THE GRACE OF GOD

A SERMON FOR THE 18TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Deo Gratias!  It’s a Latin expression that probably you’re already familiar with.  We say it at the end of Mass:  Ite, Missa est.  Deo gratias.  “The Mass is complete.  Thanks be to God.”  We give thanks to God, not, obviously, because the Mass is now over and we can go and have breakfast.  But because another Mass has been offered to God and is now complete, another Holy Sacrifice which continues the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary, and is the source of all graces.  We give thanks for those graces, the most important gift we can receive from God.  Indeed the Latin word for grace is gratia, the same as the Latin word for “thanks.”

In this morning’s Epistle, St. Paul gives thanks for all the graces that God sends to all of you, to all of us, every day.  He explains the reason why we too should be thankful for them.  He says that God sends these graces so that we may be “in every thing enriched by him.”  For without these graces we would be powerless to perform any good deed, pronounce any good utterance, or think any good thought.  We would be incapable of being “good!”  We can’t be good if we don’t have the grace from God, if we’re not in the state of sanctifying grace.

You may instantly object to this, and say that non-Catholics, even pagans and atheists are capable of many good thoughts, words, and deeds.  Surely, you may think non-Catholics can be “good” people.  After all, they do many good things, they believe that Christ is the Son of God, our Savior, a lot of them speak well, and I’m sure they think good thoughts.  So why would I be so presumptuous as to say they are not good?  Well, it all depends on what you mean by “good.”  There is a distinction to be made between natural goodness and supernatural goodness. 

Without what St. Paul calls “the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ”, both non-Catholics, and Catholics who are in the state of mortal sin, are incapable of doing anything supernaturally good.  Their thoughts, words and deeds may be good and pleasing to God on the natural level.  They may even elicit from God an outpouring of actual grace to inspire them to go to confession, repent their sins, or convert from their heresy.  But their acts can never amount to being meritorious.  Without supernatural grace in their soul, they cannot merit an increase in supernatural, sanctifying grace.  In other words, their natural good deeds cannot buy them a place in heaven.

Without sanctifying grace, we may still be kind to our neighbor and treat him with natural charity and generosity.  But without grace, this charity is truly only natural charity, not the kind that merits supernatural grace and saves our souls.  We can have all the good thoughts in the world, we can have the golden speech that gladdens the hearts of men.  As St. Paul says elsewhere, we can have “the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge;” and we can have “all faith, so that we could remove mountains, and have not charity, we are nothing.  This supernatural virtue of charity can only exist in our souls if we are in the state of sanctifying grace..

Once we commit a mortal sin, our good actions become merely natural.  They are still good, but they are not meritorious.  This is why it is so important to go to confession as soon as we can, if we ever have the misfortune of falling into grave sin, mortal sin.  The word “mortal” comes from the Latin word mors which means “death”.  When we commit a mortal sin, our soul dies.  We human beings are referred to as “mortals” because we eventually all die.  Our bodies are mortal, but our soul has the potential to be immortal.  If we remain in the state of sanctifying grace, our souls will never die.  They will have eternal life.

We’re all born with original sin.  The innocent little baby is born not a hundred percent innocent.  There is already a stain on his soul which will prevent him from doing anything supernaturally good.  The sacrament of Baptism washes away that stain and introduces supernatural grace into the baby’s soul, so that when he reaches the age of reason, he can freely choose to love God and his neighbor a hundred percent.  We see, then, how important the Sacrament of Baptism is.  Without this washing away of original sin, that baby will never have a soul that can merit eternal life.

This is why the Church teaches that there is no salvation outside the Church.  We flinch, perhaps, when we hear those words.  We think of our friends who are not Catholic, who are “good people”, who, surely deserve to go to heaven when they die.  But if we believe that only those who die in the state of sanctifying grace are “saved”, then we must also worry about those who are not in the state of grace.  Those, first of all, who are not baptized, like Mormons, Jews, Muslims, or the children of parents who just didn’t bother to have them baptized.  And then those Catholics and validly baptized Protestants who lead a life in contradiction with the true faith revealed by God, or who have fallen into mortal sin and never go to confession.  How can we believe they are on the path to heaven?

We shouldn’t feel guilty when we say that there is no salvation outside the Church.  We’re certainly not saying we’re better than anybody else, for there, but for the grace of God, go I.  All we’re saying is what our blessed Lord already said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”  What else did he say?  “I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.”  We must be branches of the vine, members of Christ’s Mystical Body, members of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church he founded.  And if not?  “If a man abide not in me,” our Lord continued, “he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.”  If we’re not branches of that vine, we cease to live supernaturally.  Once we’re cut off from the vine, we’re no longer capable of supernatural life, of being good.  We’re good for nothing except to be burned.  And burned we should certainly be.  It’s a sobering thought, and our reaction to it, if we love our neighbor as ourselves, should be to convert to the true Church anyone who is outside it.  Or if they’re members who have fallen away, to bring them back through our prayers, our good example, our persistence.  

