LAMBS AMONG WOLVES

 A SERMON FOR THE FEAST OF ST. MARK THE EVANGELIST

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  The authors of the four Gospels.  The Latin name for Gospel is Evangelium, hence we call the authors “Evangelists.”  Two of the Evangelists were also Apostles, St. Matthew and St. John.  Two of them were not, St. Luke, and St. Mark whose feastday we celebrate today.  

In the Epistle, we read the prophecy of Ezekiel, in which he describes his vision of four living creatures.  He presents quite an impressive picture: Each of them had four wings, two of which covered their bodies, and two of which were joined to each other, thereby showing the unity of the four Gospels.  “Their appearance,” he says, “was like burning coals of fire, and like the appearance of lamps: it went up and down among the living creatures; and the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning.”  Indeed, the effect of the words of the four Holy Gospels was like lightning bolts on the world, electrifying mankind with their account of the presence of the Son of God dwelling amongst us, living, dying, and rising from the dead.

The prophet Ezekiel describes the these living creatures as having four faces: the face of a man, the face of a lion, the face of an ox, and the face of an eagle.  These are the symbols of the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  It’s an amazing factor of this prophecy that the four Gospels fit exactly into these symbols described by Ezekiel, so many centuries before.  St. Matthew’s Gospel begins with the human genealogy of Christ, starting with Abraham all the way down the family tree to “Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.”  What better symbol than the face of a man to represent our Lord’s human ancestry?  St. Mark’s Gospel starts with the “voice crying in the wilderness,” a wilderness known for the fierce and mighty lions who dwelled there.  And so we have the lion to represent St. Mark.  We’re left with the ox and the eagle.  The ox represents St. Luke, whose Gospel opens with the father of St. John Baptist, the priest Zacharias, burning incense in the temple of Jerusalem, where the sacrifice of oxen was made on a daily basis.  And finally, St. John, who starts his Gospel by immediately soaring like an eagle into the heavenly realm of the divine, describing our blessed Lord with the famous words, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Once you know this, you’ll start to recognize these four figures all over the Catholic world, in paintings, murals, the architecture of the great cathedrals, everywhere that man wanted to portray the importance of the four Gospels in the life of the Church.  Today’s saint, St. Mark, is known, for example, as the patron saint of Venice in Italy, and if you ever go to Venice, you’ll see the image of the lion wherever you walk.  Down by the Cathedral of St. Mark in Venice, close to the Grand Canal and the Doge’s Palace, for instance, there’s a great pillar, on which stands the roaring lion of St. Mark, proudly standing guard over the city of Venice and its inhabitants.

The four faces of the four Evangelists are in a certain sense like the faces of anyone else.  They are the means by which we recognize each other.  It’s true that no two people’s fingerprints are identical, and I’m sure that’s a very useful tool in law enforcement.  But in the normal run of things, I don’t look at your fingers to see who you are.  I recognize you by your faces.  In his exposition on the prophecy of Ezekiel quoted in today’s Matins, Pope St. Gregory the Great put it this way: “What signifieth the face save likeness whereby we are known.. since it is by the face that man is known from man?  So the face pertaineth to certitude, and by certitude we are known of God, who saith: I am the Good Shepherd, and I know my sheep and am known of mine.  And again, I know whom I have chosen.”  Maybe this is why the devil and his ever-busy minions are so intent on making us wear masks.  By masking our faces, we become unrecognizable to our fellow-man, and perhaps sometimes we might feel, subconsciously, mistakenly,  that even God has forgotten who we are.

God knows us.  By our fruits he knows us, not by our faces.  He knows who we are and everything about us.  He knows which among us are truly his sheep, and which are wolves, and which are wolves pretending to be sheep.  And we who are his sheep, we are chosen by him.  There aren’t many of us.  “The harvest truly is great,” he tells us, “but the labourers are few.”  Let that fact not trouble us, let us just do as he commands, which is to “pray therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest.”  Our prayers must be that our numbers will grow, grow so that our own witness to the words of the Gospel may resonate all the more strongly among our fellow men, even those who are wolves, striking them like the bolts of lightning emanating from the four creatures of Ezekiel’s vision.  “Behold, I send you as lambs among wolves,” our Lord admonishes us.  And do you want to know what to say to these wolves out there?  He tells us what to say.  “Say unto them, The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.”  Remind them that God is nigh unto them, that he sees what they do, that he knows them just as certainly as he knows us.  He sees through the masks of piety and hypocrisy that cover their faces, through their subterfuge and pretenses, and he knows them by their fruits. 

