PRAYER--A BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATERS

A SERMON FOR THE 4TH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY

 

We seem to have a bit of a problem going on in Eastern Europe right now.  Wars and rumors of wars, as our Lord warned us about.  This shouldn’t surprise us, given the spiralling of Western Civilization as a whole toward what looks like a point of no return.  I saw on the news last Sunday that the churches in the Ukrainian capital were packed, as the faithful crowded in to make their no doubt fervent petitions to God to protect their nation, praying in the words of the disciples in the boat.  “Lord, save us: we perish.” 

Because, just like the disciples of our Lord in today’s Gospel, it takes a “great tempest, insomuch that the ship is covered with the waves” before we bother turning to God.  Prayer should be our daily, even constant occupation, speaking with God, pouring out to him all our hopes and fears, our questions and doubts, our repentant sorrow, our prayers of adoration—but to our discredit, after ignoring all these things for so long, it’s only when we find ourselves in real trouble that we turn back to the God who should have been in our hearts and minds all along.

And when we finally turn to God for help, what do we find?  He’s asleep.  Yes, believe it or not, some people actually think he’s asleep.  With our feeble and fickle human nature, we actually have the audacity to attribute God’s non-intervention in our problems to the preposterous idea that God is sleeping, oblivious to our trials and tribulations, and that we need to wake God up so that he can save us.  Whereas the reality is, we are the ones who have been asleep.  We are the ones who have been oblivious to God’s multiple invitations to pray, to attend Mass, to receive him in holy Communion, simply to make him a part of our lives. 

Why are so many people asleep.  It seems impossible that anyone could sleep through the onslaught of perilous threats that face us today.  And yet, some people are even now unaware of the dangers we face.  Some are indifferent to them, thinking that they won’t affect us, so why should we care.  Others yet are simply unwilling to be distracted from their pleasant daily routine and their “happy thoughts”.  Then there are those who are so complacent that even now they put their hope in man rather than God, blithely and absurdly confident that the men of this world can fix things. 

There’s another category of people who prefer to continue sleeping in these dangerous times.  It’s one that probably we here today are the most likely to fit into.  We know basically what’s going on, but feel helpless to do anything about it.  The resulting temptation is to bury our head in the sand and distract ourselves with worldly and material diversions, but this reaction is fraught with danger.  It’s based on the age-old axiom, “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” During the period of the Black Death in medieval Europe, there was a phenomenon where some people used to ignore the risks of contagion and indulge themselves in wild parties.  Maybe that’s the reasons so many people got into trouble for partying during the Covid lockdowns.  It’s normal human nature, but it isn’t a constructive way of handling a crisis.  If you find yourself falling into this trap of dispelling thoughts of imminent peril from your mind, you are simply anesthetizing your mind—basically lulling yourself deliberately into, yes, sleep.  But don’t expect the world to be any better, don’t think the dangers will have passed you by when you eventually wake up.

So what should we do in the face of all the terrible things facing us today?  Ignorance, complacency and despair are certainly not the answers.  The first thing we must all do is recognize the fact that God is not asleep.  We might be sleeping through the danger, but God is not. Just because he is not intervening with thunderbolts and booming reprimands from heaven doesn’t mean he isn’t intimately aware of everything that’s going on in this world of ours.  So why does he seem to be asleep?  Why doesn’t he intervene and rebuke the ill winds of peril?  The answer lies in man’s free will…

It’s this free will that gets us into trouble every time.  Sure, there may be other crises that we don’t cause: weather disasters, earthquakes, and so on.  But when it comes down to the major crises that affect history, it’s nearly always man’s fault.  God isn’t asleep.  He’s watching us, no doubt with sadness, maybe anger, watching what we do with that free will he gave us.  We know why he gave us free will—it’s so that we can freely choose to love him, to obey his commandments, to freely conform our will to God’s will.  But alas, we all fail in this respect many times a day, and there are some who even deliberately choose to defy the will of God and pursue their own whims, often in the worst ways imaginable.   What caused this current crisis with Russia?  Pride, stubbornness, envy, anger, hatred?  I don’t know, but I do know this: that it was the free will of some people somewhere that has brought us to this precipice.

And after we mess up God’s world, his creation, we have the nerve to accuse God of being asleep, of somehow failing us by not intervening.  But think about it, how can he intervene in the workings of our free will?  If he did, he would be destroying the freedom of our will, the very element of what makes us human beings and God’s children.  He can’t give us free will and then take away the consequences of our misuse of that free will.  He would be taking away the very thing he gave us.  So why should we expect him to?

You may be thinking that this reason for the non-intervention of God should lead us to conclude what we have earlier condemned, namely that there’s nothing we can do, so don’t do anything at all.  Wrong!  The disciples were not wrong to call upon our Lord in their boat and beg him for help.  They were in danger; they didn’t have time to analyze why they were in danger, that just maybe the emergency they found themselves in was one of their own making.  Maybe they had taken the boat out to sea without first checking the weather forecast.  Or perhaps they had tempted fate, or more accurately, tempted God by staying out on the water longer than they should so they could catch a few more fish.  All they knew was that they were going to drown if God didn’t help them.  They weren’t wrong in calling out for help, they were wrong only because they assumed God was unable to help them because he was asleep.  Certainly they were wrong in their lack of faith—we know that because our Lord himself reprimanded them: “Why are ye so fearful, O ye of little faith?”  But their fault lay in their lack of faith, not in the fact that they called upon our Lord for help.