We certainly don’t have the right to stand like the Pharisee in the temple, thanking God that “I am not like other men.”  “Look at me, I give to the poor, I sacrifice myself for the good of others, I am so good!”  Just remember, “Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.”  Just because we’re baptized, we’re practicing Catholics, we perform all manner of charitable acts, even if we have the faith to move mountains, all of this is useless without our constant cooperation with the graces we receive from the sacraments, particularly Holy Communion.  If we don’t, they profit us nothing.  Our resolution today must be to remain good branches of the True Vine, the Mystical Body of Christ, the Catholic Church with her true faith; to remain in the state of grace by obeying the commandments; and to receive devoutly and frequently the Holy Eucharist, the Body of Christ himself.  Living our life by these three standards, we can patiently wait “for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,” who shall confirm us unto the end, that we may be blameless when we are judged.

THE CHURCH'S ONE FOUNDATION

 A HYMN FOR THE 18TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

By Samuel John Stone 1866

The Church’s one foundation

  Is Jesus Christ her Lord;

She is His new creation

  By water and the Word:

From heav’n He came and sought her

  To be His holy Bride;

With His own blood He bought her,

  And for her life He died.

 

Elect from every nation,

  Yet one o’er all the earth,

Her charter of salvation,

  One Lord, one faith, one birth;

One holy Name she blesses,

  Partakes one holy food,

And to one hope she presses,

  With every grace endued.

 

’Mid toil and tribulation,

  And tumult of her war,

She waits the consummation

  Of peace for evermore;

Till, with the vision glorious,

  Her longing eyes are blest,

And the great Church victorious

  Shall be the Church at rest.

 

Yet she on earth hath union

  With God the Three in One,

And mystic sweet communion

  With those whose rest is won:

O happy ones and holy!

  Lord, give us grace that we,

Like them, the meek and lowly,

  In love may dwell with Thee.

THE BLOOD OF THE MARTYRS

 A MESSAGE FOR THE FEAST OF THE NORTH AMERICAN MARTYRS

In a couple of weeks this nation will be celebrating the Federal Holiday known as Columbus Day.  As we know, it’s named after the man who is given credit for discovering the New World, Christopher Columbus.  Even though he never set foot on what is now the United States of America, he is nevertheless accorded the honor and respect rightfully owed to the man who had the courage to sail across the vast uncharted waters of the Atlantic Ocean, and plant the flag of Spain in the Caribbean.  This was the beginning of the great conquest of the western hemisphere by the civilized nations of Europe.  Marred, unfortunately, by the rivalries that existed between these various countries, western civilization was nevertheless successfully extended into the Americas by Spain, Portugal, France, and Great Britain, paving the way for the millions of European settlers who followed.

These pioneers brought all the qualities of their homeland with them.  The most important benefit they tried to instill among the natives was the Gospel of Christianity.  Both North and South America were inhabited by fierce warrior-like tribes of savages, many of them cannibals.  Human sacrifice and slavery were commonplace among them, and they were defiant in their resistance to the new religion brought by the black-robed missionaries sent from Europe to convert them.

In today’s liberal atmosphere of anti-American ignorance, it has become the vogue to sympathize with the savages in their bloody war against the missionaries.  Statues of Columbus are being torn down by leftist mobs all over the country, and even Columbus Day itself has been replaced in some states by the more trendy “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.”  Horrific tales are told to our children about the evil pioneers stealing land from the native peoples, massacring villages, and wiping out entire tribes.  The idea of the “noble savage”, first popularized by early liberal thinkers like Hobbes and Rousseau, now finds its echo in the halls of elite, progressive, modern society, where even football teams like the Washington Redskins are shamed into shedding their mascots and even their very names.

It is well to remember on this 26^th of September, feast of the North American Martyrs, just how noble these savages were not.  The good Jesuit fathers, who had devoted their lives to bringing the faith of Christ to the Iroquois, were met, not with gratitude and hospitality, but with torture and death.  One had his fingers literally chewed off, others were tomahawked or shot with arrows, and two in particular were tied to stakes and subjected to one of the worst martyrdoms in history, a trial which culminated in their still beating hearts being torn out of their chests and devoured before them.  It is indicative of the extent evil has insinuated itself into our topsy-turvy world, that we now honor these brutes rather than the men they tortured for trying to show the way to eternal life.

