IF IT AIN'T BROKE...

 A SERMON FOR THE 13TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”  So the saying goes, and it makes a lot of sense.  If something is working just fine, exactly the way it’s supposed to, why mess things up by taking it apart and coming up with some fantasy to make it better?  Take your car for example.  Sure, there may be room for improvement—a little oil in the motor, a bit more air in the tires.  But as you’re driving merrily along to your vacation in Florida, there’s no need to stop on the way as it’s purring along down I-75 with all the kids in the back seat, and take it to a garage to get a new transmission installed.  I’m not telling you anything astonishing here, it’s just common sense, and to do such a thing wouldn’t even occur to us.

It does occur, however, to the folks that like to call themselves “progressives.”  For them, there’s no such thing as a status quo that’s already working just fine and doesn’t need changing.  Progressives constantly feel the need to make things “better,” whether their ideas would actually do so or not.  What matters to them is only that “progress” is being made.  The end result is irrelevant to them, so long as they can sit back and look with satisfaction at the fact that things have changed. 

We find it in politics, where the Progressives go under the misleading name of Democrats.  Misleading because democracy is the last thing on their mind.  They want to impose their own warped view of government on the rest of us whether we want it or not, and are prepared to destroy anything or anyone in their path, whether it be the Constitution that establishes the foundation of our country, or the President who tries to improve our lives through that Constitution and its tenets.  His obvious success in doing so gives them no pause and just makes them hate him all the more.  They continue to strive for a new, improved type of country, a new constitution that will reflect their vision of global equality.  Examples of previous attempts to bring about their fantasy of full-blooded socialism, by the likes of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, fall on deaf ears.  Their only thought is to blindly continue implementing social change no matter what the consequences. 

In the Church, this kind of progress for the sake of progress has been raised to the category of a heresy.  It’s known as “Modernism”, which is nothing more than the religious application of the Progressive agenda.  Modernists are not content with the faith of our fathers, or with the Mass that Christ instituted.  They feel the constant need to “improve” everything that was given to us by Christ and his Apostles.  One of the modernist “popes” even “improved” the Rosary given to us by the Blessed Mother.  The current heretic in Rome, Bergoglio, has just “improved” the Our Father.  The Church was doing just fine, churches were filled, converts were flocking to the true faith, vocations were increasing to the point where seminaries, monasteries, convents were overflowing with devout Catholics giving their lives to God.  Parish schools were the envy of the nation, and parents made tremendous sacrifices just to get their children enrolled.

Why couldn’t they just leave things alone?  Because they’re “progressives” and for them, they can’t abide to let things be.  So they want to “fix” things, even if they “ain’t broke.”

This is not the way of God.  Our blessed Lord did not wander all over Judea and Galilee trying to improve what didn’t need fixing.  He did not perform miracles to make people more intelligent, men stronger, women more beautiful.  But when he did find someone who was “broken,” he healed them.  The ten lepers in today’s Gospel were very much broken.  They had that terrible disease of leprosy, which ravaged their flesh, destroying skin and muscle tissue, turning their bodies into a putrid, festering mass of sores, some of them may have had missing fingers and toes, perhaps even a gaping hole where their nose used to be.  Leprosy is not a nice disease, and these poor men were definitely in need of a miracle.  So when they heard that the miracle-worker from Galilee was passing by, they cried out to him to help them in their distress.  They were sick, and he healed them.  They were broken, and he fixed them.

There are times in our life when we too feel the need to call upon God to fix what is truly broken.  Broken, it seems sometimes, beyond repair.  Times when our own sorrowful mysteries encroach upon the joyful, when our basic needs can no longer be met, and what was once working starts to irrevocably break down.  Take the current Covid-19 crisis, for example.  So many people are in dire financial circumstances.  Out of work, unable to provide for their families, bills piling up—it gradually gets to the point where people can no longer cope or come up with ways to deal with their situation.  Or perhaps, it’s a medical problem.  As we get older, our visits to the doctor seem to become more frequent, until it’s no longer a question of preventative care—taking vitamins, getting the right nutrition and exercise—or of maintaining life with the right pills and drugs.  Suddenly, we find ourselves beyond the care of human doctors and in need of a “fix” from a higher source.  It’s even worse if it’s someone close to us who is in financial straits or medical peril and there’s nothing we can do about it.  We call upon God, and from the bottom of our hearts we cry out for mercy.

“O Lord hear my prayer, and let my cry come unto thee!”  God does hear our prayer, and never fails to answer them.  Perhaps not in the way we anticipate, but assuredly in a way that best fulfills his own divine plan for us and our neighbor.  We should always be thankful for the answer he gives us, and offer up whatever pain and sorrow may come along with that answer.  This is never easy to do, as we prefer to get our own way.  But our Father in heaven knows best.  And we always owe him our most profound gratitude for the answer he gives us. 

