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.
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