A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE

A SERMON FOR QUINQUAGESIMA SUNDAY

Last week, we had our Shrovetide wake-up call.  We found ourselves in peril on the sea, and we took to the lifeboats.  Today, on this last Sunday before Lent begins, we imagine ourselves sitting in that lifeboat, now deprived of all the comforts and feeling of security that our luxury liner had been providing, and wondering what comes next.  Our ship went down at Vatican II, and here we are, no longer able to rely on popes and bishops and parish priests to guide us and provide us with our Catholic right to believe and worship in truth and freedom.  Like the apostles, who once found themselves being tossed around in the stormy waters of Lake Genesareth in St. Peter’s little boat, we look around us, only to find our Blessed Lord apparently asleep and indifferent to our peril.  “Save us, O Lord, we perish!” the apostles cried out, and he stood and rebuked the wind and the waves, and there fell a great peace.

Today, however, we are not being tossed around in a tempest.  On the contrary, that great peace has already fallen around us.  But it’s not a real peace, just a dark and eerie lull upon the sea on which we float.  The calm, perhaps, before the storm.  It’s a meteorological phenomenon familiar to all sailors of old, called the “doldrums.”  There’s no wind blowing through our sails, only the dread silence of the deep.  No current beneath our bows, no movement around us nor below us.  We float aimlessly, lulled into a sense of false security as the storm clouds gather.  We’re vaguely aware that things have gone bad in the Church, that things are not well with the world.  And yet, we get up each morning, drink our coffee, drive off to work, and go through the thousand and one routines of our daily life, actions which serve only to distract us from those uneasy thoughts that come in the night, fears of those gathering storm clouds, dread of the inevitable fulfillment of prophecies made long ago.

Like ostriches with their head buried in the sand, we yearn not to know the truth of what is coming.  We strive to make do, to be as content as we can with the doldrums of life.  Do what we will, however, what is coming will surely come.  In today’s Gospel, our Lord rouses his apostles from their complacency with a dire warning about what will come.  “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished.  For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on: and they shall scourge him, and put him to death.”  “And the apostles understood none of these things.”  Do you?

Oh yes, to be sure, we know what happened to our blessed Saviour.  The story of his Passion and Death is as familiar to us as any other story we have ever heard.  And yet, surely, it is more than just a story.  We should at least understand that.  That it’s an event not merely in history, but one which has effects today, through the graces that come to us from the shedding of his Precious Blood, through the perpetual continuation of the sacrifice he made for us in Holy Mass.  And… through the application of those events surrounding our Lord’s physical Body to his Mystical Body at the end of time.  We understand, but how much do we really care?  Well then, let me put it to you in an unfamiliar context…

Do you remember, on another occasion when our Lord spoke to his disciples, he put things a little differently?  He said this, that “The servant is not greater than his master.  If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you.”  And why?  Because we are members of his Mystical Body, and if the current world events are heralding in the persecution of that Mystical Body, we must be firmly aware that this doesn’t just refer to “the Church.”  Who is the Church?  We are the Church, individual members, Catholic faithful who together make up that Church.  If the Church is persecuted, we are persecuted, no matter whether it’s by outside agents like Luther and Henry VIII, or by infiltrators like the current malignant occupier of the Throne of St. Peter.  Behold, on this Quinquagesima Sunday, we, the Catholic faithful go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written in the prophets concerning the Son of Man—and his Mystical Body—shall be accomplished.  For WE TOO shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on: and they shall scourge us and put us to death… but unfortunately, the Catholic faithful, the Catholic clergy, like the apostles, seem to understand none of these things.  And as with the apostles, our lack of understanding will not prevent these things from taking place.

God looks down upon us, his faithful, yet complacent disciples today, and he continues to love us with a love that is beyond measure.  He made us out of nothing, and he understands the reasons for the smug satisfaction we take in our daily lives.  Unlike us, though, he fully realizes the perils of the sea that we continue to face, even after our narrow escape from our sinking ship after Vatican II.  God loves us so much that he never stops trying to wake us to the dangers we face.  We look around to find him, we think he’s asleep, and we could not be more wrong.  He’s not sleeping, on the contrary, it is he who is continually trying to wake US up. He’s wide awake, continually sending his graces to us, the graces of opportunity.  Even before we hit the iceberg, he sent his Blessed Mother to us in the apparition of Fatima, warning us of the dangers ahead, and what will happen to the world if we do not wake up.  “Pray the Rosary,” she told us, “pray the Rosary.”  This will help, if only we’d pray the Rosary.  How many opportunities do we have to pray the Rosary, but decide to do something else instead, some other little distraction of the moment, anything to avoid having to think about the serious trouble we’re in?

All is not lost.  There is a safe haven for our lifeboat.  We are not left without hope, and we find that hope in the Glorious Mysteries of Our Lady’s Rosary.  When our Lord prophesied the terrible events of his Passion and Death to his disciples, he ended it with that most remarkable prophecy of all—“And the third day he shall rise again.”  Whatever bad things happen, the ultimate destiny of our souls remains unchanged.  Heaven awaits us, in spite of and even perhaps because of the persecution we must endure.  If we remain members of Christ’s Mystical Body, if we keep our places on his lifeboat, we have the chance to save our souls. 