You’ll notice that only one out of the ten lepers shows his gratitude by actually thanking our Lord.  And I’m sure you also noticed that he was a Samaritan.  Just one week after we read the story of the Good Samaritan, the Church once again places a Samaritan before us as the one who behaves better than the followers of the true religion of the time.  It reinforces the lesson we learned last Sunday—that very often, non-Catholics behave far better than those of us who profess the true faith.  That should be for us not a reason for envy or despair, but should rather inspire us to live up to our own higher calling.  We who have been given the grace of being baptized, of being raised Catholic, have far greater responsibilities than the rest.  We must recognize our privileges as graces freely granted us by God.  And like all privileges, they comes with the burden of responsibility to do more and to do better.

The obligations now incumbent upon us are these:  to love God and our neighbor.  Each of us must find the best way to do this.  But one means at least is common to us all, and that is the one commanded by the Blessed Mother—to pray the Rosary in reparation for own sins and the sins of mankind, and to avert the heavy sword of justice that is poised over this world and ready to strike.  For indeed, the world is broken, and one way or another, God is going to fix it.  Let our prayer be that of the ten lepers, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”

 A HYMN FOR THE 13TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

By Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley, 1905

 

Savior, Who didst healing give,
Still in power go before us;
Thou through death didst bid men live,
Unto fuller life restore us;
Strength from Thee the fainting found,
Deaf men heard, the blind went seeing;
At Thy touch was banished sickness,
And the leper felt new being.

Thou didst work Thy deeds of old
Through the loving hands of others;
Still Thy mercies manifold
Bless men by the hands of brothers;
Angels still before Thy face
Go, sweet health to brothers bringing;
Still, hearts glow to tell His praises
With Whose Name the Church is ringing.

Loved physician! for his word
Lo, the Gospel page burns brighter,
Mission servant of the Lord,
Painter true, and perfect writer;
Savior, of Thy bounty send
Such as Luke of Gospel story,
Friends to all in body’s prison
Till the sufferers see Thy glory.

HELP IN TIME OF NEED

 A REFLECTION FOR THE 13TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Lepers by the wayside calling for help.  How many times do we pass by along the way and hear the cries for help from those we pass?  How many times do we ignore those cries?  Do we even hear them?  Or are our own preoccupations so distracting that the desperate cries of our neighbor fall on deaf ears?

 

As Catholics who at least in theory want to follow in the footsteps of our Blessed Lord, it is incumbent upon us to maintain a kind of situational awareness as we walk through life.  Our passage through this all-too-brief sojourn on earth must not turn into a leisurely stroll seeking out only the comforts that we crave. 

 

Think of it in terms of a long drive to visit someone we love (for that is what our path to heaven is).  We are anxious to reach our destination.  We stay tuned to our GPS and make sure we haven’t made a wrong turn.  We aren’t concerned with making a lot of stops on the way, just the minimum for fuel, bathroom and a quick sandwich.  We’re conscious only of our destination, and making sure we reach it safely. 

 

In life, we do the same thing.  Or at least we try to.  We are committed to staying on track, not straying outside the Church through apostasy, or out of the grace of God through sin.  We make sure we don’t run out of gas or get too tired of the journey by renewing our state of grace through the sacraments.  If the car breaks down, we go to Confession.  If we need gas, we make sure to go to Communion.  And through spiritual reading and meditation we gradually come to grips with our journey, understanding what is expected of us as we travel.  But all of this is part and parcel of our trip, with the arrival at our ultimate destination our prime concern.

 

Of course, the highway to heaven is paved with good intentions, and sometimes we don’t live up to our resolutions.  Loving God and neighbor is not always easy, especially if we think that by stopping to help someone who has a flat tire it’s going to slow us down.  The path of perfection is a toll road, and now and again, we have to stop and pay.  Sometimes, that means stopping to help out that soul in distress, or going out of our way to pick someone up and give them a lift.

 

Look around as you go your way.  Find those in need and go out of your way to help them.  And if it’s you who finds yourself stranded by the side of the road, don’t be afraid to call out for help like the ten lepers in today’s Gospel and give your neighbor the opportunity to earn some graces themselves.

GO, AND DO THOU LIKEWISE!

 A SERMON FOR THE 12TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

One of the most familiar of all the Gospel parables, the story of the Good Samaritan poses the threat of becoming a cliché.  We are so well acquainted with it that we take it for granted, and stop thinking about it.  How often do we think about the air we breathe, for example, and how important it is for us?  But this little story told by our Lord has in it one of the most fundamental and critical lessons that we all must learn.  It’s a lesson that our eternal life depends on.  Take away the air we breathe and we very quickly die.  Take away charity (for that is what this story depicts), and our death is equally fast and furious.  It may be a spiritual, as opposed to a physical death, but surely that makes it more, and not less, to be feared.

So let’s take a quick look at this “good Samaritan” chap, and remind ourselves of our responsibilities vis-à-vis this greatest of the virtues, charity.

