WITH ONE TONGUE

 A SERMON FOR WHITSUNDAY

Did you ever wonder how Adam and Eve communicated with each other?  Did they just grunt and gesticulate like the Neanderthals in the movies?  Or did they use a language?  If so, what language, and how did they learn that language?  These may be idle thoughts, and no doubt, theologians and linguists have considered the origins of human speech from their own diverse perspectives.  What we do know, however, is that they did indeed speak.  In the Book of Genesis there are several examples of Eve speaking with the serpent, and of both Adam and Eve speaking to God, perhaps some form of linguistic telepathy between humans and supernatural beings.  But between Adam and Eve themselves you won’t find a single word passed between them, which, I understand, is still a common occurrence among some married couples today.

However, we do know that Adam did have the use of language, because Genesis informs us that “Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field.”  We can be sure that if he knew the words for shrimp and cow, he had names also for things like fire, water, and plenty of other words too.  And if he knew those words, he would have communicated them to his wife Eve, so that they could come to understand what the other was saying.  Soon Eve would be able to ask Adam to pass the ketchup, and Adam would learn never to tell Eve that her dress makes her look fat.  And thus we have the beginnings of human language which were passed down to their descendants.

That worked very well for a while and people said a lot of things to each other, some good, some bad, just like it is today.  The difference back then was that everyone totally understood what everyone else was saying, because they all spoke the same language, and so it was for hundreds and hundreds of years, well past the Great Flood of Noah and for many generations more.  Genesis Chapter 11, first verse: “And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.” 

But then something happened.  Men learned how to build with bricks and mortar and very soon they desired to build something that would reach high up into the heavens, a tower that would show God how clever and powerful mankind had become.  This was the great tower of Babel, but it would not be a great tower for long.  God was not happy with their declaration of pride and strength.  God never is.  As always he seeks “an humble and contrite heart,” not acts of pride and defiance.  And by the way, in passing, and on that subject, let me mention one of this past week’s acts of pride and defiance, this one committed by no less than the United States Embassy to the Vatican, which to mark the beginning of Gay Pride month, proudly and defiantly displayed the rainbow-colored pride flag from its rooftop down the road from St. Peter’s Basilica in the center of the Holy City of Rome.  It’s part of the increasingly blatant plan to test the power and authority of Christ’s Church, which has already capitulated in this and so many other ways.  If this display of evil was designed to upset the leaders of the conciliar Church, it will fail, simply because most of them, including their “beloved Holy Father” will see the flag and be tickled pink…

God will no doubt deal eventually with such acts of defiance against his authority as he did with that Tower of Babel.  God’s answer to these proud and rebellious men was to “go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.”  He scattered them throughout the earth, and there they settled, each with their own form of speech, or language.  And so it was from that time forth.

This brings us to today’s account of that first Whitsunday, when pilgrims from all over the world congregated in the Holy City of Jerusalem for the important Jewish feast of Pentecost.  How were the apostles, who were not exactly linguistic experts, going to make any impression on this huge multitude of Jews with their various languages, and convert any of them to the holy faith of Christ and his new Church?  How could they possibly understand what the Apostles were saying?  Well, just as God could so easily confound the language of the men at Babel, so too could he just as easily restore their understanding on Pentecost Sunday.  Through the Holy Ghost, he gave the apostles a very special charism to speak in tongues.

We hear a lot about people speaking in tongues these days.  It refers to certain Pentecostal sects, some of which have been able to infiltrate the Conciliar Church, whereby people will suddenly stand up in the middle of a service and start shouting out words in a nonsensical gibberish that nobody can understand.  It beggars the mind how otherwise intelligent people could ever believe that God would perform or condone such a “wonder” for no other reason than for the speaker to make a fool of himself.  On Pentecost, though, there was a reason.  In fact, it was the most valid of all reasons, that the souls of men may be saved by hearing the words of the Gospel.  And so God performed the miracle that everyone who heard the apostles speak that day, heard them in their own language and were able to understand what they were saying.

Not only were they able to hear and understand the Gospel of Christ expounded to them in words they could understand, but the very fact that they could all understand them in their diverse languages solidified and confirmed their conversion.   It was a miracle.  No matter where in the world they came from, they each heard and understood in their own language, everything the apostles were saying.  For the first time since the Tower of Babel, mankind was able to understand once more in the same language.