Whatever we do, we must never be tempted to jump off the lifeboat, because then, without the benefits of confession and the other sacraments, we’d really be in trouble.  There’s nothing outside the lifeboat except the waters of the deep, always ready to swallow us up.  We all know people who have jumped ship.  Have they disappeared yet beneath the waves?  If not, if we can still reach them at all, throw them a line, pull them back in.  Outside the Church, there is no salvation.  We may have escaped the main vessel of the Church to avoid sinking with it, but we’re not outside the Church—we’re still on a lifeboat that bears the name of the ship it comes from, we’re still a part of that ship, the part of it that will survive.  

So if someone has fallen or jumped off the lifeboat, drag them back on board, all those poor people, young and old, with their vain hopes of a better life.  They think the Church is holding them back from that life, from all the dreams of pleasures and ambition they hold.  They think all our “medieval notions” of penance and sin are irrelevant in this brave new world.  They want to be Mardi Gras Christians, not Ash Wednesday Christians.  Like our Lord’s apostles, “they understand none of these things: and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things which were spoken.”  They don’t even know they are in peril.  Pull them in, teach them, make them understand.

Today’s Gospel ends with the curing of a blind man.  He cries out to our Lord as he passes by, and no one can stop him.  “Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me!”  As we enter into Lent, let our Rosary prayer be made with this cry for mercy, not just for ourselves but for all those others whose screams for help resound about us as they sink beneath the waters.  The devil already has his hold on them, and he won’t fail to pull them down.  And when they’re all gone, this devil will turn his attention to those still left on the lifeboat.  Whether we realize it or not, the persecution of the Church, the Mystical Body—us—has already begun.  It was delivered unto the Gentiles at Vatican II, and today the Church, our faith, our holy customs and traditions, our sacraments, morals, you name it, are being mocked.  Mocked first with words, but then what?  From being spitefully entreated, we proceed to the next step—being spitted upon.  And then scourged.  And then put to death.  It’s a progression, and it has begun.  “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy upon us all.”

WHO WOULD TRUE VALOUR SEE

A HYMN FOR QUINQUAGESIMA

By John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress, 1678

Who would true valour see, let him come hither;
One here will constant be, come wind, come weather
There’s no discouragement shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent to be a pilgrim.

Whoso beset him round with dismal stories
Do but themselves confound; his strength the more is.
No lion can him fright, he’ll with a giant fight,
He will have a right to be a pilgrim.

Hobgoblin nor foul fiend can daunt his spirit,
He knows he at the end shall life inherit.
Then fancies fly away, he’ll fear not what men say,
He’ll labor night and day to be a pilgrim.

EAT, DRINK, AND BE MERRY

A MESSAGE FOR QUINQUAGESIMA SUNDAY

Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!  There’s no day of the year where this saying applies more than Shrove Tuesday.  The world knows it as Mardi Gras—Fat Tuesday—when the excesses of Carnival reach their annual climax in the approach to the penitential season of Lent.  The very term Carnival comes from the two Latin words carnis and vale, meaning “Farewell to Meat,” originating at a time when all meat and even dairy products were part of the Lenten fast.  Mardi Gras was the last day to get rid of all the forbidden food items in the pantry, and what better way to do that than by eating it all!

Our delightful human nature needs very little excuse to party, and as Mardi Gras was in a certain sense encouraged by the Church’s Lenten regulations, it was natural that it should become a day of eating and drinking.  Even the popes acknowledged the carnival practice in Rome by regulating its observance, correcting its abuses, and providing entertainment for the people.  Pope Paul II, for example, introduced the annual horse races and carnival pageants for which the eternal City was famous.

The sadder part of our nature, however, ensured that it eventually degenerated into a day of debauchery, where the partying led to gluttony and drunkenness, as well as all the other sins of the flesh.  Pope St. Pius V went so far as to erect whipping posts in conspicuous places around Rome as a caution and warning to those whose lascivious behavior crossed the line.  The traditional Forty Hours of reparation for the excesses of the Carnival was instituted by Pope Benedict XIV in 1748, and is still observed during the three days preceding Lent in many churches in Europe and America, especially where the carnival frolics are of long-standing tradition.

It will come as no surprise that your priest should encourage you to avoid going too far in your partying between now and Ash Wednesday.  By all means, enjoy yourselves, have your last fling before the dread stroke of midnight ushers in the solemnities of Ash Wednesday.  I’d go so far as to say it’s the Catholic thing to do, and helps us mark the difference between the penances of Lent and the comparative worldliness of the rest of the year.  But as in all circumstances, we must observe the rules of civilized human behavior that are based on the Ten Commandments and the will of God.  All in moderation, even as we let our hair down for the day!  Let’s not forget how easy it is for a time of good-natured and harmless enjoyment to turn into a wild orgy of eating, drinking and other excesses.