Perhaps our admonitions that the kingdom of God is come night unto them, that their evil deeds are being watched by the same Almighty Judge, may give them pause to reflect on the wickedness of those deeds and of the life they live.  If not now, then they will at least remember on that dreadful day of judgment that they had been warned.  Remember the words of St. Paul, that now, we see as through a glass darkly, but then face to face.  When we meet that judge, we will not only realize just how well he knows us, but we will see him face to face and recognize him for who he is.  We will also recognize ourselves for who we are.  When the kingdom of God comes nigh unto us, we will know God and we will despise our every miserable thought, word and deed that ever displeased him.  The sheep will be separated from the goats—and certainly from the wolves—and we will all be sent forth unto our eternal reward or everlasting punishment.  Meanwhile, although we may see now as through a glass darkly, let’s not forsake the Light of the Gospel, which shines and enlightens the obscure confusion in which the world now finds itself.  No matter how dimly that light may shine, it is enough for us to recognize the face of God in all men of good will.  It is enough for us to make out the pathway to heaven.

WE PLOUGH THE FIELDS AND SCATTER

A HYMN FOR THE GREATER LITANIES

By Matthias Claudius, 1782

1.       We plough the fields and scatter
The good seed on the land,
But it is fed and watered
By God’s almighty hand:
He sends the snow in winter,
The warmth to swell the grain,
The breezes, and the sunshine,
And soft, refreshing rain.

Refrain:
All good gifts around us are sent from heav’n above;
Then thank the Lord, oh, thank the Lord, for all His love.

 

2.       He only is the Maker
Of all things near and far;
He paints the wayside flower,
He lights the evening star;
The winds and waves obey Him,
By Him the birds are fed;
Much more to us, His children,
He gives our daily bread.

 

3.       We thank Thee then, O Father,
For all things bright and good,
The seedtime and the harvest,
Our life, our health, our food;
Accept the gifts we offer
For all Thy love imparts,
And what Thou most desirest—
Our humble, thankful hearts.

THE GREATER LITANIES

A REFLECTION FOR THE GREATER LITANIES

 (adapted from “The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Gueranger)

April 25 is honored in the Liturgy by what is sometimes called Saint Mark's Procession. The term, however, is not a correct one, inasmuch as the Procession was a privilege peculiar to April 25 previously to the institution of the Evangelist's Feast, which even as late as the 6th century had no fixed day in the Roman Church. The real name of this Procession is The Greater Litanies. The word Litany means supplication, and is applied to the religious rite of singing certain chants whilst proceeding from place to place in order to propitiate Heaven.  The two Greek words Kyrie eleison (Lord, have mercy upon us) were also called Litany, as likewise were the invocations which were afterwards added to that cry for mercy, and which now form a liturgical prayer used by the Church on certain solemn occasions.

The Greater Litanies (or processions) are so called to distinguish them from the Minor Litanies, that is, processions of less importance as far as the solemnity and concourse of the faithful were concerned. We gather from an expression of St. Gregory the Great that it was an ancient custom in the Roman Church to celebrate, once a year, a Greater Litany, at which all the clergy and people assisted. This holy Pontiff chose April 25 as the fixed day for this Procession, and appointed the Basilica of St. Peter as the Station.

The institution of the Greater Litanies even preceded the Processions prescribed by St. Gregory for times of public calamity, such as the one famously held to end in the plague in 591. It existed long before his time, and all that he did was to fix it on April 25. It is quite independent of the Feast of St. Mark, which was instituted at a much later period. If April 25 occurs during Easter week, the Procession takes place on that day (unless it be Easter Sunday) but the Feast of the Evangelist is not kept till after the Octave.

The question naturally presents itself—why did Pope St. Gregory choose April 25 for a Procession and Station in which everything reminds us of compunction and penance, and which would seem so out of keeping with the joyous Season of Easter? Liturgists have shown that in the 5th, and probably even in the 4th century, April 25 was observed at Rome as a day of great solemnity. The faithful went, on that day, to the Basilica of St. Peter, in order to celebrate the anniversary of the first entrance of the Prince of the Apostles into Rome, upon which he thus conferred the inalienable privilege of being the capital of Christendom. It is from that day that we count the 25 years, 2 months and some days that St. Peter reigned as Bishop of Rome. The Sacramentary of St. Leo gives us the Mass of this solemnity, which afterwards ceased to be kept. St. Gregory, to whom we are mainly indebted for the arrangement of the Roman Liturgy, was anxious to perpetuate the memory of a day which gave to Rome her grandest glory. He therefore ordained that the Church of St. Peter should be the Station of the Great Litany, which was always to be celebrated on that auspicious day. April 25 comes so frequently during the Octave of Easter that it could not be kept as a feast, properly so called, in honor of St. Peter's entrance into Rome; St. Gregory, therefore, adopted the only means left of commemorating the great event.