The Church was born that day, and very soon, she learned the importance of having one universal language that all men would understand.  She adopted the common language of Latin.  Latin was the language spoken throughout the Roman Empire, which pretty much corresponded to the entire known world of that time, and so provided a means of communication which all men would know and understand.  Latin continued to be used for nearly two thousand years, in the liturgy of the Church, her official documents, and in her universities.  And it is no coincidence that it would be in the 1960s, that age of rebellion against all moral, spiritual and civil authority, that the use of Latin would be discarded and abandoned.  The false teachers in the Church at that time thought they could improve upon the Mass of all time, the traditional apostolic Mass passed down through the ages.  They thought in their pride they could build something better, a whole new edifice built to the glory of man and not God, a modern-day Tower of Babel.  Today, hardly anyone knows Latin, and it is rarely taught in the schools.  With this whole new age of defiant rebellion against God, we have reverted to the times of Babel.  God has scattered his people so that the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church” is no longer “one.”  As soon as we lost the use of the common language of Latin, we lost the unity that went with it.  We see this very well today, when Conciliar Archbishop Cordeleone of San Francisco publishes a decree that Nancy Pelosi must be refused Communion because of her publicly sinful support of abortion, and then the very next day, she is given Communion in another church in Washington.  Where is Church Unity?  Real Church Unity, not the fake joining together of truth and falsehood that they like to call Church Unity.

The current leader of the Conciliar Church, their pope Francis, manages to deny the faith in whatever language he speaks, so his lack of Latin is no great loss in his case.  But to restore the Catholic faith worldwide, we must be committed to the restoration also of that common language which will pave the way for the truth to be once more expounded among the nations of the world, and we may all hear the Church speak again with a single voice “the wonderful works of God.”

SEND FORTH THY SPIRIT

 A REFLECTION FOR WHITSUNDAY

In the Third Glorious Mystery of the Rosary, we contemplate the role that the Holy Ghost plays in the story of our Redemption.  While only this one Mystery is devoted entirely to the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, we should remember that the Holy Ghost is in fact the unseen producer of this entire epic story, without whom it could never have been recorded, transmitted, or believed.

The Holy Ghost is there in the beginning of the world when he moved over the face of the deep, igniting the first spark, which would illuminate all of Creation.  He is there at the beginning too of our Rosary, when he overshadowed the young Maiden of Nazareth enkindling a new yet everlasting spark of light within her womb with a flash that was to be the Light of the World.  And now, at Pentecost, the Holy Ghost is present once again this time at the beginning of the Church, igniting with tongues of fire the souls of St. Peter and the other Apostles, enflaming their minds and hearts with the fortitude and all-consuming love of God that would inspire them to evangelize the world.

The Holy Ghost is the Lord and Giver of Life.  When he first gave light to the world, he created an environment of time and space in which Life could exist.

He was the life-giving force of the Son of God’s humanity, the breath of God animating the Body of Christ and giving it a soul: “In him [Christ] was life; and the life was the light of men.”

The Holy Ghost similarly give life to all men, breathing into us at conception that vital spark of immortality that separates from all other material beings.  In giving life, the Holy Ghost illuminates the hearts of men with that same flash of light that began the world’s creation, the light of God’s love that allows us to love God in return.  It’s why we sing at Pentecost those noble words, “Come, Holy Ghost, fill the hearts of thy faithful, and kindle in them the fire of thy love!”

So that we may be deserving of everlasting life with God, our Lord requires of us to be perfect.  Only our perfect love for God can measure up to his love for us.  But how can man ever be perfect?  How can he love perfectly?  There is only one way we can worship God perfectly and infinitely, and that is by offering to him the perfect and infinite sacrifice of his Son.  The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass continues this perfect sacrifice until the end of time, and is our act of perfect love.  Only by the actions of the Holy Spirit can this be accomplished as he once again proceeds from the Father and the Son to ignite the spark of life at the words of Consecration that will bring the Light of the World to dwell amongst us once more.

WITH ONE ACCORD IN ONE PLACE

 A SERMON FOR WHITSUNDAY

“And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.”  After our blessed Lord ascended into heaven, the eleven remaining Apostles did as they had been commanded.  They returned to Jerusalem and to the Upper Room where they had celebrated the Last Supper of our Lord the night he began his final sufferings.  Here, they were joined by other disciples of our Lord, as well as what St. Luke describes simply as “the women.”  These were the holy women who had followed our Lord during his life, faithfully keeping his teachings in their hearts.  Only one of these women is actually named by St. Luke, and that is “Mary, the Mother of Jesus.”  Our Blessed Lady deserves special mention in this first assembly of the our Lord’s faithful followers, she who was the most faithful, the only one, in fact, whose faith had never wavered, even during the darkest hours of the Crucifixion.  She was now accorded a special place among the apostles, and would play a crucial role in the events of the first Pentecost.