I would suggest also that, even as we observe the more harmless aspects of Carnival time, we keep in mind the reparation that is due to God for the excesses of others.  While we may not be able to have the Blessed Sacrament exposed in our chapel for the Forty Hours of Carnival, we can still say a prayer now and again for the conversion of sinners and the salvation of their souls.  Additionally, let’s remember that in medieval times, the faithful used to go to confession on Tuesday before Ash Wednesday.  From this practice, that day because known as “Shrove Tuesday” (the day on which people are shriven from sins).  What better way to prepare for Lent than by cleansing our souls and making them fitting tabernacles for all the graces we hope to receive during the coming holy season.

BEHOLD, I STAND AT THE DOOR AND KNOCK

A SERMON FOR SEXAGESIMA SUNDAY

Most of us, at some time or another, have a life-changing experience.  It may be a good one, like realizing we’ve won millions of dollars in the lottery.  I’ve never had that experience, probably because I don’t buy lottery tickets.  You can imagine, though, checking off the numbers one by one, each of them giving more hope, until in a few breathless seconds all the numbers come in and you realize you’re a millionaire and your whole life from now on will be totally, utterly different.  Truly a life-altering moment.

Some moments though are less pleasant, though just as life-altering.  That phone call in the middle of the night you’ve been dreading, or that visit to the doctor’s office when he’s not smiling for once and tells you to sit down.  Let’s close our eyes for a moment, and imagine another one that many have had, though probably not us.  Imagine yourself back in time, the year before the outbreak of the First World War.  You’re back in the old country over in Europe, living in poverty with your family and having a very hard life.  You decide to emigrate to the United States.  You pack up all you can carry, book your passage, and with your mind filled with hope for the future you herd your wife and children on board the ship that will take you to the New World.  And as you sail across the Atlantic, suddenly in the middle of the night you hear a slight bump and a long scraping noise.  It doesn’t bother you at first:  after all, you were told not even God could sink this ship…  Still, you can’t help wondering what it was, especially when you hear the cabin boys pounding on doors for people to wake up.  So you reluctantly shake yourself out of sleep and jump out of your bunk.  That’s when you find yourself up to your ankles in water.  Now there’s truly a life-altering moment, and not one that any of us would like to have.

It’s not a nice thought, but let’s stay with it for a moment.  All those pleasant dreams filled with hope you’ve been having about a new life of freedom and prosperity for you and your family—they suddenly explode into nothing.  All your little minor worries about getting through Ellis Island, finding a job, somewhere to live, all these evaporate as though you’re waking from a dream.  Suddenly you have only one thought on your mind and that thought is survival.  How are you going to prevent yourself, your wife and your children from drowning?  And then pow! another of those life-altering moments hits you like a kick in the stomach when they tell you there’s room on the lifeboats for only your wife and children.  You’re going down with the ship, and there’s no way around it.  How’s that for life-altering!

Why is this thought relevant to us, here today in this cozy little chapel?  We shudder for a moment at the idea of this poor man realizing that he has but a few hours at most left before he will have to suffer death in the cold waters of the Atlantic.  We think back to that cold night over a hundred years ago, and we are saddened and horrified by the depth of this man’s anguish and the startling abruptness with which it happened.  It’s a terrible thought, isn’t it, but after all it’s his life that was changed when he felt that water lapping round his feet—not ours.

Well guess what!  You actually are on that ship right now.  We are all on the Titanic and it’s already hit the iceberg.  We’re in the Titanic of our mortal body, and that body is slowly sinking.  And if you’re sleeping in your cabin, blissfully indifferent to the fact that you’re going to die and meet your Maker, well, I’m the cabin boy pounding on your door this morning.  Wake up, folks!  You’re all going to die!

Don’t blame me.  I’m not banging on your door to frighten you.  Just to let you know that maybe it’s time to do something…  It probably won’t happen today (although I can’t be sure).  Perhaps, hopefully, you might say, not for a long time yet.  But we’re all on the Titanic that is our own mortal body.  One of these days it’s going to sink and we’re going down.  And let’s never think that “not even God can sink us”.  No matter how hard and long we pray, he will not deliver our body from the death that ultimately awaits us.  Death is an indispensable element of his plan for us.  It’s the gateway, not to a cold and icy grave mind you, but to our real destination.  It’s the last step of our real voyage, where instead of a glimpse of the Statue of Libery in New York Harbor, we will come face to face with God himself in heaven, hopefully to enjoy that beatific vision for eternity.  My problem, as your cabin boy, is in waking you up  and getting you to realize that we are all in peril on the sea.  You’re going to die, that much is for certain, but what lies  beyond that death is entirely within our control once we call upon God for the help of his grace.

So before you stand up and head for the bar, let’s look on the bright side of these dismal thoughts of death.  Once we realize it’s nothing more than the gate of heaven, we should even look forward to it.  However, we continue to dream our little dreams.  The hopes and fears that our emigrant was feeling as he embarked on the Titanic are our hopes and fears today.  But really, what are they worth?  Let’s face it, dreams of prosperity, earthly happiness, pleasure—these are nothing, airy nothings, fleeting sentiments that will vanish with our rebirth into eternity.  Death, like life itself, is, as Shakespeare once said, “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury.  Signfiying nothing.” Death is but an illusion, that, like all dreams, will evaporate into a lost memory the moment we wake up and realize the importance of saving our souls.   That’s why it’s so important to have that epiphany this Shrovetide season, that life-changing moment that makes all our actions, thoughts and motivations centered from now on, on pleasing God and doing his will.

