THE LITURGICAL YEAR

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

Sunday, July 31, 2022

BEING A GOOD STEWARD

A SERMON FOR THE 8TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST


“There was a certain rich man, which had a steward.”  This is how today’s Gospel begins, and right away there’s a question that needs to be answered.  We all know what a rich man is, but how would we define a “steward?”  Basically a steward can be defined as “someone who is entrusted with the careful and responsible management of something.”  So now let’s think for a moment how we are stewards, and about “who” has entrusted “what” to our care.  The essential response to this question is that everything we have belongs first to God who has entrusted us with the care and management of these various and diverse things.  What things exactly?  Everything!  The world around us and everything in it. 

Depending on who we are, this would include many other people too.  For example, a king is entrusted with the welfare of his subjects.  The Catholic faithful are entrusted to the care of their priests, bishops and pope, whose solemn duty it is to provide them with the truths of their faith, valid sacraments, and solid moral values.  If we’re parents, then God has entrusted to us the welfare and moral education of our children. 

We’ve been entrusted with other things too.  The time we have, for example is not really ours.  It is on loan to us from God, and we had better make sure we don’t waste it or spend it on things that take us away from God instead of drawing us closer to him.  Our bodies too are not our own.  We may have been given a body that works perfectly, or perhaps less so, but in either case it is up to us to take care of it, making healthy choices in our lifestyle.  We may have been blessed with intelligence or with good looks, but none of this is for our own benefit exclusively.  We should use any physical or mental advantages we may have for the glory of God, not to gratify our own ambitions and desires.  Thus we should use our mind to learn more about God so we may know him, use our emotions to love him, use our energy to serve him.  And let’s make sure above all that we look after the welfare of our soul, by avoiding the occasion of sin and other sources of temptation, cultivating our virtues, constantly battling against our unbridled passions, our vices, and our general inclination to do whatever we want and not what God wants.

We are stewards of so very much and we must not be careless or negligent in taking care of what we have been entrusted.  Like the steward in today’s Gospel we too shall be judged on how well we actually do manage what the good Lord has loaned us.

The word “stewardship” is very much in vogue today amongst those who imagine themselves to be the enlightened elite of our society.  They constantly lecture us about how evil it is to drive a gas-powered car to work so we can provide a living for our family.  Meanwhile, they consume tens of thousands of gallons of jet fuel as they fly all over the world for no other purpose than to chastise us more effectively.   This kind of hypocrisy is typical of how the liberals twist an idea and turn into something perverse, often in complete contrast to the good management of the things God has entrusted to us.  When God entrusts the life of a child to his mother only to have the mother murder this child even before it’s born, this is just one example of the overturning of true stewardship.  It’s a complete betrayal of the trust God has placed in them.  They place the welfare of their own bodies—“my body, my choice”—over the care of the innocent children who are totally dependent upon them to bring them into the world.  A tiny innocent baby is entrusted to them by God.  They kill it.

We can already see a pattern emerging, I think, that shows that bad stewardship stems from one original source, and that is the bad management of our free will.  We have choices.  All through life, we experience the need to make one choice after another.  When we make a bad choice we generally experience bad consequences.  These in turn provoke us to further bad choices, thus continuing the mismanagement of what God has entrusted us with.  When a woman claims that it’s her body and her choice, it’s a choice that is generally made before she finds herself with a child she doesn’t want or doesn’t feel equipped to raise.  God gave us the sacrament of marriage for a reason!  Or if pollution threatens the planet today, is it not because of bad choices that were made in the past to bypass some simple precautions that might have caused them to lose a few dollars in profit?

All these artificial choices we think we must make in the present stem ultimately from the one original sin.  God gave Adam a garden to tend, and a companion, Eve, to help him.  Unfortunately Adam failed in his stewardship of both, allowing Eve to wander off and be tempted by the serpent to eat the fruit of the one tree God had forbidden them.  All our temptations to be poor stewards today stem from this original failure by the first steward Adam.  Nevertheless, we can’t use this as our excuse for the negligence we show today.  We are all entrusted with the same free will that Adam had, and only we have control over it to either be good stewards or bad stewards. 