Meanwhile, let’s turn our attention to those first words of today’s lesson from the Acts of the Apostles, namely, that “they”—the Apostles and all the other disciples, men and women, who assembled in prayer for the nine days between the Ascension and the coming of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost—they, were all with one accord in one place.”  It’s worth mentioning, and for this very important reason: all these men and women were with one accord, in total agreement about their faith.  There was no dissent, no arguments about what to do, what to think, what to believe.  They acted, thought and spoke as one.  And this is a remarkable thing.  Human nature being what it is, people tend to enjoy finding things to disagree on.  But not in this case.  And we don’t have to look very far for the reason…

Before our Lord ascended into heaven, he appointed the leader of the apostles, Peter, as his Vicar on earth, the one who would take his place, representing him with all the weight of Christ’s divine authority and the infallibility of his revealed teachings about God and the ways of man.  The very first act of the new Pope is described in the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, when Peter stood up and used his authority to announce that an election must take place to choose a replacement for the traitor Judas Iscariot.  For just as there were twelve tribes of Israel, so had our Lord selected twelve Apostles to be the judges of these twelve tribes.  Now that one of them had betrayed him, it was essential that before the Church was born again of the Spirit at Pentecost, it should have a full complement of twelve Apostles.  And so they drew lots, and St. Matthias was chosen to replace Judas.  But it’s important to note that this particular “act of the Apostles” didn’t just happen.  It happened because St. Peter stood up and explained why it had to happen.  No arguments, no dissent—they were all “with one accord.”

This is how human nature works.  We like to follow the leader.  The sheep follow the shepherd.  And without a leader we are lost, endlessly arguing and disagreeing about this, that and the other.  The shepherd has been struck and the sheep are scattered.  It happened to the Jews who did not accept their Messiah and who persisted in their betrayal of the new covenant between God and man.  The diaspora of the Jews, that terrible fate whereby the twelve tribes of Israel were scattered around the world and lost their identity, that diaspora was precisely the effect of their refusal to acknowledge that Christ was their king and Peter their Pope.  The same thing happened to the Protestants who broke away from the Church to found their own new religions—there is only one Church, but the Protestants are now split into hundreds of different denominations—Episcopalians, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Mormons, and so on and so on.  Strike the shepherd and the sheep are scattered.  And let’s not forget what has happened since Vatican II, when the actions of one bad shepherd after another has forced the faithful to flee from the poison these shepherds are feeding them.  Now, through no fault of our own, we faithful Catholics are leaderless.  And because we have no leader, we immediately resort to discord and division.  It’s the way of things.  How can it be otherwise, when we acknowledge no leader with the authority to resolve disputes?  These divisions we suffer in the traditional Church today are inevitable, but that does not mean that they are good.  They are, rather, a necessary evil, the unavoidable result of our popes and bishops betraying us.

What can we do about it?  We must simply do as the first Christians did when faced with the betrayal of Judas.  They got together with all those who were in agreement with them.  “With one accord in one place.”  It’s what we are doing right now, here in this little chapel.  We gather to pray and worship our Creator in the way our Saviour taught us.  We remain faithful to the true Church founded by our Lord Jesus Christ.

On the first Pentecost Sunday, the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father and the Son, and descended upon the heads of these men and women who were in accord and in one place.  The fire of the Holy Ghost enkindled in them the fire of God’s love, and the Church was born, the Church entrusted to St. Peter, the Church composed of all those who are in one accord about what to believe, how to act, how to worship.  We who are in agreement on these things taught by our Lord are the members of his Church, his Mystical Body.  Have no fear when those who have betrayed him tell us that it is we who are the traitors, who have fallen away from the Church, who don’t “follow the Pope.”  Let our response be one of tranquil acknowledgment that indeed we are not following anyone who would lead us away from Christ our true and divine head, and that we are and will continue to be members of his true Body, the true Church that was born on that first Pentecost so many years ago.

HOLY SPIRIT, EVER DWELLING

 A HYMN FOR PENTECOST

by Timothy Rees, 1922

1 Holy Spirit, ever dwelling 
In the holiest realms of light;
Holy Spirit, ever brooding 
O'er a world of gloom and night,
Holy Spirit, ever raising 
Those on earth to thrones on high;
Living, life-imparting Spirit, 
Thee we praise and magnify.

 

2 Holy Spirit, ever living 
As the Church's very life,
Holy Spirit, ever striving 
Through us in a ceaseless strife,
Holy Spirit, ever forming 
In the Church the mind of Christ;
Thee we praise with endless worship 
For Thy gracious gifts unpriced.

 

3 Holy Spirit, ever working 
Through the Church's ministry,
Teaching, strength'ning, and absolving, 
Setting captive sinners free,
Holy Spirit, ever binding 
Age to age and soul to soul,
In communion never ending, 
Thee we worship and extol.

BORN AGAIN IN THE SPIRIT

 A REFLECTION FOR WHITSUNDAY

There was a reason why our Lady was present with the Apostles that first Pentecost morning.  It was certainly not because she needed to be strengthened and sanctified by the Holy Ghost.  She was already “full of grace.”  She was there to fulfill for the second time the prophecy of the Angel Gabriel: “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that Holy One which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.”   Once again our Lady would miraculously conceive and bear a Child.  Only this time it would not be the physical body of Christ but his Mystical Body, the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.