Look around the world.  The ship we’re on is filled with passengers who blithely go about their daily business, focusing entirely on what they can get out of it for themselves.  Whether it be more money, more pleasure, more power, so many, alas, are completely oblivious to the water lapping around their ankles, water that is rising and will forever rise until they sink beneath the waves, never to rise again.  Pray for these poor souls, join me in pounding on their doors if you think they’ll listen, wake them up to the realization that they’re sinking into the abyss.

Like I said, I’m only the cabin boy.  The captain of the ship?  He went down with the ship.  He went down in glory, in a heroic effort to save as many passengers and crew as possible.  He went down on that first Good Friday many years ago.  And he saved some, but not all.  He died for you and for many, but not all, alas.  Even his horrible Passion and Death were not enough to impress the majority of our neighbors.  Most of them are blithely indifferent to his heroism, his dedication to his creatures, his love for them.  They are not being helped by the ship’s crew either.  Since Vatican II our Captain has been betrayed by officers who refuse to follow his orders, his commandments.  First Lieutenants like John XXIII and Paul VI, what did they decide to do?  What was their bright idea as the Titanic sinks?  Let’s open up all the portholes.  Let’s let the world in.  And so they did, and the waves of heresy entered our ship of Peter, and now we’re sinking faster than ever.  It’s not just ourselves as individuals who are dying, but the very Ship of Peter, the Mystical Body of Christ comprised of us all as individuals.  As goes the Church, so goes the world.  They both seem to be sinking beneath the waves, as we watch with horror from our lifeboat here.

And just one, last, interesting little bit of information… on this Sexagesima Sunday the readings at Matins are the story of Noah’s Ark.  Now there’s a ship that knew how to stay afloat!  Maybe because it was designed by God himself?  And when the Great Deluge came, it didn’t sink.  Its passengers were saved from drowning.  Stay with God’s ship, even if that ship is only a little lifeboat.  St. Margaret Mary’s here may not be a luxurious ocean liner—but it’s our lifeboat!  And right now, it’s all we have.  We hit an iceberg back in the 1960s.  We can’t stay on the ship we were on.  So cling to the lifeboat now and we’ll all row together to our safe harbor. 

Remember, it was the Titanic that was the first ship ever to send out the morse code signal SOS—Save Our Souls.  God may not have prevented most of the passengers from drowning, but how many of those poor souls that night did save their souls, calling out to God for mercy as they sank beneath the waves.  That’s what we must do today, that’s what really counts, saving our souls, not our mortal bodies.  It’s the second Sunday in Shrovetide.  Sexagesima.  Lent starts a week on Wednesday, so let’s start getting ready now.  Carnival?  Mardi gras?  Please!  Don’t even bother.  Prepare your souls for the annual conversion, the “turning back” to God that comes with the Lenten season.  Listen to your cabin boy, this morning, “Wake up!  Don’t go down with the ship!” I’m pounding on your door.  Wake up!  Wake up!

ETERNAL FATHER, STRONG TO SAVE

A HYMN FOR SEXAGESIMA SUNDAY

By William Whiting ,1860

1 Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm doth bind the restless wave,
Who bids the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
O hear us when we cry to Thee
For those in peril on the sea.

2 O Savior, whose almighty word
The winds and waves submissive heard,
Who walked upon the foaming deep,
And calm amid the rage did sleep;
O hear us when we cry to Thee
For those in peril on the sea.

3 O Holy Spirit, who did brood
Upon the waters dark and rude,
And bid their angry tumult cease,
And give for wild confusion peace;
O hear us when we cry to Thee
For those in peril on the sea.

4 O Trinity of love and pow'r,
Your children shield in danger's hour;
From rock and tempest, fire, and foe,
Protect them where-so-e'er they go;
Thus, evermore shall rise to Thee
Glad hymns of praise from land and sea.

FOR THOSE IN PERIL ON THE SEA

A REFLECTION FOR SEXAGESIMA

This week’s hymn, Eternal Father, Strong to Save was written by William Whiting in 1860 inspired by the dangers of the sea described in Psalm 106. This hymn is commonly associated with seafarers, particularly in the naval armed services, and is often referred to as the "Navy Hymn." This hymn also has a long tradition in civilian maritime settings and is regularly called upon by ship's chaplains and sung during services on ocean travels.  So what has that to do with Sexagesima Sunday?

Our Matins readings in the Divine Office are the story of Noah and his Ark.  It is a story well suited to the theme of Shrovetide – last week, we followed the account of the Creation and the Fall of Man, lamenting over the first sin of Adam and Eve and the need for our blessed Lord to be born and to die.  Now, we see the state of man after his expulsion from Eden, how he degenerated to such a state that God decided to destroy him altogether from the face of the earth.  However, he would not wipe out the entire human race—Noah and his family were not like the others, and were given instructions to build a huge wooden ship that would be their Ark of Salvation.