The easiest way to prevent our own misuse of that free will is to never yield to that first temptation to do wrong.  The consequences of that first mistake are simply more and bigger mistakes as we take the path that leads to destruction.  Avoid each temptation as though it were your first and only temptation, because you never know where it will lead you.  It’s why we first ask God to “lead us not into temptation,” and only afterwards that he “deliver us from evil.”  One thing leads to another, and we mustn’t let ourselves be drawn away from the narrow, difficult and uphill path, no matter how alluring the world and its attractions may be.  Every single one of those alternative paths will take us down a different road—away from our destination, away from salvation.  Be the good steward you’re meant to be and just keep going, taking care of what God has given us and mortifying the deeds of the body, as St. Paul says, so that we shall not die, but live.


BE STILL MY SOUL

 A HYMN FOR THE 8TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST


By Katharina A. von Schlegel, translated by Jane Borthwick, 1855

Be still, my soul: the Lord is on thy side.

Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain.

Leave to thy God to order and provide;

In every change, He faithful will remain.

Be still, my soul: thy best, thy heav’nly Friend

Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

 

Be still, my soul: thy God doth undertake

To guide the future, as He has the past.

Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake;

All now mysterious shall be bright at last.

Be still, my soul: the waves and winds still know

His voice Who ruled them while He dwelt below.

 

Be still, my soul: when dearest friends depart,

And all is darkened in the vale of tears,

Then shalt thou better know His love, His heart,

Who comes to soothe thy sorrow and thy fears.

Be still, my soul: thy Jesus can repay

From His own fullness all He takes away.

 

Be still, my soul: the hour is hast’ning on

When we shall be forever with the Lord.

When disappointment, grief, and fear are gone,

Sorrow forgot, love’s purest joys restored.

Be still, my soul: when change and tears are past

All safe and blessed we shall meet at last.

 

Be still, my soul: begin the song of praise

On earth, believing, to Thy Lord on high;

Acknowledge Him in all thy words and ways,

So shall He view thee with a well-pleased eye.

Be still, my soul: the Sun of life divine

Through passing clouds shall but more brightly shine.


BE STILL MY SOUL

A REFLECTION FOR THE 8TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 


Is my soul truly at peace?  In the midst of turmoil, can I find the peace of mind, the peace of soul, within myself?   There are two answers to these questions, two very basic answers, “Yes,” or “No.”  If our answer is in the affirmative, it confirms that we are on the path to salvation, or at least that we think we are.  If negative, then I’m afraid there is something lacking in our lives that must be put right.

There is one truth but many lies.  “Two plus two equals four.”  Four is the only correct answer.  But there is an infinite number of wrong answers.  Life is the same.  There is one simple answer to finding peace in our lives.  It is to be in the state of grace.  When we are in that state of grace we are the living temples of the Holy Ghost, we have God himself dwelling within us.  When we look inside of ourselves it is God that we shall find and the peace that comes from his presence, that peace on earth that is the reward of men of good will.  Unfortunately, there is an infinite variety of apparent “good things” that seek to entice us away from that state of grace.  We seek pleasure, ownership, money, power; we look for independence when we should obey authority, self-indulgence when we should desire penance and reparation for our sins.  Wherever we turn there is something, someone, to beckon us away from our true happiness in God, and no matter which we choose, we shall never find that true peace that comes only from God.

All of us yield to temptation at some point, in one form or another.  We offend the God whose presence we should cherish above all things.  The result?  We lose our peace.  Thankfully, God has given us the Sacrament of Penance by which we can welcome him back into our soul and restore the peace he brings.  But if there’s one thing that God has entrusted to us that we should at all costs preserve and nurture and take care of, it is our soul.  No matter what, we must always strive to keep it in the state of grace. 

“But Father,” you might object, “isn’t it selfish to want the state of grace just so that we can have peace of mind?  Shouldn’t we want the state of grace purely out of the love of God?”  Yes, of course we should.  Nevertheless, this is a part of what our Lord meant by making friends with the mammon of unrighteousness.  Even if we keep our state of grace out of selfish reasons, the fact is, we’re still in the state of grace and on the path of salvation.  We can still go to heaven even if our motivation is simply to get there and avoid hell.  Whatever the reason for staying out of mortal sin, the important thing is to stay out of it.  You’re entitled to the peace of mind it brings.

