WHO HAS THE POWER?

 A SERMON FOR CHRIST THE KING

We have an election coming up soon.  One of those treasured opportunities when “We the People” actually get to exercise the authority given us by the Constitution.  For according to this venerable document we revere so much, all power comes from the people.  It assures us that we have inalienable rights given us by God, and that it is up to us, people with “rights” and “powers”, to choose our elected officials who will do our bidding in the hallowed halls of Washington.  It’s a nice idea to be sure, and makes us feel all warm and fuzzy that we have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

But like all the devices of man, the Constitution is ultimately flawed.  I’m not saying it hasn’t worked reasonably well since the American rebellion back in the 1700s.  Nevertheless, its basic premise that power, the authority to govern, comes from below, from the people, is simply not true.  Setting aside any historical and political bias I might have, I still need to remind you that our belief, as Catholics, is that authority, quite simply, comes from God.  The Constitution has it coming from “We the People.”

Like I said, it has worked reasonably well, as long as the majority have believed that the power of the people is bestowed upon them by Almighty God.  But when the majority vote to remove God from this equation, the idea of power then logically disintegrates into our own individual power to do whatever we want.  Moral truth ceases to be an objective fact and begins to depend on the current views of the majority.  Yesterday’s truths and values are not necessarily today’s.  What, for example, was once correctly seen as murder of the innocent is now transformed into a woman’s choice; what was once seen as a perverse moral lifestyle is now almost universally recognized as perfectly normal.  If you don’t agree with the majority position, you are made to feel like a modern-day heretic.

All authority depends ultimately on God and it is his divine moral authority that tells us what is right and wrong.  Any law that goes against this authority of God is an illegimate law that must not be obeyed, no matter what the majority of Americans think, or how the men and women of the Supreme Court interpret our Constitution. 

Our blessed Lord is not recognized by this nation as its King.  Next week’s election is simply one more ripple in the Washington swamp, which is too deep to drain without first acknowledging its Creator as having supreme authority over it.  The power we exercise when we vote should not delude us into thinking that it’s we who are running the show.  It will take more than an election to rid our nation of the swamp creatures of the Deep State who will cling on to the reins of power and continue to crush anyone who dares to try and stop them.  Why, do you think, do they go after President Trump so hard?—he’s standing up to them, and that they cannot abide.  Let’s pray he gets the chance to spend another four years getting rid of a few more of them.  It might not make much of a difference in the long run, but there again, it may save a few souls that would otherwise be lost.

Authority comes from God.  It comes from God whether we the people believe it or not, whether we the people like it or not. The American system of Government can work.  But it will work only so long as a majority of the population continue to believe that we truly are “one nation under God” and elect only men and women who continue to believe that inalienable truth.  So yes, we must vote, but behind that exercise in democracy must follow the faith and trust that this nation still has a king!  Not an earthly king, but the King of kings and Lord of lords, our Lord Jesus Christ.  That is why today’s feast is so important, and why Providence has so perfectly placed it on the last Sunday of October, so close to this nation’s election.

If we seek comfort from all this wretched election turmoil, let’s not make the mistake of turning to the Church of Rome for help.  This past week has seen two direct assaults from the Eternal City against the Kingship of Christ in this world.  The man in charge there hopes to extend the chaos of the progressive liberals to the world at large.  He has actively used his position as pope of the Conciliar Church to seduce the Catholic faithful away from the kingship of Christ and replace it with the values of the French Revolution.  What not even Washington can do, Rome is now attempting.  The final overthrow—they hope—of Christ the King.

The first assault of the week came in the form of the latest encyclical from the Conciliar boss.  It’s called Fratelli Tutti—“We’re all brothers”, —and it’s an open promotion, supposedly from the Vicar of Christ for the overthrow of Christ the King in the form of a One World Government and the mythical brotherhood of man.  Not since Judas himself has a creature in such a high position stooped to such a treacherous act against his Lord and Master.  It’s impossible to read it without revulsion for its unabashed socialist and humanist views.  I don’t need to explain them to you here—just listen to any Democrat politician and you’ll not find a single word, not a single viewpoint that isn’t contained and vigorously applauded in Fratelli Tutti.