But there was a striking contrast resulting from this institution, of which the holy Pontiff was fully aware, but which he could not avoid: it was the contrast between the joys of Paschal Time and the penitential sentiments and Station of the Great Litany. Laden as we are with the manifold graces of this holy Season, and elated with our Paschal joys, we must sober our gladness by reflecting on the motives which led the Church to cast this hour of shadow over our Easter sunshine. After all, we are sinners, with much to regret and much to fear; we have to avert those scourges which are due to the crimes of mankind; we must, by humbling ourselves and invoking the intercession of the Mother of God and the Saints, obtain the health of our bodies and preservation of the fruits of the earth; we have to offer atonement to Divine Justice for our own and the world's pride, sinful indulgences, and insubordination. Let us enter into ourselves, and humbly confess that our own share in exciting God's indignation is great; and our poor prayers, united with those of our Holy Mother the Church, will obtain mercy for the guilty, and for ourselves who are of their number.

A day, then, like this, of reparation to God's offended majesty, would naturally suggest the necessity of joining some exterior penance to the interior dispositions of contrition which filled the hearts of Christians. Abstinence from flesh-meat was long observed on this day at Rome; and when the Roman Liturgy was established in the Kingdom of the Franks by King Pepin and St. Karl the Great, the Great Litany of April 25 was, of course, celebrated, and the abstinence kept by the faithful of that country. A council held at Aachen in 836 enjoined the additional obligation of resting from servile work on this day: the same enactment is found in the Capitularia of Charles the Bald. As regards fasting, properly so-called, being contrary to the spirit of Paschal Time, it appears never to have been observed on this day, at least not generally. Amalarius, who lived in the 9th century, asserts that it was not then practiced even in Rome.

During the Procession, the Litany of the Saints is sung, followed by several versicles and orations. The Mass of the Station is celebrated according to the Lenten Rite, that is, without the Gloria, and in violet vestments.

We take this opportunity of protesting against the negligence of Christians on this subject. For centuries, even many persons who had the reputation of being spiritual thought nothing of being absent from the Litanies said on the Feast of St. Mark and the Rogation Days. One would have thought that when the Holy See took from these days the obligation of abstinence, the faithful would be so much the more earnest to join in the duty left—the duty of prayer. The people's presence at the Litanies is taken for granted; and it is simply absurd that a religious rite of public reparation should be one from which almost all should keep away. We suppose that these Christians will acknowledge the importance of the petitions made in the Litanies; but God is not obliged to hear them in favor of such as ought to make them and yet do not. When St. Charles Borromeo first took possession of the See of Milan, he found this negligence among his people, and that they left the clergy to go through the Litanies of April 25 by themselves. He assisted at them himself, and walked barefooted in the Procession.  The people soon followed the saintly pastor's example.

THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD

 A SERMON FOR THE 2ND SUNDAY AFTER EASTER

There’s something very endearing about sheep, isn’t there?  They’re placid little animals on the whole, meekly following their shepherd as he leads them from one pasture to another so they can feed on the fresh grass of God’s good earth.  They trust their shepherd, and most of them are quite content to follow him without a single rational thought in their head.  They don’t question how they should follow, or why they should follow, they just follow.  They don’t worry about what would happen if the shepherd can’t find a fresh pasture, or what he would do if the wolf attacks them.  They just trust him unquestioningly and follow him whithersoever he goeth.  It’s Good Shepherd Sunday today.  We know who the Good Shepherd is, and it’s time to realize also that we are the sheep.

“We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture,” as it says in Psalm 94.  It’s an analogy we should pay more attention to.  The nature of sheep informs us as to the how’s and why’s of the behavior God requires of us.  Like sheep, we should have blind obedience to our Shepherd, who is our Lord Jesus Christ.  We should follow him wherever he takes us—without question, without complaint, and without fear.  Whatever the perils the future holds for us, perils from land and sea, enemies foreign and domestic—we must trust in the Lord.  That Lord is our shepherd, and our trust in our shepherd should be unassailable.  Why?  Because he is such a Good Shepherd who will never fail us, never abandon us to the wolves, never tire of looking after us, his sheep.  He loves his sheep.