 

Once more the Word of God breathes forth a command.  At Creation he demands that there be light, and the story of man begins in time and space.  At the Annunciation he speaks again, saying “This is my Body” and becoming flesh in the womb of his Mother to continue the story of man and his Redemption.  At the Last Supper he repeats those words “This is my Body,” sharing his divine authority with his priests that they would also “do this in his memory” so that the Word could become flesh in the Holy Eucharist, and man could enjoy the source and presence of salvation abiding with them forever.  Now in the very same room where he performed the first Mass, the Word once more breathes forth his Holy Ghost with the same powerful words “This is my Body,” and the Church has its birth, the Mystical Body dwells amongst us, giving man the power to be a part of that Body by his adherence in faith and his communion in love.

 

On Good Friday, our Lord had looked down from the cross on his Apostle John and had said to him: “Son, behold thy Mother!”  In doing so he made our Lady not only St. John’s Mother but the Mother of the whole Church.  The events of Pentecost were nothing more than the confirmation of our Lady’s role as Mother of Christ’s Mystical Body.   She is Mother of God, and Mother of all God’s creation, but most especially she is the Mother of Holy Church, that Church in which she would continue until the end of time to bring us her Son, our Lord, to be our light and life.  Just as she gave birth to a Son in Bethlehem, “House of Bread”, so she will now bring forth her Son at Holy Mass to be our living Bread.

 

As the Apostles prayed in the nine days between Ascension Day and Pentecost, God the Father looked down on the world he had created, a world in which the “Light of the world” no longer walked and dwelt.  He had known from all eternity that this light could not be extinguished from his people, and had prepared for this time, the moment when his Son would speak from the heavens, “This is my Body,” and the Mystical Body, the Church, would be born. 

 

When the Word of God thus spoke, the Holy Ghost moved once more upon the face of the darkened world, igniting that new spark of light, the light that would be the life of that Mystical Body.  This new spark of light took the form of tongues of fire, not only enlightening but galvanizing the Apostles on whose heads it settled.  The Holy Ghost, who at the moment of creation had illuminated the empty darkness of the world, now brought the same bright radiance to the twelve men chosen to bring to that same world the holy truth of the Gospel and the Blessed Sacrament of Salvation.  Is it any wonder our holy Mass begins with the priest’s invocation to the Holy Ghost, to send forth his light and his truth—Emitte lucem tuam et veritatem tuam!

 

On Pentecost Sunday the world changed forever.  It heard again the great announcement of the herald angels of Christmas night: “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  For unto you is born this day… a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.”  The holy city of Jerusalem, that city of God of which “glorious things are spoken,” is now revealed as the fulfillment of the prophecy that “of Sion it shall be reported, that he was born in her.”  In thirty-three short years we have moved from the Third Joyful Mystery to the Third Glorious, from the physical birth of Christ in Bethlehem, House of Bread, to the mystical birth of Christ in his Church, the true House of Bread.  Our temporal gift of joy has been transformed into an eternal and glorious remedy: “Behold, I am with you always, even to the consummation of the world.”

THE PRINCE OF THIS WORLD COMETH

A SERMON FOR PENTECOST SUNDAY

It’s Pentecost already.  Fifty days have passed since Easter, and our Lord’s promise of a Comforter is today fulfilled.  Cloven tongues of fire appear on the heads of the Apostles, and they now begin their task of spreading the good news of the Gospel to the four corners of the earth.  Pentecost in the year of our Lord 33 marked the beginning of a new era in the world’s history.  With his death, Christ conquered Death, with his Resurrection he humiliated the Devil, and with his Ascension he re-opened the gates of heaven.  Today, a new Church is born, one that would replace the ancient Synagogue of the Jews with a global covenant for all mankind, Jews and Gentiles alike.   On this day, all things were made new again, and we were given a second chance.

How did Satan feel about all this?  On Good Friday, he had experienced the pinnacle of whatever evil glee his hatred permitted him to have when he witnessed the death of the Son of God on the cross.  But his victory had been turned into utter defeat on Easter Sunday, and he had found himself in a worse position than ever, with his human slaves now able to avail themselves of sacraments and graces unheard of in the Old Testament.  Heaven was once again open for business after a lockdown of four thousand years.  And people were anxious to change their lifestyles and make sure of their place in this newly opened heaven by staying away from sin.  Satan was losing his hold on his followers, and people were beginning to flock to the waters of baptism.

So what’s he going to do about it?  Quite simple.  If you hold a serpent by the tail and stick pins in it, you’re going to make it mad.  Real mad.  And then watch out, because it’s going to swing around and bite you.  And our blessed Lord knew this would happen, and that’s why he warns his apostles in today’s Gospel, that along with the coming of the Holy Ghost, “the prince of the world cometh” also.  With the coming of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, another spirit comes slithering in, an unholy spirit, one that has just been deprived of its victory over the God it hates, and one fixated on revenge.

