ENOUGH TO MAKE YOU WEEP

A SERMON FOR THE 9th SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

What does it take to make a grown man weep?  I remember, when I was much younger, seeing a grown man weep, and it made a deep impression on me.  He was a member of the church I was attending at the time, and his wife was very sick. He took good care of her, and as the time approached for a church garage sale, he watched her with pride as, with her trembling fingers, she spent hours making the most beautiful little wooden decorations for hanging on the wall, all covered with miniature flowers and little ornaments.  In spite of her illness she was able to make a dozen or more of these exquisite little wall decorations.  She looked forward to selling them at the church sale to make some money for her church and provide a simple treasure made with love for some fortunate home.  Finally, the day of the sale came, and she took her place at her little booth, with the decorations arranged in front of her. But she didn’t sell a single one. People looked at them, they picked them up, they put them down again, and nobody bought them.  At the end of the day, the church didn’t want them either, and they ended up in the trash.  The lady (for she wastruly a lady) put on a brave face.  But her husband wept.

Today we listen to the Gospel and hear how when Our Blessed Lord “was come near unto Jerusalem, he beheld the city, and wept over it.”  What does that have to do with the lady who made the wall decorations for the church sale?  Simply this:  Like the lady’s husband who loved her so very much, Our Lord loved his Father in heaven. He had seen the love with which his heavenly Father had created man so that he may be united with him in heaven. He had seen how man had disobeyed in the Garden of Eden, and how his Father had then done everything possible to prepare man after the Fall of Adam for his restoration to grace.  Our Lord had heard the promise his Father had made to Abraham and his seed forever, the love with which he had blessed Jacob and his twelve sons, the future twelve tribes of Israel, how he had chosen them to be his people, how he had brought them out of the land of Egypt, cared for them in the wilderness for forty years, feeding them with manna from heaven, bringing them to the Promised Land, and vanquishing their enemies.  Our Lord knew the patience with which his Father had put up with the complaints of the Jews, their sins, their idolatry, still loving them as his chosen people, to whom he continued to send his prophets, and finally the fulfillment of their prophecies, a child who was born in the city of David, who dwelt amongst them, who was to be their Redeemer and Saviour, God’s only-begotten Son.  Our Lord knew all the love, the care, the devotion with which his Father had prepared this, his chosen people, to receive him.  And now Our Lord came near unto Jerusalem, and beheld the Holy City, the site of the great Temple of Solomon where was kept the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy of Holies.  And he wept. For here, in this Holy City, dedicated to the one, true God of Israel, his own chosen people would betray him. They would return not love and gratitude to his Father in heaven, but would take his Son and mock him, and cry out for his crucifixion.  He “was in the world,” as it says in the Last Gospel, “and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.  He came unto his own, and his own received him not.”  God’s greatest gift to man would be crucified, and his Father would be treated with ingratitude and contempt.  And Jesus wept.

On Good Friday, as we venerate the Cross, the Choir sings the Reproaches, a veritable litany of what probably went through Our Lord’s mind as he beheld his Holy City of Jerusalem that day.  “I did scourge Egypt with her first-born for thy sake:  and thou hast scourged me and delivered me up.  I led thee forth out of Egypt, drowning Pharaoh in the Red Sea:  and thou hast delivered me up unto the chief priests.  I did open the sea before thee:  and thou hast opened my side with a spear.  I did go before thee in the pillar of the cloud:  and thou hast led me unto the judgment-hall of Pilate.  I did feed thee with manna in the desert: and thou hast stricken me with blows and scourges.  I did give thee to drink the water of life from the rock:  and thou hast given me to drink but gall and vinegar.  I did smite the kings of the Canaanites for thy sake: and thou hast smitten my head with a reed.  I did give thee a royal scepter:  and thou hast given unto my head a crown of thorns.  I did raise thee on high with great power:  and thou hast hanged me upon the gibbet of the Cross.”

“He came unto his own, and his own received him not.”  Our Lord already knew how his perfidious people would treat him, and he wept.   And he said to his people: “If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace!”  If only the Jews had understood what great and mighty wonders had been done for them, all culminating in his presence now in their midst!  And he warned them that the day would shortly come when the Holy City of Jerusalem, even the whole people of Israel, would be punished for what they were about to do to the Son of God who had come to redeem Israel from all his iniquities, the Son of God who was to be the salvation which God had prepared before the face of all peoples, and to be the glory of his people Israel.  And Our Lord’s tears turned to anger, and he entered the Holy Temple of Sion, and with a whip he drove out the money-lenders who had dared to turn his Father’s house into a den of thieves.