Between his Resurrection and his Ascension into heaven, our Lord founded his Church.  He appointed Peter, the Rock, to lead his Church, and to be his vicar on earth, acting as his very own chief shepherd, our pastor.  Three times he admonished St. Peter to feed his sheep.  For two thousand years, the Catholic faithful were able to trust Peter and each of his successors, the Vicar of Christ, to feed us, his sheep, to carry out the duties of shepherd entrusted to them.  We became accustomed to blindly following Christ’s Vicar, the Shepherd he appointed over us.  We followed like sheep, with total trust.  What an inconceivable betrayal then, that they allowed the smoke of Satan to enter into the sheepfold.  It was a betrayal of us, and more significantly, it was a betrayal of the trust our Lord had placed in the successors of St. Peter.  They not only allowed the wolves to enter in, they actually became those very wolves, devouring the faithful instead of feeding them.  On top of it all, while they acted as wolves they put on sheep’s clothing and still to this day play the exalted role of shepherd in this pantomime, this parody of the Holy Catholic Church.  The Shepherd has been struck, and “all we, like sheep, have gone astray,” as Isaiah prophesied, “every one to his own way.”

Yes, we were given the grace not to follow a fake shepherd who was now a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  But make no mistake about it, we are still in a very perilous situation.  We have gone astray.  We are sheep without a shepherd, and that’s not a good thing to be.  Because sheep need to follow something, and there are plenty of evil men in this world who would gladly become your new leader.  Hence the abundance of cults, not only religious cults (and we probably know a few traditional Catholic groups who have become cults), but also cults of personality—we follow celebrities, movie stars, corrupt politicians, influential doctors, and turn them into our new shepherds, someone who will feed us with something worth eating.  Don’t be misled.  The constant haranguing from these people who would push their anti-Christian agenda upon us must be not only ignored but defied.  And defiance does not come easily to us sheep.

There is no substitute for the Good Shepherd.  Don’t place your hope in men—the Lord is my Shepherd.  With the dismal failure of his representatives on earth, we must not go wandering off after anyone who plays a tune we find attractive.  Remember the children who followed the Pied Piper to their doom!  Our only hope today is to turn to our blessed Lord himself, and to him alone.  It’s not how he wanted it to be, but if our pastors have betrayed him, we have no other suitable alternatives.  There are no other options.

So let’s follow our Lord closely.  The safer you want to be in this increasingly perilous world, the closer you will cling to the Good Shepherd.  What did our Lord say?  That “except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”  In other words, it’s not enough to be just sheep, following along from a distance.  We need to be converted and be like baby sheep—little lambs!  That’s the kind of trust we need to place in our Good Shepherd.  If we can’t find our Mama Sheep, and if our Papa Sheep is more concerned with climate change and promoting the socialist agenda than with feeding his children, we must recognize that we are little orphan lambs.  And lambs don’t fight back.  They run away from the wolves in sheep’s clothing and nuzzle up to the Shepherd.   We need to hop right up to his feet and bleat our prayers to him so that he will take us up into his arms and carry us!  You’ve all seen pictures and statues of the Good Shepherd carrying the lamb in his arms.  That’s where you and I need to be, right next to his Sacred Heart, clinging to him and trusting him not only to lead us, but to bear us in his arms through the trials and misfortunes we might otherwise encounter.  He will protect us with his own life.  The Good Shepherd will lay down his life for his sheep.  In fact, he already did.

THE LORD'S MY SHEPHERD

 A HYMN FOR THE 2ND SUNDAY AFTER EASTER

By Francis Rous, 1579-1659

1 The Lord’s my shepherd, I’ll not want.
He makes me down to lie
in pastures green; he leadeth me
the quiet waters by.

2 My soul he doth restore again,
and me to walk doth make
within the paths of righteousness,
e’en for his own name’s sake.

3 Yea, though I walk in death’s dark vale,
yet will I fear none ill,
for thou art with me and thy rod
and staff me comfort still

 4 My table thou hast furnished
in presence of my foes.
My head thou dost with oil anoint,
and my cup overflows.

5 Goodness and mercy all my life
shall surely follow me,
and in God’s house forevermore
my dwelling place shall be.

FINDING OUR IDENTITY

 A REFLECTION FOR THE 2ND SUNDAY AFTER EASTER

It’s very important to know who we are.  There’s a need that springs from the depths of our human nature that begs us to explore ourselves and find out not only what makes us tick, but what is the actual essence of our personality.  This is nothing to do with the utter nonsense that drools from the mouth of our more progressive brethren.  Gender identity is nothing to do with this exploration of our inner self.  We grow up knowing quite well whether we’re male or female, and any attempt to alter the nature that God gave us is by definition unnatural, and even blasphemous.  Nevertheless, as we grow in self-awareness, we do need to recognize what our own nature is beyond its obvious and scientific boundaries.