This is the reason we must not despair and think God can’t or won’t help us.  It’s why we shouldn’t think that the worst possible outcome is inevitable and that there’s nothing we can do about it.  We should not give in to our fears.  Our Lord rebuked the disciples for doing just that, and he will rebuke us today for doing the same thing.  But there is something we can do and that’s to call upon the Lord as we are reminded in the 90^th Psalm: “He shall call upon me, and I will hear him; yea, I am with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and bring him to honour.”  Our prayer to God must be made, not in fear and trembling at what faces us, but with confidence in his divine Providence that all things work together for good to them that love God.

Can God intervene without damaging our free will?  In fact, we often see that God can perform miracles that override the laws of nature.  One such miracle occurs in today’s Gospel when “he rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.”  If he is powerful enough to create the universe and then defy the natural laws he made to govern it, then he certainly has the power to change the consequences of our actions in order to answer our prayers.  In fact, it’s why he told us to pray.  Last week, we saw how he changed his divine plan and performed his first miracle, changing water into wine, purely to answer the prayer of his Mother.  So we should trust that he will answer our humble supplications—just don’t ask them in fear of not being answered, but confident in God’s promise to deliver us—“He shall call upon me, and I will hear him.”

This 90^th Psalm from which these words are taken is sung at the Church’s Divine Office of Compline.  I’ve included it in this week’s bulletin, and it would be a good thing to take it home and read it often, especially in these times of crisis when we feel that the walls of Jericho are tumbling down around us.  Prayer is not just words that we whisper into the air, prayer is our SOS signal to God, our mayday call, that we are in desperate need of help, our bridge over troubled waters.  God is most assuredly not sleeping.  “Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.”  He’s there, always listening for our communication, ready at a moment’s notice to answer our call for assistance, and to rebuke the powers that be, and to restore that “great calm” for which we all so deeply long.    

THE 90TH PSALM: QUI HABITAT

 A PSALM FOR THE 4TH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY

Whoso dwelleth under the defence of the Most High, * shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
2  I will say unto the Lord, Thou art my hope, and my stronghold; * my God, in him will I trust.
3  For he shall deliver me from the snare of the hunter, * and from the noisome pestilence.
4  He shall defend thee under his wings, * and thou shalt be safe under his feathers.
5  His faithfulness and truth shall be thy shield and buckler; * thou shalt not be afraid for any terror by night,
6  Nor for the arrow that flieth by day, for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, * nor for the sickness that destroyeth in the noon-day.
7  A thousand shall fall beside thee, and ten thousand at thy right hand; * but it shall not come nigh thee.
8  Yea, with thine eyes shalt thou behold, * and see the reward of the ungodly.
9  For thou, Lord, art my hope; * thou hast set thine house of defence very high.
10  There shall no evil happen unto thee, * neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.
11  For he shall give his angels charge over thee, * to keep thee in all thy ways.
12  They shall bear thee in their hands, * that thou hurt not thy foot against a stone.
13  Thou shalt go upon the lion and adder: * the young lion and the dragon shalt thou tread under thy feet.
14  Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him; * I will set him up, because he hath known my Name.
15  He shall call upon me, and I will hear him; * yea, I am with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and bring him to honour.
16  With long life will I satisfy him, * and shew him my salvation.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, * and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.  Amen.

OUR OFFERING IN THE TEMPLE

 A REFLECTION FOR CANDLEMAS

This coming Wednesday we celebrate the feast of Candlemas.  It is a feast that has two important component parts, being at the same time the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Presentation of the Christ Child in the Temple. 

Our Blessed Lady brings her Baby to the temple at Jerusalem after the requisite forty days have elapsed since his birth.  She offers him to God, a mystical foreshadowing of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in which the same Son of God is offered to the same Father in heaven.  As such, our Lady’s role is that of the priest who makes the offering, and her ritual purification at this ceremony also foreshadows the ritual washing of the priest’s hands at the Offertory of each Mass.

This offering of the Christ Child to his Father marks the beginning of the end of the Old Testament.  The blood sacrifices are over.  We are no longer commanded by God to offer the blood of animals.  Now it is Christ who will offer himself, the perfect, unspotted Victim, to God in the only possible sufficient Sacrifice that can be made.  But we have a part to play in this sacrifice too.  Because now we are asked to offer our own blood in the form of sorrow and suffering, and especially in the sorrow of repentance for having offended God.  Now it is our own willingness to suffer for Christ and with Christ that is pleasing to God: “for thou desirest no sacrifice, else would I give it to thee; but thou delightest not in burnt-offerings.  The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit: a broken and contrite heart, O God, shalt thou not despise.”