The symbolism of this is clear, and it is not for nothing that the title Ark of Salvation is given to the Blessed Mother, who would crush the head of Satan beneath her heels, as God prophesied to Adam.  Only those who found their way to this Ark would be saved, and I like to think that this is the real reason ships today are referred to with the feminine pronoun “she.”  In any case, Noah’s Ark is an obvious foreshadowing also of Holy Mother Church, outside which, let’s remember, there is no salvation.

We are either on the Ark or we’re drowning in the waters of the Great Flood.  It matters little whether we’re passengers or crew, so long as we’re on the Ark, members of Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church.  Because trust me, it has started to rain in torrents and shows no signs of letting up.  And while we might be relatively safe on board, these are still not safe waters on which we sail.  The waves rise high these days, and threaten to sweep us overboard.  We even have stowaways on board—lukewarm and even fallen-away Catholics—who work from within to drill holes in the fabric of the ship, modernists who open the doors and windows to let in the stormy world around us, truly a mutinous lot.  Don’t forget – the leader of the mutineers on the Bounty was called Mr. Christian.  We must be on our guard.

It rained for forty days and forty nights, and it is no coincidence that this is the number of days in Lent, days of repentance, days of fasting and penance.  Year after year, we have this great opportunity to give back to God some small return for all the good things he has given to us.  We sail in troubled waters, and we priests, your crew, are asking all the passengers for help keeping the ship afloat.  Do your part, contribute to the Church, financially yes, but also with your various talents, and most of all with your prayers, that we may all safely come to the haven where we would be.

IT'S NOT FAIR!

A SERMON FOR SEPTUAGESESIMA SUNDAY

One of the first complaints a child learns to make is familiar to all parents.  “It’s not fair!”  And indeed, often it isn’t.  Children seem to have a very heightened sense of what is fair and what isn’t.  They usually view it from the perspective of the victim.  “I’m not being treated as well as so-and-so,” “This sibling gets favored, but you always pick on me.”  And so on.  Children, of course, have not yet been exposed to years of such unfair treatment.  They haven’t yet developed the tolerance for situations where others are favored over them; or the cynicism that comes with being habitually disrespected.  It’s refreshing sometimes to see things from the perspective of a simple child, especially when it’s a question of justice and what’s fair.  We should try it more often perhaps.

We adults, though, never quite lose that sense of unfairness, especially when we see ourselves as the victim of that unfairness.  The parable in today’s Gospel, however, reminds us that what we might see as unfair sometimes is not unfair.  Here we have a householder who is trying to manage the workers in his vineyard.  When he pays the laborer who shows up close to quitting time the same amount as those who have worked all day long, who have “borne the burden and heat of the day,” the union bosses erupt at the injustice of it all.  They’re so outraged you’d think they’re ready to call everyone out on strike.

But the householder responds to their complaints.  He says, “Here, look!  What am I doing that’s so wrong?  I told these guys I’d pay them a penny a day, and by golly I paid them a penny a day.  What’s it to you if I gave everyone a penny, even if they showed up late looking for a job?” 

Our instinctive reaction, as conservatives, probably tends to side with the hardworking folks who had spent the day in the vineyard, and not with the folks who had been “standing idle in the marketplace.”  Surely, these lazy guys aren’t entitled to the same wage as the real laborers?  But we would be wrong, and for one simple reason: they weren’t standing around idle in the marketplace because they felt entitled to being paid for nothing.  These weren’t welfare recipients who stay at home all day, demanding the government feed, clothe, house, educate and medicate them for nothing, just because they deserve it.  No.  The reason they aren’t working is because they can’t find a job.  “Why stand ye here all the day idle?”  “Because no man hath hired us.”  That’s the reason they’re in the marketplace.  They’re trying to find work, but haven’t been able to.

And so when the householder pays them the full day’s wage, he is performing a true act of charity.  These unemployed have bills to pay, children to feed, homes to maintain; and it’s not for lack of trying that they haven’t been able to find work.

So if we find ourselves sympathizing with the complainers in today’s Gospel, we should perhaps re-examine our own way of thinking.  It doesn’t mean we should believe in entitlements, that real welfare bums are entitled to the same income as those who work hard all day for a living.   It’s not that those out-of-work men who showed up at the last minute were entitled to that charity.  If the householder had shown only justice and no mercy, he would have paid them by the hour, whatever Bernie Sanders decides is the minimum wage this week, and sent them on their way.  On the other hand, if he had shown mercy and no justice, he wouldn’t have bothered hiring them at all—he would have just put them all on food stamps indefinitely, and turned them all into welfare bums.

