THE TIME OF THY VISITATION

A SERMON FOR THE 9TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Vatican 2…  (‘ll bet you’re groaning already.  But listen up anyway, we’re going to make a point I hope you’ll all appreciate.). Vatican 2 was a council of the Church held back in the 1960s before many of us here were even born.  A council which left in its path a trail of destruction that has haunted us to this very day.  We might not like to think about Vatican 2, but even our plans this morning have been made because of Vatican 2, traveling to this little chapel miles from our home in order to receive sacraments and teaching that we can trust.   Let’s face it, Vatican 2 has shaped our lives whether we like it or not.

The fact that we’re here this morning means, presumably, that we don’t like it.  All of us here today feel the same about Vatican 2, and so we should.  We have come to hate the sound of these words, Vatican 2.  We’ve tried to put them out of our head, like a bad tune that won’t stop playing in our mind. Some of us just distract ourselves with other things, some mindless , others material.  Alas, there are also those for whom the distractions truly go too far, who “lust after evil things” as the world also lusted.  They “sit down to eat and drink, and rise up to play,” as St. Paul says in this morning’s Epistle.  As a result of Vatican 2, so many of the faithful have lost their sense of what it is to be Catholic.  They fall away from the faith, gradually at first, by ceasing to attend Mass regularly, then before they even realize it’s happened, they lose the faith entirely and give themselves up to sins and false faiths, lost in a godless world devoid of hope or mercy.  It’s a tragic end for anyone who has been born, baptized and bred as a Catholic.

For us here today, we’re probably more interested in just making the best of it, making our lives as normal as we can under the circumstances.  In our more noble moments we try to center our lives on God, hanging on to his presence in the hope that we’ll somehow save our own souls and those of our children.  We are the victims of Vatican 2, victims of those who claim to be the vicars of Christ but who have betrayed their high calling.  Some of us may indeed save our souls, others will gradually drift away.  But where are the saints amongst us?

Do we even want to be saints?  In every crisis of the Church God has raised saints to combat the evil that threatened.  But where are the saints today?  Are we prepared to do what it takes to be those saints?  To love God with all our mind and soul and strength? Do we have that strength, the strength that it takes to take up our cross and follow Christ?  If so, let us at least follow him in today’s Gospel narration, as he arrives outside the city walls of  Jerusalem.  Let’s remind ourselves that Jerusalem represents our holy Mother Church, and with this in mind, let us behold the city, the Church, and together with our Lord let us weep over it.  We may be sick and tired of hearing about Vatican 2, but I tell you this, not only has Vatican 2 shaped our lives, but this awful council and its aftermath is the single most important and defining event that has occurred since Pentecost.  It is the worst thing that has happened since the Crucifixion.  So weep! Weep with Christ over the holy city that is Rome.  Even if you’re jaded by the sound of the name of Pope Francis, by the never-ending torrent of evil that spews from the mouth of him and his minions, we must never forget that out of the billions of people who have ever lived or ever will live, it is up to us to deal with it.

Have we become like the ostrich that buries its head in the sand, refusing to think about the evils that Vatican 2 has brought upon us?  If so, it’s time to pull our heads out of those sands of deliberate ignorance and listen today.  Ours is not a “feel-good” religion like that of the Protestants and Novus Ordo Catholics. Haven’t you noticed, there are are very very few of us compared with the tens of thousands who attend the new Mass and other false religious services on Sunday.  Most Christians either don’t know about, or deliberately choose to ignore the devastation that Vatican 2 has caused.  And we must not follow their example.  We are few because ours is the very opposite of a “feel-good” religion, it is a religion where we choose to follow our blessed Lord, his example and his commandments.  And that’s no easy feel-good thing.  When he says that if we would be his disciples, we must take up our cross and follow him, do we really think this was just a figure of speech, or that he was joking?  God is not mocked, and he doesn’t mock us.  So many get tired and fall away, some as soon as they can when they reach the age of 18.  But as St. Paul says, all these things have happened for our example, and as a warning. A warning for whom?  Read the Gospel again—for us, “upon whom the ends of the world are come.”   You want to pretend everything is okay with the world?  “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.”

When our Lord spoke of the literal city of Jerusalem, he warned that it would soon be destroyed by enemies who “shall not leave one stone upon another.”  And why? Because Jerusalem, the holy city of the Jewish nation, did not know the time of its visitation.  This is the reason our Lord gave for the coming destruction of Jerusalem.  What did he mean by the time of their visitation?  Who was it who visited them?  Who was it that they didn’t recognize?  Himself, of course!  Here was their Messiah, come to save them and all mankind from their sins, and they knew him not, they refused him, they crucified him.

This was their visitation.  Did we receive such a visitation before Vatican 2?  And if so, have we, like the Jews, refused that visitation and refused its message?  Since our Lord’s Ascension into heaven, our Lord has made very few appearances in this world.  Instead, he has preferred to send another, one who was chosen to be the ultimately destroyer of Satan and God’s enemies.  The Blessed Mother has appeared many times, she has visited us and warned us. Think only of La Salette and Fatima, apparitions of our Lady that included the most terrible warnings of what would happen if mankind didn’t stop lusting after evil things.  In the Old Testament they committed fornication, and there fell in one day three and twenty thousand, a direct punishment from God. This was nothing compared with the dreadful chastisement we should expect in the New Testament.

In the 19^thcentury at La Salette, our Lady warned us that “Rome will become the seat of the Antichrist.”  In the 20^thcentury, she revealed to Sr. Lucia the so-called Third Secret of Fatima, commanding that it be made public in 1960.  But 1960 came, and John XXIII refused to make it public.  It is still a secret today, but we know it has something to do with Vatican 2 and its aftermath.  You may have heard of a priest called Fr. Malachi Martin.  He worked in Rome and had the privilege of seeing and reading the Third Secret of Fatima.  He was once asked in an interview about a version of the Third Secret that was doing the rounds in the newspapers.  This version presented a devastating picture of the woes that would befall the Church and all mankind if we allowed the Church, Christ’s Mystical Body, to be infiltrated by the modernists.  It included these words: “Millions and millions of men will lose their lives from one hour to the next, and those who remain living will envy those who are dead. There will be tribulation as far as the eye can see, and misery all over the earth and desolation in every country.”  “Is this the Third Secret of Fatima?” the interviewer asked Fr. Malachi Martin.  “No,” he replied, “the actual Third Secret is far, far worse.”

After weeping over Jerusalem, our Lord went into the city and, with a whip, he drove out the money-lenders from the temple.  “My house—in other words, my temple, my Church—is the house of prayer: but ye have made it a den of thieves.”  The Vatican 2 church is a den of thieves—thieves who have stolen our faith, our holy Mass, and let’s face it, everything else, statues, altars, sacraments, you name it.  They need to be driven out by our prayers and any other means that God would approve of.  Weeping over the situation isn’t enough.  It’s even worse if we ignore it, pretending it doesn’t exist, as we go through our daily routines and make the most of our miserable lives.  No!  We have been chosen for these times, and God expects that every man shall do his duty. That duty is to obey the wishes of our Blessed Mother and pray, pray, pray.  Pray the Rosary for the Church for the salvation of souls.  Pray and do penance.  Whatever might be the will of God in the end, whether the great chastisement before us may be averted or not, we may be sure that we will be judged on our efforts to prevent it.