Sometimes it is a sacrifice just to attend the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  It takes up our time, we have to exert ourselves to organize the family, travel great distances, fast from food and drink, and perhaps miss out on other more pleasurable social activities.  All these little sacrifices pale, however, before the Great Sacrifice itself and our participation in it.  For if we do truly take part and share in that Sacrifice of our Redemption by offering ourselves to God with all our sufferings, our souls will be pierced like that of our Lady.  If we present ourselves to God, we must expect that our Blessed Saviour will take us at our word, and will provide us with the opportunity to share in the work of salvation through our sorrows.  Holy Mass is not for the faint-hearted.  It is our chance to follow our Lord himself not only to the temple, but beyond to Calvary, there to be presented to our heavenly Father as a victim for the sacrifice, uniting ourselves, through the Mass and especially in Holy Communion, with Christ the Saviour of souls.

Let us offer our Holy Communions that we joyfully suffer unto glory.

GREAT MULTITUDES FOLLOWED HIM

 A SERMON FOR THE 3RD SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY

“When Jesus was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed him.”  These opening words from today’s Gospel reminded me of another Gospel we heard a few short weeks ago on the 2^nd Sunday in Advent, when our Lord asked the crowd why they followed St. John the Baptist in such great numbers.  “What went ye out into the wilderness to see?  A reed shaken with the wind?  A man clothed in soft raiment?  A prophet?”  His questioning of the crowd is meant to show us exactly what the multitude were not seeking in this forerunner of the Messiah.  It can equally be applied to the Messiah himself—the multitude followed Jesus not because he was a reed shaken with the wind nor a man clothed in soft raiment, nor even a prophet.  They followed him because they recognized in our Lord something very special.  His miracles of healing, his teachings, his very persona all indicated to them that this was no ordinary man.  And so they followed, hoping to catch a glimpse of the divine.

Times change, cultures change, circumstances change.  But the nature of man does not change.  Why do you come to church today?  Is it to sit in awe at the beauty of our architecture, the majesty of our liturgy and music?  Is it to be entertained, distracted from the world’s problems for a few minutes?  No.  You come here, just as the multitude who followed Jesus, because you too want to catch a glimpse of something divine.  There are bigger and better churches, choirs, preachers out there, but do they offer what our modest little chapel can give you?  Do they offer the actual things of God?

Today’s Gospel describes two miracles our blessed Lord performed in the presence of the multitude that followed him.  We here in this church who have followed our Lord here this morning, are rewarded by witnessing the same two miracles.  In the first miracle, Christ heals a leper.  “And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.  And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.”  This same miracle is performed here this morning.   How exactly?  For behold, there came a sinner to the confessional, saying, Father, if thou wilt, thou canst absolve me.  And Father puts forth his right hand over the sinner, saying, “I absolve thee from all thy sins, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.  Amen.  “Be thou clean.” If anything, this is an even greater miracle than healing mere leprosy.  For in the confessional, Christ heals the soul and not just the body.  And that’s something you won’t get down at your local protestant megachurch, no matter how good their coffee and donuts are!

In the second of the two miracles, a Roman centurion approaches our Lord to ask him the favor of healing his sick servant.  His words to Jesus are very familiar, we hear them at every Mass as we approach our blessed Lord at the communion rail, and we’ll hear them again this morning: “Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed.”  Apart from changing the word “servant” to “soul”—speak the word only, and my soul shall be healed,” the humble request of the centurion is exactly the same as what we ask of God when we receive his Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in holy Communion.  The centurion was a man of authority over many soldiers.  He says to this man, “Go, and he goeth; and to another come, and he cometh.”  But no matter how much power we wield, whether we’re a king or a peasant, we approach God with the same humility, the same lowly acknowledgment of our unworthiness to receive God, to be in union with him in this our Most Blessed of Sacraments.  “And his servant”—our soul—“is healed in the selfsame hour.”  Miracle of miracles, we have followed Christ as he came down from the mountain of heaven this morning to this little chapel, we have followed him, and we have witnessed great wonders!  Hidden miracles they may be—after all, it is our hidden soul that is healed—but miracles nonetheless.

If there is a lesson to be learned from the observation of this phenomenon, it is that in order for our souls to be healed, we must first follow Christ.  It is not enough to merely believe that he is our Lord and Saviour, as the protestants do, it is not enough merely to be “good people” who are “nice” to our neighbors.  We must do both.  We must believe in our Saviour and follow the commandments he gave us, summed up in the love of God and our neighbor.  We must keep the true faith and we must practice true charity, love.  This is what is meant by following Christ.

We know where not to look for the true faith.  The leaders of the post-conciliar Church teach a faith that is not of Christ, they preach a whole new Gospel of globalism, climate-change, vaccinations, and other made-up political and divisive doctrines.  How do they show their allegiance to the traditional faith that was revealed by God and passed down to the apostles and their successors to us the Catholic faithful?  Is it by preserving that Tradition unsullied and perfect?  Or do they try to abolish the Traditional Mass, water down our doctrines, replace all that is holy with all things ugly, false, and godless? Do they actually pretend to claim that their loyalty to Tradition lies in their hatred of Tradition?  Do they expect us to follow them as they lead us down to the path to hell?

We can no longer comply with their agenda, because, quite simply, if we do, we will surely lose our souls.  And so, here we are, in somewhat uninspiring surroundings perhaps, but nevertheless in the presence of our Lord and Saviour.  Like the three wise men, we have followed our star of destiny to our little Bethlehem here, and in so doing, we have found our blessed Lord in this humble stable.  Let us present our gifts of faith, hope and charity, and return to our homes not by way of King Herod and his evil palace, but by another road, the Way of Christ, of him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, healed in our heart and mind and soul.

