THE LITURGICAL YEAR

Sermons, hymns, meditations and other musings to guide our annual pilgrim's progress through the liturgical year.

Sunday, March 27, 2022

THE CHILDREN OF PROMISE

 A SERMON FOR THE 4TH SUNDAY IN LENT


Rejoice!  Today is Laetare Sunday—Rejoicing Sunday—and for one brief day in the middle of Lent we are instructed by the Church to discard our spirit of mourning and repentance and to put on instead our brightest garments of joy.  Our vestments glow with the rose-colored hue of happiness, we place flowers upon our altar, and we turn our thoughts for a short while, from fasting and sorrow for our sins, to visions of the eternal happiness that await them that persevere through Lent and through this vale of tears that is our life.

As we look around that sorrowful vale of tears, which today seems to be filled with more trials and misfortunes than we can handle, we may wonder what there is to be joyful about, and how we can summon up any happiness at all in the face of the dreadful state of the world around us.  The answer is to be found in the actions of our blessed Lord and Saviour in today’s Gospel.  By a single miracle he took  five thousand people who were about to starve in the wilderness, and he fed them.  We live today in such a wilderness.  A wilderness devoid, for the most part, of the means of satisfying our spiritual hunger; hunger for peace, stability, the restoration of the Church’s traditional faith and worship, the restoration of the natural order.  Where is our Lord to be found?  He is here with us now and we are in his presence, the presence of that same blessed Lord who promised—promised!—that wherever two or more shall be gathered together in his name, there shall he be in the midst of them.  And like the multitude in the wilderness he will feed us, he will fulfill our spiritual hunger.

And how exactly will he feed us?  With the same five barley loaves and the same two fishes that he fed the five thousand.  Five barley loaves, two fishes.  Five and two.  Add them up and you have seven.  Seven, because these five barley loaves and two fishes represent the seven Sacraments.  Call to mind the teachings in the catechism: it is no coincidence that there are two kinds of Sacraments, again five and two—two Sacraments of the Dead, Baptism and Penance, and five Sacraments of the Living.

The Sacraments of the Dead, the two fishes in today’s Gospel, take souls that were spiritually, in the state of sin, and introduce them or restore them to the life of grace.  Through Baptism we are cleansed from original sin, and through the Sacrament of Penance, the sins that we actually commit are washed away.  Instead of souls that are spiritually dead, we now have souls that are in the state of sanctifying grace, souls who may now be permitted to enter the gates of heaven into everlasting life.

As for our five barley loaves, these are the five Sacraments of the Living, Holy Communion, Confirmation, Matrimony, Holy Orders, and Extreme Unction.  They are given to those who are already in the state of grace, and increase that sanctifying the grace in the soul, bringing us to a higher level and closer to God.  They provide us also with the graces specific to the sacrament we are receiving, whether it be the grace to practice our state of life faithfully through the Sacraments of Matrimony and Holy Orders, or to strengthen our resolve as warriors of Christ through Confirmation, and so on.

It is in these seven Sacraments that we find the chief source of the graces we receive from Christ, and it was for this purpose that he himself instituted them all.  They are gifts from God, and we should be grateful for them.  Alas, so many are not.  Even Catholics abuse God’s gifts and reject the opportunities they have of availing themselves of the graces they need for salvation.  They even show contempt for the sacraments by avoiding Confession and Holy Communion, throwing back in our Lord’s face the means of salvation which he so mercifully gives them.

Today, we have the opportunity to witness the way it should be done.  Two young children are receiving Sacraments for the first time.  After Mass today, little Averly Crescenzo is to be baptized into the Church of Christ, and will enter for the first time into the life of sanctifying grace.  Baptism, Sacrament of the Dead, one of the two fishes.  Meanwhile, another young lady, Julie Griffith, her soul cleansed for the first time through the Sacrament of Penance, the second of those two fishes that constitute the Sacraments of the Dead, will now share in the barley loaves that represent Holy Communion.  She will receive for the first time the Holy Eucharist, and will be filled with the infinite graces that are given in that Sacrament.  She will receive the sacramental grace of being nourished and strengthened by the spiritual food of the Eucharist, she will for the first time discover that union with God that is our eternal destiny.

