to us older ones who do remember to provide them with an adequate substitute for our memories.  Most of the people here in this chapel arrived in this world too late to experience what the Church was like for the two thousand years that came and went before you.  In a sense, you were born deaf.  Those memories of Catholic life are something that must be taught to you, rather than experienced.  You must do your best to listen to the memories of your parents, watch the old movies like Bells of Saint Mary’s and The Song of Bernadette, and learn to appreciate, to the best of your ability, what it must have been like.  But your own Catholic experience is an entirely different one from that of your parents.  You’re made to get up early on Sunday so you can travel long distances to go to a church that isn’t even a real church but a converted barn or somebody’s living room; you’re forced to give up meat on Fridays when the rest of your friends are wolfing down their hot dogs; you have to wear old-fashioned clothes and chapel veils.  In short, you may be tempted to feel that you stand out from the rest of the world, that somehow you don’t fit in, that this traditional religion you belong to is holding you back from doing all the things you want to do.  But for now, you go along with it because your parents make you, out of a sense of obedience to them, or maybe out of the natural desire just to please them.  Will that be enough for you to hold on to the faith you’re taught and the sacraments you receive in these faraway churches once a week?  When you eventually leave home and marry and have your own families, will you be prepared to pass on the true faith to your own children, a faith you’ve received only from books and the experience of others?  Time will tell. But because, through no fault of your own, you young people were born deaf, as it were, you have an impediment.  When it’s your turn to pass on the faith, the knowledge of Catholic culture, the whole experience of what it is to be a Catholic, you have an impediment in your speech because you never knew these things for yourself.  Your speech therapist was your parent who lived through those times, and your ability to speak the truth now depends in large part on how good a teacher they were, and how good a student you were.  How well do you know what it is to be a Catholic?

Like anyone with an impediment, it will require a lot of extra work to overcome the disability of not having known the Church as it once was.  Psychologically, you’ll need to overcome the desire to surrender to this world and just give up on Tradition and the Faith of your Fathers.  But you’ll have help.  If you wonder how on earth the Church can survive when those in it have been deafened by so many years of ear-splitting deception, then read today’s Gospel.  “And they brought unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech: and they beseeched him to put his hand upon him.  And he put his fingers in his ears, and touched his tongue; and looking up to heaven he saith unto him, Be opened.  And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain.”

We, young and old both, need that helping hand from our blessed Lord.  It is in him alone that we must put our trust, praying daily that he will put his fingers in our ears and touch our tongues so that we may hear and speak as we should.  So that we may constantly strive to keep alive the faith of our fathers, the Catholic life of the Church.  Because these things are not merely cultural treasures to be preserved, like the Polish immigrant who wants to preserve his native costume, his language and his recipe for dill pickles.  No, we’re talking about more important things here, the things on which our salvation and the salvation of our children, and children’s children depend.  Our Catholic life and sacraments must be passed down to them as a precious heirloom, not just as something they can cast aside like so much garbage as soon as they reach the age of eighteen.  I’m not exaggerating when I say that the future and salvation of the world depends on each one of us to do our part.  You parents, when you teach, teach well.  Speak often and with enthusiasm to your children about the things of God.  And if you’re young and still learning, put your heart and soul into knowing as much as you can about your faith.  Don’t ever be discouraged—even if you were born deaf, you can still learn how to speak.  Let every one of us do his best to overcome our own personal defects and keep the faith alive.  If we do, our blessed Lord will take care of us and our descendants, for “he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.”

SAVIOUR, WHO DIDST HEALING GIVE

 A HYMN FOR THE 11TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

by Hardwicke D. Rawnsley, 1905

 

Saviour, who didst healing give,
Still in power go before us;
Thou through death didst bid men live,
Unto fuller life restore us;
Strength from Thee the fainting found,
Deaf men heard, the blind went seeing;
At Thy touch was banished sickness,
And the leper felt new being.