Sunday, July 24, 2022

THE LEGEND OF THE WOLFMAN

A SERMON FOR THE 7TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST


Of all the Sunday Gospels we read during the course of the year, perhaps none of them strike us as much as today’s.  Our Lord’s analogy of the sheep in wolves’ clothing comes closer to describing the evils of our times than perhaps anything else he said.  Popes and bishops, pretending to be our Lord’s good, loyal sheep, seem to be hell-bent on killing the actual sheep—us—with the sharp fangs of heresy, immorality, and false worship.  Wolves in sheep’s clothing—it’s as though our Lord knew that these times would come and wanted to warn us in advance.  And of course he did know.  And yet the Church, after reading this Gospel on every Seventh Sunday after Pentecost for countless hundreds of years, was somehow infiltrated with these ravening wolves tearing apart Christ’s flock and devouring the innocent lambs of the Good Shepherd.

Unfortunately, when we read these words of our Lord again today, there’s a dangerous inclination to just nod in grim recognition of the situation we’re facing—and then move on.  We tut-tut about the evils around us and don’t take the time to recognize the evil within us.  Today, I’d like to point out that danger by listening to another warning from our Lord:  “Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”  You see, it’s very easy to look at the terrible sins committed by the clergy of the Conciliar Church and forget all about our own vices and sinful attachments.  To what extent are we the loyal sheep of the Good Shepherd?  How often do we act like wolves ourselves, preying on the vulnerable by forcing our own will upon them instead of the charity our Lord calls for?  We know we’re supposed to have this supernatural charity for our neighbor, and yet how often do we ignore his needs, how often do we fail to supply him with the faith, hope and charity that all men crave and so few find?  How subtly do we exploit the weaknesses of our neighbor to our own advantage?

Our Lord has no time for such double standards: “Thou hypocrite,” he says, “first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.”  Are we so concerned and scandalized by the modernists that we fail to observe our own duplicity?  Are we so obsessed by pointing out the sins of others that we don’t bother trying to eradicate our own selfishness from our behavior?

What’s profoundly interesting is that these words of our Lord condemning this kind of hypocrisy were pronounced by him immediately before his warning about the wolves in sheep’s clothing.  They come from the same chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel, the seventh chapter.  In verse 5 our Lord tells us to first cast out the beam from our own eye, so we can see clearly to cast out the splinter from the eyes of our neighbor.  Then, just ten verses later in verse 15, he warns us to beware of false prophets which come to us in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves.  Before we dare to condemn the wolves in sheep’s clothing, first, he says , we must cast the beam from our own eye by making sure we ourselves are not like the wolves we’re meant to watch out for.  Let’s take note of this context and retrospectively prepare ourselves for today’s Gospel by making sure we’re aware of our own faults before we point out the sins of the wolves in sheep’s clothing.

It's fairly obvious how we must do that.  We have to look into our own souls, not anyone else’s.  Not our wife’s soul, not our husband’s soul.  You’d be surprised how often, when I point out this or that fault or imperfection from the pulpit, I see husbands and wives nudging each other and giving each other the eye, as if to say “I told you so.”  Forget the faults of your spouse, the faults of your children or your parents, or your friends at work, even the faults of the real wolves—popes, prelates and progressive politicians.  They are all ultimately responsible for their own souls.  They have free will like us.  They can’t save our soul, and we can’t save theirs.  Sometimes our best friend is our mirror.  We should take a long and realistic look into that mirror so that we can remove any splinters of duplicity we might then see in our own eyes, the windows of our soul.

Our Lord tells us quite clearly what to look out for.  “By their fruits ye shall know them.”  We should judge ourselves, as one day Christ himself shall judge us, by our fruit.  “Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.”  So as we walk through life, what fruit are we leaving in our wake?  Is it a trail of destruction, chaos, lost souls?  Do we leave the world behind us a worse place than it was before we entered into it?  Or do we leave it a better place?  Are the people with whom we interact better off for knowing us, will our legacy be one of holiness, virtue and good example?  Or will be remembered only for our voracious appetite in attacking the faults of others?  It’s worth taking that long, hard look into our souls and whether we leave behind us a trail of destruction or sanctity.  This trail, whatever it is, is our fruit, and as our Lord says, “By their fruits ye shall know them.”