Conservative prelate Archbishop Carlo Viganò finds the writings of his pope so abhorrent that he has felt the need to publicly denounce them as representing “the emptiness of a withered heart, of a blind man deprived of supernatural sight.” He says that the encyclical’s attempt to bring hope to all men of the earth is misguided since, “in order to truly desire the good of modern man it is necessary to wake him out of his hypnotic spell of do-goodery, ecologism, pacifism, ecumenism, and globalism. In order to want the good of sinful and rebellious man, it is necessary to make him understand that by distancing himself from his Creator and Lord he will end up being a slave of Satan and of himself.”  Archbishop Viganò spells out “the only hope to foster peace and harmony among men” is “by conforming to the will of God.”

As we join ourselves with these sentiments of Archbishop  Viganò, let’s not forget that second assault on Christ the King that came from the mouth of Bergoglio this week, an open demand for laws allowing and encouraging “same-sex civil unions”.  He declares that the folks with unnatural vices, sins that call upon heaven for vengeance, have the absolute right to live as a family, and he vigorously prohibits us from denying them that right.  As we crown our blessed Lord King today, let’s do so in the spirit of reparation, sorrow and grief that he who is supposed to be Christ’s representative on earth is busy crowning the King of kings with a crown of thorns.

As goes the Church, so goes the world.  When we see such blasphemies coming from the supposed leader of the Church, how can we expect our own nation to escape unscathed from the assaults of the Devil?  What can we do about it?  Answer: we do what we can and leave the rest to God.  Vote next week.  And then pray.  Pray that our Lord’s divine authority might be recognized and obeyed by “We the People”, and by our leaders, spiritual and temporal, so that finally we may truly live as one nation under God, and under his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, our King.

HOW SHALL I SING THAT MAJESTY

 A HYMN FOR CHRIST THE KING

By John Mason, 1645-94

 

1 How shall I sing that majesty

which angels do admire?

Let dust in dust and silence lie;

sing, sing, ye heavenly choir.

Thousands of thousands stand around

thy throne, O God most high;

ten thousand times ten thousand sound

thy praise; but who am I?

 

2 Thy brightness unto them appears,

whilst I thy footsteps trace;

a sound of God comes to my ears,

but they behold thy face.

They sing, because thou art their Sun;

Lord, send a beam on me;

for where heaven is but once begun

there alleluias be.

 

3 Enlighten with faith's light my heart,

inflame it with love's fire;

then shall I sing and bear a part

with that celestial choir.

I shall, I fear, be dark and cold,

with all my fire and light;

yet when thou dost accept their gold,

Lord, treasure up my mite.

 

4 How great a being, Lord, is thine,

which doth all beings keep!

Thy knowledge is the only line

to sound so vast a deep.

Thou art a sea without a shore,

a sun without a sphere;

thy time is now and evermore,

thy place is everywhere.

MANY ARE CALLED BUT FEW ARE CHOSEN

 A SERMON FOR MISSION SUNDAY

There’s a saying used by our Lord that I’m sure you’re all familiar with.  It popped up again last Sunday in the proper Last Gospel: “Many are called but few are chosen.”  It’s a nice turn of phrase, but have you ever wondered what it actually means?  What does it mean to be “called”?  And what’s the difference between being “called” and being “chosen”?  Then of course there’s the ultimate questions of all, namely “Am I called?”  “Am I chosen?”

“Many are called, but few are chosen.”  A short phrase, but one packed with unanswered questions.  So let’s take a brief look at what our Lord means by this mysterious pronouncement.  The current population of the world is about 7.8 billion.  In other words 7,800 million.  If you filled up the stadium of the Cincinnati Bengals to capacity, you’d still need another 120,000 stadiums the same size to fit in all the people of the world.  How many of those people have been “called”, how many “chosen”?