Our personality, by and large, is what it is.  We can’t change who we are.  But in recognizing our personality with its own individual faults and virtues, hopes and fears, sense of humor, abilities and energies, we are able to use this knowledge to channel our behavior into a lifestyle that is pleasing to God.  Am I nurturing and loving?  Then I should do what comes naturally, by being a good parent, raising children for God and taking care of my family.  Am I the studious and intellectual type?  In that case, I should learn to know God better and apply my knowledge to make the world a better place.  Am I physically strong, a hard worker?  Then I should provide for my family and help my neighbor when called upon.  There is an infinite number of personalities.  We are all unique, and God loves us for who and what we are.  It’s up to us, on the other hand, to channel our behavior so that it pleases God.  We can’t help who we are, but we can help how we act.  We must work with the tools God gave us so that we can return our own gift of love to him.

On this Good Shepherd Sunday, we have the chance to make at least one very basic determination about our personality.  If the Lord is my Shepherd, then I must follow.  But what kind of animal follows a shepherd?  He’s followed actually by two species of animal, both of which he feeds and takes care of.  There are, of course, the sheep.  Today’s sermon focuses on us as sheep, passively following the Good Shepherd, blindly obeying his commands because of the faith and trust they have in him.  But there’s another animal you’ll see in the sheepfold, one that we sometimes forget about.  That’s the sheepdog.

The sheepdog is just as loyal to the shepherd as the sheep.  But he’s a different kind of animal altogether.  He actively helps the shepherd to guard the livestock, barking out warnings to the him when the sheep are in danger.  The sheepdog will even defend the sheep when they’re under threat.  And in normal times, when things are going well, the sheepdog moves quietly but rapidly around the sheep, herding them in, making sure they’re all going in the right direction and not wandering off. 

If we can find it within ourselves, we need to identify more with the sheepdog than the sheep.  Especially today, when our actual shepherds have gone missing in action and left both sheep and sheepdogs to the mercy of the wolves.  Priests, parents, teachers, whoever we are, we find ourselves more and more in this role of sheepdog, warning our children, our employees, our students, our parishioners, of the increasing dangers the world poses.  We can no longer content ourselves with being mere sheep—circumstances have determined that we take on the extra duties of the sheepdog, if it’s at all within the abilities of our personality to do so.

GETTING WHAT YOU WANT

 A SERMON FOR LOW SUNDAY

There’s a saying that you don’t always get what you want.  This morning I’m here to tell you the opposite.  Or almost the opposite.  Because more often than not, we do get what we want, don’t we?  And the reason we do is that if we want something badly enough, we’re prepared to do whatever it takes to get it.  We try every method open to us, we overcome every obstacle, we spend whatever time, whatever energy it takes, until we get what we want.  And if we don’t get what we want, it’s usually because either what we want is impossible, for example, I want to grow wings and fly; or because we were never meant to have it, for example, when we don’t win the lottery; or thirdly, and this is far more often the case, because we never really wanted it enough.

If we really, really want to play the violin well, we’ll save the money to buy the instrument and pay the tutor, we’ll put in the hours and hours of practice that it takes, we’ll hire baby sitters to watch the kids while we learn our techniques, we’ll never stop trying until, by golly, we can play that violin like a pro.

The key to success, you see, is in wanting it enough.  Today is the Sunday after Easter, on which we commemorate the faith, or lack of it, of one of the apostles, St. Thomas.  Poor doubting Thomas!  He follows our blessed Lord through thick and thin, he wants to believe this is the Messiah.  He sees the miracles, hears the words of wisdom, and is determined to follow our Lord to the ends of the earth.  But then, as soon as trouble arrives and our Lord is arrested in Gethsemane, his faith crumbles and he flees.  And when his good buddies tell him that our Lord has risen from the dead, he’s beyond reluctant to giving the assent of faith to them when he’s lost it in the man who gave it to them.  If Christ can’t be believed, then Thomas surely isn’t going to believe Peter and John and the others.  Besides, people don’t come back from the dead.  Maybe Christ raised Lazarus and a few other people from the dead, but he sure as heck can’t raise himself from the dead.

So Thomas refused to believe.   He didn’t want to believe.  And if your desire for something is that weak, the likelihood is that you won’t get it.  It took divine intervention to restore Thomas’ faith.  Our Lord appeared to him and showed him the physical proof that he had risen.  He showed him the mortal wounds in his body, wounds that no man could survive.  And yet, he was alive and well.  Thomas’ faith is restored, but only through physical proof—not the most meritorious kind of faith, but faith nonetheless.

It happens now and again.  Apparitions, miracles, physical evidence to support our faith.  They shouldn’t be necessary, because we should want the faith enough to make sure we have it and that it doesn’t ever fail us.  But, being human, we sometimes get discouraged and our faith does fail us.  Or rather we fail our faith.  It’s a testament to the infinite patience and mercy of God that he provides for such times by sending his blessed Mother to console us, to counsel us, and to warn us, Fatima being a notable example.  Even avowed atheists were converted by the miracle of the sun.