Please pray today for these two children that they may grow in grace.  They’re like two little fishes themselves, and as St. Andrew wondered aloud in the Gospel, “What are they among so many?”  If we pray that they grow in grace, we should recognize that there is no limit to the heights of sanctity to which they may attain, no limit to the good they may bring to the world.  And if we pray for them, we should pray also for ourselves, because it is the same for us.  The infinite graces of the Sacraments we receive are enough to make any of us saints.  How sad that so few of us are.  If only we would all partake of the Sacraments more worthily, more frequently, more effectively, there would be enough fragments left over from those graces to fill twelve baskets, to save twelve thousand souls and more.  The Sacraments are the key to restoring the world into the true Kingdom of Christ, and it’s up to all of us to gather up those fragments that remain, as our Lord told his disciples, “that nothing be lost.”

So today is a day for rejoicing.  By the example shown to us today by two of the most innocent among us, we surely can rejoice on this Laetare Sunday, not only for them, but for ourselves who enjoy the same opportunity to be fed by those seven gifts of our Lord, and to attain, in spite of our manifold sins, to the life everlasting.


THE CHURCH'S ONE FOUNDATION

 A HYMN FOR THE 4TH SUNDAY IN LENT


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.

2

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.

3

’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.

4

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.


MOTHERING SUNDAY

 A MESSAGE FOR THE 4TH SUNDAY IN LENT


In the old countries of Anglo-Saxon Europe, this day is known as Mothering Sunday, the original Mothers’ Day.  When we read the Epistle today, we learn of the two mothers by whom Abraham fathered children.  One mother, Sara, gave birth to the child of promise, Isaac.  The second mother was a slave girl, Agar, and she gave birth to Ishmael who was to become the patriarch of the Arab people.  Agar was a slave and her children today have inherited her state of bondage, being slaves of the false religion of Islam.  But we, today, are as Isaac was, St. Paul tells us, the children of promise.  The children of Ishmael, the Moslems, would forever be at enmity with the children of Isaac.  If we call to mind the name of Isaac’s son, Israel, we will understand why Ishmael and Israel continue even to this day to be enemies, Moslems vs. Jews.

In our own age of Redemption, when the Catholic Church has replaced the Jewish faith as the chosen people, we are warned by our Lord that we must forgive our enemies.  To help us in this difficult task, he gave us a new Mother, neither the wife nor the concubine of Abraham, but the most Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God.  Two days ago, we celebrated the feast of the Annunciation of our Lady, the day when she agreed to be the Mother of God at which moment our Lord became incarnate by the Holy Ghost in her womb.  Later, as she stood beneath the dying body of her Son, she became our mother also, and today takes care of her children as no earthly mother can.

Today we entrust two new children to her care, the first as she receives the Sacrament of Baptism and is received into the Church, and the second as she receives the Body and Blood of our Lord for the first time in Holy Communion.  Like all children, they have the potential to become great saints or great sinners, but if they are committed to following in the immaculate and perfect ways of their blessed Mother in heaven, their salvation is assured.  This Mothering Sunday is the ideal time for the rest of us to re-commit ourselves to this same path, a path which, no matter how laden it may be with trials and sorrows, is nevertheless the only sure path that will lead us to salvation.  


Sunday, March 20, 2022

A STRONG MAN ARMED

 A SERMON FOR THE 3RD SUNDAY IN LENT


“When a strong man armed keepeth his palace his goods are in peace.”

This quotation from the words of our Lord in today’s Gospel forces us to ask ourselves the question, “Am I a strong man armed?  Are my goods in peace?”  What are these goods of which our Lord speaks?  They are sanctifying grace, the presence of the Holy Ghost dwelling within us—in short, our very soul.  For our soul to be in peace, we must be in the state of sanctifying grace.  If we are in that state of grace, we can be at peace because we are strong.  Peace through strength.  We’re armed with all the protective armor of God.  No one can overcome us, because no one is stronger than God, not even the devil himself.  No matter what they do to our mortal bodies, they can never succeed in destroying our souls if they are in the state of grace.