A little background first, because it was one of the events in our Lord’s life that led him to tell the story of the Good Samaritan.  As Christ was speaking to his disciples, “a lawyer stood up and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”  That’s the job of a lawyer, isn’t it?  To ask questions to which he already knows the answer, so that the witness may condemn himself out of his own mouth.  And this surely was the purpose of this lawyer.  He was tempting our Lord, and hoped to entrap him so that he could come in for the kill and destroy the credibility of his “witness.”  The only problem was that this particular lawyer did NOT know the answer to the question he asked.  He only thought he did. 

He knew the Jewish law forwards and backwards.  What exactly did the Jews regard as essential to salvation?  Follow the laws of Moses and the traditions of their fathers.  Our lawyer here was an expert in all that.   But guess what!  That might have been fine and dandy in the days of the Old Testament, but Christ had come to fulfill those fine and dandy, yet insufficient means of salvation.  He had come to fulfill them with the spirit of what those things represented.  It was to be the spirit of the law, and not the letter, that would save souls.  And that spirit rests utterly and completely in the law of charity.  “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart , and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself.”  All the other laws that exist hang upon this one, supreme and all-inclusive commandment of love.

The law of Moses was given to the holy patriarch on Mount Sinai as the Hebrews left the slavery of Egypt for the new freedoms of the Promised Land.  It was a law that comprised ten separate commandments.  The first three dealt with the relationship between man and God and were inscribed on one tablet of stone.  The other seven, dealing with man’s relationship with his neighbor, were written on a second tablet.  Two stone tablets, dividing the commandments into two categories, God and neighbor.

In today’s Gospel, our blessed Lord is not throwing out this law of Moses as the lawyer wants to establish.  He tries to prove that our Lord is somehow against the laws and traditions of the patriarchs.  But we can see, how our Lord’s words refute the lawyer’s trickery utterly and completely.  Ten commandments contained on two tablets.  God and neighbor.  Two categories of law.  Our Lord merely summarizes the Ten Commandments into these two categories, and gives us the two most basic and fundamental laws of all:  Love God, and love thy neighbor.

Thwarted by our Lord, the lawyer seeks to extricate from the trap he set, and into which he himself has now fallen.  “And who is my neighbor?”  He can’t refute Christ’s reminder that we must love God, but maybe he can trick Christ into misidentifying who our neighbor is.  After all, according to the Jews, our neighbor is our fellow Jew, and only our fellow Jew.  The “others” are merely goyim—cattle.  Thus, the Jewish code of ethics permits the cheating of Gentiles in their acts of commerce, which is why we end up getting charged such high interest rates by the credit card companies.  But they weren’t allowed to cheat their fellow Jews.  That’s kind of gone out of the window by now, as the “elite” now seek only to enrich themselves, and they have totally lost all consideration for any of their fellow man.  They’ll cheat Jews and non-Jews alike these days, providing they remain rich and powerful.  Truly, the swamp needs to be drained.

Meanwhile, our Lord tells us a story, which, if the lawyer and his ilk had paid attention to it, the world would be a better place today.  He tells the story of a non-Jew, a Samaritan, not the type of neighbor the lawyer had in mind.  Some poor traveler gets beaten up by robbers, and one by one, the Jews walk past and ignore his plight as he lies half-dead in the road.  It is left to one of the goyim to take compassion on the traveler, binding his wounds and putting him up in a hotel for the night.  This is our neighbor, not the ones who hold to the letter of the law and would leave the poor man to die.

This lawyer reminds me of a certain type of traditional Catholic.  Let’s make sure we don’t behave like the holier-than-thou Jewish priest and Levite who shun the wounded man lying in the road, abiding by the letter and not the spirit of the law.  And by traditional Catholic, I mean even those before Vatican II, when many otherwise God-fearing men in the Church looked down and refused help to those outside her walls.  Today, let’s make sure we don’t look upon ourselves as the “elite”, ready to take care of ourselves but not the poor, the orphans, the homeless.  Let’s make sure we don’t look upon those who hold a different faith with any less charity than we view each other who have kept the faith in these bad times.  Let’s not “tut-tut” at the faults of our neighbor, but rather do what we can to bind their wounds of ignorance, gently pouring the oil and wine of truth on their false beliefs and showing them the error of their ways.  Finally, let’s lead them with all charity towards the inn of eternal happiness, where they may abide forever.  This is the true love of our neighbor.   It’s called mercy.  So let’s obey the words of our Lord to the lawyer: “Go, and do thou likewise.”

DEAR LORD AND FATHER OF MANKIND

 A HYMN FOR THE 12TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

By John Greenleaf Whittier, 1872

1 Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
forgive our foolish ways;
reclothe us in our rightful mind,
in purer lives thy service find,
in deeper reverence, praise.

2 In simple trust like theirs who heard
beside the Syrian sea
the gracious calling of the Lord,
let us, like them, without a word
rise up and follow thee.

3 O Sabbath rest by Galilee,
O calm of hills above,
where Jesus knelt to share with thee
the silence of eternity,
interpreted by love!

4 Drop thy still dews of quietness,
till all our strivings cease;
take from our souls the strain and stress,
and let our ordered lives confess
the beauty of thy peace.