TAKE UP THY CROSS, THE SAVIOUR SAID

 A HYMN FOR THE 3RD SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY

by Charles W. Everest, 1833

 

 

1 "Take up thy cross," the Savior said,

"if thou wouldst my disciple be;

take up thy cross with willing heart,

and humbly follow after me."

 

2 Take up thy cross; let not its weight

fill thy weak spirit with alarm;

Christ's strength shall bear thy spirit up

and brace thine heart and nerve thine arm.

 

3 Take up thy cross, heed not the shame,

and let thy foolish heart be still;

the Lord for thee accepted death

upon a cross, on Calv'ry's hill.

 

4 Take up thy cross, then, in Christ's strength,

and calmly ev'ry danger brave:

it guides thee to abundant life

and leads to vict'ry o'er the grave.

BE OF THE SAME MIND

 A REFLECTION FOR THE 3RD SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY

St. Paul’s Epistle today starts out by asking us to “be of the same mind one toward another.”  That sounds very nice on the face of it, doesn’t it?  To me, it conjures up images of hippies sitting round the campfire on a beach in California, smoking pot and singing Kum Ba Yah.  And of course, nothing could be further from what the good St. Paul is asking of us. 

Since Vatican II, the highlight of the “Mass” isn’t the consecration any more.  The big moment comes later on after the Our Father when the person presiding over the service asks everyone to give each other the kiss of peace.  Nowhere is the new church better summed up than in the bedlam that follows.  And nowhere is the hypocrisy of modernism more clearly displayed than in the scene of handshaking and back-slapping that pretends to show how much we love our neighbor, but in reality is a manifestation of how little we love God.

If you think about it, love of neighbor is the second of the two great commandments, always subordinate to and dependent upon the love of God first and foremost.  In fact, we cannot fail to love our neighbor if we truly love God.  And how do we show our love for God?  By keeping his commandments.  At the Last Supper, when Christ commanded us to “Do this in remembrance of me,” he was not working the room, shaking hands with everyone from St. Peter to Judas.  He certainly loved all his apostles, but it cannot be said they were all of “one mind one toward another.”  The one would deny him three times and the other betray him for thirty pieces of silver, so the degree of love they or any of the other apostles had toward our Lord could never be said to equal the love he had for them.  

His love was the true love of sacrifice.  He was willing to die for them and for us.  Are we so ready to die for our neighbor?  How shallow is the display of “love” at the new Mass!  The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the true Mass, has been offered, without interruption for two thousand years.  It is our reminder that the love of our Lord Jesus Christ is an eternal love, and we are commanded to return this sacrificial love in the true Mass, not abolish it. 

We are not of one mind with the enemies of God who wish to take this Mass away from us, and we don’t need to apologize to St. Paul for not being of one mind!  After all, he goes on to say this: “If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.”  By all means, fight what they’re trying to do.  But if it’s possible for us to remain at peace with our neighbor, even the neighbor who hates our values and everything we stand for, then we should tolerate their presence among us, partly for the sake of the common good but more so, because they are still God’s children—his enemies, perhaps, but nevertheless enemies that he forgave on Calvary, enemies he died for.  Who are we, then, to deny them true Christian love, no matter how difficult it might be for us to summon up.

“Recompense to no man evil for evil,” says St. Paul.  “If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him to drink.”  The evil he does is ultimately between him and God, and God has promised to take care of things in the end—“Vengeance is mine, I will repay.”  Meanwhile, we are to love our enemies, by praying for them, making acts of reparation for them, and in short, by acts of loving sacrifice as befits a follower of Christ.

FILL THE WATERPOTS WITH WATER

 A SERMON FOR THE 2ND SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY

We know the story.  Our blessed Lord has been invited, along with his Mother, to a wedding.  They’re at the reception and everyone is having a good time, when suddenly our blessed Lady notices that something very embarrassing has happened.  It was unthinkable that the bride and groom would not have provided enough wine to last everyone till the end of the feast, and yet, here we are, and she mentions it to her Son Jesus, “They have no wine.”  His response is not encouraging: “It’s none of our business,” he basically tells her.  “It’s not the time yet for me to reveal myself as the Messiah.” Our Lady doesn’t argue with him, she knows him too well for that.  So she orders the servants to just do whatever he tells them.

There then followed the third great Epiphany, or Manifestation, of the Son of God to the world.  And yet there were no great kings coming to present expensive gifts this time, as happened at the First Epiphany.  There were no fanfares, no voice from heaven proclaiming “Behold my Son”, as had happened at Jesus’ Baptism, the Second Epiphany.  For this third Epiphany, our Lord drew absolutely no attention to himself at all as he pronounced these most innocuous of words to the servants: “Fill the waterpots with water.”

He didn’t say, “Watch this folks, I’m going to perform a miracle!”  He didn’t gather the crowds around him to witness a spectacle.  He merely told them to put water into the waterpots.  What could be more insignificant than that?  What else would you put into waterpots other than water?  The servants must have wondered, why is this man telling us the obvious?  It would be as though, when we wake up in the morning, somebody is telling us to breathe, or telling us to drink something when we’re thirsty.  Not necessary, surely.  And yet, he speaks: “Fill the waterpots with water.”

