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.”