5 Breathe through the heats of our desire
thy coolness and thy balm;
let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm!

STILL DEWS OF QUIETNESS

 A REFLECTION FOR THE 12TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

The lawyer in today’s Gospel is a foolish man.  Like many lawyers, he is impressed by his own knowledge.  All those years of training, memorizing the minutiae of the legal code from the Talmud, figuring out the loopholes that allowed them to get round God’s commandments when it suited them, applying the full force of the letter of the law to the people they didn’t like.  Oh, they were so very, very clever.  When some “upstart” from the wilds of Galilee shows up and starts healing people on the sabbath, obviously this lawyer just had to put him in his place by making a fool out of him.

 

Of course, our blessed Lord was more than a match for this arrogant and Pharisaical lawyer.  If anyone ended up looking foolish after their conversation, it was definitely the attorney who had lost sight of the spirit of the law he thought he knew so well.

 

We Catholics must avoid the same trap.  Our life here on earth is not about knowing the intricacies of the Ten Commandments.  It’s about loving God and our neighbor.  If we do this, all the lesser laws fall into place.  We cannot love God by worshiping false idols like Pachamama, by taking his Name in vain or failing to observe our Sunday obligations.  We surely can’t love our neighbor if at the same time we’re stealing from him, doing harm to him or his reputation, wishing him evil.  And as usual, by following our own self-interested inclinations, we find nothing but trouble.  With our first mortal sin, our soul enters a whirlpool, which sucks us further and further in until we can no longer escape without a special grace from God.  Let’s never presume that God will give us that grace, by the way!

 

Whenever we’re tempted, our choice is not just between good and evil.  It’s the choice between inner peace and the mayhem that we let loose within us.  No natural desire or achievement can ever truly satisfy us, for we are supernatural beings with an immortal soul.  To find peace, we must find God.  And God is to be found, not in the earthquake, the whirlwind and the fire, but in the still, small voice of calm.  By ordering our lives according to the two great commandments of loving God and our neighbor, we will surely find this peace.

 

I hope the words of today’s hymn by John Whittier will be a worthwhile source of meditation on this subject, as we consider this week the beauty of God’s peace that can be ours  if only we truly follow the commandments—the two big ones!

SONG OF THE FATHERS

 A HYMN FOR THE FEAST OF ST. JOACHIM

Ecclesiasticus 44: 1-4, 7-13

Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us.

The Lord hath wrought great glory by them through his great power from the beginning.

Such as did bear rule in their kingdoms, men renowned for their power, giving counsel by their understanding, and declaring prophecies:

Leaders of the people by their counsels, and by their knowledge of learning meet for the people, wise and eloquent in their instructions:

Such as found out musical tunes, and recited verses in writing:

Rich men furnished with ability, living peaceably in their habitations;

All these were honoured in their generations, and were the glory of their times.

There be of them, that have left a name behind them, that their praises might be reported.

And some there be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been; and are become as though they had never been born, and their children after them.

But these were merciful men, whose righteousness hath not been forgotten.

With their seed shall continually remain a good inheritance,

and their children are within the covenant.

Their seed standeth fast, and their children for their sakes.

Their seed shall remain for ever, and their glory shall not be blotted out.

Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore.

The people will tell of their wisdom, and the congregation will show forth their praise.

THE SON OF DAVID

 THE SON OF DAVID

Today’s Gospel is not meant to entertain us.  It’s not one of those nice, easy-to-read stories of one of the events in our Lord’s life.  Instead, it’s more like reading an Israeli telephone directory, and on the face of it, about as interesting.  But there’s a reason for including it in today’s Mass nevertheless, as it contains a lesson just as important as anything else we read in the Gospels.

 

It is what we call a genealogy, the documented family tree, in this case, of our Lord Jesus Christ.  It is the historical record tracing Christ’s ancestry back to King David, thereby demonstrating our Lord’s royal roots and providing the world with further evidence that he is the King of kings.

 

The genealogy begins by pointing out that David was the son of Abraham.  Not literally his son, that’s not what it means.  David was simply the descendant of Abraham, and the genealogy that connects these two men is documented elsewhere in Holy Scripture.  Let’s not forget that it was to Abraham that God spoke, promising him that salvation would come from his lineage.  Our Blessed Lady reminded us of this in her Magnificat, which we sing at Vespers every evening, that God, “remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel,
as he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed for ever.”

 

So we follow the seed of Abraham, first jumping to King David, and then throughout the generations until we come to St. Joseph.  When the Roman Emperor Augustine called all the men of the occupied Holy Land to return to the city of their ancestry to be counted for the census, St. Joseph had to make the journey all the way from Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem of Judea.  This was the town where David had been born, and was known therefore as David’s Royal City.  Here it was that St. Joseph’s spouse, the Blessed Virgin Mary, gave birth to the Child who was both Son of God and Son of David.