For us who know the story, this doesn’t strike us as anything out of the ordinary.  In fact it doesn’t strike us at all.  After all, with the benefit of hindsight, we know he’s going to change the water into wine, so there’s the reason, obviously, why he’s telling them to prepare plenty of water.  Even for those servants who heard him that day, they were being told, as if they needed telling, that they should pour water into the waterpots.  Shrugging of shoulders, no big deal there!  And yet, without question, they filled the pots up to the brim.  Then, somewhere between that act of filling the pots with water and the moment when they poured some of the contents into the goblet of the wedding coordinator, the great miracle occurred.  Water became wine, and our Lady’s prayer had been answered.  And all were amazed, as Jesus publicly manifested his divine power over nature for the first time.

What happens in life when we are truly in need of something?  Most of the time, we aren’t even conscious of needing these essential things.  We only pray for them when we’re in danger of losing them.  For example, when is the last time you went to bed and prayed that there will be air to breathe when you wake up the next day?  And yet, air there is.  God provides.  We come to assume that our prayer in the Our Father will be granted, and that God will indeed “give us this day our daily bread.” We know it isn’t just about bread, but about all the real necessities of life, including the air we breathe.  And, yes, God does answer these prayers, and even when we don’t pray for them.  Only when we’re having an attack of asthma, or get a piece of food stuck in our throats, do we send up urgent prayers for air.  The truth is we don’t pray enough, and we’re not even grateful to God when he gives us even those very necessary things we haven’t prayed for. 

The same is even more true when we’re dealing with needs that aren’t so basic.  Maybe they’re not even needs, but just wishes, or perhaps something that would prevent us from being embarrassed, as in the Wedding at Cana, or from being inconvenienced, or something that would just make life that little bit better.  We human beings are very needful creatures, always needing something, or at least thinking we do.  Usually, we don’t pray for these little luxuries, and vaguely hope they will just happen.  We might wish for them even.  We think to ourselves, “Wouldn’t it be nice if I could win the lottery…?” or “I wish I could afford to pay this bill or for that vacation, or lose weight, or stop smoking, or that the annoying guy at the office would be transferred”—the list is endless.  But often, we don’t actually pray for these things.  Maybe we think it beneath the dignity of God to grant our wishes, or maybe we’re just thinking about ourselves or even the good of our family and those around us, but we’re not thinking about God and how he rules over the laws of nature and is Divine Providence, how he can help us.

At times like this, isn’t it a wonderful thing that we have a Blessed Mother in heaven, who does our praying for us!  After all, it was certainly not our Lord’s decision to help out the embarrassed wedding couple.  Nor was it the wedding coordinator, or even the bride and groom themselves, who came running to Jesus, begging him to help.  They were probably too busy panicking and wondering where they could get some more wine real fast.  None of the above—it was our blessed Lady who saw their humiliation and simply pointed it out to her Son, “They have no wine,” even though he was already divinely aware of the problem. 

Thanks to all those prayers we make to her, all those “Pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death” prayers we make in the Hail Mary, she goes to bat for us even when we don’t bother asking.  She points out to Jesus what we need, and lo and behold, he gives us the graces to make these things happen.  When we can’t pay our bills, she merely tells him, “They have no money,” and somehow, we find a way out of our jam. She is always busy pointing out what she wants us to have.  When we fight and quarrel, she’s there to tell her Son, “They have no patience.” She’s not criticizing us, merely letting her Son know what virtue we need more of.  If only we knew all the ways in which she helps us! “They have no faith, they have no time, they have no more courage, they have no brains!”

And the graces come, and she will let us know somehow that now we need to do whatever God asks of us.  There will always be something, no matter how small, that we need to do for the miracle to happen.  Something small, something obvious perhaps—Fill the waterpots with water, don’t forget to buy a lottery ticket, eat more salad, pray for an increase of such and such a virtue, distract yourself in times of temptation…  Such little things, so obvious, and yet it is in fulfilling these little things that we cooperate with Mary’s prayers in God’s plan to help us.  We can’t win the lottery if we don’t buy a lottery ticket.  So from now on, let’s not just rely on our blessed Mother to take care of our needs.  We have to do our own part to find what we’re looking for.  “Fill the waterpots with water,” do whatever the good Lord asks of us, and we’ll find that in obeying, many astounding miracles will occur in our lives, and God will manifest forth once more his glory, that all may believe in him.

FAITH OF OUR FATHERS

 A HYMN FOR THE 2ND SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY

by Thomas Alexander Lacey

 

 

1 Faith of our fathers, taught of old

By faithful shepherds of the fold.

The hallowing of our nation;

Thou wast through many a wealthy year,

Through many a darkened day of fear

The rock of our salvation.

 

2 Our fathers heard the trumpet call

Through lowly cot and kingly hall

From oversea resounding:

They bowed their stubborn wills to learn

The truths that live, the thoughts that burn,

With new resolve abounding.

 

3 Our fathers held the faith received,

By Saints declared, by Saints believed.

By Saints in death defended;

Through pain of doubt and bitterness,

Through pain of treason and distress,

They for the right contended.

 

4 Though frequent be the loud alarms,

Though still we march by ambushed arms

Of death and hell surrounded,

With Christ for chief we fear no foe,

Nor force nor craft can overthrow

The Church that he has founded.