Since that first Pentecost, when the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church was born, our world has experienced the presence of these two spirits, the one holy and the other evil.  Men have been torn as never before in this struggle between the Holy Ghost and the Devil.  Each of us have experienced this struggle many times in our lives – shall I do what I want to do, or what I should do?   It’s the Jekyll & Hyde story over and over again. 

In the wider sphere of world history, the same struggle has been continually waged between the two forces of good and evil.  Victories and defeats, sometimes with evil being vanquished, other times with God’s forces seeming to suffer an ignominious beating.  But history is just that—it’s the story of what’s happened in the past.  Today, we are living tomorrow’s history.  The events of today are what will shape our future into what it will become.  The current crisis in world events brought about by a simple little bug has been the catalyst for developments that we’ll surely be feeling for years to come.  How will it all turn out?  Only time will tell.  Who’s to blame for what’s happening?  There are too many conspiracy theories clashing around these days for us to be able to pick the right one.  All I know is that the devil doesn’t miss a trick.  He recognizes the chance he has been given by this crisis, and he will use his human instruments to try and bring about changes in our society that fit his agenda.

“Brethren, be sober, be vigilant,” says St. Peter our first Pope in his epistle, “because your adversary the devil goeth about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.  Whom resist ye, steadfast in the faith!”  Here’s our agenda.  To be sober, to be vigilant, and finally to resist the assaults of the devil.  We’ll need to resist when the time comes, when we know exactly what we need to resist—whether it be hatred, division, immorality, or pressure to abandon our faith.  But in the meantime, for goodness’ sake, stay sober, keep your wits about you.  And above all, be vigilant—keep your eyes open for any cracks in the infrastructure through which the devil can enter in.  Whether it be our constitution, our laws, our local community.  Or maybe our own family.  Or our very own souls.  Don’t let him in.  Resist.

Back in the Middle Ages, when a village was attacked by foreign barbarians, the villagers would all run for cover in the local castle.  They would run inside, and then the drawbridge would be pulled up, and they would defend themselves from the safety inside the fortress walls.  Our souls are a bit like that fortress.  They are our house of defense that we need as the world outside seems to be collapsing.  First we had coronavirus, and before we’ve even had chance to breathe, we then get a new cold war with China and race riots in Minneapolis, all within the space of a few days.  Many in our own families have already fallen victim to the wolves of an apostate Church and a society of rotting morals.  So where else can we turn?  We must run for cover to the house of defense that is our own soul.  Know that as long as we keep that soul safe and free from sin, there is nothing an enemy can do.  Even the very prince of the world, the Devil, cannot enter in unless we throw the door open and invite him in.

Our soul is the temple of the Holy Ghost.  It is he that we must invite to fill our souls.  It is the Holy Ghost whom we must ask today to fortify our souls for the battle with evil, to arm us with his sevenfold gifts of wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord.  After you leave here today, look up that hymn we all learned as children: “Come Holy Ghost, Creator, come, from thy bright heavenly throne.  Come, take possession of our souls, and make them all thine own.  Far from us drive our deadly foe; true peace unto us bring; and through all perils lead us safe beneath thy sacred wing.”

COME, THOU HOLY SPIRIT, COME

A HYMN FOR WHITSUNTIDE

Translated from the Latin by Fr. Edward Caswall, 1849

1 Come, thou Holy Spirit, come,

and from thy celestial home

shed a ray of light divine;

come, thou Father of the poor,

come, thou source of all our store,

come, within our hearts to shine.

2 Thou of comforters the best,

thou the soul's most welcome guest,

sweet refreshment here below;

in our labour rest most sweet,

grateful coolness in the heat,

solace in the midst of woe.

3 O most blessèd Light divine,

shine within these hearts of thine,

and our inmost being fill;

where thou art not, man hath naught,

nothing good in deed or thought,

nothing free from taint of ill.

4 Heal our wounds; our strength renew;

on our dryness pour thy dew;

wash the stains of guilt away;

bend the stubborn heart and will;

melt the frozen, warm the chill;

guide the steps that go astray.

5 On the faithful, who adore

and confess thee, evermore

in thy sevenfold gifts descend:

Give them virtue's sure reward,

give them thy salvation, Lord,

give them joys that never end.

SPEAKING IN TONGUES

A REFLECTION FOR WHITSUNDAY

When our Blessed Lord told the apostles that after the coming of the Holy Ghost they should go and teach all nations, there is no record that any of them questioned him as to how they would communicate with all the foreigners they would encounter.  They were simple men, fishermen for the most part, so maybe it just didn’t occur to them that people spoke in different languages depending where they lived.  Perhaps they thought about it later, perhaps not.  All we know is that on the morning of Pentecost they started their mission, and everyone—everyone—understood exactly what they were saying.

