A SERMON FOR QUINQUAGESIMA SUNDAY
Among the feelings of anger,
depression and frustration we’ve been experiencing these past few months, we must
include also a certain sense of incredulous amazement. As we watch the nation and the world seemingly
going into self-destruct mode, we are forced to wonder how on earth the authors
and perpetrators of this national suicide can possibly think that what they are
doing is a good thing. If you’re like
me, you probably end up just shrugging your shoulders and dismissing them all
as “bad people,” what Archbishop Vigano calls “children of darkness.” While this may be true, to call Democrats and
Progressives evil is a bit of an over-simplification. Not because their lust for power and
destruction in defiance of the spirit of the Constitution and the laws of God
isn’t an evil thing in itself. Rather because
they appear so firmly oblivious to the evil of their agenda.
This is an odd thing. Normally, when we go after something evil, it’s
because there is some kind of perceived good to be achieved. This perceived good is usually the
satisfaction of some evil inclination, true, but at least there is that
satisfaction, which to our corrupted human nature, provides us with some similarly
corrupted sense of fulfillment. But what
good can be perceived by their hatred for a President whose policies resulted
in benefits for all our fellow citizens, especially those whom they claim to
hold in special esteem, the minorities, the poor and oppressed? What good do they see in creating policies that
jeopardize our safety by releasing hardened criminals from jail and letting in
an unlimited number of unvetted illegal immigrants? That create more poverty by enabling homelessness,
by raising taxes and increasing regulations that put employers out of business? That create an explosion of immorality by promoting
every imaginable vice as the highest pinnacle of self-achievement? Let’s not forget their unflinching promotion of
abortion, particular in the minority communities they claim to protect. Where do they see good in any of these things. It’s national suicide where the only good they
can claim to be going after is the destruction of their own nation and its
identity. They seem to take pleasure in
slitting the wrists of the country and watching its lifeblood drain away into
the dust.
There is a man in today’s Gospel
who begs our blessed Lord, who is passing by, for mercy. He is blind and desires to see. So he cries out that Jesus, the Son of David,
may have mercy on him. For this he is
rebuked, but not dissuaded from crying out all the more. He perseveres in his cries for mercy, and our
divine Lord rewards his persistence by restoring his sight. Those enemies of God, children of darkness,
or whatever you want to call them, are similarly blind. The difference between them and the blind man
of our Gospel is that they don’t seem to know it. For if they did, then surely they too would want
to see. But as children of darkness,
they know nothing but the darkness in which they live, a dark world in which
they cannot see anything, because it is a world that has no light. They see, as St. Paul describes, “through a
glass, darkly. This glass is the prism
through which they see their darkened, evil view of the world. They have only to ask God for mercy, and he
would give them the grace to see otherwise.
But they do not ask. And so God
does not grant them to see.
How hardened are we to our own
desires for self-indulgence that we do not ask God for the grace to change our
ways? What are the attachments in our
own life that we’ve resigned ourselves to accepting? What bad habits, vices, habitual mortal sins
even, have we come to accept as inevitable?
What temptations persist in attacking us, for which we’ve stopped asking
God for the graces to fight? Before the
start of this Lenten season of penance, we absolutely must examine our conscience
in this matter. For if we are to do penance,
we must know what we are doing penance for.
It’s not enough to enter into Lent with some vague notion of “making
reparation for sin” or “feeling sorry” for the bad stuff we’ve done. We must approach Lent with the firm purpose
of amendment. We must seek to amend our
lives and rid ourselves of any complacent attachment to the specific sins into
which we keep on falling. It’s no good
to attribute them to our “personality”, to “the way we are.” Our task this Lent is to improve that
personality and become better than the way we are, to become the best we can
be. For this we need the grace of
God. So let’s not let Christ pass by
this Lent without crying out to him with all the persistence of the blind man
in today’s Gospel, “Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me!” “Ask, and ye shall receive. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” But if we’re so hardened to our sins, so familiar
with them that they are no longer repulsive to us, then it’s time to wake
up. Time to turn on the light in our
darkness, time to stop seeing through a glass, darkly.
Sooner or later, we will see God,
not through a glass, darkly, but then face to face. We will know him no longer in part, but even
as also we are known by him. For the
enemies of God, that will be a terrible moment.
A light will switch on in their dark minds, illuminating for them the
horror of all they’ve done to hurt God and destroy souls. And in particular their own souls. This light will provide them forever with a
deep loathing of themselves, an infinite and eternal self-hatred of what they
are which will burn into their souls forever.
May God protect us from such a fate.
Let’s do what we must to avoid it.
And on this Quinquagesima Sunday,
when St. Paul speaks to us of “faith, hope and charity, these three, but the
greatest of these is charity,” then let’s start on our quest to put away our
thoughts of anger, depression and frustration at all the things that are happening
to us and our country. Let’s replace
them with thoughts of compassion for our enemies. Let’s keep in mind their ultimate and horrendous
fate if they fail to seek the light of truth, if they neglect till too late to
beg God for the mercy he would surely show them. It’s a terrible, awful fate, and one that we
can so easily avoid by simply realizing our own blindness. May God have mercy upon us all.
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