In the dark annals of the mountains and forests of Eastern Europe, there is a legend that has endured to the present day.  It is the Legend of the Wolfman, a seemingly likeable and pleasant young man who for most of the time is kind and charitable to his neighbor.  However, on every night of the Full Moon, he is transformed into a wolf, with sharp claws and fangs, and a terrible impulse to kill.  The local villagers live in constant fear, dreading the approaching full moon, and wondering who will be the wolfman’s next victim.  Whether such a legend has any basis in truth I’ll leave to your imagination and common sense to make your own conclusions.  Yet the story of the Wolfman is a disturbingly accurate metaphor for the way we all behave.  We go through life being nice enough most of the time.  But within us all there lurks a monster, one which is an integral part of our human nature, our fallen human nature.  And now and again, this monster comes to the surface and we act with horrifying disregard for the welfare of our fellow man.  Greed, unbridled lust, feelings of power, sometimes just plain-old selfishness, cause us to walk all over anyone who gets in our way.  And we leave that trail of destruction behind us.

There’s only way to stop the Wolfman.  With a silver bullet.  But God is merciful, and he doesn’t strike us down every time we misuse our free will.  Instead he gives us a different kind of silver bullet to help us withstand our destructive impulses and inspire us instead with charity towards our neighbor.  Our Lord’s silver bullet is the Blessed Sacrament, the source of all grace and the means to our salvation.  It’s available to all who choose it, and we all know what we have to do so that we can choose it.  Take the time now to consider those choices.  Stop in your tracks and look behind you.  What good have you left in your path, what evils have you been responsible for?  Have you dragged others into your own sins?  Have you trampled on the souls of your children by setting a bad example?  Learn from your mistakes and avoid repeating them.  Make reparation for them and resolve to take a different path in future.  The past is just as important to us as the future—it’s there to learn from, and woe unto us if we fail to take those lessons.  The next full moon is surely coming, and what will we find ourselves doing then?  Beware the ravening wolf.


PRAISE MY SOUL THE KING OF HEAVEN

 A HYMN FOR THE 7TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST


By Henry F. Lyte, 1834

 

 

Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven;

To His feet thy tribute bring.

Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven,

Evermore His praises sing:

Praise Him, praise Him, alleluia!

Praise the everlasting King.

 

Praise Him for His grace and favor

To our fathers in distress;

Praise Him still the same as ever,

Slow to chide, and swift to bless.

Praise Him, praise Him, alleluia!

Glorious in His faithfulness.

 

Fatherlike He tends and spares us,

Well our feeble frame He knows;

In His hands He gently bears us,

Rescues us from all our foes.

Praise Him, praise Him, alleluia!

Widely yet His mercy flows.

 

Frail as summer’s flow’r we flourish,

Blows the wind and it is gone;

But while mortals rise and perish,

Our God lives unchanging on.

Praise Him, praise Him, alleluia!

Praise the high Eternal One!

 

Angels, help us to adore Him,

Ye behold Him face to face;

Sun and moon, bow down before Him;

Dwellers all in time and space,

Praise Him, praise Him, alleluia!

Praise with us the God of grace.


WHO AM I?

 A REFLECTION FOR THE 7TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST


It seems like a strange question to ask ourselves who we are.  Unless we’re suffering from one of those unpleasant diseases that ravage the minds of some of our elderly neighbors, generally speaking we know who we are.  However, with today’s Gospel in mind and applying the idea of wolves in sheep’s clothing, it’s a suitable opportunity to examine our own character a little more deeply.  Sure, we know our name and address, we recognize our children most of the time, we have an idea what drives us, what are our goals, our beliefs, our moral values and our general character.  We even know, or hope we know, how we appear in the eyes of others.  But in this last respect, who are we really fooling?  Them?  Or ourselves?