When we slip out of that state of grace by committing a mortal sin, it’s a whole different story.  The Holy Ghost no longer dwells within us.  We are no longer protected from the forces of evil who, perceiving our weakness, proceeds to launch a full attack on us to take us further down the path to destruction.  Our Lord warns us of this: “When a strong man armed keepeth his palace his goods are in peace.  But when a stronger than he shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armour wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils.”

When we fall into mortal sin, we are deliberately casting out the Holy Ghost from us.  We are telling God we don’t want him, that we prefer our own little pleasures and riches and material benefits.  We are rejecting God’s protection against the evil one, trusting instead in our own ability to take care of our souls.  Manifestly, this isn’t going to work.  In fact, it’s prideful and downright stupid, and totally underestimates the power of the devil.  Satan might not be stronger than we are, providing we have God by our side.  But without God, we become nothing more than insects for him to step on.

Why is it that we human beings don’t seem to be aware of this inconvenient truth?  Because this is the truth—we need God.  The supreme agenda of the world today is to prove that we don’t need God, that God, if he even exists, is not concerned with our protection or even our happiness.  He is the Great Spoiler, the one who lectures us that “thou shalt not” do this or that—all the pleasurable things of life that satisfy our whims and animal appetites, all the things we don’t like being told we mustn’t do.  The world blasphemes in this way, and will go on blaspheming.  Why?  Because it works.  Because the devil knows we want what we want, and he really doesn’t have to work very hard to persuade us to do whatever we want.  He knows full well that simply by giving in to our own inordinate desires to have what we want, we will damn our own souls.  And that, my friends, is his ultimate aim. 

We are in the midst of our Lenten penances, and never before have we needed to be more aware of the value of these penances.  We must joyfully, yes, joyfully offer up these penances to Almighty God, always considering their value in strengthening us as we deprive ourselves of the things we “want.”  Even giving up innocent pleasures, like sugar in our coffee, is meritorious when we discipline our will in this way and subject it to something higher.  Today is a good time to remind ourselves why…

Like all virtues, temperance is something which must be practiced constantly for a length of time before it becomes a virtue we can claim as our own, before we become “virtuous.”  Hopefully, forty days and forty nights will be enough.  If not, though, be careful!  The eventual coming of Eastertide and the joys of the Resurrection should not be our excuse to resume our self-indulgence.  The arduous struggle of Lent is something we shall always have to endure—the devil doesn’t stop tempting us on Easter Sunday, after all.  The season of Lent is our training ground in which we prepare ourselves for the ongoing struggles against the devil, the world, and our fallen human nature.  By denying ourselves the little things, we are meant to adapt the habit of questioning our every action.  Does what I’m about to do satisfy the litmus test of pleasing God?  Or does it perhaps offend God in some way?  Am I doing what God wants me to do, or am I just doing what I want?  Practice makes perfect.

And just in case we happen to think that such self-denial should be confined to the Lenten season, listen to what our Lord says next.  What happens if we make the best Lent ever, but then let our guard down?  If we make our solemn Easter duty and go to confession and Holy Communion, (as the Church demands we must, at least once a year at this time) and then sit back and relax because Lent is over?  Well, our Lord tells us exactly what happens…  “When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out.”  In other words, the devil has left the soul, recently cleansed in the Sacrament of Penance, renewed in strength by presence of our Lord in the Holy Eucharist.  But the devil isn’t happy.  He liked where he was, thank you very much.  He was content with the idea that you were his, that your soul was heading down to the eternal fire the moment you died.  The devil doesn’t like failure, and your new-found sanctifying grace is like poison to him.  So what does he do?  He comes back to your nice clean soul, “and findeth it swept and garnished.  Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there.”  In other words, he sends for reinforcements and comes back to his old stomping ground in your soul.  And if we aren’t sufficiently practiced in the virtues of abstinence from sin, fortitude in temptation, temperance and moderation in all things, then we are canon fodder on the battlefield.  “And the last state of that man is worse than the first.”