But what is there to separate us from this savage side of humanity?  Is it not inherent in the fallen nature of man that we are all capable of falling into the worst of cruelties towards our fellow human beings?  It is a mere couple of years or so that ISIS was torturing and beheading Christians in the Middle East.  And the bloody murder of unborn babies continues even in our own hospitals across the land, to the frenzied cries for even more abortions from so-called Catholics like Nancy Pelosi and her poisoned ilk.  Bloodlust is in the air, and martyrdom may not be far behind it.

When news of the martyrdom of St. Isaac Jogues and his companion Jean de la Lande reached the headquarters of the Jesuits in Quebec, they did not offer Requiem Masses for the repose of their souls.  Instead, they immediately recognized them for the martyrs they were, and offered instead Masses of Thanksgiving.  We would do well to instill within us their feelings of gratitude to replace our own dark fears.  Let the promise of martyrdom and its reward inspire us to embrace any suffering we may have to endure in the days to come.  Let us give thanks to God.  Deo gratias!

THE SPIRIT OF THE LAW

 A SERMON FOR THE 17TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Last week we examined the letter of the law.  In particular, we went into detail about just one of those laws, the First Precept of the Church and Third Commandment of God, that we keep holy the Sabbath Day.  In today’s bulletin, we further delve into the prohibitive part of that law—what we are forbidden to do on Sundays.  This law of the Sabbath, we must remember, is but one of the many laws that we are expected to keep if we want to save our souls.  Laws are there to keep us on the straight-and-narrow path of salvation.  One of the main reasons we keep those laws is so that we don’t fall into sin by disobeying them and thus lose our souls.  That’s why God gave so many laws to the Jews of the Old Testament.

Today though, we read in the New Testament, this Sunday’s Gospel, a new law, a law that fulfills every single one of the laws that were given to the Jews by Moses.  It is what our Lord himself describes as “the first and great commandment,” to love the Lord thy God “with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.”  This one law fulfills the first three of the Ten Commandments, which refer to our relationship with God.  A second law, which is “like unto” the first, is to love thy neighbor as thyself.”  This law fulfills the other seven commandments of God, which deal with our relationship with our fellow human beings.  “On these two commandments,” proclaims our blessed Lord and Savior, Son of God, “hang all the law and the prophets.”

In other words, if we truly obey these two great commandments, we obey all the commandments.  By truly loving God and our neighbor, we cannot do other than obey every single legitimate piece of legislation that has ever been written, whether by God or by man.  However, not all laws are legitimate.  Any law, in order to be legitimate, must be based on these two laws, otherwise they are null and void in the sight of God.  Even a simple disciplinary law that forbids us, for example, from driving at reckless speeds on the highway, is based on the respect we should show our neighbor by not endangering him needlessly.  Love of neighbor in other words.  A law on the other hand, which permits such reckless endangerment of our fellow man, is not a legitimate law.  It must be either ignored, or, if necessary, disobeyed.  The Nazis, for example, were very big on killing off a specific part of the population, our fellow human beings, the Jews.  Catholics during World War II had the moral duty to not participate in such persecution, and in certain specific cases, even to protect their Jewish neighbors from harm.  Things haven’t changed, and the descendants of those Nazis, who have now turned their attention to the persecution and murder of unborn babies, give us the same responsibility today to ignore the abortion laws as illegitimate and to protect those defenseless children, at least through our prayers, if not actual political activism.  The abortion laws can hardly be described as promoting the love of our neighbor.  Killing a baby is far from loving that baby as ourselves.

Laws then, are based on the spirit in which they are written and for which they are intended.  If we all followed this spirit, if we were all united in keeping “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,” as St. Paul says, the world would be a far better place.  There would never have been wars, or revolutions, or civil unrest; there would never have existed such things as divorce, quarreling, violence, or persecution.  So obviously, something went wrong somewhere along the line.  Actually, it didn’t take long.  When Adam and Eve bit the apple, the human race took its first step in breaking the first and great commandment to love God when it broke the only law that then existed.  Thanks to this original sin, it’s been downhill ever since.

While there’s not much we can do about human nature and the fact that it is now a “fallen” human nature, there is a great deal we need to take care of to make sure we don’t let that fallen human nature get the better of us.  Simply obeying the Ten Commandments isn’t enough.  A hundred thousand commandments would not be enough if all we do is follow the letter of those laws.  If we do not have their spirit, then we will never succeed, either in obeying them all, or ultimately, of saving our souls.  We must love God.  And because we love God, we must also love our neighbor.  After all, God sent his only-begotten Son to die for our neighbor.  Who are we to deny that neighbor our love?  That’s why this second great Commandment is “like unto” the first.  Love of neighbor is worth nothing if we don’t love God first.