 

The genealogy does not mention, nor does it need to mention the Blessed Virgin Mary.  The Jews were not accustomed to chronicling the pedigrees of women, but rather of the menfolk.  However, they were forbidden to marry outside their own tribe, and so it follows that Mary was of the same tribe of David as her spouse St. Joseph.  It was the royal blood of King David that both Joseph and Mary inherited, and which she passed on to her divine Son.

ALL GENERATIONS SHALL CALL ME BLESSED

 A SERMON FOR THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

Last Sunday we took a look at two men standing in the temple, one a proud and arrogant Pharisee, boasting what a good and holy man he was, the other a humble and repentant Publican, striking his breast as he acknowledges himself to be a miserable sinner.  Today, we find ourselves in the presence of a third category of human being, one which is unique in her nature.  She was neither proud of her goodness, nor did she need to ashamed of her misdeeds.  Of all the humans ever born of man, only this one was completely sinless.  Sinless from her conception, her Immaculate Conception, and sinless throughout an entire lifetime dedicated to God.  God, her heavenly Father, and God her heavenly Son.

So that the Word may become Flesh and dwell amongst us, this Woman was raised above all other creatures.  Even above the angels themselves, some of whom had a hard time with this concept, and rebelled against God’s plan.  But this Woman would be raised all the higher, to defeat Satan and crush the evil serpent beneath her heel.  Queen of angels, Queen of earth, and with her Assumption today, Queen of heaven also.  A mortal woman raised to be the purest of creatures, higher than angels, apostles, prophets and martyrs, her soul perfect, immaculate and spotless.

Let’s place her for a moment side by side with the Pharisee and the Publican we met in last Sunday’s Gospel.  She is sinless and yet she does not behave like the arrogant Pharisee.  She does not thank God that she is not like other men—better than the extortioners, adulterers, and the other sinners of this earth.  She does not feel the urge to point out to us or to God that she is without sin, that her soul shines bright like the morning sun.  There is no hint of pride in her, no inclination to rejoice in her perfection.
Nor, obviously, does she feel the remorse of the Publican.  How can she?  She has no sins for which to be sorry, nothing that she should repent having done.   She is perfect, but does not take pride in her perfection.  Even though she holds a place higher than all other creatures, she remains as humble as the sinful Publican.

In the case of Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, she merely acknowledges with awe that her soul doth magnify the Lord.  In other words, she humbly recognizes that, despite her lack of imperfections, she is still merely human and a pale reflection of the infinite goodness and beauty of God.  Her soul reflects his beauty, and she knows that, without his divine Light, she would be nothing.  “My spirit,” she says, “hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.”  She deflects all the praise away from herself and gives it to God instead.  “For he hath regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden, he that is mighty hath magnified me, and holy is his Name.”

She does not speak of her own perfections, instead, pointing out to us God’s mercy and loving-kindness to us, his children.  His children are her children, and she shares his caring love towards us.  But it is never about herself, always about God: “His mercy is on them that fear him throughout all generations.”  She does not say that God has exalted her, but that “he hath exalted the humble and meek.”  She is awestruck that she has been chosen as the instrument of God’s plan to help his servant Israel “as he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed for ever.”  This humble daughter of Abraham was exalted by the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity himself.  He, who was so much higher than she, exalted her above his own human nature by allowing himself to be confined within her body for nine months, by subjecting himself to her and St. Joseph in Nazareth, by obeying her and performing his first public miracle at her request.   

Such exaltation of a creature had never taken place before this, nor ever shall be again.  And we marvel at the response of Our Blessed Lady to these great privileges.  We can almost hear the gasp of awestruck wonder in her voice as she recognizes that “from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.”  And so we do, we call her our Blessed Mother, we hail the Blessed Virgin Mary as did her cousin Elisabeth at the Visitation when she exclaimed “Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.”

We can’t help but look with broken hearts upon the generations of Protestants, who in spite of their devoted attachment to Holy Scripture, fail to follow the word of God as prophesied by this humble handmaid, and refuse in their ignorance to call the Mother of Jesus “blessed.”  In this our day, let us repeat again and again in reparation for the sins of man, and especially the blasphemies spoken against God’s holy Mother, the holy words of Scripture, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.  Blessed art thou amongst women.”  Today’s great festival of Marymas, the Assumption of Our Blessed Lady into heaven, marks the final privilege, the last and ultimate exaltation of the humble maid of Nazareth, as she is raised body and soul into the sight of God, there to receive her crowning glory as Queen of Heaven and Earth.  “Hail, holy Queen.”

LIFTING OUR EYES TO HEAVEN

 A SERMON FOR THE 10TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Today’s Gospel is about contrast.  Our Lord wants to show us two extremes, the Pharisee with his prideful arrogance, and the Publican with his abject humility.  We usually don’t like extremes.  The term “extremist” is not something we’d like to be called, is it?  In politics, the extremists are, on one hand, the far left communists who are now rioting and looting their way to a revolution; and on the other hand, a thankfully dying breed of far right racists who, not so very long ago, made black people ride at the back of the bus and drink from separate water fountains so we whites wouldn’t be “contaminated.”  Neither far left nor far right is a good place to be, and as I said, the truth is somewhere in between, but a long way from both.