 

Arise, arise, good Christian men,

Your glorious standard raise again,

The Cross where with he signed you;

The King himself shall lead you on,

Shall watch you till the strife be done.

Then near his throne shall find you.

IN SPITE OF DUNGEON, FIRE, AND POPE

 A REFLECTION FOR THE CHAIR OF UNITY OCTAVE

If there is one single week in the Church’s year that is completely devoted to the virtue of Faith, it has to be the eight days beginning with the Chair of St. Peter at Rome and ending with the Conversion of St. Paul.  The first of these feastdays falls on Tuesday of this week and celebrates the global supremacy of the Church of Rome and its bishop, the Supreme Pontiff and Vicar of Christ.  The week ends with St. Paul’s conversion to the true faith, an event that underscores the requirement for salvation to belong to that Catholic faith which God has revealed.

To emphasize the significance of these two feasts, Pope St. Pius X, in the year 1909, approved the practice of devoting these eight days to Church Unity.  The week was called the Chair of Unity Octave, emphasizing the concept that Christian unity was to be achieved only under the Chair of Peter, the Roman Church.  

This beautiful practice, like so many of the Church’s traditions, was perverted by the modernists in the mid-20^th century.  With its emphasis on a new type of vague ecumenism, the conciliar Church suppressed the feast of St. Peter’s Chair and turned the octave into a circus of unbridled “togetherness” with our separated brethren.  Rather than attempting to draw souls to the true faith, the emphasis had changed to one of “dialogue”, in which all religions would seek out the “truths” that each was presumed to hold, and which they would share with each other.

As the devil is the ape of God, so did the modernists take something of great value and turn it into a tool for destroying souls.  It has become intolerable to the modern world to claim that the Catholic Church is the one, true Church founded by Christ, and the only means of salvation.  The result—conversions have all but ceased.  There is no longer any appeal to belong to a church which is merely one of many.  Today, people choose the most convenient church they can find, the one with the best parking, the nicest people, the most entertaining pastor.  They blithely turn the weekly routine of going to church into something that best fits their own schedule, their own political principles, or even their own preference for progressive versus traditional liturgy.  They attempt, in other words, to make the worship of God conform with their own self-indulgence.

Let us use this important week to renew our prayers for true Church Unity.  To the usual prayers prescribed by the Church, let us add the most important supplication of all—that our holy Roman Catholic Church may be restored to the unity she enjoyed before the schism caused by Vatican II.  A house divided must surely fall, and the post-conciliar “popes” have been the most destructive force ever to storm our great bastion of faith, the Church.  Slowly, we see the walls tumble around us, and this Chair of Unity Octave is an important means to slow down and even stop the demolition.  So let’s pray for unity this week, the kind of unity that is based on Truth, pure and simple.

SUBJECT UNTO THEM

 A SERMON FOR THE FEAST OF THE HOLY FAMILY

The life of Jesus continues today with the story of the Finding of the Christ Child in the Temple, an event we’re all very familiar with as the Fifth Joyful Mystery of the Rosary.  Our Gospel today recounts the details of what happened, and once again, we are filled with awe at the sight of a twelve-year-old boy “sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions.” These doctors, the Gospel tells us, “were astonished at his understanding and answers.”  We are reminded, from their reaction, that this was no ordinary child. 

Even Jesus’ Mother and St. Joseph are described as being “amazed”, to the point where our Lady asks him point blank for the reason why he had thus dealt with them.  Although we might imagine we detect a note of reproach in her voice, we should not assume that this is the case.  The blessed Mother was undoubtedly aware of the nature of this Child who had been promised to her by the message of an angel.  She knew that the little boy to whom she asked this question was the Son of God.  But it was for this very reason that she asked him, with all humility, to explain his behavior—seemingly rather naughty behavior!

Rather than answer her question directly, he replies with a question of his own.  First, his question: “Wist ye not,” he asks, “Don’t you know, that I must be about my Father’s business.”  With this question, our Lord plants the seed in their head that his mission in life is not to be just the child of St. Joseph, an ordinary child who would grow up to become a carpenter and take over the family business.  His true Father is God the Father, and the whole reason why he has been born into this world is none other than to be about his divine Father’s business, to do God’s will.  Mary and Joseph had no answer to this question, “and they understood not the saying which he spake unto them.”

The Child Jesus recognized that it was impossible for them to understand what he spoke to them as they were incapable of knowing what their Son’s future held.  His apparently naughty behavior by remaining behind in Jerusalem and subjecting them to the agonizing search, was motivated by his earnest intention to prepare them for that future, a future in which he would have to walk his own path and follow God’s authority rather than that of his earthly mother and foster father. 

However, for now, he was still a child, and knew he must act as a child by subjecting to their authority for a time.  Only later, and at the request of his Mother, would he begin his public ministry and work of teaching and healing.  When he changed water into wine at the wedding feast of Cana, let’s remember that it was only because his Mother asked him to intervene.  This request would free up her Son Jesus to become independent of the family nest and begin to walk the path that would take him to his destiny on Calvary.  It enabled him to manifest publicly what he had always been, Jesus, God and Saviour.