This is not just something to point out in passing.  It’s an essential part of understanding why the world is in such a topsy-turvy moral chaos today.  As usual, we can point to the failings of Vatican II, on the basis that “as goes the Church, so goes the world.”  When the Second Vatican Council reduced the role of God in our lives, they tried to fill the resulting vacuum by substituting love of humanity for its own sake.  The Mass stopped being the worship of God and became instead the celebration of our own human worth, the Body and Blood of Christ became simply the “work of human hands.”  The virtue of charity was reduced to social justice, mere philanthropy; Catholic schools, hospitals and orphanages gradually gave way to state-run establishments whose primary goal is to make a ton of money through exorbitant costs and government grants; Catholicism, once the firm bulwark of the Democratic party, is now replaced with Socialism; stewardship of God’s gifts has become conservation, care of our planet, where the greatest sins according to the current leader of the conciliar Church, are based on the reluctance to recycle and negligence of our carbon footprint.  Nuns became feminists, and joined the ranks of those who would give preference to women even over God himself.  The result—we are now expected to let women murder their own offspring if that’s their choice.  We could go on all day listing examples of the foul consequences of trying to replace God with man.  Let’s bear them in mind and by all means come up with our own examples as we go forward.  But for now, let’s just stress that the first and greatest commandment is to love God, and that love of man is in second place, and then, only because of the first—we must love our fellow-man because we love God first, otherwise we end up with the mess we have today.

There’s not much we can do about the world we live in, other than live in it.  How we live in it will determine the only outcome we should really care about.  It’s not about keeping the letter of the law, or deciding which ones are good and which are bad.  It’s really about keeping the spirit of the two great commandments in the law, just keeping the focus on loving God as we know he should be loved, and loving our neighbor as ourselves, again as we know our neighbor should be loved.  By doing this, we stand a chance of saving our own soul, and hopefully the souls of a few of our neighbors along the way.

GOD IS LOVE, LET HEAV'N ADORE HIM

 A HYMN FOR THE 17TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

By Timothy Rees, 1922

 

1 God is Love: let heav'n adore him;

God is Love: let earth rejoice;

Let creation sing before him,

And exalt him with one voice.

God who laid the earth's foundation,

God who spread the heav'ns above,

God who breathes through all creation,

God is Love, eternal Love.

 

2 God is Love: and he enfoldeth

All the world in one embrace;

With unfailing grasp he holdeth

Every child of every race.

And when human hearts are breaking

Under sorrow's iron rod,

Then they find that selfsame aching

Deep within the heart of God.

 

3 God is Love: and though with blindness

Sin afflicts the souls of all,

God's eternal loving-kindness

Holds and guides us when we fall.

Sin and death and hell shall never

O'er us final triumph gain;

God is Love, so Love for ever

O'er the universe must reign.

THE FIRST PRECEPT OF THE CHURCH (PART 2)

 A CONTINUATION OF OUR REFLECTION FOR THE 16TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

The Church’s commandment to keep holy the Lord’s day has two parts.  The first is the positive command to attend Mass on Sundays and holydays of obligations, and this we discussed last week.  But there is a second part which is prohibitive in nature—it tells us what we are not allowed to do on Sundays and holydays.  So just what should we avoid exactly?

We should remember the basic rule, which is that we shouldn’t participate in any activity that distracts from our duty of keeping the Sunday holy.  Our first duty therefore is to avoid anything which is sinful, indeed any thought, word or deed that may be deemed an imperfection.  We should try harder on Sundays not to be disagreeable, to show more patience, to avoid vulgarity, impatience, boastfulness, and so on. Riotous recreations, gambling, drunkenness, reading improper matter or watching improper movies—none of these have any place in our lives but especially so on Sundays.

Secondly, we should avoid things, which although they be perfectly acceptable any other day of the week, would take us away from our higher duty on Sunday which is to give our time first and foremost to God. Excessive or unnecessary servile work is therefore forbidden.  If it can be done on another day of the week, then it should be put off to one of those other days.  Laundry, shopping, major cleaning, and in fact any kind of work that causes bodily fatigue that distracts us from religious thoughts, should not be performed on Sundays.  A small amount of work or shopping may be done, but try and reserve it, if you can, for those important things that can’t wait for Monday.