Lent prepares us for this potential catastrophe.  It prepares us by making us constantly aware that there is a higher value to doing God’s will rather than our own, by giving us the opportunity to make our moral choices based on God and not our own base whims and desires.  So let’s continue to make a good Lent.  Let’s redouble our efforts to practice focusing on God, to submit our will to his, and to become utterly solid in our determination never more to fall into temptation.  Only the presence of God in our souls will protect us in this quest.  We must be resolved never to lose him again.


GOD OF MERCY AND COMPASSION

 A HYMN FOR THE 3RD SUNDAY IN LENT


By Fr. Edmund Vaughan, C.SS.R.

 

1 God of mercy and compassion,

Look with pity upon me.

Father, let me call Thee Father,

’Tis Thy child returns to Thee.

 

Refrain:

Jesus, Lord, I ask for mercy;

Let me not implore in vain;

All my sins—I now detest them,

Never will I sin again.

 

2 By my sins I have deserved

Death and endless misery;

Hell, with all its pains and torments,

And for all eternity. [Refrain]

 

3 By my sins I have abandoned

Right and claim to Heav’n above,

Where the saints rejoice forever,

In a boundless sea of love. [Refrain]

 

4 See our Savior, bleeding, dying,

On the cross of Calvary;

To that cross my sins have nailed Him,

Yet He bleeds and dies for me. [Refrain]


HOW NOT TO CAST OUT DEVILS

 A MESSAGE FOR THE THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT


When our Lord was accused of casting out devils through Beelzebub the chief of the devils, he admonished his accusers for making no sense.  After all, for any kingdom, even that of the devil, to be so divided against itself as to cast out devils in the name of the devil himself, how exactly is that going to work?  Our Lord’s point is quite clear, and he made sure they understood exactly in whose name he was casting out devils.  “If I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you.”  Only God has the power to cast out the devil.

The fact is, that in order to rid the world of any evil, we must first be good.  For if people are so entrenched in their lives of sin, how can they now restore goodness to those lives.  Many people have become so disordinate in their thinking that they actually do turn to Satan to ask for help.  You may think that is a rare thing, but alas, it’s becoming far more common than most of us realize.  However, that’s a topic for another day.  A majority of people do not go to such lengths, and yet they fail equally to turn to the right place to get help.  They obstinately turn their back on God and place their trust in man.  And we’re seeing every day just how ineffective that is.

The seemingly never-ending series of crises that have faced the world since 2020 finally seem to be having the effect of drawing many to turn back to God.  We are told that the geopolitical situation today is more dire than anything we’ve faced since Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.  And no matter where we might be tempted to lay the blame for what’s going on, or the motivation behind it, it seems indisputable that some kind of great reset is taking place in the world of political alignments.  The threat of a war that could potentially wipe us all out is beginning to have an effect on the minds of a few, however superficial this might turn out to be.

It is, then, with very little surprise that we witnessed the bishops of the Ukrainian Catholic Rite begging their pope in Rome to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  What we may not have expected is that he would agree to their request.  How can Beelzebub cast out Beelzebub?  Could there be some spark of genuine devotion left in this man who openly seeks to destroy the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Mass?  It’s not for us to judge the motivation or spiritual status of any man, so we’ll just hope for the best.  However, it should be noted that our blessed Lady of Fatima specified that it should be Russia that is the object of the consecration.  She explicitly named Russia. She did not mention the Ukraine, or Ukraine and Russia, but only Russia.  So we may question, in a spirit devoid of cynicism, whether our Lady’s command is being truly obeyed.  We should also question whether all the conciliar bishops of the world are indeed uniting with their conciliar pope in this act of consecration, which, if I’ve understood it correctly is actually being done by some subordinate and not Bergoglio himself.  And the other bishops of the world?  Where are they?  The bishops of Germany, for example, are surely too consumed with their current obsession to change the catechism and declare same-sex relationships “a gift of God.”  That kind of thinking does not have room for the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  May she have mercy upon her errant children, and hearken unto our prayers!