But maybe you haven’t encountered any miracles in your life.  And maybe you are getting a little discouraged by the evils of the world.  Like St. Thomas, you look around for your divine Saviour, but you don’t see him with your physical eyes, or hear his voice with your physical ears.  And so maybe you think he is dead, never to rise again in this world of sin.  And like Thomas, you’d be wrong.

But let’s not follow Thomas in his doubt.  Let’s follow him in his new-found faith, a faith that never again faltered as he spread the Gospel as far as India and died a martyr’s death.  Easier said than done, you might think.  And that is where our desire for the faith comes in.  How much do you really want that faith? Enough to do whatever it takes to have it?  Then don’t just pray for the faith when you doubt.  Pray for the desire for the faith. 

Many people say they don’t have time to pray.  But if they want to play golf, this they find time to do.  They feel like watching TV, well, there’s always time for that, isn’t there!  Because if we really want to do something, we’ll find the time, we won’t be too tired, we won’t be looking for excuses not to do it.  If we want to pray, we’ll pray.  If we want to be holy, we’ll naturally strive for holy practices, for the virtues we need to overcome our own particular weaknesses and imperfections.  So if we find ourselves lacking faith, we must pray, not just for faith, but to want faith with all our heart, mind and soul.  We must pray for all the right wants and desires, we must pray to want God and his kingdom, we must pray for a mind that prefers to focus on all the true priorities of life, on what is good, true and beautiful. 

Do this and you’ll find that your faith is automatically strengthened by the graces God gives you as you make him the new focus of your desires.  Expel from your mind the mundane distractions of the world.  Replace them with your new-found priorities.  Desire a greater love of God, a greater faith in God.  This desire is a prayer that God loves to answer.  Believe him, you’ll get what you want!

YE SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF THE LORD

 A HYMN FOR LOW SUNDAY

By Jean Tisserand, 1494; Translated by Fr. Edward Caswall

Ye sons and daughters of the Lord!
The King of glory, King adored,
This day Himself from death restored. Alleluia!

All in the early morning grey
Went holy women on their way,
To see the tomb where Jesus lay. Alleluia!

Of spices pure a precious store
In their pure hands those women bore,
To anoint the Sacred Body o'er. Alleluia!

Then straightway One in white they see,
Who saith, "Ye seek the Lord; but He
Is ris'n, and gone to Galilee." Alleluia!

This told they Peter, told they John,
Who forthwith to the tomb are gone;
But Peter is by John outrun. Alleluia!

That selfsame night, while out of fear
The doors were shut, their Lord most dear
To His Apostles did appear. Alleluia!

But Thomas when of this He heard,
Was doubtful of his brethren's word;
Wherefore again there comes the Lord. Alleluia!

"Thomas, behold My Side" saith He;
"My Hands, My Feet, My Body see,
And doubt not, but believe in Me." Alleluia!

When Thomas saw that wounded Side,
The truth no longer he denied;
"Thou art my Lord and God," he cried. Alleluia!

Oh, blest are they who have not seen
Their Lord, and yet believe in Him:
Eternal life awaiteth them. Alleluia!

Now let us praise the Lord most high,
And strive His Name to magnify
On this great day through earth and sky: Alleluia!

Whose mercy ever runneth o'er,
Whom men and Angel Hosts adore,
To Him be glory ever more. Alleluia!

OVERCOMING THE WORLD

A REFLECTION FOR LOW SUNDAY

 

The Sunday after Easter is chiefly concerned with the virtue of faith.  We see the story of our Lord’s Resurrection unfold in today’s Gospel, as the Apostle Thomas, not present at one of the first apparitions of Jesus, refuses to believe his brethren when they tell him.  His sad lack of faith is removed once and for all when our blessed Lord appears again among them, and shows the wounds of his Passion to St. Thomas, proving beyond any reasonable doubt that he was the risen Christ.

Rather than reprimand Thomas in front of the other apostles, our Lord is content to remind them all that “Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet believe.”  This is the essence of the virtue of faith, to believe simply because we trust God and that he can neither deceive nor be deceived.  We should not look for signs, miracles, “proof” that there is a God, that he is who he says he is.  We should simply trust our Father in heaven to provide us with what we need when we really need it.  We shouldn’t seek miracles, and yet, in his mercy, he allows super-natural phenomena and visions when he deems it beneficial for us.  But blessed are they who can do without them.