The first question is, of course, called to what?  To salvation?  All men are called to this.  All men.  The problem has always been getting them to know this good news, the good news of the Gospel.  Like the Gospel of today’s saint, St. Luke, for example.  So many for so long have had little or no idea about creation, the fall of man, the need for redemption, and that the Son of God actually dwelt with the children of men and took away the sins of the world through his Passion and Cross.  Our Lord ordered his apostles to go and teach this good news to all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.  Ever since, it has been the mission of the Church to do exactly that, and for this reason we have never ceased the constant expansion of the faith through the missions.  Dozens of missionary orders were created over the years, and they brought the faith wherever they went.  One of the first things Christopher Columbus did after he discovered the New World was to introduce missionaries into that world to teach and baptize the locals.  For this, he is now universally despised by the enemies of God, which alone should make us want to celebrate his holiday even more.

The point is, God wants everyone to know the faith.  He calls everyone to it.  Many are called.  With the advances in world exploration, modern technology and digital communications, more and more are called every day.  But alas, few are chosen.

How many of those nations which were brought to know, love and serve God continue to do so today?  So many of them have been disloyal to the Church which is the only path to salvation, outside which there is no salvation.  Schism tore some of them away to form new autonomous churches, so-called “orthodox” churches, whose doctrines are sometimes anything but orthodox.  Others split from the Church through heresy, from the early days of Arianism to the Protestant rebellion, and now to the modernist infiltration of the Church herself.  Today, the institutional “Catholic Church” has nothing to offer that other Protestant sects don’t have, and so people fall away from the Church in droves to join in the apostasy of their non-Catholic neighbors.  So many nations lost to the faith.  So many souls.  Lost.  Lost in a world that offers them no real knowledge of the true God, no love for God’s laws, nothing, in fact, but an empty God-free life of doing nothing but pleasing their own selves.

They were called, but alas it seems that they are not chosen.  The chosen ones, the “elect”, are those who have remained loyal to their calling.  You and I, presumably, are chosen.  But are we?  To be honest, we won’t know the answer to that question until we die, either in the state of grace, or out of it.  The hour of our death is the moment when the answer will be given to us.  We will know then for sure whether we have been true to our calling or not, whether we are in fact among the chosen, the elect.  We already know we have been called, but have we been chosen for salvation or not?  That is something we will find out.

One particularly harmful heresy was invented by John Calvin back in the days of the Protestant Revolt.  He twisted the Church’s teaching about predestination and made it into something truly perverse.  We are, yes, predestined for either heaven or hell.  Predestined in the sense that God has known from all eternity which one we are going to end up in.  The Calvinists took this doctrine of the Church and twisted it to conclude from this that there’s nothing we can do about it.  God already knows if we’re going to heaven or going to hell, so what can we possibly do to change that?  This of course leads to either presumption or despair, depending on how you’re feeling on a particular day.  “It doesn’t matter what I do, I’m going to end up in heaven/hell no matter what I do, whether I act like a saint or a sinner.”  This is rubbish, of course.  The Church reminds us that it is precisely our moral choices, our behavior, that is the basis for God’s knowledge of where we’ll end up.  He knows we’re going to heaven (or hell) because he knows how we’re going to choose to act throughout our lives, and whether we will die in the state of grace or not.  So be very careful with this doctrine of predestination, and make sure you don’t drift into Calvinism, particularly if you’re going through a bad spell in your life and feel as though you’re merely the victim of “Fate.”  On the contrary, you’re a child of God, and our Father in heaven will “give us this day our daily bread,” he will provide us with whatever graces and blessings we need to save our soul.  It’s not haphazard “good fortune” or “luck.”  It’s Divine Providence making sure of our calling, and giving us every opportunity to be “chosen.”

Today is Mission Sunday.  There’s a special collect at Mass for the propagation of the faith, and in light of the fact that “many are called, but few chosen,” it would behoove us today to pray that the Church may not only expand the number of those who are baptized into her, but would even more importantly, remain loyal herself to the faith and morals she is supposed to be teaching, and resume transmitting that faith and those moral precepts to her children.  If only the Church would get back to this most fundamental of her duties, we could expect to find so many more of those who are called ending up among the chosen.