Whether our own personal tendency is towards justice or towards mercy, we must always remember that God is infinitely just and infinitely merciful.  Whichever way we might happen to lean, we’re never going to achieve that perfect balance between these two perfect attributes of God.  And so, we are called upon by our Lord in today’s Gospel to be careful.  We mustn’t let our natural tendency towards one or the other push us either way into an unbalanced view of the world.  If we are overly sentimental, the goody-two-shoe type, maybe verging towards being liberal or even progressive, we have to rein in our tendencies to give everybody everything they want.  Because it simply isn’t fair to give taxpayer money to people who stay in bed all day, watching Jerry Springer while they drink their beer and munch on their cheez-its.  Meanwhile, though, and this is where it’s more tempting for us conservatives, we mustn’t withhold financial help to those who are in genuine need.  And that might need a little re-thinking on our part…

I’ll give you a for-instance.  Should illegal immigrants receive free healthcare?  Now that’s a huge question, and it has an equally complex answer that we haven’t time for here.  Suffice it to say that while they’re certainly not entitled to it, and while our justice-leaning tendency would be inclined to deny it to them,  mercy must also be considered.  If an illegal immigrant’s child is involved in a traffic accident, for example, are we going to let that child just die in the street?  Of course not, nobody would advocate such a cold-hearted thing.  But think it through: there must be some line somewhere beyond which we should not go, but up to which we must go.  Find that line, and you find the will of God.

“Is thine eye evil, because I am good?” asks the householder.  When God shows mercy on a sinner, who are we to complain because maybe we were not so favored?  Remember the brother of the Prodigal Son—he complained bitterly to his father, who had killed the fatted cow when the prodigal returned home, something he had never done for the “good son” who had stayed home all those years.  The father explained his actions to the son, just as the householder in today’s Gospel explained his payroll system to the workers.  Neither of them needed to make this explanation, and neither does God need to explain his justice and his mercy to us.  And yet he has explained it.  He explains it through the father of the Prodigal Son, and he explains it through today’s householder.  It’s up to us to learn the lesson.

The last shall be first, and the first last.  One other way of thinking about that profound little phrase, is that the just shall be merciful, and the merciful just.  Don’t limit yourself to being only one or the other.  Whatever your natural inclination, make sure you push yourselves a little now and again in the opposite direction.  Otherwise, when many are called and few chosen, and you find yourselves on the unchosen list, don’t complain that “It’s not fair!” few chosen, and you find yourselves on the unchosen list, don’t complain that “It’s not fair!”

COME LABOR ON!

A HYMN FOR SEPTUAGESIMA SUNDAY

By Jane L. Borthwick, 1859

Come, labor on.
Who dares stand idle on the harvest plain,
while all around us waves the golden grain?
And to each servant does the Master say,
"Go work today."

Come, labor on.
The enemy is watching night and day,
to sow the tares, to snatch the seed away;
while we in sleep our duty have forgot,
he slumbered not.

Come, labor on.
Away with gloomy doubts and faithless fear!
No arm so weak but may do service here:
by feeblest agents may our God fulfill
his righteous will.

Come, labor on.
Claim the high calling angels cannot share--
to young and old the Gospel gladness bear;
redeem the time; its hours too swiftly fly.
The night draws nigh.

Come, labor on.
No time for rest, till glows the western sky,
till the long shadows o'er our pathway lie,
and a glad sound comes with the setting sun.
"Servants, well done."

WHY STAND YE HERE ALL THE DAY IDLE?

A REFLECTION FOR SEPTUAGESIMA

Complacency is one of the greatest dangers we encounter in our progress towards our final end.  How easy it is to just let things go, to relax and ignore the dangers that face us and the challenges to which God invites us to rise.  As we bask today in the comfortable satisfaction that is so alluring, suddenly the clarion call of God’s mercy and justice sounds out!  It shatters our illusion of smug tranquility, beckoning us to respond with every fiber of our being, that we might survive our final judgment and reap the rewards of a Christian life well spent.

The question we must ask ourselves today, and I repeat the word “must,” is whether we will choose to answer God’s alarm call to action, or, as we so often do each morning, merely hit the snooze button, and put off our responsibilities for as long as we think we can.  But we should consider God’s alarm more as the urgent wail of a tornado warning—we’d better move fast before we are swept up in the vortex of a sinful world and the devil’s clutches.  We may stand idle, but the devil doesn’t!

The householder in today’s Gospel needs workers in his fields.  It is harvest time and all those blades of wheat, human souls every one, must be gathered for the great judgment.  When we look around us at the great fruited plains of this world, do we see wheat, or do we see weeds?  One of these days, Christ will come in judgment and will separate them, one from the other.  It’s up to us to tend the wheat and make sure it survives.  Where is your wheat this morning?  Are all my children attending Mass today?  Have I done all I can to convince my family of the value of the true Mass and sacraments?  Have I learned my own faith well enough that I can teach it to others?  Am I supporting my fellow-Catholics by supporting the Church financially so it can continue providing the sacraments for them?  Most importantly of all, Where do I myself stand in this gathering of the wheat?  Will I find myself with the cockle, tied with other sinners to be burned?  Or can I honestly say that I have answered God’s call?  That I am firmly resolved to reject all sinful thoughts, words and deeds in my life?  Do I truly love God with all my heart and mind and soul and strength?

The great glory of God’s love for us is that he gives us so many choices.  Every second of every day, we have a choice how to act and what to do.  Today is the day God is calling us to make that choice and change our lives.  It’s never too late.  No matter how grave the sins of our past, no matter how deep we may be in the pits of complacency, we know we can turn back to God today and firmly resolve to do our duty.  Come, labor on!