“They were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.”  These simple fishermen, most of whom spoke only Aramaic, now spoke in tongues that were completely unknown to them.  It was undeniably a miracle, and the multitude “were all amazed and marvelled.. because that every man heard them speak in their own language.”

As with all miracles, God had a purpose.  He does not perform party tricks for our amusement, and miracles happen for a reason.  He created nature, and this wonderful nature takes care of everything in one way or another as God intended.  He does not intervene in the workings of nature unless there is a very special reason for which he wills to make an exception.  In this particular case, the reason is obvious.  God wanted to make known his new covenant with mankind to as many people as possible and as quickly as possible.  And it was the miracle of tongues that made it possible.

One of the various hundreds of heretical sects that have come into being since those days is a group called the Pentecostals.  It originated at Bethel Bible College in Topeka, Kansas, and its members claimed that glossolalia (the ability to speak in an unknown language) was evidence that they had been truly baptized with the Holy Ghost.  More and more of them began gibbering in strange-sounding tongues, which sadly, nobody could understand.  They figured out that it would be good to also have members who could interpret the babbling of the first group, and then they claimed this as a further miracle.  We may legitimately wonder why God would go to all this trouble when all these people spoke English anyway.

Eventually, this bizarre cult found its way into other mainstream Protestant churches, and even into the post-Vatican 2 Catholic Church.  These groups are usually referred to as Charismatics, and don’t usually limit themselves to speaking in tongues.  You’ll find that they’re big on faith healing, fake exorcisms, and other “miraculous” parlor tricks that are designed to make money out of gullible converts.  They are not of God, and should be avoided like the plague.  Miracles are exceptions to the rule, and no one should be selling advance tickets to a weekly performance of them.

Miracles do happen though, and the events of Pentecost show us their true reality and purpose.  Don’t be taken in by imposters.

IF YE LOVE ME, KEEP MY COMMANDMENTS

A SERMON FOR WHITSUNDAY

We’re here this morning for one single purpose.  That purpose is to save our souls.  We may have come here this morning perhaps out of habit.  That’s okay, because it’s a good habit, in other words a virtue.  It’s also okay if we came there today out of fear, because we don’t want to put our souls in danger by disobeying God’s commandment.  It’s okay because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

The point is, we’re here.  Ideally, we’re here because we love God, because we want to do his will more than anything else, because we want to unite with him in Holy Communion, because he is our chief priority and focus in life.  Ideally.  But if our motives are less perfect than that, we can at least reassure ourselves that we are here.  We have obeyed the Third Commandment of God and the First Precept of the Church, and we are at Sunday Mass.  We’re in the right place at the right time, and if the world ends in the next few minutes, there is nowhere else we’d rather be than here in the presence of our Creator and Redeemer.

On the first Pentecost Sunday, the Apostles felt the same way.  They could have made some half-hearted attempts to “move on with their lives” after our Lord had ascended into heaven.  They would probably have gone fishing, or returned to their families and settled down.  But they had received a mission from God, that they should go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.  And they had no idea how to do that.  All they knew is that the last thing Christ had commanded was that they should remain in Jerusalem and wait for the coming of the Spirit of Truth.  And so they obeyed.  Just as you who came to Mass this morning have obeyed, they did what they were told, following our Lord’s instructions to the letter, so that when the time came for the Holy Ghost to descend upon them, he found them exactly where they were supposed to be, waiting and praying.  

My concern isn’t so much the reason why you’re here today.   The point is that you’re here.  My concern is for those who have not obeyed the voice of their God this morning, that they should keep holy the sabbath day, those who have not obeyed the voice of Holy Mother Church that they should attend Mass on Sunday. We should all be very, very concerned for the many who have not bothered to be here today, either here or at some other true and traditional Mass.  Their souls are in peril if they have deliberately chosen not to obey God and his Church.

The same goes for any other act of defiance against the commandments.  To disobey is to commit a sin, to offend God. If the disobedience is serious, then the sin is mortal.  If the sin is mortal and God chooses to take us before we truly repent and (if possible) confess our sins, then our souls will be damned.  

And that brings me back to the three things necessary for us to save our souls. We began speaking about them a few weeks ago, and we continue today with the second requirement.  The first, as I hope you remember, is that we must belong to the right Church.  You all do because here you are, so I’m not going to spend time with that today, other than to remind ourselves that today is the birthday of that Church.  The Descent of the Holy Ghost on the Apostles signifies the beginning of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, and it was from this moment when the tongues of fire appeared on their heads that the Apostles knew what they had to do and how to do it.  Without the Holy Ghost there would have been no Church, and Christ would have founded it in vain.  With the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Truth, the Comforter, we can find that necessary comfort that everything the Church teaches is taught with the authority of God himself, and that it is the guarantee of this Spirit of Truth that enables us to relax and accept whatever is told us by a Church that is infallible.  Today’s feast of Pentecost, in other words, confirms what I have been telling you about the necessity of belonging to this Church, which alone, is the source of all the truths about God that we need to save our souls.  We are confirmed in our faith by the Holy Ghost, and specifically we are confirmed through the Sacrament of Confirmation.

