A SERMON FOR THE FEAST OF THE HOLY FAMILY
When we come together on this
Feast of the Holy Family, our thoughts usually center around our own family,
and our responsibilities to ensure its continued stability and unity. Today, however, I’d like to divert our
attention to something else in the Gospel of today, and that is our
relationship with a far larger and more important family, the family whose
Father is God himself, and whose Mother is our Holy Mother Church.
When we think of our Blessed Lady
and St. Joseph spending three agonizing days searching for their lost Child, we
can imagine how upset and anxious, and yes, annoyed we ourselves would be if our
twelve-year-old boy decided to wander off on his own and put us through three
days of worry and guilt. Indeed, our
Lady does seem to reprimand him when she finally catches up with him in the
temple. She asks: "Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing." But our Lord’s reply is, as they say, “outside the
box.” “Wist ye
not,” he asks—“Didn’t you know” in other words, “that I must be about my
Father's business?” Our Lady had just
referred to St. Joseph as our Lord’s father.
Her divine Son reminds her that his true Father is indeed God
himself. With this reminder, made more
for our benefit than his Mother’s, he announces to us in very specific terms,
that God is more important than even our earthly father and mother, and that we
must hold the Church in more esteem than our earthly family.
This sounds simple enough,
but we should let the idea resound through our mind and consider the
consequences. It means that in the eyes
of God, the spiritual ties of unity that bind us, the members of this
congregation together for example, are greater than those biological ties that
bind us to our own family. Why? Because the source of that unity is God
himself, present in the Sacrament of Unity which is the Blessed Sacrament. If we have family members who are not
partaking of that sacrament, they have become, in a sense, excommunicated from
our family by their disunity. If there
are members of this congregation who never receive Holy Communion, it is the
same thing—they are cutting themselves off from God, from the Holy Catholic
Church, and from us. I may sound harsh
in saying this, but the Church herself commands that in order to be considered
a Catholic we must receive Holy Communion at least once a year at Easter time.
Like our blessed Lord before
us, we must be about our Father’s business.
And what is that business? What is
our Lord doing for those three days in the temple? He is sitting with the doctors of the Church,
the Jewish equivalent of popes and bishops and theologians, and he is
interrogating them. A child of twelve
dares to question and debate the great leaders of the Church. And if we love our holy family, the Church,
we must follow his example, questioning the priests and bishops of Rome about
the Faith. It was the case before
Vatican II, and it’s certainly even more so today in these strange and dark
times in which we now live.
The Christ Child in the
temple debated with the elders of the Church. He never accepted their false teachings and
corrupt morals that had crept in since the establishment of the Old
Covenant. On the contrary, he went on in
later years to denounce the hypocrisy of the Scribes and Pharisees, just as we
must denounce the false teachings of Vatican II and the immorality of the
priests and bishops and popes who have ruled the Church ever since. The High Priests of Jewry went on to demand
the crucifixion of the very God who had placed them in their high positions,
the God who had created them and who continued to give them breath. Pope Francis seems likewise determined,
“hell-bent,” we might say, to crucify Christ’s Mystical Body the Church. But we must remember that we follow not the
people who govern the Church, but the Church herself, our Holy Mother, our Holy
Family of souls like ours, who seek their salvation within her walls and
through her sacraments.
In
doing our Lord’s business, we must follow him back to Nazareth where he
returned with his family, Mary and Joseph. Thenceforth, says the Gospel, he was “subject
to them.” Subject to parents who were
both united with him in God, not just biologically. In fact, St. Joseph wasn’t even related to
our Lord biologically. Thus, we can see
that he was subject to them not because of any biological ties only, but
through God. Similarly, we too must
subject ourselves to the Church herself—not to its high priests, the John Pauls
and Francises who like Annas and Caiphas in our Lord’s day have betrayed the
covenant between God and man. These
modern-day versions of Annas and Caiphas are even worse than the Jewish high
priests, because the new covenant is greater than the old. It is the new and everlasting covenant
between God and man, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and they have replaced it
with the abomination of desolation and emptiness that we see in our local “Catholic”
churches today. We must follow the
teaching of St. Paul who wrote these memorable words: “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel
unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.” And believe me, Pope Francis is no angel from
heaven.
We must remain loyal children
of the Church even as we reject Pope Francis and his evils. As a modern extended “Holy Family” we must work
to maintain the true Faith, true moral values, true Sacraments, and the true
Mass of the “True” Church that still exists within the ruins brought about by its
wicked high priests. If possible, we
must work even to rebuild the family of our Church and the true Mass as best we
can, by means of whatever opportunities God gives us. Even if it is only by prayer and word of
mouth, we must build up the Church, soul by soul and silently, until the Word
of God once more reigns supreme and she is again the bastion of Truth and
Morality. We are a family, and a family
that prays together stays together. The
family of our Church has always prayed for unity, and in a couple of weeks we’ll
be celebrating the Chair of Unity Octave, and we’re reminded that true unity
comes only through the faith and sacraments.
There is no other unity worth having.
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