I SHALL WASH MY HANDS AMONG THE INNOCENT

A SERMON FOR CANDLEMAS

If I were to ask what the name of today’s feast is, there would be three completely different but equally correct answers to this question.  In our missals we see today listed as the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  And yet it is also, and equally importantly the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the temple, the fourth of the joyful mysteries of the Rosary.  And last but probably most commonly of all, we know today’s feastday as simply “Candlemas”.

In order to sort out this overabundance of names today, let us remember firstly that the Christ Child was born to be the Light of the World.  He comes not to confuse us, but to illuminate the dark recesses of our mind, increasing our knowledge about the things of God.  All these names for February 2^nd,, therefore, are not an occasion for bewilderment, but for coming closer to God so we can know him, love him, and serve him better.

Like all the events in Holy Scripture, this one contains a lesson for us to learn.  Something we can meditate on and come to a greater understanding of who God is and what he wants from us.  So let’s go back to the days following Our Blessed Saviour’s birth in the stable of Bethlehem.  We can imagine how the parents of the divine Infant came to the realization that their Son had been born in a town very near the Holy City of Jerusalem.  The day he was born they knew that it would be only another forty days before the law demanded that the Child’s Mother present herself at the temple in Jerusalem to be ritually purified, and that they offer sacrifice at the selfsame temple for the birth of their Firstborn Son.  The laws of Moses were clear, and they were so close to Jerusalem that they could easily make the journey and perform their duties.

Finally the day came.  Forty days after the birth of the Christ Child, Our Lady and St. Joseph arrived at the temple with their baby, and the age-old rites of purification were accomplished, fulfilling the law, in spite of the fact that Mary, full of grace, had no need of being purified.  Then the old man Simeon took up the Christ Child in his arms, prophesying that this infant would be for the rise and fall of many in Israel, and that a sword should pierce Our Lady’s heart.  The story is comforting because we know it so well, and we welcome the familiar words of Simeon’s Nunc Dimittis: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word.  For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people.”  We recognize that great things were happening that day, old prophecies were being fulfilled, new prophecies were being made.

But peel back the surface of this story.  Go beyond the words, the faces, the events.  Go to the truth of the everlasting hills that lies beneath.  Purification, and Presentation.  First Our Lady is ritually purified, then she presents her Son as a gift to God.  And one must come before the other.  Only after her ritual purification is Mary considered in Jewish law, God’s own law given to Moses, as worthy of giving anything to God.  And what is true for Our Lady who was already all-pure even before the ceremonies, who had been hailed as full of grace by the Angel Gabriel, then that purification is all the more demanded of us.  We are asked by God to offer sacrifice to him.  But only after we have been purified.

Remember what it was that Our Lady and St. Joseph presented to God today.  It was no less than God himself.  Holy things unto the holy.  God the Son unto God the Father.  It was the perfect and acceptable offering, the precursor of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass:  their newborn baby who was God made man, was offered to God the Father who begat him. 

And how are we to follow their example?  What can we possibly give to God, when he created all things?  How much more imperfect must be our own offering.  And yet God demands it of us.   So let us make it the best offering we can.  Let us present to God on this feast of the Presentation, something as close to the perfect Christ Child that we can possibly find in ourselves.  We can begin by purifying ourselves from all stain of sin.  This we started at baptism when the stain of original sin was removed from our souls.  Now it is in the sacrament of penance that we are absolved from all the stains of our actual sins.

But it is not enough simply to be free from sin.  Perfection hardly consists in merely not being bad. Goodness is more than the absence of evil.  We must progress further, beyond that first necessary step, and purify ourselves from all attachment to earthly, material objects.  We must make sure that we love God above any of the creatures he made.   Then and only then can we finally turn to our inmost self.  We must now purify that self not from what we have any more, but from what we are.  We peel back our own character, with all its flaws and imperfections, all its grudges, its vices, its appetites and hopes and fears.  We take all this and go beyond to what lies beneath.  Deep down beneath the surface, until we find the divine light, that spark, that essence of divinity that God implanted with his grace, that silent and unspeakable presence of God within us that makes us something more than the sum of our parts, that makes us more than mortal, that image of the eternal God within us that is our immortal soul. And when we learn to purify this our very essence, of whatever is displeasing to God, then and only then can we present ourselves before God, giving him not of the things we have, but of who and what we are.   

It is interesting to note that when Mary and Joseph offered to God the gift of their Son, they were offering him in the form of a mere infant.  And yet how perfectly appropriate that image is.  After all, think about what it is to be an infant.  To be so perfectly pure of heart, someone who is sinless, who hasn’t had time to build attachments to earthly things, who has no grudges, no vices, none of those human disorders that detach the rest of us from God.  It is the newly born infant, or to be more precise, the newly baptized infant, who is surely the purest form of humanity that exists.  This is why the image of the Christ Child at Candlemas has such a hold on us.  And it’s why we worship Christ the King in the form of the Divine Infant of Prague.  And make no mistake, it’s also why it’s such a horrendous crime to destroy the life of an infant, especially before it has even had the chance to be born and to attain to this most perfect state of the newly baptized.  The crime of abortion is a crime not just against our fellow human beings, but against humanity in its most pure form, its most perfect reflection of the image and likeness of God himself.  It is a crime against God himself.