 Let’s face it, we behave in totally different ways depending on who we’re talking to.  Have you ever been really, really tired, so that all you can do is grunt to your wife or husband while you moan and yawn and shuffle around?  And then suddenly the phone rings.  It’s a call from the teacher at your daughter’s school trying to arrange for chaperones for the next field trip.  Within seconds, your voice is bright and normal, you’re cracking jokes and in short, you’ve become a totally different person.  Which is the true “You”?  Or we go from complaining and griping about our boss’s personality and behavior one minute, to a façade of groveling politeness as soon as he appears.  What kind of phony people are we?

 The truth is, we all put on an “appearance” depending on who we’re with, who we’re trying to impress, who we like, dislike or respect, where they are on the social ladder, our relationship with them and so on.  We’re like chameleons, constantly changing our appearance to fit our surroundings and our company.  It’s part of our human nature, and worth noting as such.  It’s not that we’re pretending to be someone we aren’t, rather just adjusting out of politeness, convenience, self-interest or whatever.

 Where morality enters the scene is when we do actually pretend to be someone we’re not in order to take advantage of someone else, to exploit them for our own benefit.  This is where we become wolves in sheep’s clothing, predators who slip in among the flock to lead them to a bad place where we can devour them without hindrance.  Our Lord warns us to beware this type of personality, and it goes without saying that we must beware above all becoming this type of personality ourselves.

Sunday, July 17, 2022

ALIVE UNTO GOD

 A SERMON FOR THE 6TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST


What is the greatest good that exists?  The answer of course is God.  God is supremely, infinitely, and perfectly good in all his aspects.  But for us, what is the greatest good that we can achieve?

When we think of goodness in our lives, we tend to think in natural terms.  This is to be expected as we live a physical life in the midst of natural and material things.  We have relationships with others in this framework of the natural, some of which we treasure, others not so much.  We own physical property, homes, automobiles; we take vacations, we have hobbies, we indulge in many varied interests in order to make our lives as happy and fulfilled as possible.  All this is “good”.  But of course, it is not the supreme good that should be the chief aim of our life.  We know what that chief aim is—God—but it’s worth repeating.  In fact the Church does repeat it today, in both the Epistle and Gospel.

St. Paul explains at length how we should reckon ourselves dead unto sin but alive unto God.  For it is God, that supreme, infinite and perfect Good, who is the ultimate good that we must seek.  It is only in union with God, being “alive unto God” as St. Paul says, that we shall ever find that perfect happiness, that perfect good for ourselves.  And the way to God is through our Lord Jesus Christ, through him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life—“alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  The Gospel provides us with exactly how we may be united with God in this life—through the reception of the Holy Eucharist, the Bread of Heaven symbolized by the seven loaves in today’s miracle of the Feeding of the Multitude.

So where does this leave us?  If we seek the greatest possible good for ourselves, we must seek union with God.  Union with God is made available to us in this life through Holy Communion, which is itself only a series of temporary previews of the eternal life with God that will be ours in heaven if we continue to follow Christ, the Way, the Truth and the Life.

The alternative is something we prefer not to think about.  There are only two alternatives—heaven and hell.  Either we shall have everlasting union with God or never-ending separation from God.  One or the other fates shall be ours.  Just as union with God is the supreme good that we can achieve, separation from God is the supreme evil that constantly beckons us as we give in to sin after sin.  There is no worse fate than this.  Mortal sin is for us the direct opposite of Holy Communion.  Communion joins us to God, mortal sin separates us.  These are the two polar opposites in what is most important in our lives.  Holy Communion and Mortal Sin foreshadow the ultimate destiny that awaits us, heaven or hell.

This is illustrated most clearly every year on Good Friday.  Did you ever wonder why the Church for two thousand years did not give Holy Communion to the faithful on Good Friday?  It’s because it was on that first Good Friday that the Son of God himself was separated from his Father in heaven.  “My God, my God,” he cried out in his last agony, “why hast thou forsaken me?”  Insofar as he is God, Christ could never be separated from God the Father.  The two are one and always shall be, along with the Holy Ghost, the blessed Trinity, coeternal and in constant union one with each other.  However, insofar as Christ was a man, his human nature was in a sense torn apart from God on the cross, the weight and filth of the sins of the world preventing him from remaining in his Father’s presence.  Thus he died, as one day we all will, alone.  It was unthinkable that as Christ suffers the supreme evil of separation from God, we sinful creatures should shamble up to the communion rail to unite ourselves with God.  Who are we that we should be given what our blessed Lord was deprived of on this day?