 

Sunday, March 13, 2022

A MIRACLE IN THE GARDEN

A SERMON FOR THE 2ND SUNDAY IN LENT


We’re all fully aware, I think, of the reason why our blessed Lord allowed himself to be transfigured before the three Apostles Peter, James and John.  These were the three who would be with him in Gethsemane that dreadful night before Good Friday, when our Lord’s soul was sorrowful unto death, and his humanity descended into the lowest possible state of suffering.  How could they have handled such weakness in the one they regarded as the Son of God, unless they had first witnessed the power and glory of his divinity at the Transfiguration?

This vision of glory as our Lord was transfigured before the three men in today’s Gospel was, however, not the last sign of his power.  There was more to come, a very brief but powerful display of our Lord’s divinity.  Even after his most terrible Agony in the Garden of Olives, there was given to these three Apostles one last and most powerful indication that this man was indeed the Son of God.  In the 18th chapter of St. John’s Gospel, we read about the betrayal of Judas and how he led the soldiers to where he knew they would find Christ and would be able to arrest him quietly: “Judas then, having received a band of men and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees, cometh thither with lanterns and torches and weapons.  Jesus therefore, knowing all things that should come upon him, went forth, and said unto them, Whom seek ye?  They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith unto them, I am he.”  We then read this most remarkable verse: “As soon then as he had said unto them, I am he, they went backward, and fell to the ground.”

Something truly extraordinary just occurred, something which, in the reading of St. John’s long Passion on Good Friday is easily glossed over among all the other terrible events of that day.  But what just happened?  Why did they fall to the ground?

There have been many psychological theories as to why these hardened soldiers showed such apparent weakness and were unable to arrest Jesus right away when he identified himself as the one they were seeking.  But truth be told, something supernatural lies within this scene of fear and submission as they fall backwards to the ground together.

Whom seek ye?  our Lord had asked the soldiers.  Their reply—“Jesus of Nazareth”.  You may remember what we said about this Holy Name of Jesus back on January 2, the feast of the Holy Name, and how the Name of Jesus or Yeshua, came from two separate Hebrew words, 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.  The name Jesus, therefore, means “God the Saviour”.  Whom seek ye?  God the Saviour.  I am he.

Christ here is saying, “I am God the Saviour.” And the very wording he uses confirms that he is indeed God the Saviour.  Compare our Lord’s answer “I am he” to the voice of God speaking to Moses from the burning bush, “I am that I am,” words that revealed the quintessential nature of God as pure Being.  Compare our Lord’s answer also with a conversation he had with the Jews earlier in his apostolate.  He said “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad.  Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?” Listen to his answer to that, “Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.  This admission of his own divinity caused the Jews to pick up stones to hurl at him, as they knew that his words were a claim to be God himself. 

Now in Gethsemane, he replies simply “I am he.”  And the soldiers fell to the ground, just as the Apostles Peter, James and John in today’s Gospel “fell on their face and were sore afraid” when they heard the voice of God booming out of the cloud.

What was going through the minds of these men as they cowered before the man they were about to arrest and so cruelly mistreat?  We’ll never know for sure, but it must have been something very powerful to strike all of them at once and cause them to fall backwards to the ground.  Perhaps it was the sudden yet fleeting realization that this was indeed the Son of God and Saviour, the one who would sit in judgment on them as their eternal fate hangs in the balance.  Or did they perhaps have a brief but powerful vision of the divinity of this man, similar to the transfigured Christ we witness in today’s Gospel?  Whatever it was, this vivid scene of hardened soldiers collapsing before the blood-stained and suffering Redeemer is one that transfixes our minds and puts us in awe of the power and the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, God and Saviour.  There was no need for our Lord to call upon his Father to send twelve legions of angels to protect him.  His very presence would have been enough, if he had so willed it.  And for this split second, he did so will it, so that we could behold him, even at this dark moment, transfigured not with the bloody sweat of his Agony, but with the glory of his divinity.  “Behold my Son in whom I am well pleased.”