Until that wedding feast in Cana, however, Jesus “went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.”  Think about that short phrase for a moment, “And he was subject unto them.”  St. Bernard of Clairvaux in today’s Office of Matins asks the question, “Who was subject?” “Who was subject?  And to whom?”  He answers his own question: “God to man!  God, I repeat, to whom the Angels are subject, whom the Principalities and Powers do obey, was subject to Mary; and not only to Mary, but to Joseph also, for Mary's sake.”   St. Bernard goes on to exhort us to marvel at this most wondrous subjection of God to his creature man, and asks to choose “which giveth greater wonder, whether it be the most loving humility of the Son, or the exceeding great dignity of his Mother.”  For truly each is marvellous in its own right.    As St. Bernard puts it, “Both amaze us, both are marvellous.  That God should obey a woman is lowliness without parallel, that woman should rule over God, an elevation beyond comparison.”

For us today, this is a great lesson in humility.  For how can we possibly exalt ourselves over our fellow man, thinking ourselves to be better or greater than them, when our Saviour, Christ the Lord, Creator of the universe, should place himself under the authority of those he had created?  Again, St. Bernard sternly admonishes us: “Learn, O man, to obey!” he says.  “Learn, O earth, to be subject!  Learn, O dust, to submit!  Shame on you, ye proud entities of dust and ashes!  God abaseth himself, and dost thou, O creature sprung from the earth, exalt thyself?  God maketh himself subject to man, and dost thou, who art always so eager to lord it over men, set up thyself to lord it over thy Creator?”

Those last words conjure up images of our own time, when these self-exalting creatures of dust and ashes do indeed set themselves up to lord it over their Creator.  They create laws in defiance of God’s laws, unnatural laws that go against the nature of the world God created.  Our world today has the spiritual stench of hell itself, so far is it wrapped in the law of Satan, which is simply to do whatever we want.  Satan’s law is that there is no law.  And yet Christ himself, creator of all, obeyed the laws set down on him by his created human parents.  Who are we to defy God, when God himself became man and obeyed man?

The lesson learned today is one we must forever keep in our hearts as our blessed Lady did.  As Jesus was subject to his parents, so too must we be subject to our Father in heaven and to his laws.  We must subject ourselves to those who have rightful authority over us—our parents, teachers, governors and bishops.  It is only when their commands are sinful or go against the laws of the God who delegated these men over us in the first place, that we have the duty to disobey them.  Otherwise, humility is the key to knowing our place in the hierarchy of authority.  Arrogant notions of independence, that no one can tell me what to do, are the manifestations of pride, our pathetic attempts to assert ourselves over the authority of God and follow in the footsteps of Lucifer, who thought himself greater than God.

If we always seek to do our own will, we will eventually lose sight of God altogether.  But if we seek out the ways of Christ, we, like his parents, will eventually find him, and be astonished and amazed at his wondrous understanding and answers to all our questions and doubts.

WHEN JESUS CHRIST WAS YET A CHILD

 A HYMN FOR THE FEAST OF THE HOLY FAMILY

Tchaikowsky's Legend of the Crown of Roses

1. When Jesus Christ was yet a child,

He had a garden small and wild,

Wherein He cherished roses fair,

And wove them into garlands there.

 

2. Now once, as summer time drew nigh,

There came a troop of children by,

And seeing roses on the tree,

With shouts they pluck'd them merrily.

 

3. “Do you bind roses in your hair?”

They cried, in scorn, to Jesus there.

The Boy said humbly: “Take, I pray,

All but the naked thorns away.”

 

4. Then of the thorns they made a crown,

And with rough fingers press'd it down,

Till on his forehead fair and young,

Red drops of blood, like roses sprung.

FINDING THE CHRIST CHILD

A REFLECTION FOR THE FEAST OF THE HOLY FAMILY

The Fifth Joyful Mystery of the Rosary does not begin well.  It certainly does not begin joyfully.  One can only imagine the shock and then fear when our Lady and St. Joseph realize they have left their 12-year-old son behind in Jerusalem.  The anguish felt by his Mother is so great that it ranks as one of her Seven Sorrows, comparable to those she will suffer at Christ’s Passion and Death.  It is another reminder that this life is a mixture of sorrows and joys, and that only in the next will our joy be complete and truly fulfilled.

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

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

MORE WISDOM FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT

 A SERMON FOR THE FEAST OF THE HOLY NAME OF JESUS

We continue our reflections from yesterday, the feast of the Circumcision, as we continue that ceremony that took place on the eighth day of our Lord’s life.  As part of the ritual of Circumcision, it was the tradition to name the new baby also on this day.  However, so important and highly revered is the Most Holy Name of Jesus that we defer mention of it on January 1^st, preferring instead to reserve a day unto itself to celebrate the bestowing for the first time of this most holy of names on the newborn Infant of Bethlehem.  This year, we are celebrating the feast of the Holy Name on the very next day, January 2^nd, and so it only seems fitting to resume our examination of the ancient Jewish practices surrounding this ceremony and how they apply to our own lives today.