Similarly, commercial labors of a worldly kind are unsuitable for the quiet and recollection of the Sabbath.  We shouldn’t work at our regular job on Sundays if we can help it.  Teenagers in particular should be dissuaded from taking jobs which would force them to work on Sundays, especially if this would be a regular occurrence, and most especially if it would cause them to miss Mass.  After all, if they still live under their parents’ roof and have no family of their own to support, they should not normally be in urgent need of the income that their job provides, and there is therefore no proportionate cause for working it on a Sunday. 

For those whose duty to provide for their family forces them to work on Sunday, care should be taken to avoid it as much as possible.  Certain jobs, however, are considered essential to the common good and cannot therefore be omitted.  Nurses, law enforcement officers and other first responders, are all included in this category.  Other less essential but nevertheless useful categories, such as restaurateurs, waiters, shopkeepers, and so on, are treading on thinner ice…  Is it a sin to work a Sunday shift at McDonald’s?  On a regular basis, probably; now and again, probably not; switching to Chick-Fil-A, which closes on Sundays, preferable!

Remember, works devoted to the service of the mind are not forbidden.  No great bodily exertion is required and they are therefore not looked upon as unsuitable for the Sabbath.  Thus, teaching, reading, writing, studying, embroidering, and so on are all okay to do.  Football and other highly physical sports should be avoided, but more moderate sports and diversions, such as tennis, baseball, fishing, chess and video games are permitted.

Again, we should not become obsessed with the quantity or even quality of the servile works we may be tempted to perform when evaluating their morality.  The most important thing is whether they inhibit us from our supreme focus of the day, which is to worship God and rest from anything which would prevent or even distract us from doing so.  Let your conscience be clear!

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

 A SERMON FOR THE 16TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

As you know, the Jews are very strict about keeping the sabbath.  Starting with sunset on Friday night, they stop all forms of work and business transactions, in honor of the seventh day of Creation on which God also ceased his work and rested.  The observance of Sabbath law became so rigorous that even today, in strict orthodox Jewish communities, they will hire non-Jewish people to turn their light switches on and off, even to flush their toilets.  It is a good example of how the letter of the law can be observed too meticulously, even to the extent of going beyond mere inconvenience and becoming unhealthy.  Certain Christian denominations are noted for such rigors: Seventh Day Adventists refuse blood transfusions, for example.  Sunday observance was so strict in the Presbyterian Church of Scotland that during World War II, when Britain was on the verge of being invaded by the Nazis, they insisted that the Royal Air Force must ground their planes every Sunday, thus leaving our Scottish coast wide open to enemy attack.

The same kind of thing went on in our Lord’s time, and he actually condemned such harmful observance of the letter of the law.  It has come to be known as pharisaical, sanctimonious, holier-than-thou, and the Catholic Church has always been careful not to fall into such practices.  So what is Catholic law on the subject of observing the Sabbath?  The Catechism tells us that it is based on the Third Commandment, “Remember thou keep holy the Sabbath day,” a day on which we are to give our time to the service and worship of God.  The Church has commanded specifically how we are to worship God on Sundays (and holydays of obligation), and that is chiefly by attending Mass.  In addition, we are encouraged to give ourselves to prayer and other good works, and are forbidden excessive and unnecessary servile work and whatever else may hinder us from our due observation of the Lord’s day.

The question of what we’re not supposed to do on Sundays I’d like to leave for another time.  Today, our focus is on our attendance at Mass, and I’d like to give you an answer to  one question in particular that confuses a lot of people.  It’s a question that often goes unasked, and for the wrong reason!  We traditional-minded Catholics have an unfortunate tendency to be like the Jewish Pharisees, seeking out the exact letter of the law so that we can condemn those who don’t follow it, or worse, so that we can find loopholes to avoid following it!  Either way, we don’t like to ask the priest what we should do because that might make us look judgmental on the one hand, or irreligious on the other.  So let’s answer this unasked question today, so you don’t have to embarrass yourselves by asking me later.

The question is, what exactly fulfills our obligation of hearing Mass?  How much of the Mass exactly do we absolutely have to be present at, in order to fulfill our obligation?  Do we have to arrive before the Gospel, or can we skip a bit more and just arrive in time for the Offertory?  Many people mistakenly believe that if they turn up after the Gospel or the Offertory they have “missed Mass.”  This is  a reasonable misconception to have.  After all, surely there must be a line drawn, beyond which you haven’t attended Mass sufficiently?  Surely I can’t just show up just before Communion and think I’ve kept holy the Sabbath?