As for ourselves, we many legitimately presume, I hope, that we have remained loyal to God’s truth and God’s laws.  But let’s not extend that presumption to any kind of certainty that just because we’re good traditional Catholics we’re assured of being chosen for eternal life in heaven.  Without God’s grace, we’re not going to make it, and we need to persevere in that grace until our dying breath.  God has called us this far.  The rest is entirely up to us.

CHRIST IS MADE THE SURE FOUNDATION

 A HYMN FOR THE 20TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

By John M. Neale, 1861

 

Christ is made the sure foundation,

Christ the head and cornerstone,

chosen of the Lord and precious,

binding all the church in one;

holy Zion's help forever,

and her confidence alone.

 

2 All that dedicated city,

dearly loved of God on high,

in exultant jubilation

pours perpetual melody;

God the One in Three adoring

in glad hymns eternally.

 

3 To this temple, where we call thee,

come, O Lord of hosts, today:

with thy wonted loving-kindness

hear thy people as they pray;

and thy fullest benediction

shed within its walls alway.

 

4 Here vouchsafe to all thy servants

what they ask of thee to gain,

what they gain from thee forever

with the blessed to retain,

and hereafter in thy glory

evermore with thee to reign.

 

5 Laud and honor to the Father,

laud and honor to the Son,

laud and honor to the Spirit,

ever Three and ever One,

One in might, and One in glory,

while unending ages run.

SAINT LUKE THE EVANGELIST

 A REFLECTION FOR THE FEAST OF ST. LUKE

Today’s saint, Luke, is one of the four evangelists, and is especially well-known for his descriptions of the events surrounding the Annunciation, Visitation, and Nativity of our Lord.  From his detailed knowledge of these early events in the lives of the Blessed Mother and the Christ Child, it is believed that he was well acquainted with the Blessed Virgin Mary, who alone was privy to the specifics of what actually happened.

 

St. Luke was born in Antioch, and was by profession a physician, as St. Paul testified in his epistles.  For this reason he is venerated as the patron saint of doctors and surgeons.  After his conversion, he became a disciple of St. Paul, following him in his travels all the way to Rome.  He wrote down the events of St. Paul’s apostolate, as well as earlier events starting with the Ascension and Pentecost.  These writings are included in Holy Scripture and are known as the Acts of the Apostles.  Together with his Gospel, this second book makes St. Luke the author of more than a quarter of the New Testament.

 

St. Luke’s Gospel begins with the description of St. John Baptist’s father, the priest Zacharias, entering the temple to burn incense at the daily sacrifice.  In those days, oxen, sheep and other animals were offered in sacrifice for the expiation of sin, an offering that obviously foreshadows the ultimate sacrifice of the Son of God.  Because his Gospel begins with animal sacrifice, the symbol for St. Luke is an ox, and perhaps for that reason, he is also the patron saint of butchers.

 

Another thing St. Luke is renowned for is as an artist.  Supposedly, during his close acquaintance with the Blessed Mother of God, he painted an image of her.  This original icon has long been lost, but others, allegedly also painted by St. Luke still survive to this day, including the famous icon of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa.  His contribution to iconography has earned him the title of patron saint of artists.

 

After his death, St. Luke’s body was eventually transferred to the Abbey of Santa Giustina in Padua, while his head is venerated in the Cathedral of St. Vitus in Prague.  In the 1990s extensive scientific analysis was performed on the relics, including carbon-14 dating, and it was established that they were the remains of an individual of Syrian descent who died between AD 72 and 416.  St. Luke was martyred at the age of 84 by being hanged from a olive tree.  In addition to his titles mentioned above, he is also the patron saint of farmers, bachelors, and students.