In these days of trial and tribulation, when darkness seems once again to cover the earth and the enemies of God lead their cohorts into our own Gethsemane to persecute and destroy, we must keep forever in our minds those words of our Lord, that “wherever two or more are gathered together in my Name,” that Holy Name which means God and Saviour, “there am I in the midst of them.”  He is here with us, whatever the future brings, and we do not need the twelve Legions of Angels to defend us, comforting though they might be.  He, and he alone, is sufficient.  Prepare to follow him.


'TIS GOOD, LORD, TO BE HERE

A HYMN FOR TRANSFIGURATION SUNDAY


By J. Armitage Robinson 


'Tis good, Lord, to be here!

Thy glory fills the night;

Thy face and garments, like the sun,

Shine with unborrowed light.

 

'Tis good, Lord, to be here,

Thy beauty to behold,

Where Moses and Elijah stand,

Thy messengers of old.

 

Fulfiller of the past,

Promise of things to be,

We hail thy Body glorified,

And our redemption see.

 

Before we taste of death,

We see thy kingdom come;

We fain would hold the vision bright,

And make this hill our home.

 

'Tis good, Lord, to be here!

Yet we may not remain;

But since thou bidst us leave the mount

Come with us to the plain.


WALKING AND PLEASING GOD

 A REFLECTION FOR THE 2ND SUNDAY IN LENT


The problem with Lent isn’t that it lasts so long.  It isn’t that the fasting and abstinence laws are so vigorous as to be intolerable.  As we enter the second week of Lent, it should have dawned on us by now that the problem with Lent is that we are very weak and self-willed creatures who just have a hard time denying ourselves every little luxury of life that presents itself to us.  It’s a little problem called “human nature,” or more specifically “fallen human nature” which demands that we pamper ourselves with every creature comfort, even those which might offend God.  The main thing, it seems, is to satisfy our every whim, yield to every passing desire, and in general, crown ourselves as the supreme being of our own individual little world.

We are all guilty of this, whether we are conscious of it or not.  We want—we take, it’s as simple as that.  One of the purposes of fasting and doing other penances is that it subdues this inclination to make ourselves the ultimate deciding factor of our behavior and replaces “me” with “God.”  Every time we get that urge to satisfy the appetite of hunger and reach out for the cookie jar, we are forced to remind ourselves that there is a Being superior to ourselves, and to whose divine will we must submit if we are to save our souls.  There’s nothing wrong with eating a cookie, usually, but if God decrees that we must refuse that otherwise innocent little pleasure to satisfy the laws of fasting, then it is God we must obey and not our own base instincts.

This gift bestowed on man, to freely choose the will of God over our own, places us above the brute beasts of the field, who act purely on instinct.  Animals are incapable of understanding that on Friday they must not eat meat.  They don’t even understand what a day of the week is, let alone that there is a Supreme Being who has inspired his Church to impose a law on us to abstain on the sixth of those day, so as to make reparation for the Crucifixion.  The animal is hungry, so he eats.  We submit our instincts to our higher rational determination to please God first.  We are not just animals, we are rational animals.  Unless, of course, we lower ourselves by becoming animals, obeying only our instincts and ignoring God’s will.

Today’s Epistle is more blunt in this regard, as St. Paul reminds the Thessalonians of their duty to “abstain from fornication.”  The deadly sin of lust, we must remember, is the chief cause of death for souls the world over.   Our Lady of Fatima said: “More souls go to Hell because of sins of the flesh than for any other reason.” It is so important that we fight against this tide of impurity in our culture, and most importantly, in ourselves.  By developing that instinct not to yield to the temptation of the cookie jar when we get that urge to eat between meals, we will be well practiced in the art of denying ourselves other, more sinister pleasures, when the devil seeks our downfall.

So this week, let’s concentrate on being more conscious of what we’re doing when we fast.  It’s an enormously important ingredient, along with the grace of God, that enables us to resist temptation, avoid sin, and ultimately save our souls.