The truth is that there is no rule in Canon Law pointing to any specific part of the Mass that absolutely must be attended.  On the contrary, moral theologians manuals say that the rule of attending Mass applies to the whole Mass.  In other words, you are obliged to attend the entire Mass, from the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar to the Last Gospel.  If you don’t, through your own fault, then you commit a sin, the gravity of which would depend more on the extent of your guilt, than on the amount of Mass you miss. 

It would be impossible, or at least highly impractical, for the Church to lay down a specific part of the Mass and say you must be there by then or you commit a mortal sin.  Because if such a rule existed, people would be tempted to just arrive by that point, they’d stop making the effort to be here for the beginning of Mass, since thinking that as long as they get there by the “official obligatory time” that would be enough.  Many people would wrongly decide that since it’s okay to miss the parts of the Mass that take place, say, before the Gospel, that means that elements like the Confiteor and the Gloria aren’t all that important, otherwise why would the Church say that we can arrive after these prayers are finished?   

So if you come late to Mass, it’s a bad thing.  But the degree of badness is based on the reason why you’re late, not how late you are.  Obviously, unforeseen things happen in life – perhaps the traffic that day was unusually slow because of an accident or construction, or maybe the baby threw up all over Mommy in the car.  You planned to be there for the start of Mass, you did everything you normally would do to get there on time—but unexpected circumstances made you late.  The Church has never penalized attributed any wrongdoing to such things.  You can’t be held to account for something you had no way of knowing about.  No one is ever held to the impossible. 

But at the same time, you shouldn’t imagine that you can make up excuses for being late to Mass.  If you know there’s construction on the road to church, leave earlier.   And please don’t think that just because you have children, that in itself is a good excuse for showing up whenever you feel like it.  “Well, you know I have children to manage...”  You didn’t wake up on Sunday morning to suddenly find you had a bunch of kids!  If you don’t bother waking them up in time to help put their socks on, then there is some degree of guilt on your part.  Figure out what time you need to wake up and leave the house in order to arrive punctually for Mass, and then stick to that time every week.  Make reasonable allowances for things to happen along the way that might slow you down: check the weather; you all have cell phones, check the traffic app to see what the traffic is like.  Our guilt accumulates if we’re late for Mass week after week, for the same reasons, which of course we ought by now to be able to foresee.

If you do end up being late for Mass, can you still receive Communion?  The right answer to this question is again not so much about being late, but rather whether you’re properly disposed to receive Communion.  Take a nurse, for example, who was preparing to go to Mass and receive, but then had a last-minute emergency which prevented her from being there for the beginning of Mass.  It doesn’t matter whether she showed up before or after the Gospel, or even halfway through the distribution of Holy Communion—if she still has the right disposition and is still fasting, she should still be able to go up and receive.  Some lazy good-for-nothing who saunters into the church half-an-hour late (or even half-an-hour early!) and then spends his time texting his girlfriend at the back and giving every external indication that he is not properly disposed to receive—he should not.

So let’s not be pharisees, either in our own behavior, or in being busy-bodies and looking at our watch every time someone walks into church, making a mental note of how we did a better job of being on time.  We can’t know why someone is late, so we should never rush to judgment, especially based on a quantitative circumstance like minutes and seconds. 

All morality is based on our knowledge of our responsibility and the motivation, or lack thereof, to fulfill those responsibilities.  As far as knowledge goes, we all know the obligation to attend Sunday Mass—all of it. It is a commandment of the Church which binds under the penalty of grave sin. It exists for a specific reason and should be not only known but loved, so that the soul feels a need to fulfill it.

ON THIS DAY, THE FIRST OF DAYS

 A HYMN FOR THE 16TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Translated from the Latin by H.W. Baker, 1861

 

On this day, the first of days,
God the Father's Name we praise,
Who, creation's Lord and spring,
Did the world from darkness bring.

 

On this day the eternal Son
Over death his triumph won;
On this day the Spirit came
With his gifts of living flame.

Maker, who didst fashion me
Image of thyself to be,
Fill me with thy love divine,
Let my every thought be thine.

Holy Jesus, may I be
Dead and buried here with thee;
And, by love inflamed, arise
Unto thee a sacrifice.

Thou who dost all gifts impart,
Shine, blest Spirit, in my heart;
Best of gifts, thyself bestow;
Make me burn thy love to know.

God, the blessèd Three in One,
Dwell within my heart alone;
Thou dost give thyself to me,
May I give myself to thee.

THE FIRST PRECEPT OF THE CHURCH

 A MESSAGE FOR THE 16TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

This precept commands that on Sundays and holydays of obligation Mass be heard and servile works be omitted.  It is a Church law based on the Third Commandment of the Decalogue, which prescribes that man set aside some time for the external worship of God, and avoid those things which distract him from that worship. 

