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.