A MOST IMPORTANT EVENT

 A SERMON FOR THE MOTHERHOOD OF THE BVM

What’s the most important thing that’s happened since the last time you were here?  If we spend a little time, we may come up with a few events that either happened to us personally, or maybe in the world at large.  Important political changes perhaps that will end up having far-reaching effects for many years.  I could ask you what was the most important so far this century, and you’d probably say that it was 9/11.  But what if I asked you to narrow it down to the four most important events EVER?  Maybe if this were a classroom it would be interesting to have you write down your answers and compare them, but we’ll have to make do with just giving you my opinion on what are those four events which stand out more than any other because of their effect on the history of mankind.

 

The first must surely be the Creation.  Everything stems from that moment when God said “Let there be light”, and the darkness that was upon the face of the deep was illuminated by the brightness of God’s goodness and love.  Knowing full well that his greatest creation—Man—would fail him, God nevertheless created time and space for him, so that man could choose to know, love and serve God in this world and be happy with him forever in the next.  In that first moment—and we may not have realized it—the Blessed Mother already was.  She was present in the divine knowledge that she would one day be the Mother of God, and eventually our mother too.  Today’s first reading, taken from the Old Testament book of Ecclesiasticus, points this out: “I therefore, being eternal, am given to all my children which are named of him.”

 

The second event happened just a short while later in that little part of the universe where man lived, the Garden of Eden.  The betrayal of God’s love by Adam and Eve when they disobeyed him was again the cause of all that followed—the closing of heaven’s gates and expulsion of man from paradise, our own fallen nature, and ultimately the restoration of grace through the sacrifice of God’s only-begotten Son our Redeemer.  At this event God made manifest the future role of our Blessed Mother, promising Eve that her seed should crush the head of the serpent with her heel.  Redemption would be ours, but it would depend on a woman, just as our fall had been the result of a woman’s disobedience.

 

The third event, which has particular relevance to us on this feastday of Our Lady’s Motherhood, was that moment when the Blessed Virgin Mary accepted her role in the Redemption story, and said those words:  “Let it be done unto me according to thy word.”  With this, Our Lady submitted herself completely to the will of God in all things, repeating in a sense the word of God “Let there be light.”  For at that moment the Son of God became incarnate, was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us.  Without this acquiescence by our blessed Lady, there would not be today the light of salvation in this world, and the gates of heaven would still remain closed in our face.  A momentous event indeed, and the reason we commemorate it three times a day by reciting the Angelus.

 

The fourth event was the death of Christ on the Cross.  This ultimate and most perfect sacrifice, infinite in its merits, was the only offering truly acceptable to an infinite God, infinitely offended by man.  Only a God-Man could expiate those offences and take away the sins of the world, thus re-opening the gates of heaven.  A few days ago, interestingly enough, we commemorated the feast of St. Denis.  He was a pagan who lived at the same time as our Lord but in a land far away.  He lived in Athens, Greece.  But despite the distance, on the very day Christ died on that Cross in Jerusalem, there was a most unusual and unnatural solar eclipse visible in the sky above Athens.  St. Denis was awestruck by this sight, and is said to have remarked:  “Either the God of Nature is suffering or else the mechanism of the universe is breaking up.”  Not since the Creation of the universe had Nature given such a sign to mankind.  But this was the moment when the sins of mankind were forgiven, when the gates of heaven were opened again to all those who, like Our Blessed Mother at the Annunciation, would accept to follow the will of God. 

 

And where was this Blessed Mother to be found at this fourth wondrous event?  At the foot of the Cross, weeping and sorrowful, and yet the only real source of consolation for her dying Son.  What was there left for her to do now that her role as Christ’s Mother was coming to an end?  God had something else in store for her, and from the Cross itself he announced that future role to her and to his beloved apostle John, “Woman behold thy son… son, behold thy Mother.”

 

On this feast of Our Lady’s Motherhood, how can we not recognize these two most extraordinary and awe-inspiring facts.  Firstly, that when Our Lady accepted to be the Mother of God, that same God, Creator of the universe, dwelt within her… 

 

“The God whom earth and sea and sky

Adore and laud and magnify,

Whose might they own, whose praise they swell,

In Mary's womb vouchsafed to dwell.” 