 

Thou didst work Thy deeds of old
Through the loving hands of others;
Still Thy mercies manifold
Bless men by the hands of brothers;
Angels still before Thy face
Go, sweet health to brothers bringing;
Still, hearts glow to tell His praises
With whose name the Church is ringing.

 

Loved physician! for his word

Lo, the Gospel page burns brighter,

Mission servant of the Lord,

Painter true, and perfect writer;

Savior, of Thy bounty send

Such as Luke of Gospel story,

Friends to all in body’s prison

Till the sufferers see Thy glory.

I PERSECUTED THE CHURCH OF GOD

 A MESSAGE FOR THE 11TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

“For I,” says St. Paul in today’s Epistle, “am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God.”  And certainly, before his conversion, Paul, or Saul as he was then called, did indeed persecute the Church of God.  You’ll remember it was Saul who held the clothes of the Jews as they stoned to death St. Stephen, the first martyr.  Even to the very moment of his conversion, Saul’s hatred for the new religion of Christ knew no bounds; in fact, he was on his way to Damascus to persecute more Christians when he was struck from his horse and came face to face with our blessed Lord himself.

 

Since St. Paul, the successors of the apostles have persevered in transmitting the Catholic faith to the Church of God.  Popes through the ages have followed the command of their Lord to feed his sheep.  For two thousand years the faithful have thrived and been nourished on the Bread of Angels, fed to them daily in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. 

 

With the Second Vatican Council, however, there came a deviant Bishop of Rome who took away the food from the sheep and forced them to die a slow death of spiritual starvation.  Like our blessed Lord himself, this purported “Vicar of Christ” had a Forerunner whose name was John.  This John XXIII called a council, and as the bishops and cardinals processed into St. Peter’s Basilica, the bells of the Vatican joyously pealed out the changes.  After the death of John, along came another “pastor”, who, ironically, took the name of Paul.  Paul VI, long known as a communist sympathizer and informant, was elected to complete those changes by doing away with the two-thousand-year-old Mass of the Ages, and suppressing it once and for all.

 

Unlike Saint Paul, he failed to convert before his death, at least publicly.  The only similarity between Paul VI and Saint Paul was that he could quite truthfully declare, “I am not meet to be called a pope, because I persecuted the Church of God.”  Unfortunately, since his death, his own successors have been perversely faithful to the nefarious deviant, Paul VI, even going so far as to attempt his canonization.  His latest successor, Jorge Bergoglio, has even tried to outdo Paul VI with his latest and most desperate yet attempt to suppress the traditional Latin Mass.  But like Paul VI, he will fail.  Already, bishops throughout the world are defying his Motu Proprio.  Catholics have learned to love once more the spiritual depths of the true Mass, and no tyrant in Rome is going to deprive them of it.  Watch the backlash against Bergoglio, and rejoice!  It is grace in action.  How it will all end is up to Divine Providence and man’s cooperation with God’s graces.  Let’s all make sure we do our part, so that we may make the words of St. Paul our own: “His grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain.”

WE WILL BE TRUE TO THEE TILL DEATH

 A SERMON FOR THE FEAST OF ST. PETER AD VINCULA

The lesson from the Act of the Apostles which I have just read, recounts the story of St. Peter’s arrest and imprisonment by King Herod, and his miraculous liberation by an angel of God.  We tend to forget that this was the first of at two occasions when St. Peter was chained in prisons dark.  The second time occurred a few years later in the year 67 A.D. when he was arrested in Rome and put in chains, along with his fellow apostle, St. Paul, in the dreaded Mamertine Prison, which still stands to this day.  From this jail cell, he was taken to the place of execution and there crucified, faithfully following his divine Master even unto death.

Twice arrested, twice chained in prisons dark, and yes, twice set free.  For his death upside down on the cross was indeed a liberation, a martyr’s death which freed his spirit from the chains of this life, and lifted him up from the vale of tears, with which we are all too familiar in this world, to a better place of eternal freedom.