It took the modernists to break two thousand years of this respectful tradition.  In the early 1950s the freemasons modernized the ancient Good Friday liturgy, replacing the solemn desolation of the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified with “Communion as usual.”  Just another day on which we can receive Communion, rather than following our suffering Saviour in his desolation and separation from God.  That the Novus Ordo would promote this disrespectful act of distributing holy Communion on Good Friday is hardly surprising as it’s part of their conspiracy against all things holy.  That so-called traditional groups like the SSPX and the CMRI would blindly follow this practice is, to say the least, unfortunate.  Their undoubted sincerity does not eradicate the objective blasphemy against the Church’s holy tradition of respecting the desolation of our blessed Lord.

In this Chapel of St. Margaret Mary, we have the constant reminder from our patron saint how we may best achieve the fulfillment of all our Holy Communions, that eternal union with God in heaven.  It comes in the form of the nine First Fridays, a request from our Lord that comes with a powerful assurance:  “I promise you in the excessive mercy of my Heart that its all-powerful love will grant to all those who receive Holy Communion on the first Fridays of nine consecutive months the grace of final repentance; they will not die under my displeasure or without receiving their sacraments, my divine Heart making itself their assured refuge at the last moment.” 

This promise by our Lord is a powerful guarantee, assuring us of the opportunity to die in the state of grace, to save our soul in its last torments, and to achieve that everlasting union with God that is our chief aim and ultimate good.  It is our blessed assurance that we may avoid the ultimate evil of the fires of hell which is our separation from God. 

And by the way, if you’re planning to make the Nine First Fridays and have not yet done so, there is no point starting next month on the First Friday of August.  Why not?  Because if you do, you will find out that the ninth and last of your First Fridays will be on April 7 of 2023, and that day is Good Friday.  No Mass, no Holy Communion, no fulfillment of your First Friday commitment.  By all means, go to Mass on the first Fridays between now and then, just be aware that you will not be able to make the full “nine” First Fridays as described by our blessed Lord to St. Margaret Mary. 

There’s no doubt that the promise of the Nine First Fridays is a great gift from God.  However, we may save our souls even without making them, as all the saints that lived before St. Margaret Mary bear witness.  What’s truly essential is that we start by making that primary choice between heaven and hell, between what God wants from us versus what we want for ourselves.  Once we make that choice, we must then do what is required.  We must receive Holy Communion regularly, at least once a year, or fall into mortal sin.  It’s one or the other, and the result is also one or the other, heaven or hell. After our Lord’s feeding of the multitude, he went on to say exactly that: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.  Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.“  Holy Communion makes the difference between heaven and hell.  Whether it means just fasting for three hours, or going to Confession, or making a total change in the way you lead your life, for the sake of your soul, see to it that you do what’s necessary so you can receive this Sacrament of Life Everlasting.  “Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”


LET ALL MORTAL FLESH KEEP SILENCE

 A HYMN FOR THE 6TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST


Paraphrased By Gerard Moultrie, 1864

 

 

1 Let all mortal flesh keep silence

and with fear and trembling stand;

ponder nothing earthly-minded,

for with blessing in his hand

Christ, our God, to earth descending,

comes our homage to command.

 

2 King of kings, yet born of Mary,

as of old on earth he stood,

Lord of lords in human likeness,

in the body and the blood

he will give to all the faithful

his own self for heav’nly food.

 

3 Rank on rank the host of heaven

spreads its vanguard on the way

as the Light from Light, descending

from the realms of endless day,

comes the pow’rs of hell to vanquish

as the darkness clears away.

 

4 At his feet the six-winged seraph,

cherubim with sleepless eye,

veil their faces to the presence

as with ceaseless voice they cry:

“Alleluia, alleluia!

Alleluia, Lord Most High!”