 

The precept is partly affirmative, commanding what must be done (attendance at Mass), and partly prohibitive, forbidding what must not be done.  This week we will focus on what must be done.  We are commanded to participate in the greatest act of worship, the sacrifice which is a commemoration and the continuation of Christ’s own sacrifice, source of all graces.

 

External assistance is required.  That means we must be in the same building or place as the celebrant, and be able to see or at least hear him.  Parents who need to take their children outside or to the cry room still fulfill their obligation, so long as they can still hear the bells or choir, and can still more or less follow the Mass.  This applies only for the time necessary, and should not be used as an excuse to spend large portions of the Mass removed from the body of the church.  The obligation to attend Mass is not fulfilled by watching it on television, nor even by viewing a live stream on your computer.  Such practices can obviously be spiritually beneficial and edifying, but they are never to be used as a substitute for attendance at Mass.

 

Internal assistance is also required.  This means that you must intend to pay attention to the Mass with your mind.  If you go to church merely to see your friends or to hear the beautiful music, you do not fulfill your Sunday obligation.  If you fall asleep during the sermon and forget to wake up again till people are leaving at the end of Mass, you were technically not at Mass, for lack of attention.  A brief doze would not, however, even be more than venially sinful, and if involuntary, then not sinful at all.  If your thoughts are deliberately given to non-religious matters, you may fulfill your Sunday obligation, but still commit the sins of irreverence and voluntary distraction. 

 

You may be excused from Mass because of inability or necessity.  A two-hour drive is usually considered a reasonable excuse for missing Mass, at least now and again.  Those who would suffer grave detriment to health, honor or fortune are excused, and also those who are kept away by duties of charity or employment or office that cannot be omitted.  Not every reason constitutes an excuse!  We should not unnecessarily place ourselves in the impossibility of observing the law, for example by taking on employment that requires us to work every Sunday, moving permanently or even going on vacation to a place where there is no church.  Frivolous reasons are never enough.  If we don’t like the priest, or we don’t want to bump into so-and-so, we get upset with crying babies—these are not excuses to miss Mass!

 

If you really have a reasonable excuse for not attending Mass on certain Sundays, remember that you can never be excused from the divine law of keeping holy the Lord’s day.  Try to make up for not going to Mass by some extra prayers, some time given to spiritual reading, or by performing good works like visiting a sick or elderly relative.  Sunday is the Lord’s day.  Keep it holy!

THE IN-BETWEENS

 A SERMON FOR THE 15TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

You’ve probably noticed, if you’ve thought about it at all, that there are three types of people in this world—the saints, the incorrigible sinners, and then the people in between.  The point of today’s Epistle is to encourage us to question where we stand in this mix, and of course to remind us of the result of our choice.  Last week we spoke about making that choice between God and mammon.  This Sunday, we are taken past the choice itself in order to think about the consequences of what we choose.  The punch line, of course, is that “whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.”  So if we want to reap good things for all eternity, we had better choose the eternal good, which is God, over the temporal pleasures of this life, which is mammon.

So let’s ask ourselves when we get a private moment… am I a holy person, one that successfully fights his temptations, who is always of a kind, charitable, truthful disposition, displaying heroic virtue on a daily basis, voluntarily doing penance for my own faults and for the sins of the world?  Or am I so despicable that I don’t even bother struggling against my inclinations to self-indulgence, treating other people with contempt, hatred, neglect, while I seek nothing more out of life than to enjoy my bad habits and godless lifestyle, whatever the cost?  If we’re honest, we’ll probably come to the conclusion that we fall into that category of the “in-betweens”, neither all good nor all bad, but a mixture of both.  That’s actually where just about everybody in the world is.  Only our blessed Mother has ever been completely sinless, and if we look carefully even at the most evil of dictators, serial killers, psychopaths and Democrats, we’ll usually find that there are one or two relatively nice things about them.  So realizing you’re an in-between should not come as a huge shock.

The point is, it isn’t so much where you are on the ladder of perfection that’s important.  It’s whether you’re climbing up it or sliding down it that matters.  We’re all a work in progress, so we need to figure out which way we’re progressing.  Obviously, if you conclude that you used to be a better person yesterday than you are today, then it’s time to take stock and change direction.  And if you can honestly say you’re improving, then don’t let yourself get discouraged, keep up the hard work and continue climbing ever upward—“Excelsior!”—it’s the state motto of New York, and one we should all adopt.