Chains are instruments of oppression, symbols of the power which is so often abused by those who wield them.  So many people who are held in chains do not deserve such a fate, and it has always been the duty of Catholics to visit those held in captivity and relieve the sufferings of those who endure the torments of imprisonment.  Oppression of the weak, injustice against the most vulnerable members of our society is one of the four sins crying to heaven for vengeance, and it is incumbent upon us all, first to avoid such sins ourselves, and then to provide assistance to the victims of others who commit them.

Chains are so often the tools of the Devil.  He uses them to enslave the masses under his tyrannical yoke of temptation, sin, and despair.  It is his ultimate wish to draw all souls to hell, partly because he hates us, who are God’s creatures, but mostly because he wishes to do harm to God himself.  As if he ever could!  And yet, so many are so willing to take these chains upon themselves, in happy ignorance that they are committing themselves to an eternity of submission to the Devil.  Ironically, as they wrap these chains around their own necks, they see themselves as somehow freeing themselves from the burden of authority, from the duty of obeying laws they don’t like, casting aside a conscience that stops them doing the things they enjoy. That it is God who commands them to obey is lost on them as they frantically cast off what they see as his ball and chain of subservience, as they exchange their submission to God for the new unimagined horrors of slavery to their own debauched desires and to the Devil.

It is a sad thing when we watch those we love slipping down this path of “self-liberation”.  They want to show off their new-found liberty, so smug that they have found the path to true happiness by doing whatever they want.  It happens in our own families, it’s happening in our schools, our government, threatening the very bedrock upon which our Society is based.  And, worst of all, it’s happening even in our spiritual home, our Church.  I’m sure you’ve all heard about the latest atrocity spewing from the poison pen of the Modernist-in-Chief, Mr. Bergoglio, during these last few weeks.  His attempt to wipe the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass from the face of the earth is nothing more than his latest attempt to be free of the “chains” of the Holy Sacrifice of our Blessed Lord.   Because this is how he sees the Mass.  Rather than recognizing it as the continuation of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, our Redemption, the source of all graces, he would rather stomp it out of existence because it conflicts with his own modernist and, dare I say it, Satanic agenda.  Certainly, with the recent memory of his veneration of the demonic statue of Pachamama fresh in our minds, we may suspect that his motives behind his obliteration of the Latin Mass are based in the deliberate and blasphemous desire to reshape the Bride of Christ to his own image and likeness.  Bergoglio, it seems, can’t work quickly enough towards the total annihilation of the Mass that Christ gave us, and the damnation of as many souls as possible.  By his actions, he shows himself to be the willing tool of Satan, a true child of darkness.

The Catholic faithful today are those vulnerable members of society, the “widows and orphans” whose oppression rises to heaven as a great cry for vengeance.  And it is the Church of Vatican II which is the source of this oppression, which places the chains of oppression upon us.  It is the Catholic faithful who have been given the tremendous privilege, once accorded to so many early Christians, and including St. Peter himself, of being chained against their will because of their faith.  We suffer for this faith, perhaps not as violently as they did, but with a kind of dry martyrdom, devoid of the comfort and support of our popes and pastors, who have somehow morphed into becoming the enemies of God.  Even in the early days of Christianity when we were being fed to the lions in the Colosseum, we had apostles, we had popes and bishops who saw to it that the faith survived in the catacombs.  Today, even our catacombs of tradition are under attack by these very popes and bishops.  When they arrested our first Pope, St. Peter, and put him in chains the first time, there appeared an angel who freed him from prison.  The second time angels came down to carry his soul in triumph to heaven.  Today, St. Peter, the rock upon which our Church is built, is again in chains, and I see no angels coming to our rescue yet.  But they will come, one way or the other.

Our faith, you see, is the same for which our fathers died.  It lives on still, in spite of dungeon, fire and sword.  And whether angels come to break the chains from our wrists and ankles, or whether they come to carry our soul to heaven, we will indeed one day be free if we keep that Faith.  And so, with Mary’s prayers, and with the truth that comes from God, let us be true to that faith till death.