 

And secondly, that even now, this extraordinary Woman, a creature unlike any other, still deigns to be our own Mother.  Her role stretches from the depths of eternity to the heights of eternity.  Always a mother.  Mother of God, and our own Mother.  God saw something in her which we can only marvel at.  He saw her fit to suffer with him at the Cross all the sins of the world, and from that very Cross, he gave to her the task of being Mother to all poor sinners, watching over them from heaven as we commit those very sins that caused her Son’s sufferings and her own.  She continues to look down on us as we sin against her and her Son, and she shares still in his work of Redemption as she continues to protect us, her children, and guides us continually back to his loving and forgiving arms, whenever we pray those glorious words, “Hail Mary, full of grace, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.  Amen.” 

FOR MARY, MOTHER OF THE LORD

A HYMN FOR THE MOTHERHOOD OF THE BVM

By J.R. Peacey, 1896-1971

 

For Mary, Mother of the Lord

God's holy name be praised,

Who first the Son of God adored

As on her child she gazed.

 

The angel Gabriel brought the word

She should Christ's mother be;

Our Lady, handmaid of the Lord,

Made answer willingly.

 

The heavenly call she thus obeyed,

And so God's will was done;

The second Eve love's answer made

Which our redemption won.

 

She gave her body for God's shrine,

Her heart to piercing pain,

And knew the cost of love divine

When Jesus Christ was slain.

 

Dear Mary, from thy lowliness

And home in Galilee,

There comes a joy and holiness

To every family.

 

Hail, Mary, thou art full of grace,

Above all women blest;

Blest in thy Son, whom thine embrace

In birth and death confessed.

A MOTHER SEEKS HER CHILD

 A REFLECTION ON THE MOTHERHOOD OF OUR LADY

“Now the parents of Jesus went to Jerusalem every year at the solemn feast of Passover.  And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast.  And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and his mother knew it not.  But they, supposing him to have been in the company, went a day’s journey; and they sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintances.  And when they found him not, they returned again to Jerusalem, seeking him.”

 

The Fifth Joyful Mystery does not begin well.  It certainly does not begin joyfully.  One can only imagine the shock and then fear when our Lady and St. Joseph realize they have left their twelve-year-old son behind in Jerusalem.  The anguish felt by his Mother is so great that it ranks as one of her Seven Sorrows, comparable to those she suffered at Christ’s Passion and Death.  It is another reminder that this life is a mixture of sorrows and joys, and that only in the next will our joy be complete and truly fulfilled.

 

Eventually, they find the Christ Child in the temple of Jerusalem, “sitting in the midst of the doctors, hearing them, and asking them questions.”  Should we ever lose Jesus through sin, we must seek him out again.  “Seek, and ye shall find.”  No matter how far we have traveled away from God, whether it be three days’ journey or more, we must turn around, go back, and find him again.  The farther we go in the wrong direction, the less chance we ever have of finding our way back to him again.  And so it is necessary to turn around, to “con-vert”.  We have lost something more precious than gold or silver, more precious even than the air we breathe.  Without Christ in our soul, we are dead.  Dead forever.  Instead of being united to our God, we are spiritually dislocated from him who is the source of all goodness and grace, our first cause and last end.  There is no limit to the anguish we should feel at this separation.

 

Christ will not follow us and drag us back to himself when we leave him behind.  He has given us the free will to abandon him if we so choose.  But he wants us to use that free will to seek him out again, to return to the God we have forsaken by our sins.  And so he waits.  Meanwhile, our soul is dead and we have no hope of resuscitating it ourselves.  We need help.  And so God sends his Blessed Mother, our Blessed Mother, to go looking for us.  By remaining faithful to her, even though we have offended her Son, she will seek us out and bring us home.  By clinging to the Rosary and whispering our anguished “Hail Mary, full of grace, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen”, we may be assured still of God’s mercy if we do what is necessary to find forgiveness.