Every Sunday, my dear faithful, we are given a lesson to learn by the Church. Today, we are given an extremely serious warning.  Just as God chose the children of Abraham to be his people, and sent unto them his only-begotten Son, whom they would reject and murder, so too is the Roman Catholic Church today in danger of rejecting that same Son of God who built her upon the Rock of Peter.  He warned us about false leaders, Antichrists, who would spread lies under the silken banners of liberty, equality and fraternity, the motto of the French Revolution, the anniversary of which just passed this week.  Such pleasant words, aren’t they!  Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!  But the libertyto belong to whatever religion we want?  No!  The equalityof a Pope, supposedly the Vicar of Christ on earth, who wants people to “just call him George?”  No!  The fraternityof condoning whatever sins and perversions and lies the people of this world are ready to slobber over next?  No, no, and three times no!  And yet, we let history repeat itself, in spite of all the warnings we have received in Holy Scripture – remember the prophet Daniel’s warning of the Abomination of Desolation standing in the holy place, for instance? – and in spite of the countless examples of the Chosen People of the Old Testament, who time after time, rewarded God’s love for them with callous ingratitude, and ultimately with total rejection.  “Crucify him, crucify him!”

And if the mighty institution of the Holy Roman Catholic Church can fall into the same dereliction of its duty as the Jews of old, what then of us?  Are we to imagine, that we traditional Catholics have simply been rescued at random from this mass defection from the Faith, so that we can come once a week to our comfortable little chapel here in Cotton Candyville, Ohio, and get our weekly fill of religion, the same way we recharge our iPhones every now and again?  If you believe that, then look into the face of Jesus today, look at the tears streaming down his face as he says to you “Thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.”

For God is surely coming to visit and judge his people.  And we had better be prepared to be judged when he comes. And how do we prepare?  With the same attitude as we prepare for any important examination.  If the passing grade is 70, do we aim to get exactly 70 and just scrape by?  Or do we aim to get the highest score we can possibly get, to make sure we’re well over the passing grade and in no danger of failing? Life is the same.  Let’s not aim merely to be “without sin”.  We must aim higher.  Once we leave the confessional, we must do everything in our power to make reparation for our sins and the sins of others, to bear our crosses patiently, to expand our practice of virtue, to deepen our love of God and neighbour.   We have to aim as high as we can.  “Be perfect,” said Our Lord, “even as my heavenly Father is perfect.”

And God, of course, gives us every opportunity to do better.  Just as he did with the Jews.  Are we to be like them, who ended up rejecting their God, relying instead on some misguided idea of “tradition” and “law”.  He gave them so much, and today he gives us even more. The Jews were spared the loss of their first-born, by sprinkling their doorposts with the blood of the sacrificial paschal lamb.  We are spared the loss of our very souls by the Most Precious Blood of the Lamb of God. The Jews were fed with manna from heaven.  But that was only a shadow of the Blessed Sacrament, the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ himself, with which we are fed in Holy Communion. The Jews were led to their Promised Land, flowing with milk and honey, where they were able to live their faith, secure from the enemies around them.  We have been led by grace to the true Church of God, where we can live our faith, and remain true to the values God gave us and the truths God revealed to us.    Are we, like the Jews of old, to give back in return for all these gifts of God, nothing more than ingratitude, coldness, indifference, sometimes bordering even on contempt?

With God’s help, let each of us pray today that our efforts may be blessed by God, and that we may never fail him like his chosen people the Jews, or like those who have taken over the Church he founded.  We must expect further attacks from God’s enemies, and particularly from the greatest and most dangerous enemy of all, that perversion of angelic beauty, Satan, who controls this world and will do all in his power to thwart our every effort.  It will not be an easy task, but there is no greater reward in this life or the next than to have the opportunity to work for God, to suffer for him, and if so called upon, to die for him.  But whatever the price, we must be prepared to pay it.  The cost is to ourselves.  In time, in spiritual energy, in the effort of having to disrupt our routine and do something new and different.  That’s the cost.  But in return, we are promised that we will receive a hundredfold.  That’s what Our Lord promised to those who leave their home, their wife, their children, their fields, even for a short time.  Do we want to increase in virtue?  Then let us follow God’s commandment to love him and our neighbor.  Are we in need of special help or favors?  Then let us pay for God’s help by sacrificing our time and efforts to him as a demonstration of that love.  Or are we simply sinners who just want to save our souls?  Then let us at least strive to confess our sins and do better in future. 

Whatever the state of our soul, it will be helped a hundredfold by the prayers and sacrifices we make.  We can be assured that our efforts will not be in vain, like those of the lady who made the wall decorations.  Our efforts will be carefully weighed, not thrown in the trash.  But they willbe weighed.  Let’s not be found wanting.  Let’s not be content with aiming for just the passing grade, but higher, always higher, towards the perfection to which God calls us.  To him that giveth more shall more be given.  Let’s give of ourselves, with generosity, back to the God who has given us so much.  Or must Jesus weep again?