In our religion, we often see extremes.  Take the virtue of hope, for example.  We practice Hope when we look forward to being rewarded for cooperating with God’s graces by going to heaven when we die and living in the eternal presence of our God.  It’s one of the three theological virtues, and one we must practice as perfectly as we can.  But it is possible to have too much hope.  We can have so much “hope” that we exceed the bounds of real hope, and presume on God’s mercy, vainly “hoping” he’ll forgive us all our sins, no matter how bad they are, how many times we carelessly commit them, no matter how imperfect our contrition, how weak our resolution to avoid them in the future.  The result?  We keep on sinning, with smug thoughts about the mercy of God being infinite, and a complete failure to realize the danger we are in.  “Don’t worry, I can go to confession again on Sunday.”  Too much hope.  Presumption.

On the other hand, with some people, the self-loathing of our sins becomes so much to bear that they lose hope, despairing altogether of their ultimate salvation.  This despair is the opposite of presumption.  We despair of ever being able to save our souls, and wallow in self-pity, depression.  Ultimately, we lose not only our hope, but our faith and our love of God, those two other theological virtues that are necessary for salvation.  The result of not enough hope, in other words, is the same as having too much hope.  We simply fall into the self-induced quagmire of a life of sin.

Presumption and despair.  Two extremes.  Both of them extreme distortions of the virtue of hope.  In the Gospel today, we have two extremes, but not these extremes of presumption and despair.  So in this particular case we shouldn’t be looking for the truth to be somewhere between the arrogant Pharisee and the humble Publican.  Certainly, the Pharisee’s pride is caused by the sin of presumption.  But the Publican’s humility is not the result of despair.  Humility is not a distortion of the virtue of hope.  On the contrary, it is a sign of the true practice of the virtue of hope.  Conscious of his many sins, the Publican still trusts in God and with true repentance and a firm purpose of amendment continues to hope in his salvation.

Take a look at the Pharisee as he falls into the first category of presumption.  He presumes that because he fasts twice a week and gives a tenth of his income to the temple, he’s a better man than the sinful Publican.  He presumes on God’s mercy, even thanking God for making him such a wonderful person.  Certainly, this man is extreme in his presumption, and with it, falls headlong into the deadly sin of Pride.  The Publican, on the other hand, counters the Pharisee’s excessive over-abundance of hope, not with a shortage of hope, but with just the right amount of hope.  He counters vice with virtue.  It is this true hope that leads him into the virtue of humility.

This is the lesson our Lord is giving us here, not that we have to pick between two opposites that are both bad, presumption or despair, but that we must reject extreme vice with extreme virtue, replacing our evil tendencies through the practice of the opposing virtues.  When we hope in God’s mercy, we must first seek the happy medium, falling neither into despair nor presumption.  These are the two real and undesirable extremes between which lies the truth.  Find that happy medium and your trust in God will be sound and well-founded.  Your ensuing humility will be to your credit.

Nor should you fear to be “extremely humble.”  Just beware the age-old trap of humility, which is probably the most dangerous of all the virtues.  It’s a virtue that, when you think of have it, that very thought means that you don’t.  Look at the Pharisee standing at the front of the temple: he dares to boast to Almighty God that he’s not a sinner, a perfect example of straightforward pride. The Publican, on the other hand, stands at the back of the temple, hiding himself from view, and confessing his sins with repentance and begging for mercy.  Note that he “would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven.”   He’s not calling upon God to look down on him and witness what a humble man he is.  No, his humility is genuine.  Instead of falling into the trap of taking pride in his humility, his prayer is based firmly on true hope—it’s utterly devoid of pride, merely the acknowledgment of his sins, sorrow and repentance for those sins, and finally, a heartfelt plea for mercy in the God in whom he puts his hope and trust.

When we pray our Act of Contrition, it must be with this same humility.  When we go to Confession, we rattle off our sins and expect the priest to absolve them with a few words in Latin.  Let’s not forget that if the confession of the sins is not done with repentance and firm purpose of amendment, the priest can spout all the Latin he wants over you, but it will have no effect.  You’re not there to just give the priest a laundry list of things you shouldn’t have done.  You must be humble and acknowledge that you have offended God, you must be sorry you did so, and you must have that intention to avoid any future occurrence.  The temptation to pride is always lurking in the background, luring us into a sense of complacency that we have “done our duty”, confessed our sins, and that we’re now back “in the state of grace,” our souls glowing white once again in the sight of God and his angels, better, undoubtedly, than the person next to us who hasn’t been to confession.  How wonderful we are!  Be careful. The devil is in the details.