Probably the main aspect of our faith is that we believe that Jesus is the Son of God.  It is what separates Christianity from all other religions.  And in today’s Epistle, St. John the Apostle tells us that it is our belief in the divine nature of Jesus that allows us to overcome the world.  That is no small benefit, if you think about it.  The world is a constant source of tribulation for us, and in so many ways.  We live under a cloud of threats—from foreign adversaries, terrorists, Democrats, modernists, even viruses and vaccines.  It’s enough to make us quake in our shoes as we shift from one panic attack to another thinking about all the ways we’re in trouble.  We can’t possibly overcome all the terrible things menacing us and our families.  In fact we can’t overcome even one of them.  That is, unless we keep the faith.

With the faith, we have the ability to live calmly through whatever the world throws at us, confident in our own Resurrection at the end of our life.

“This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.  Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?”  I wonder if St. John had been thinking about doubting Thomas as he wrote his epistle.  It was a scene he himself had witnessed, after all.  You’ll notice that not only today’s Epistle is written by St. John, but the Gospel also.  He was there.  He had tried in vain to convince St. Thomas that the Lord had risen, and was present again when our Lord returned and offered the physical proof of his Resurrection.  St. John hadn’t needed these proofs, he already believed.  He hadn’t asked for signs, he merely observed the signs sent to others.  But what he tells us in the Gospel should be enough for us, as it was for St. Thomas and the others.  Ironically, it is the very doubts of St. Thomas that ended up reinforcing the faith of St. John and the other apostles.  Now, their joint witnessing to this event should strengthen our own faith also.

But to be honest, comforting though it may be, even the witness of the apostles shouldn’t be necessary to us.  As St. John points out, “If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater.”  Say your Act of Faith every day!

SEND OUT THY LIGHT

 A SERMON FOR EASTER SUNDAY

Let’s remember the very first Easter Sunday.  It is the end of the Jewish Sabbath and all is quiet in the Holy City.  The silence is reminiscent of a winter’s night thirty-three years prior—it is the silence that covered the land of Judea the night our Blessed Lord was born, “while all things were in quiet silence, and night was in the midst of her swift course.”

What happened to disturb the silence of this first Easter night?  Did anything disturb the silence?  It is the third day since the Crucifixion, since that eerie physical darkness had descended on the world at the hour of Christ’s death.  He who, in the beginning, had created light with his divine Word; who, at his Incarnation, became himself the Light of the World; who, at his Nativity brought light to the people who walked in darkness; now he was dead, and the lifeless corpse of this divine Son of the Most High is at rest in the quiet darkness of the holy sepulcher.  The black twilight that fell over Jerusalem on Good Friday may have dissipated, but a spiritual darkness still pervades the land, mixing with the awful memories of the week’s events to create an nervous atmosphere of apprehension.

So what exactly happened during this uneasy night?  There are no witnesses to the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The men closest to his tomb, Roman soldiers placed there to guard it, are asleep and they see and remember nothing.  This was the most spectacular event since the world’s creation, and yet there are no scriptural accounts, no revelation from God of what exactly happened. 

However, it is not unreasonable to speculate that in the course of that night, something silent but remarkable accompanied the return to human life of God’s only-begotten Son.  For an idea of what that could have been, we have only to look back at the other events of history, understandably few in number, that could rival the Resurrection in importance.  We know that at the Creation, the Incarnation, and the Last Supper, God shone Light where there had been darkness.  “Let there be light” were God’s first words of creation.  At the Annunciation, the Light of the World entered into the world as a human being.  And that same human, yet divine being, before he suffered and died on the Cross, left us with the light of the Blessed Sacrament, a light that still burns powerfully in the few churches in which the true Mass is preserved.  So is it not reasonable to expect that in the dreadful darkness of the tomb, the absolute blackness of a world that had crucified its Saviour, this same God would now produce the brightest radiance of all as our Lord rose from the dead,

“Let there be light!”  The divine nature of Christ, which of course, had never ceased to be, again follows the will of his Father in heaven and the Word of God issues the command for Light to replace the darkness of death.  The Breath of God that is the Holy Ghost once more descends over the darkness of the deep and, overshadowing the lifeless Body of Christ, breathes new life into it again.  In him is life once more, and the life is again the light of men.

It’s interesting that even scientists have confirmed that, accompanying the conception of every man in the womb of his mother, at the exact moment the Holy Ghost infuses an eternal soul into a mortal body, there is actually a very small, physical flash of light.  We can only imagine the intensity of that same celestial light as the Holy Ghost breathes our Lord’s divine nature back into his lifeless human body.  “Let there be Light,” the Light of Creation, the Light of the World, a light so intense that it burned a perpetual and three-dimensional image of our Lord into the Holy Shroud that covered his Body.