Sunday, March 6, 2022

BEHOLD, NOW IS THE ACCEPTED TIME

A SERMON FOR QUADRAGESIMA SUNDAY


On April 27, 1910, Pope Saint Pius X approved the celebration of a new feastday in the Catholic Church.  He appointed this new feast to be celebrated on Shrove Tuesday, the day before Lent begins, and it was to be observed only as a local feast in the diocese of Cambrai in France.  It was the Feast of the Most Holy Face of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Today, as we take up the cross of our Lenten penances, it’s the perfect time to emulate the spirit of this great pope, St. Pius X, by introducing this devotion into our own lives.  For what better way could there be of making a good and holy Lent than by meditating on that holy Face, so badly disfigured with the Precious Blood of our Lord’s Passion.

The image we have of the Holy Face does not come to us from the brush of an artist.  It is not a painting or drawing, not an artist’s depiction of our Lord’s countenance.  It is the image that was left on the veil of St. Veronica after she wiped the blood and sweat from our Lord as he climbed the hill of Calvary with the Cross on his back.  This veil was carefully preserved in Rome where it is still venerated in St. Peter’s Basilica every year on Passion Sunday. 

When we look upon this image, we may believe that we are looking upon an almost photographic representation of the actual Face of our Lord.  In last Sunday’s Epistle, St. Paul told us that in this world we “see through a glass darkly, but then face to face”, “then” meaning when we reach our eternal reward in heaven and experience the beatific vision.  But when we gaze upon the image imprinted on Veronica’s Veil, we are given the unfathomable blessing of seeing our Lord “face to face” even in this world, a grace that is truly remarkable and a gift from our Divine Saviour that we should not neglect.

History itself provides us with another reason for cultivating this devotion to the Holy Face.   Between the years 1843-1847, Sister Mary of St. Peter, a Carmelite nun in Tours, France, experienced a series of revelations from our Lord about a powerful devotion he wished to be established worldwide - the devotion to His Holy Face. The express purpose of this devotion, he told her, was to make reparation for the numerous blasphemies and profanities taking place in the world, but also as a means through which we can all appeal to God for anything we wish. 

Before her death, Sr. Mary of St. Peter passed on the devotion to a lawyer named Leo Dupont. He obtained one of the Holy Face relics from the Vatican, and placed it on the mantle in his parlor, keeping a crystal oil lamp burning continuously in front of it as a sign of veneration. He began privately praying the Holy Face prayers (obtained from Sister Mary of St. Peter) with friends and acquaintances in front of the image. Soon afterward, miraculous healings began to occur with the friends and acquaintances who said the devotional prayers and anointed themselves with the oil from the lamp in front of the image. Due to the repeated miracles that happened from that point forward, Leo DuPont's parlor soon became a place of pilgrimage, and word quickly passed throughout France. These miracles continued for 30 years, even past the death of Leo Dupont, and were so numerous that Pope Pius IX declared Leo Dupont to be perhaps one of the greatest miracle workers in Church history!  The fact that so many first class miracles occurred through this devotion attests to the authenticity of the revelations from our Lord to Sister Mary of St. Peter.  After the death of Leo Dupont, his home became the Oratory of the Holy Face.

In these particularly difficult modern times, the Guild of St. Peter ad Vincula wishes to revive this devotion to the Holy Face by establishing the Society of Veronica’s Veil.  Our website at gspav.org provides several pages describing the history of the devotion as well as prayers that can be said while meditating on the Holy Face.  These prayers include the Litany of the Holy Face, the Chaplet of the Holy Face, and of course, the Golden Arrow Prayer dictated by our Lord to Sr. Mary of St. Peter.  For those who want more information, we also provide a link to our online bookstore where you can find the complete Handbook of the Archconfraternity of the Holy Face and the beads for reciting the Chaplet.  The bulletin contains more information on where to find the relevant webpages.