It’s not far from the back of the church to the front, from your pew to the confessional.  It’s a short trip that you should make often.  Make sure though that when you venture forth to bare your soul before God, and again, even more so, when you go back to your pew with your nice newly-washed soul, it is with the humility of the Publican and not the presumption of the Pharisee.  Let God do the exalting of the humble, it’s not for us to do it ourselves.  If we do, our presumption leads us automatically into the sin of presumption and pride and become the Pharisee of today’s story, with all his extremism.  Let’s heed the words of our Lord, that “every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled.”  We need to know our place!

O THOU WHO DOST TO MAN ACCORD

A HYMN FOR THE 10TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

by John William Hewett, 1859

1. O Thou who dost to man accord
His highest prize, his best reward,
Thou hope of all our race;
Jesu, to Thee we now draw near,
Our earnest supplications hear,
Who humbly seek Thy face.

 

2. With self accusing voice within,
Our conscience tells of many a sin
In thought, and word, and deed:
O cleanse that conscience from all stain,
The penitent restore again,
From every burthen freed.

 

3. If Thou reject us, who shall give
Our fainting spirits strength to live?
’Tis Thine alone to spare;
With cleansèd hearts to pray aright,
And find acceptance in Thy sight,
Be this our lowly prayer.

 

4. O blessèd Trinity, bestow
Thy pardoning grace on us below,
And shield us evermore;
Until, within Thy courts above,
We see Thy face, and sing Thy love,
And with Thy saints adore.

TWO MEN IN A TEMPLE

 A REFLECTION FOR THE 10TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

“Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other, a publican.”  It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but in actuality it’s the start of a parable told by our Lord in today’s Gospel.  We know the story very well, the Pharisee who brags about what a wonderful saintly man he is, and the poor publican at the back of the temple, who won’t even lift his eyes to heaven, but just strikes himself on the chest as he repents his sins and asks God for forgiveness.   We’re left in no doubt which of the two our blessed Lord approves of.

 

Both men address God directly.  This is not a performance on the part of either of them, made for the benefit of the other.  They are both “praying”.  The Pharisee “prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee that I am not as other men.”  Meanwhile, the Publican too is busy speaking with God alone, smiting his breast, saying “God, be merciful to me a sinner.” 

 

However, one of them is certainly aware of the presence of the other.  The Pharisee specifically names the publican, as he lists to God the types of people he despises: “extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.”  The Pharisee is proud to point out to God that he is a better man than the Publican.  And let’s face it, he does seem to lead a good life, fasting twice a week, supporting the temple and the poor with his generous donations.  Meanwhile, the poor Publican does not mention the Pharisee.  His eyes are down, he probably doesn’t even notice the man at the front of the temple.  He’s too upset at having offended God by his sinful life.  And it is, let’s not forget, a sinful life. 

 

And yet, God looks down on these two men, and smiles on the sinner even as he frowns upon the self-proclaimed saint.  Which of the two do we resemble?  Even as we ask ourselves this question, do we thank God we’re not like other men, with our fasting, our donations to the church, our rosaries, our obedience to the commandments and loyalty to the true faith?  And with our humility too, no doubt!  If so, what value are these treasures to us if we throw them away in an act of pride and presumption?  Let’s rather remember all the ways we have offended God, not taking any pride in having perhaps improved over the years, or resisting temptation better than we used to.  No.  Let’s keep our eyes down, our thoughts firmly fixed on how pride comes before a fall, and on how much we still owe to the God we’ve offended so much and so often.

HOUSE OF PRAYER OR DEN OF THIEVES?

A SERMON FOR THE 9TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.  We wake up one morning and we have such grand ideas of what we’re going to do.  We envisage great projects, ways to improve our lives, make ourselves happier.  Sometimes, our intentions are truly and supernaturally good, as for instance when we leave the confessional, firmly resolute that we will not commit those same old sins anymore.  Or every year, when we begin the season of Lent, fIlled with holy zeal and ready to perform great deeds of penance and fasting.

But then, along the way, something happens.  It’s usually not some startling epiphany that, darn it, we’ve had enough, and we’re just going to quit.  It more like a gradual reduction of our enthusiasm, an increasing relaxation of the strictness we apply to ourselves.  Little by little, our resistance to temptation wanes, our zeal to please God fades, and before we even realize what’s happened, we’re back to our old ways, abandoning ourselves once more to our former way of life, our newly rediscovered quest for sanctity left to wither away before it ever begins to bear fruit.

The truth of what happened is this: It started by God giving us a special grace.  The grace of a desire to love and serve God better, to draw closer to him with the yearning to make ourselves more worthy of the love he has shown us.  The second step was when our mind corresponded with this grace and gave the necessary instructions to our will, making the appropriate plans, fully intending to follow God’s will by rising to meet the inspiration he has given.  Then, finally, when things start getting tough, when the battle against our own poor fallen nature begins to rage like the true war it is, we lose enthusiasm and take a step back. 