NINE FIRST FRIDAYS

 A MESSAGE FOR THE 6TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST


This devotion is based upon one of the twelve promises made by Our Lord to St. Margaret Mary: “I promise thee, in the excess of the mercy of My Heart, that Its all-powerful love will grant to all those who receive Communion on the First Friday of every month, for nine consecutive months, the grace of final penitence, and that they shall not die under My displeasure, nor without receiving the Sacraments, and My Heart shall be their secure refuge at that last hour.”

THE TWELVE PROMISES OF THE SACRED HEART

1. I will give them all the graces necessary for their state of life.

2. I will establish peace in their families.

3. I will console them in all their afflictions.

4. I will be their assured refuge in life, and more especially at death.

5. I will pour out abundant benedictions on all their undertakings.

6. Sinners shall find in My Heart the source and infinite ocean of mercy.

7. Tepid souls shall become fervent.

8. Fervent souls shall advance rapidly to great perfection.

9. I will bless the house in which the image of My Sacred Heart shall be exposed and honored.

10. I will give to priests the gift of moving the most hardened hearts.

11. Persons who propagate this devotion shall have their names inscribed in My Heart, never to be effaced from It.

12. I promise thee, in the excess of the mercy of My Heart, that Its all-powerful love will grant to all those who receive Communion on the First Friday of every month, for nine consecutive months, the grace of final penitence, and that they shall not die under My displeasure, nor without receiving the Sacraments, and My Heart shall be their secure refuge at that last hour.

ACT OF REPARATION TO THE SACRED HEART

Adorable Heart of Jesus, consumed with love for men and thirsting for their salvation, Heart so loving yet so little loved, deign to accept this act of reparation that we eagerly offer to make amends to Thee for the outrages, the irreverences and profanations which Thou dost receive in the adorable Sacrament of the Altar. Pardon, O most Sacred Heart, the forgetfulness and ingratitude of men, the abandonment and indifference with which they repay Thine immense love! Forgive us all, forgive all poor sinners! Remember not our innumerable faults, and from the open wound of Thy Sacred Side let floods of grace and mercy descend upon us. Guard and protect us, hide us in this divine wound till that happy moment comes, when in our heavenly kingdom we repeat with the angels throughout eternity: “Glory, love, gratitude, and unceasing praise be to the most loving Heart of our Saviour!”


Sunday, July 10, 2022

THOU SHALT NOT KILL

 A SERMON FOR THE 5TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST


“Thou shalt not kill.”  It’s the Fifth Commandment, and one which, thankfully, most of us never literally break.  Generally speaking, most people are not guilty of the sin of having killed someone, and if any of us actually did, it would weigh terribly on our conscience until the day we die.  Even when our killing is justified, as is the case for a soldier in battle, or accidental, when we crash our car into a pedestrian, for example, the thought of having been the cause of death of another human being is a terrible burden to bear.  I remember back in 1976 when a murderer called Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad, we learned that one of the rifles used in the execution, no one knew which one, was loaded with a blank.  This was to allow each of the members of the execution squad to believe that maybe they had fired the blank and therefore had not been responsible for Mr. Gilmore’s death, thereby mitigating the terrible feelings of guilt that so many of our veterans have to live with.

Until we do cause the death of another person, we can’t know how difficult it is to cope with the memory of what we’ve done.  Imagine then how much worse it must be for the murderer who has killed someone deliberately, or even in the heat of the moment.  In his case, the guilt he feels is well deserved, and surely God will require heavy restitution for such a terrible deed.  The deliberate taking of a human life is one of the worst sins we can imagine.  The sin can be more or less serious depending on various circumstances: for example, the relationship of the murderer to the victim. It is worse to assassinate a member of our own family, for instance, than a perfect stranger.  It is a worse crime to kill an innocent unborn baby than an unruly ruffian in a bar.  Both may be mortal sins, but surely, the punishment due to these crimes should differ in their severity.  The gravity of the sin also depends on the motive.  If we kill someone for their money, it’s more serious than if we kill someone who has injured our wife or children.  Again, objectively, both are murder, but the punishment should fit the crime.