But then there are the“in-betweens” who are neither moving up that ladder of perfection, nor sliding down it.  They’re stuck, not so much on a rung as in a rut.  This is a dangerous place to be, and where some kind of action is absolutely essential.  Because we aren’t going to remain stuck on that one rung for very long.  Eventually we’ll get tired.  And the more tired we get, the harder it is to take that next step up it.  If we just allow nature to take its course, then we’ll become a victim of that fallen human nature.  We’ll fall.  The nature of gravity is that it pulls us down.  The nature of the human being does exactly the same thing. It’s so much easier to stop climbing and gradually head on back down.  Worse yet, we might even fall off the ladder completely, and then God help us!  “Let us not be weary in well doing,” exhorts St. Paul, “for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”

There’s a name for these people who remain stuck on the ladder, neither aspiring to the heights of holiness nor abandoning themselves entirely to a life of sin.  They’re called “mediocre.”  And let’s face it, the majority of the human race fall into this category of mediocrity.  We lead mediocre lives.  We live out our days in a never-ending series of reactions to our feelings and emotions.  To be sure, we have some sense of the powerful effects our choices can have on our life.  We read something or we hear something that inspires us for a moment, but we aren’t quite sure we believe it.  Or, if we do believe it, we can’t be bothered to act on it because we know it will make us change the way we act, and change requires too much work, work which we just aren’t willing to do, time and energy we aren’t prepared to invest, nice things or relationships we’re not prepared to abandon.  Instead, we choose to live our days content with being mediocre.  We’re content to climb a few steps up the ladder and then slide back down it as soon as temptations come, never really getting any higher.  We live life hoping for the best but resigning ourselves to what we are, and lacking the fortitude to go beyond that hope and actually act. 

What’s the opposite of “Ever Upward”, Excelsior?  Our first thought would probably be that it’s “Ever downward,” but let’s face it, very rarely would people go so far as to adopt that motto, The most dangerous motto you can give yourself is this: “I am what I am.”  First, we content ourselves with what we are, eventually, if you can believe it, we end up justifying it, and then actually taking pride in it.  “Look at me, with my nose ring and my blue hair, flying my rainbow flag—nobody’s going to dictate to me how to lead my life.  I do what I want!  Anyone who tells me I’m wrong—parent, teacher, priest—is being (and here’s the most disparaging word they can come up with) ‘judgmental.’  Nope, I am what I am.”  And it all starts the day we lose our determination to climb that ladder of perfection.  But we will harvest only in proportion to our aspirations and the effort we put into realizing them.  We will reap what we sow.

We’re in the month of September now.  The weather’s starting to change, we’ve entered into the last quarter of the Church’s liturgical year, and we’ve begun to think about the four last things—death, judgment, heaven and hell.  Saints, sinners and the in-betweens…  The saints go quickly, some even instantly, to heaven when they die.  The incorrigible sinners will go equally quickly to their own destination.  And the mediocre?  The In-Betweens?  We lie in the balance, and the danger is always there.  I hate to be the messenger in this regard, but let’s remember that the regret we’ll experience in Purgatory for not having done better could be long and will be painful, far worse than anything we have ever experienced in this life.  We don’t like to think too hard or often about Purgatory, except to make our prayers for the Holy Souls there.  The thought that we are going to actually be one of those Holy Souls, is not something we like to focus on, the idea that we’re going to suffer an anguish never imagined, an agonizing regret at the wasted opportunities of our mediocre lives, when we allowed ourselves to wallow in our banal attachments to the fleeting pleasures and comforts of our daily routine.  “What was I thinking?”  “Why didn’t I realize I was going to reap what I sowed?”  Well, today, let’s realize it once and for all, and do what it takes to make sure our stay in Purgatory is shortened as much as humanly possible.  Let’s resolve with utter determination to progress ever upward, so that when we die, we hear the voice of our blessed Lord fulfilling our quest in the words of today’s Gospel, “Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.”

O GOD OF EARTH AND ALTAR

 A HYMN FOR THE 15TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

A Prayer for the Nation, by G.K. Chesterton, 1906

 

O God of earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us,
The swords of scorn divide,
Take not thy thunder from us,
But take away our pride.

From all that terror teaches,
From lies of tongue and pen,
From all the easy speeches
That comfort cruel men,
From sale and profanation
Of honour and the sword,
From sleep and from damnation,
Deliver us, good Lord.

Tie in a living tether
The prince and priest and thrall,
Bind all our lives together,
Smite us and save us all;
In ire and exultation
Aflame with faith, and free,
Lift up a living nation,
A single sword to thee.