Remember the brave firefighters and police officers who walked into the flames on 9/11 to save lives, only to die themselves.  Are we consumed by the same zeal for duty towards God as they were to their fellow human beings?  It’s not so much that we are cowards, fearing the flames and destruction that face us.  Fear would at least be a better excuse for turning back.  But what is there to fear in doing penance and showing God our respect and love?  No, it’s sadly worse than that.  It’s more like we’re standing at the foot of those burning towers of the World Trade Center and deciding we just can’t be bothered climbing all those steps to the top.  Sure, we might start, and go up a couple of floors.  But by the second or third week of Lent, we look up and see how much further we still have to go, and just give up.  Simple laziness?  Lack of will power?  Call it what you will, but it’s not enough and not worthy of our calling.

We see this over and over again in the Old Testament, when God gave countless graces to his chosen people and they’re good for a while.  Just a short while.  Look at all the ways God helped the Hebrew people escape the slavery of Egypt: the ten plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, the feeding of the people in the wilderness with manna from heaven… They were very happy to take God’s gifts, but as soon as they started getting hot or hungry or frightened or bored, or whenever difficulties arose, they complained, they misbehaved, they even melted down their earrings and built a golden calf to worship.  St. Paul reminds the Jews of their feckless behavior in today’s Epistle: “The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.”  And in the New Testament, as we see in this morning’s Gospel, the chosen people continued their wicked ways, turning the temple of Jerusalem from a house of prayer into a den of thieves.

This kind of behavior displeases God.  In human terms, we may say that it provokes him to sadness and even anger.  He is especially unhappy with us when we actually dare congratulate ourselves for our good intentions alone, intentions that are never brought to fruition.  We’re very proud of ourselves when we come up with a list of all the things we’ve given up for Lent, but we push it as far from our conscience as we can when we cheat on ourselves and find an excuse to sneak a quick break from the penance.  These secret relapses do not go unnoticed by the all-seeing eye of God.  And instead of being his beloved subjects, we are now nothing more than a disappointment to him. 

This is why, when our Lord comes near unto Jerusalem in today’s Gospel, he beholds the city and weeps over it.  He weeps because the Jews, his beloved chosen people, are missing the greatest opportunity of all, the highest grace ever given man, the realization that they have, dwelling in their midst, the Word made flesh.  With this grace comes their invitation to accept what he offers them, a New and Everlasting Covenant drawn up in the Precious Blood of their Messiah.  How many of them saw the miracles, the healings, of our Lord, but failed to realize what they meant?  How many of them heard his teachings but failed to apply them to their own lives?  For many of the Jews, these all-important truths were hidden from their eyes because of their hardened hearts, because of the attachment to their sins, their open defiance of the law of charity.  But unfortunately, for so many more, the failure to accept their Messiah was based on the same lack of zeal, the same laziness of spirit, that affects so many of us today and prevents us from becoming the saints we belong being.

This kind of lukewarmness saddened the soul of our Lord so much that he sweat blood in the Garden of Gethsemane over mankind’s indifference to his sacrifice.  Even his three most beloved apostles did nothing but fall asleep as he sweat that blood in his anguish.  We are no better.

Let’s look to our own hearts.  We may not be great saints.  But dwelling in that heart of ours, if we are in the state of grace is God himself.  Our heart is the temple of the Holy Ghost.  Just as Christ our Lord dwelled with his chosen people all those many years ago, he dwells today in the divine form of the Holy Ghost within us.  And Jesus beholds us, just as he beheld the Holy City of Jerusalem, and he weeps as he beholds us.  For have we truly known the time of our visitation?  Do we act on the inspirations of that Holy Ghost within our soul?  Or have we turned that temple of the Holy Ghost from a House of Prayer into a Den of Thieves?  Have we desecrated our temple by letting in those thieves, those seven deadly sins, which would steal away our commitment to holiness by replacing them with an ever-greater attachment to our own self-interest, our own happiness and smug self-satisfaction? 

Let’s not forget that just a few years after the Agony in the Garden, the Holy City of Jerusalem was utterly destroyed by the Romans.  The people of the city were laid even with the ground, and their children with them.  Not one stone was left upon another.  And why?  Because they knew not the time of their visitation.  Let’s not forget this, that after God is done being “sad”, he will wreak out his wrath upon us.  He will look upon our desecrated temple that should have been the Temple of the Holy Ghost, and he will turn the anger of his judgment upon us.  Is this what we have to look forward to when we die, just because we can’t be bothered to be holy?

Surely, and especially in light of the times we live in, it is time to do something about it.  To realize once and for all that when God gives us the grace to make us want to become better men and women, it isn’t a game that has no consequences.  We must act on those graces, and continue acting on them, never failing in our initial enthusiasm but persevering in the face of all adversity, hardship, lack of fervor, and whatever other temptations try to lead us off the path.  Hopefully, for us to persevere, it is enough for us to know we wound the Sacred Heart of Jesus by our spinelessness.  But if not, then surely we will be moved by the fear of his wrath.  Our infinitely merciful Saviour is also, let’s remember, infinitely just.  Our Judge will weep for us, but he will also one day drive us out of the House of God once and for all unless we keep coming back to him with renewed fervor and love.  “Let him that thinketh he standeth take hede lest he fall.”