UNITY OF THE SPIRIT IN THE BOND OF PEACE

A SERMON FOR THE 17TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

We tried hard last week to remind ourselves what a wonderful world we live in.  And of course it really is a wonder, the great and marvelous work of God.  During the course of the week, however, I expect any warm and fuzzy feelings about this wonderful world have been driven from your minds.  We’ve read that In New York, for instance, it’s now a crime punishable with a fine of $250,000 to call someone an “illegal alien” or report them to the police; meanwhile in Virginia a Christian doctor who’s been in practice for 30 years is suddenly fired because he refuses to refer to a six-foot man with a beard by his “preferred pronoun” she.  And then, of course, there’s Washington, D.C.  Let’s not even go there.

God created the perfect world.  And he created it for us to live perfect lives in it.  And we messed it all up.

Let’s not blame everything on Adam and Eve.  Each of us has done his best (or her best, or whatever other pronoun you prefer), to contribute to the general mayhem.  Some have succeeded in creating more mayhem than others.  Many will lose their souls.  At the end of the day, we’ll all be judged according to the graces we received and the degree to which we cooperated with those graces.  Let’s never forget that those to whom most has been given—the faith, the sacraments, a Catholic family and upbringing, and so on—these are the ones who will be judged the hardest.  Privileges come with responsibility, and God urges us daily to meet our Catholic duties in spite of the evils surrounding us.

As for the rest of the world, we must never succumb to the temptation of the Pharisee in the temple, the one who so arrogantly congratulated himself on his own good deeds while thanking God that he was “not as other men” with all their wicked ways.  Likely as not, we have received more graces than the evildoers we’re so ready and eager to criticize.  That makes us more guilty even though we acted less sinfully.  So let’s never even think of exalting ourselves, pretending to be better than they are.

We know what to do when someone sins against us.  We have to turn the other cheek, following the example and instructions of our Lord and forgiving our enemies “for they know not what they do.”  The difficulty comes, not in forgiving those who trespass against us, but those who would harm our loved ones. That’s a much more difficult moral dilemma to handle, isn’t it?  And what about those who, by their words and actions, proudly proclaim themselves to be the enemies of God, the abortionists, the “gay pride” mob, the Democrats.  How are we supposed to forgive these creatures?  The answer lies precisely in that word “creatures”.  They are creatures of God, and for them he died.  He loved them so much that he suffered so much for them.  So who are we to despise anyone, even these, the worst examples of humanity, the abusers of their God-given free will?  Try looking at them, if you can, through the eyes of God for a change.

Last week, I mentioned that the angels “hate” the enemies of God, and I hope you all understood that I was referring only to the fallen members of their own nine choirs, those rebellious angels who followed Lucifer and with him were driven out of heaven down to the pits of hell.  These demons we are not only permitted, but encouraged, to hate.  When the news from Capitol Hill is beginning to drive you up the wall, hate with all your might not the malicious politicians who seem so hell-bent on giving us all such a hard time, but rather the devils in hell who have succeeded in leading them astray.  

The same goes for the even more malevolent villains in Rome.  This last week I heard that Pope Francis warned priests that wearing the cassock is a sign they’re concealing moral problems and mental imbalances.  When you hear blatant nonsense like this coming from the mouth of someone who pretends to be the Vicar of Christ, do not hate him.  Hate rather the demons that possess his soul and drive him to despise the ancient practices and culture of the Church.  Rome is our true problem, and Washington merely follows.  In fact, whenever you hear the latest grotesque news coming out of the nation’s capital, remember the words of our Lady at La Salette:  “As the Church goes, so goes the world.”  Our United States would not be in its present tumult and chaos were it not for the loss of the world’s one and only true light, the one that Christ left us in the Church he founded, and which can no longer be relied upon to be our beacon of faith and sound moral sense. 

This is more than just a pity, there is grave sin involved here.  After all, God had it all worked out perfectly for us.  He created man with a free will so we may love him freely, and we abused that free will by disobeying.  He created the beautiful garden of Eden and we lost it.   He created an entire world, and through our sins we almost lost that too with the Great Flood.  He sent his only-begotten Son, and we crucified him.  He gave us the Catholic Church founded on the rock of Peter, guided by his infallible Spirit, and in return we gave him Vatican II, throwing away in contempt the Mass, the sacraments and the faith that the Church was supposed to preserve inviolate.  God is love, infinite love.  But if we keep refusing his gifts like this, if we continue to throw them back in his face, how much longer will God keep giving them?  And then, when there’s no more love of God left, what will there be instead?  What shall remain?  Just as the absence of light is darkness, so the absence of love is hatred.  That’s all that will be left in this world.  Hatred.  All the hatred that’s in the world today, it’s because we’ve already driven out so much of God’s love.  The only answer is to love more than ever before, love God, love our neighbor, including our enemies, especially our enemies.

It’s of no use resorting to shouting and screaming, and violence is even worse.  Our role is to consecrate this world, not desecrate it by striking off the ear of the High Priest’s servant like St. Peter in Gethsemane.  Sure we can act like good little citizens of this democratic nation, and write to our congressman, complaining and asking him to behave.  By all means try that if you will.  As to whether it will do any good or not, I’m pessimistic, because it fails to attack the problem at its root.  And again, Rome is the root problem.  That’s why our blessed Lady appeared in Fatima in 1917, so she could warn us of the coming apostasy of Vatican II.   She commanded that the Pope should make her Third Secret known in 1960 and consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart.  But the pope of 1960 was John XXIII, and he casually threw the Third Secret into a drawer saying it was not for our times.  Fortunately, our Lady gave us a Plan B, and right now, that’s pretty much all that’s left for us to do.  Say the Rosary, she told us.  

The Rosary is the perfect way to love our neighbor.  Remember, love and hatred are not just feelings that we have.  They are acts of the will.  By forcing ourselves to pray the Rosary for our enemies, no matter how much we may be angry at what they do, this act of will turns our anger into an act of love.  Pray for them, that they may see the error of their ways, that they may be struck with such grace that will illuminate the darkness of their souls, and turn their own hatred into love.  Only then can we ever hope to turn the world around, uniting mankind in the only unity that can ever truly work, what St. Paul in today’ Epistle to the Ephesians, calls “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”  Let’s use this month of the Holy Rosary wisely, praying our Rosary as we pray at the end of every Mass for the conversion of sinners and the freedom and exaltation of our Holy Mother Church.  These are the two fundamental answers to the world’s problems, so let’s pray our Rosaries for these intentions this October.  Let’s pray that the world may find its unity in that one real Truth of Christ and his Church, and the conflicts between men may be once and for all set aside.