God allows us to see this pure perfection in the eyes of the newborn baby.  We recognize that here is someone as worthy as he can possibly be to present to God.  And so we bring him to the temple to be baptized.  Take the opportunity to remind yourselves that this most perfect little human, pure in his lack of attachment to the earthly, without sin, is what we must model ourselves on.  “A little child shall lead them”, said the Prophet Isaiah, and this is the reason why.  The baptized infant is the purest example we can have to follow.  We must be as purified from our attachments as the Christ Child of Candlemas, as any little child.  We must seek in the infant at baptism that light of divinity that we need to find in ourselves, that we may always do God’s will and not our own.

To remind ourselves of this purification, we burn candles today.  For we are purified as the silver is purified in the fire.  Fire purifies.  It burns away all those attachments to the earthly and material, and if you don’t allow it to burn them away in this life, the fires of Purgatory will surely purge and purify you in the hereafter.  The heat of the burning candle reminds us of this, and the light of the candle reflects that spark of divinity we search for within us.  “Let your light so shine before men,” said Our Lord, “that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”  You are the light of the world.  And that spark of divinity must shine forth, not only for you yourself to find, but for all men to see, and so that you may present it, an unblemished and immaculate sacrifice, to God in heaven.

HAIL TO THE LORD WHO COMES

A HYMN FOR THE PRESENTATION OF OUR LORD IN THE TEMPLE

By John Ellerton

Hail to the Lord who comes, 

Comes to his temple gate!

Not with his angel host,

Not in his kingly state;

No shouts proclaim him nigh,

No crowds his coming wait;

But, borne upon the throne

Of Mary's gentle breast,

Watched by her duteous love,

In her fond arms at rest;

Thus to his Father's house

He comes, they heav'nly Guest.

There Joseph at her side

In reverent wonder stands,

And, filled with holy joy,

Old Simeon in his hands

Takes up the promised Child,

The glory of all lands.

Hail to the great First-born

Whose ransom-price they pay!

The Son before all worlds,

The Child of man today,

That he might ransom us

Who still in bondage lay.

O Light of all the earth,

Thy children wait for thee!

Come to thy temples here,

That we, from sin set free,

Before thy Father's face

May all presented be!

NUNC DIMITTIS

A REFLECTION FOR CANDLEMAS

The Holy Ghost had revealed to the old priest Simeon “that he should not see death, before he had seen the Christ of the Lord.”  At the Presentation, we can imagine this old man’s joy as he receives the Christ from the very hands of our Blessed Lady.  This old priest had made many offerings to God before now, but this one was different—it was the light that would lighten the Gentiles and be the glory of God’s people Israel.  It was the ultimate sacrifice that would open the gates of heaven for all mankind, and for him too.  When he takes the Body of Christ from the arms of his Mother, he is united in spirit with this Child, and he cries out in joy: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace!”  In the days before the Sacrament of Holy Eucharist, this was Simeon’s Holy Communion.  In fact, it was his Viaticum—having tasted this union with God, he was now ready to leave the confines of this earth and go to his reward, union with God forever.

Simeon is our inspiration, showing us the utter vanity of this world, and that true happiness is to be found only by union with the Christ Child, the glory of his people.  However, this happiness comes at a price, and it is also Simeon’s role to remind us just how much we are expected to pay.  He does so in the following words: “Behold this Child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be contradicted; and thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

Simeon addresses these words to the Blessed Mother, to her who is and always will be closer to God than any other creature.  However, none of her great privileges, whether her Immaculate Conception, her Assumption, or Coronation as Queen of Heaven and Earth—none of these exempted her from the price of redemption.  That price is Sorrow.  Sorrow and suffering are introduced into the story of Redemption at this point, as the Joyful Mysteries gradually give way to the Sorrowful, and our Christmas season yields to next week’s commencement of the Lenten preparations.  We are reminded that there can be no perfect and undiluted joy in this world.  Holy Mary’s Immaculate Heart is pierced by the first of her Seven Sorrows, and this is a painful reminder to all of us that no matter how close we approach to the holy throne of God in this world, we too must suffer.

But just as sorrows are introduced into our Joyful Mysteries today, we must be consoled by the contrary truth—the joy that hides within those sorrows.  Our Holy Communion with God that we receive from the hands of the priest contains both the joy and sorrow that Simeon imparted to our Blessed Lady.  We receive the joy of knowing that our eyes too have seen our salvation, the light to lighten the Gentiles, and we receive too the sorrow of knowing the price of this salvation.  Our Lord reminds us that his “yoke is easy and his burden light.”  It is our love for him that makes it so, and the greater our love, the easier and lighter our suffering will be, because we suffer for him and with him.  And in the sufferings we must endure in this world, we have the joy of knowing that they have a purpose, that they give greater glory to God and us closer to him, and that by offering them up for others they contribute to the salvation of souls and render assistance to the Holy Souls in Purgatory.  “Take up thy Cross.”