A KINGDOM DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF

 A SERMON FOR THE 3RD SUNDAY IN LENT

“Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and a house divided against a house falleth.”  These strong words from our blessed Lord in today’s Gospel are meant to remind us of the virtue that is Unity.  Our founding fathers realized the importance of unity very well, and called our nation not merely “America” but the “United States of America”.  One of the four marks of our Church is that she is not only “Holy, Catholic and Apostolic”, but “One, holy, catholic, and apostolic.”  We cannot have a functioning nation or church that is not united.  No society, no matter how large or small it might be, can survive as a society, if it is not united.  Whether it be a large corporation like Amazon, or a tiny bunch of people who come together in the local chess club, if its members are not all working towards the common good of whatever society they belong to, then that society, be it club, corporation, or country, will not succeed.  It will crumble, it will fall apart. 

If America continues on its present downward path, the logical conclusion will be Civil War, signs of which we are beginning to see already in the political chaos in Washington and the rioting and crime in the streets.  Our nation is a what our Lord called a “kingdom divided against itself”—or in this case, a republic divided against itself.  This division has become something other than a mere difference of opinion, disagreements on this or that policy between the two political parties.  It has become a far deeper divide, one where one political party in particular is quite open in its intent on denying the Creator and his Creation.  They proclaim themselves “woke” by spouting blasphemies such as eugenics, euthanasia and infanticide, they redefine the nature of marriage and the notion of gender.  We are way beyond the point where Catholics may no longer vote for this party without committing a serious sin.  To be Catholic we must condemn and seek actively to destroy the Democratic Party in its present form by all moral means at our disposal.

This is not a political statement.  It is a simple fact that the Democratic Party is bent on destroying Christianity and in particular the Catholic Faith, and replacing it with the Bergoglio vision of a global religion that has no moral code, no dogmas, no authority, and, ultimately, no God.  These are evil people, and unity with them is impossible.  Certainly, our role as Catholics is to unite.  But this unity must be centered on the true faith, and can never be realized elsewhere.  For the Church to be one, for all men to unite, we must seek and find that union in the Truth of the Faith she teaches, around the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Sacrifice of the Mass she offers.  We must cling to the Spirit of Truth that is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit who came to rest on the heads of the Twelve Apostles, and inspired them to bring the truth to the whole world.  “The fruit of this Spirit,” says St. Paul in today’s Epistle, “is in all goodness and righteousness and truth.”

Here is our answer then, to be good, to be righteous, and to be truthful.  We must struggle against the temptation to scatter ourselves through pride or any divisive commitment to our own opinion, no matter how firmly held.  Only the infallible truths of the Church are able to bind us together, and only Christ’s vicar on earth is capable of teaching those truths infallibly.  This is why we must pray for the restoration of a true vicar of Christ to the Throne of Peter.  Our Lord warned us that when the shepherd is struck, the sheep shall be scattered.”  Here we are today, scattered like sheep without a shepherd.  SSPX, CMRI, every flavor of Catholicism you can imagine, and every one divided against each other.  “All we like sheep have gone astray,” said the prophet Isaiah, “we have turned every one to his own way.”

To switch back to another analogy, our ship may have foundered on the rocks, we may find ourselves in our little lifeboats, but let’s remember that the destination of all these little boats remains the same, we drift upon the same current of life, and are driven by the same winds of fortune.  Most importantly of all, we have been given the same oars of truth, and with them we must all row together towards the distant shore.  No good will come if we just sit back and let the current and the winds take us wherever the devil wants us to end up.  We cannot be passive bystanders to the disunity of the world, we really must be united in our goal.

As Catholics who have held to the truth, are we then safe?  Can we sit back in our complacency and just go to Mass on Sundays, doing the minimum possible to stay afloat?  Not according to our Lord.  “He that is not with me is against me,” says our Lord.  We hear this and we turn around and look at each other in the smug confidence that, yes, we are definitely with him and not against him.  But that’s only the half of it.  Look at the second half of our Lord’s statement.  It’s not quoted as often as the first half, but it’s just as important. “He that is not with me is against me, and he that gathereth not with me scattereth.”  It’s not enough to be just “with” our Lord.  We have to gather with him.  Gather souls.  Because if we aren’t gathering souls into the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, into the One True Faith, the Truth of Christ, we’re actually scattering those souls even more than they are already scattered.  We’re making a bad situation worse.

To gather souls, we ourselves must be united within ourselves.  Our mind and body, our will and our intellect, our high spiritual aspirations and our fallen human nature, must all be united in the single purpose of seeking out the truth that is God, and gathering as many souls as we can to join in that search.  Because if we seek, we shall find.  It’s no good if we’re living our life just fighting constant temptations to sin, winning some battles, losing others.  To be truly at one with ourselves, our higher intellect must force our will into submission, so that it wills to do only what God allows.  We must subdue as completely as we can all movements of our fallen human nature, so that we may be at peace in doing God’s will.  Virtue accomplishes this.  It makes a habit out of our victories over temptation, it makes a habit out of shunning the temptation as soon as it rears its ugly head.  Virtue is our key to peace of soul, holiness of heart, and unity of purpose.  If we’re as free from sin and full of virtue as possible, we will love God with all our heart and mind and strength, and thus love our neighbor as ourself.  And thus we will gather our neighbor with us by the holiness of our example, and the strength of our dedication to what is truly beneficial to him. 

And when it comes to the unity of truth, we have to be strong and firm and unambiguous in our defence of that truth.  We have to keep our faith as “a strong man armed.”  Because if we don’t, somebody stronger than ourselves, the devil, shall come upon us and overcome us.  Don’t think “it can’t happen to me!  I’m a traditional Catholic.  I’ve left the evils of the conciliar Church, and have stood up for the faith.  I do my part by voting Republican, I don’t commit mortal sins very often, and when I do, I make sure I go to confession.  The devil will never get me, I’ve renounced him and his evil ways.”  Oh really?  Sorry, but it’s a constant fight that never ends till we’re dead. Because “when the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through the dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out.”  If we’ve kicked out the devil, rest assured he will get tired of wandering around without a place to live.  He’ll want to come back.  And when he looks at your nice, clean soul and sees it “swept and garnished” in the confessional, he will bring with him seven other demons more wicked than himself.  These devils will unleash themselves upon you and your nice clean little soul, and you’ll end up worse than you ever were.  “The last state of that man is worse than the first.”

Never, ever, imagine that you’re safe.  Never fall into the trap that you’re already “saved.”  Thinking you’re already saved is an illusion of evangelical Christians, who fail to realize the dangers of this life with its temptations and occasions of sin.  Our strength lies not in our complacency, but in our unity.  If seven demons attack us, who are they in the face of an entire Church of Catholics praying together not to be led into temptation, praying that God will deliver us from evil  “Where two or three are gathered together in my Name,” says our Lord, “there am I in the midst of them.”  That’s only two or three.  Imagine if the whole Church were united once more under a true Pope and a true Magisterium.  Strength in unity.  Strength in truth.  Stay united in the truth and we will be strong.  We will be able to cast out the devils of temptation, not in the name of Beelzebub or the thousands of other false gods and demons, but in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, the most Blessed Trinity, three divine Persons united in the one God.  Here is our supreme example of unity.  We may all be entitled to our little differences, but ultimately this diversity must come together in the one true God who is the Creator of us all.