When the holy woman Veronica used her veil to comfort the suffering Saviour in his Passion, she was rewarded by the imprinting of the image of his holy Face on her veil.  As we today make our devotions to this Holy Face, it should be with the same intention of comforting our Lord in his suffering, of making reparation for our own sins and those of the whole world.  As we take up our own cross at the beginning of Lent and prepare to follow our blessed Lord to Calvary, we can do no better than making the resolution to give honor to the Holy Face of Jesus as we earnestly pray for the manifold needs of our Church and our world, both apparently hurtling towards the abyss.  Let us reverently wipe that Holy Face with our own veil of prayer, penance and reparation, asking our blessed Lord to imprint his image upon our souls in return. 


THE GLORY OF THESE FORTY DAYS

A HYMN FOR QUADRAGESIMA SUNDAY


 

By Pope St. Gregory the Great, translated by Maurice F. Bell

 

The glory of these forty days

We celebrate with songs of praise;

For Christ, by Whom all things were made,

Himself has fasted and has prayed.

 

Alone and fasting Moses saw

The loving God Who gave the law;

And to Elijah, fasting, came

The steeds and chariots of flame.

 

So Daniel trained his mystic sight,

Delivered from the lions’ might;

And John, the Bridegroom’s friend, became

The herald of Messiah’s Name.

 

Then grant us, Lord, like them to be

Full oft in fast and prayer with Thee;

Our spirits strengthen with Thy grace,

And give us joy to see Thy face.

 

O Father, Son, and Spirit blest,

To thee be every prayer addressed,

Who art in threefold Name adored,

From age to age, the only Lord.  Amen.


UNEASY TIMES

 A REFLECTION FOR QUADRAGESIMA SUNDAY


The evening news these days is not good.  We’re bombarded every day with the most sickening images and accounts of barbarism not seen in Europe since the days of Adolf Hitler.  As Catholics, our chief interest lies not in the why’s and wherefore’s of the conflict in the Ukraine, nor even in the inevitable mayhem that results from it.  Our main concern must be one of compassion for the innocent people being dragged through a torment none of them expected and which has torn their daily lives literally to shreds.

Compassion should be seen not merely as an emotion.  We shouldn’t just feel compassion.  Our feelings are merely the sentiment which encourages us to action. But what kind of action? “What can we possibly do,” you may ask, “to help these poor people?  We’re just ordinary citizens.  We can’t send them food, we can’t offer them medicine, weapons, housing.  We have no communication with them.  We can’t even offer them the warmth of our sympathy.”  All this is true, and yet we all know the power of prayer.  It is through the frequent and heartfelt and compassionate prayers that we can help our neighbors in the Ukraine, and it is not an option in these terrible dark times in that country for us to neglect our Christian duty and offer up those supplications to God.

I heard one poor Ukrainian mother the other day crying out in desperation that prayers were no longer enough.  But I beg to differ with her assessment of the efficacy of prayer, a conclusion brought about the sheer terror she faces for herself and her family.  Sure, it is the duty of those in power to do what they can to bring an end to the suffering.  Prayers should be accompanied by action, and if you see an opportunity to help in some practical way, by all means seize it and do your part.  But if not, as in all times when we can’t be of practical help to our neighbor, we must storm heaven with our pleas to alleviate his trials and tribulations.  In spite of our weariness at all the clichés, all the worldly platitudes that “our thoughts and prayers are with you,” we should never underestimate the power of prayer!

As we begin our journey through this penitential season of Lent, it’s a good time to offer up our penances to God for his mercy on the suffering people of Eastern Europe.  Prayer and penance have averted disaster in the past and stand the best chance of doing so now.  We encourage our faithful to pray their Rosaries for this intention and to increase their daily supplications in this time of desperate need.  We have also introduced on our Guild website a most powerful devotion which our Lord requested, that of his Most Holy Face.  In the darkest hours of the Crucifixion, as Jesus carried his cross to the summit of Calvary, he met a holy woman named Veronica who wiped his face with her own veil.  As a reward for her courageous act of compassion, he left the image of his Countenance on her veil where it remains to this day.  When we venerate this holy image, we are participating in Veronica’s act of comforting the suffering Saviour, and if we offer up these prayers for those in most need today, surely our most merciful God will show pity on them and comfort them in their suffering.

You can find this Devotion to the Holy Face at gspav.org/Veronicas-Veil/vv-home.htm.