So much for the first requirement for salvation—here we are, members of the True Church.  So make sure you never leave the true Church, as those who followed the Protestant revolution have done, as those who now follow the Modernist revolution are still doing.  Keep the faith.  The faith of our fathers.  The faith of the Apostles.  The Catholic faith.  

However, faith isn’t enough.  We need more than just faith to save our souls, we need faith AND morals.  And that’s why we need to obey God’s commandments. It’s easy to know what those commandments are, the Church teaches them to us infallibly, as we’ve already explained.  But free will “allows” us to disobey them.  Just remember that the option to choose evil is not a real option in the eyes of God. There are no real options here, no weighing up in our head whether we should go to Mass on Sunday or do something else, whether we should use contraception or not, whether same-sex relationships are okay in this new modern age, (and the same thing goes for every other commandment).  We MUST obey all the commandments of God and the Church.  If we don’t, we can have enough faith so as to move mountains, but if we have not charity—that is if we don’t love God enough to obey his commandments—then we are as a tinkling cymbal, and it profiteth us nothing.  Don’t forget, the Devil has the Faith!  He believes full well in God!  And if we behave as the Devil, we’ll end up spending eternity with the Devil.

So the second requirement for salvation is that once we belong to the true Church, we must submit to all the divine and ecclesiastical laws that the Church teaches.   It’s a simple enough statement to make, it’s Religion 101.  But not so easy to keep to.  And again, that’s where the Holy Ghost comes in.  When we’re baptized into the Church the Holy Ghost dwells within our souls, we become the Temples of the Holy Ghost.  When we sin mortally, we drive him out and tell him we prefer our own pleasures to doing God’s will.  But as soon as we repent, as soon as our sins are absolved, he returns to make us his temple once again.  And he strengthens us with his presence, he confirms us, not with tongues of fire this time, but with his hidden divine presence within our souls.  

Let’s take note of this apparent coincidence that the Holy Ghost is directly and intimately connected with both requirements for our salvation!  If we must belong to the true Church, it is because that Church is guided by the Spirit of Truth, leading us infallibly along our path towards God and our salvation.  And secondly, that Spirit of Truth allows us to know what is right and what is wrong so that we can keep our souls free from sin and temples of that same Holy Spirit. We must unite ourselves first with the Holy Spirit within Christ’s Mystical Body, and then allow Christ’s Holy Spirit to unite with our own body and soul through our obedience to the infallible laws taught by that Holy Spirit.  Does that sound complicated?  It isn’t.  On the contrary, salvation is so very simple to understand.  It’s a perfect circle of simplicity.  I could express it in ten thousand different ways, but somehow, putting it into words turns something so extremely simple into something that sounds complicated.  So let’s keep it simple and stop with this resolution—belong to the Church of God, obey the commandments of God. Do this and you’re two-thirds of the way to salvation.  Just remember though that while “two out of three ain’t bad”, it’s still not enough! There’s still one more thing missing from our final success in achieving salvation.  So in a couple of weeks, I’ll introduce you to the third and last requirement, and then, hopefully, you’ll know all you need to know to save your souls. 

COME, THOU HOLY SPIRIT, COME

A HYMN FOR WHITSUNDAY

BY FR. EDWARD CASWALL, 1849

1 Come, thou Holy Spirit, come,
and from thy celestial home
shed a ray of light divine;
come, thou Father of the poor,
come, thou source of all our store,
come, within our hearts to shine.

2 Thou of comforters the best,
thou the soul's most welcome guest,
sweet refreshment here below;
in our labour rest most sweet,
grateful coolness in the heat,
solace in the midst of woe.

3 O most blessèd Light divine,
shine within these hearts of thine,
and our inmost being fill;
where thou art not, man hath naught,
nothing good in deed or thought,
nothing free from taint of ill.

4 Heal our wounds; our strength renew;
on our dryness pour thy dew;
wash the stains of guilt away;
bend the stubborn heart and will;
melt the frozen, warm the chill;
guide the steps that go astray.

5 On the faithful, who adore
and confess thee, evermore
in thy sevenfold gifts descend:
Give them virtue's sure reward,
give them thy salvation, Lord,
give them joys that never end.

OUR GUIDE TO THE TRUTH

A REFLECTION FOR WHITSUNDAY

Amidst all the fiery tongues of Pentecost and the fanfare that accompanied the descent of the Holy Ghost on the apostles, we tend to forget that this event, so important that it is one of the great Mysteries of the Holy Rosary, was also the birthday of the Catholic Church. Until this fiftieth day after the Resurrection of our Lord, the Church had been promised to St. Peter, but did not yet actually exist.  When our Lord ascended into heaven, he left the apostles in a state of anxiety. Fortunately, they did as they were commanded, remaining in Jerusalem, waiting and praying for the promised Comforter who would guide them in the Spirit of Truth.