In passing, we should observe how diligently our blessed Lady and St. Joseph observed the Jewish law.  In spite of being many miles from their home in Nazareth, confined to a lowly stable with barely any of life’s essentials, they still managed to find a mohel, someone carefully trained in the craft of circumcision.  They made sure he was able to come on the eighth day of our Lord’s life and perform the rituals associated with the ceremony of the brit milah.  On the basis of their careful observance of Jewish law, we may well conclude that they followed as many of the ancient traditions as possible, and it is in these traditions that we’re able to gain a better insight into certain aspects of today’s feastday.

The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber expressed some of that inspired rationale behind the naming of a child on this day.   He said that every person born into this world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique.  Life calls each person to discover that he or she is unique and that there has never been anyone like him or her before. For had there been something like any of us before, there would be no need for us to be born into the world. Our task in this life is to fully develop and fulfill our uniqueness in the world, as a gift to the world.

For this reason, the name chosen by the parents for their newborn is regarded as prophetic.  It is customary for the couple not to discuss the name of their child with others, prior to the naming. The parents should also not call the child by the decided name, even between themselves, until it is bestowed at the circumcision.  It is the great honor of the parents to be the ones who choose the name, and so it was most unusual in the case of our blessed Lord, that it was not Mary and Joseph who decided to call him Jesus.  Who was it that made the decision?  We need to go back to the first chapter of St. Luke’s gospel, to the scene in Nazareth where the Holy Archangel Gabriel appeared to the Blessed Virgin Mary, greeting her with the words “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women.”  When Mary heard these words, she was troubled and asked “what manner of salutation this may be.”  The angel told her not to fear, and then transmitted to her these momentous words that “Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.”  It was God himself who named his Son. 

Certainly, this was a prophetic name.  The name of Jesus is derived from the Hebrew name Yeshua or Joshua. Joshua is made up of two parts: Ya, which is short for Yahweh, the name for God which the Jews to this day do not dare pronounce, and hoshea, which means “salvation.  Jesus means “God is Salvation” or “God the Saviour”.  Truly a prophetic name, and one coming not from any mere prophet but from the mouth of God himself.

If every individual is truly unique in the world, never has it been more true than in the case of the Son of God.  For his role as Saviour of mankind, there could be no other to take his place, no substitute, no possible being who could be God and Saviour, the salvation of mankind.  Only Jesus, God and Saviour, could take on this role, and because it is a holy name, we instinctively bow our heads when we say the Name of Jesus, and even when we hear it.  The enemies of God know exactly how holy this name is, and that is why they never fail to abuse it at every opportunity, employing it as a casual curse word, deliberately to offend the Christians who revere it.

At the ceremony of the brit, the circumcision, a chair is prepared and set aside for an invisible guest.  That guest is the prophet Elijah, who the Jews believe is present at every brit.  The reason for this is, that according to mystic tradition, Elijah the Prophet was very critical of the Jewish people. “I vow,” said God to Elijah, “that whenever My children make this sign in their flesh [i.e., whenever there is a circumcision], you will be present, and the mouth which testified that the Jewish people have abandoned My covenant will testify that they are keeping it.” It is for this reason the sages instituted that there be a seat of honor for Elijah at every circumcision.  From our point of view, this is a truly remarkable thing.  Yesterday we spoke of the law of Moses, and the importance of its strict observance by the Jews, including Mary and Joseph.  Today, we draw our attention to that Chair of Elijah, and the presence of this great prophet at the Circumcision of our blessed Lord.  Moses, representing the law, and Elijah, representing the prophets.  The Law and the Prophets… 

Suddenly, we remember another great feast, that of the Transfiguration of our Lord.  Who appeared alongside Jesus at that event, but Moses and Elijah, again representing the law and the prophets.  Jesus came into this world to fulfill the law and the prophecies of the Old Testament, and here, at his Circumcision, Moses and Elijah were spiritually present to witness their fulfillment.  As the Son of God received his Holy Name of Jesus, great must have been the rejoicing of Moses and Elijah as this “God and Saviour” took up his role and shed his Blood.  Jesus would teach that it was necessary to love God above all things and our neighbor as ourselves.  “Upon these two commandments,” he told us, “hang all the law and the prophets.”  And it would be Jesus himself who would love God and his neighbor more perfectly than any other man before or since.  He would show this love by shedding his Blood for us, his neighbor, and thus doing his Father’s will.  This Blood was first shed at his Circumcision, and his Holy Name of God and Saviour would rightly be bestowed upon him at this blood-shedding.

Along with Moses and Elijah, let us also be witnesses to the scene, as the mohel holds the Christ Child in his arms as those few drops of Blood flow down and he blesses the infant and gives him his Most Holy Name, saying: “Our God and God of our fathers, preserve this child for his father and mother, and his name in Israel shall be called Jesus the Son of God and Saviour. May God the father rejoice in his offspring, and his mother be blessed with the fruit of her womb, as it is written: May your father and mother rejoice, and she who bore you be blessed. As it is said: I passed by and saw you weltering in your blood, and I said to you: You shall live through your Blood; and I said to you: You shall live through your Blood… Give thanks to the Lord for He is gracious, and His mercy endureth forever. May this little infant Jesus become great.”

And indeed the little infant Jesus did become the great Redeemer of Mankind.  The name he bore from this day forth signified not just what he would be, but actually who he was.  A truly prophetic name whose significance for all mankind is so great that we may not utter it without bowing our head in reverent adoration of the God and Saviour who bore that name and who was that name.