Laws against murder must be powerful and strictly enforced by civil law.  Murderers should never be able to get away with their crime.  The punishment should be swift and severe in order to protect the lives of the innocent and to be a deterrent to the guilty.  The death penalty, ironically, is one of the ways that God permits in order to protect the lives of the innocent.  Those who claim to be pro-life often have a hard time reconciling their support of “life” with their support of the death penalty.  The conciliar Church has resolved this conflict by condemning the death penalty.  This goes blatantly against the practice of the saints of the Old and New Testaments, and certainly against the practice of God himself, who in times past did not hesitate to wipe out tens of thousands for a single grave sin of the people.  It also goes against the time-honored teaching of the Church that that the State is given the power by God to enforce the law with punishments that fit the crime.  The State has the authority in other words, to remove serious criminals from society, usually by incarceration, but in the worst cases, by execution.  This is not against the Fifth Commandment.

The Fifth Commandment in the original Hebrew does not exactly mean Thou Shalt Not Kill.  Rather, it should be translated as Thou Shalt Not Murder.  In other words, it does not forbid the lawful killing by the State of someone who has been convicted of a terrible crime.  Thou shalt not kill means thou shalt not kill unlawfully, thou shalt not kill an innocent person.  So while execution is not against the law of God, the killing of an innocent unborn baby most certainly is against the law of God.  It is no coincidence that the Democratic Party is pro-abortion and anti-execution.  It is because they deliberately seek the overturning of God’s laws.  Like the usurpers of power within the Catholic Church, the progressive thinking of the Marxist Democrats is to overthrow the democratic system and install their own authoritarian “morals” on the rest of us.  That means they need to persuade the masses that what is good is actually evil, and conversely, that what is evil is actually good.  While it’s a bad thing to murder the unborn, they constantly plug the idea that it’s a good thing because it “protects the mother”.  The mothers who are now in hell because they murdered their unborn children might disagree…  And while it’s good, or at least necessary to execute the worst murderers, the Democratic party suddenly becomes “pro-life” by trying to protect the guilty from such “cruel and unusual punishments.”  Everything in their sick agenda is simply upside down—they make Satan their God while they make God into a malicious tyrant who is hell-bent on preventing us from having a good time and doing whatever we want.  And then they accuse us of the very perversion of truth they themselves are guilty of—remember how fast they dropped the “my body, my choice” slogan when it came to refusing the COVID vaccine?  How easily the masses are swayed…   

Finally, there’s the question of self-defense.  This is very much in the news these days, especially when it comes to the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms.  There seem to be two diametrically opposed positions on this, although the US Constitution is very clear on the issue.  However, in the eyes of God, the Constitution of the United States is not the ultimate factor on which morality depends.  What does the law of God have to say about the right to bear arms?  The Church, and coincidentally for once, the State also, recognizes the inherent right of every human being to defend himself against an unlawful aggressor.  The Church has no specific position on whether we have the right to carry a lethal weapon in order to have that ability to protect ourselves.  However, given the proliferation of the criminal use of guns to rob, intimidate, and simply kill innocent people, it would appear to have become necessary these days for these same innocent people to have at their disposal the means to defend themselves and their families.  This is part of the natural law, the permission to kill in self-defense.  If we are subjected to a lethal threat, we may respond lethally.  But again, the liberals have turned it all upside-down.  Criminals with guns are allowed to return to the streets without even paying a penny in bail, the prisons are being emptied, the mental hospitals closed, the police are being defunded or otherwise persecuted, and in short, everything is being done by the Democratic Party to protect the “rights” of criminals to have the right weapons at their disposal to pursue their crimes.  Meanwhile, they would like to confiscate guns from the innocent who seek only to protect themselves from the maniacs they continue to unleash upon us.

Thou shalt not kill.  It’s important that we understand what it really means.  Thou shalt not kill?  No.  Thou shalt not murder.  Thou shalt not commit unnecessary violence against another.  Thou shalt not hate thy neighbor.  Thou shalt not even be angry without cause at your neighbor.  Let’s go back to our Lord’s Great Commandment on which all the other Ten Commandments depend: “Love God with your whole heart and mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”  Therein is the spirit of all laws, including the Fifth Commandment.  Not so much what it forbids but what it commands—love your neighbor and you won’t be attacking him in thought, word or deed.  Love your neighbor and protect your neighbor from the harm that the enemies of God would like to do to him and all of us.