With this flash of divine light, the Body of Christ rises from the grave, and is again the “Light that shineth in darkness,” the darkness of the tomb, the darkness of a world that had just extinguished its own Light of the World. Life has returned to the Body of Christ.  “This is my Body, this is my Blood of the new and everlasting covenant,” and because it is eternal, because it is divine, it cannot die.  “I am the resurrection and the life:  he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:  and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”

Without our Lord’s Resurrection from the dead, there could be no Blessed Sacrament.  Of what use would it be to eat not the bread of life, but something long since dead?  And if we do not receive this Bread of Life in the Blessed Sacrament, our eternal life is not simply jeopardized, not just compromised, but denied to us forever: “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.”  Our eternal salvation, then, clearly rests on the Resurrection of his immortal Body, which assures of our own resurrection of the body and the life everlasting: “Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood,” he said, “hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”

The Resurrection is not just a fact, not just a historical event.  It is the very meaning of our own life.  Celebrate this great truth with unalloyed rejoicing on this day.  Christ is risen!  And because he is risen, we too shall rise!

THE STRIFE IS O'ER

 A HYMN FOR EASTER SUNDAY

Translated by Francis Pott, 1861

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!

1 The strife is o'er, the battle done;
the victory of life is won;
the song of triumph has begun.
Alleluia!

2 The powers of death have done their worst,
but Christ their legions has dispersed.
Let shouts of holy joy outburst.
Alleluia!

3 The three sad days are quickly sped;
he rises glorious from the dead.
All glory to our risen Head.
Alleluia!

4 He closed the yawning gates of hell;
the bars from heaven's high portals fell.
Let hymns of praise his triumph tell.
Alleluia!

5 Lord, by the stripes which wounded thee,
from death's dread sting thy servants free,
that we may live and sing to thee.
Alleluia!

ON THE THIRD DAY

 A REFLECTION FOR EASTER SUNDAY

The triple aspects of joy, sorrow and glory we find in the Rosary are reflected in the timeline of our Lord’s life, death, and resurrection.  In the Joyful Mysteries, the world had enjoyed thirty-three years of the Saviour’s presence.  For three of those years he was made manifest to us in his daily life, his miracles and teachings.   Then in the Sorrowful Mysteries, during the three days of the Triduum, we keep watch as for three long hours he hung on the cross of salvation, until his death at three o’clock in the afternoon.  And now after three days of darkness in the tomb, with the world empty and seemingly deprived of hope, the sorrow of despair is suddenly turned into everlasting joy as news of the Resurrection is spread abroad and the Glorious Mysteries begin.

 

This repetition of the triple element of time is no accident, and is meant to reflect the three basic elements of our existence.  When Christ became man, he not only dwelt amongst us, but he was one of us, a human being.  He shared the same joys and sufferings we do, and by his Resurrection, he showed us that we too will share in his glory.  It is this intertwined triple pattern of give-and-take between God and man that makes sense of our existence on this planet.  The joys of Christmas, of Christ’s birth and childhood, allow us to make sense of our own fleeting happiness, one that comes and goes with the vicissitudes of life.  The sorrows of Holy Week, on the other hand, show us how our own sufferings can make sense: by following our Master as he carries his cross, as he suffers death on that cross, our sufferings empower us to make some small reparation for our own sins, and better yet, to offer them up, like him, for the sins of the world.  And finally, the glory of the Resurrection provides us with that most important virtue of hope, a hope that we too, having shared in his joys and sorrows, may finally share in his glory.  It’s a most beautiful and perfect plan for us.  If only we would stick to the plan!

 

The trouble is, we don’t like the suffering part.  We devote our entire lives to avoiding it.  We take pills to take away our little pains, we spend a fortune on medical insurance and doctors’ bills, consume vast amounts of alcohol to try and stay happy, relaxed and mellow—so very many ways to stave off the miseries of life.  And yet, our Lord warned us that if we would be his disciples, we must take up our cross and follow him.  It’s not wrong to want to be happy and pain-free, but there again, we shouldn’t necessarily try so very hard to avoid not being.  The sorrows we sometimes face are a great opportunity to make sacrifices for God.  Such self-sacrifice doesn’t come naturally, as our fallen human nature constantly seeks natural happiness, but suffering should be embraced, at least when there’s no other choice, when our health fails, or an act of God or man robs us of a little happiness now and again.

 

Above all, let’s not do as the pagans do, and that is, to center our entire life on the search for pleasure.  For if we don’t see suffering in its true light, we are doomed to continually seek the opposite.  And the pleasures and joys of this life do not last very long, and can never truly satisfy.  Our Easter joy, on the other hand, is an altogether different kind of happiness.  It is a joy that illuminates our very souls with the knowledge that the gates of heaven are open to all who accept their crosses and follow Christ.  And as heaven is a place of everlasting happiness, then Easter is our annual reassurance that if we seek heaven as our only meaningful goal, we will be assured of a happiness the godless and wicked will never find, a joy that never ends.