On this Whitsunday, almost two thousand years ago, the Blessed Mother was present for the rebirth of her Son in the Upper Room in Jerusalem.  This time, God came to dwell amongst us, not in the form of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, with a physical Body, but as the Third Person of that Trinity, to establish the Mystical Body of Christ.

Throughout the ages, men have rebelled against this Body, leaving it to follow the various heresies and schisms that the Devil has inspired to try and destroy her unity.  Whether they have followed Luther and his Protestants, Karl Marx and his Socialists, or John XXIII and his Modernists, history has been one long rebellion against the Lord and his anointed.  Today, our plight is all the more confusing as in order to follow Christ and his Church, we have been forced to turn our back on those who pretend to lead it.  We do so in good conscience, however, because to follow the Church of Vatican II would be to contradict and therefore reject what the Church has taught since that first Pentecost, guided by the Spirit of Truth.

That God has chosen so few of us to keep the faith should not puff us up with pride, but reduce us to tears of humility, as we recognize our own unworthiness to have been chosen in this way.  And we have other tears to shed, yet, for those of our brethren, our children, our family and friends, as they stubborrnly persist in rejecting the Spirit of Truth, some losing the faith altogether, others trying to find it amongst those who have long ago rejected it.

Our role is to preserve the integrity of the faith as best we can, inspiring those around us with the same love for the truth of the Gospels displayed by our Lord’s first disciples at the birth of his Mystical Body on that long-ago Whitsun morning.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

A SERMON FOR WHITSUNDAY

When our Lord ascended into heaven, his apostles were left speechless and gaping up to the clouds where he had disappeared. What were they going to do now?  As men do, when a crisis befalls them, they sought a stable refuge so they could sort out their confusion.  They returned to the nearby city of Jerusalem, to the place where our Lord had ordained them as priests on Maundy Thursday, where he had instituted the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and to which they had fled in fear on Good Friday.  Here in Jerusalem they waited, obeying the last instructions of their Master, hoping that his promise of a Comforter to come would soon be fulfilled.

Nine days later came the Jewish feast of Pentecost, the anniversary of which we celebrate today.  We know very well the enormity of what happened on that memorable day, with the coming of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, and the birth of the Church.  And it was fitting that our Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church should find its beginnings in the Holy City of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem was the ancient capital of the Jewish state of Judea.  Its status as the capital city of the chosen people derived from the holy mountain on which the city was built, Mount Zion.  Here, the temple of Solomon was constructed, and here, the great sacrifices of the Jewish people were made to their one true God, according to the laws given to Moses. These sacrifices were, of course, the precursors of the greatest sacrifice of them all, that of the only-begotten Son of God.  It is noteworthy that his Passion took place within the walls of Jerusalem, whereas his actual death was outside the city walls on Mount Calvary.  This transition from the city itself to the hills around Jerusalem was the Via Dolorosa, that sorrowful path taken by our Lord as he dragged his cross from Mount Zion to Mount Calvary, from inside the holy city of the Jews to a hill outside that city.  

It was a path that clearly shows the transition from the Old Testament to the New, as our Lord walked away from the old Temple, carrying the instrument of our Redemption, the cross, to a new Temple, where a new sacrifice would be fulfilled on the spot known as Golgotha in Hebrew, or Calvary in Latin.  In English, it is called the Place of the Skull, the burial spot of the skull of Adam. Here, the Precious Blood of our Saviour would seep down from the cross to wash the skull of Adam and cleanse him and all his children, Jew and Gentile, from their sins.

As the Master showed the way from the Old to the New Covenant, so the disciples were to follow in his footsteps.  Once they received the Holy Ghost on that first Pentecost Sunday, they left the Holy City of Jerusalem, dispersing to the four corners of the known world, spreading the Gospel and converting people to the Catholic Faith.  They had a strong message, one given them by the Saviour himself, that no one could possibly come to the Father except by him.  That outside the Church that he had founded for us, there could be no salvation. 

And eventually, the chief of the twelve Apostles came to Rome.  He became the bishop of that city, making it the new capital of the chosen people. Rome, built not on one hill like Jerusalem’s Mount Zion, but built on seven hills, representing the seven sacraments which are the foundation of our faith and worship.  In Rome, he was joined by St. Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, and on June 29, in the year of our Lord 67, they were both put to death, St. Peter by crucifixion and St. Paul by the sword.

Their martyrdom in Rome took place in the year 67, the year after the Jews back in Jerusalem had rebelled against their Roman occupiers.  Think of this uprising as the last desperate attempt by the Jews to preserve their now broken covenant with God.  They had not accepted their Messiah when he lived amongst them, teaching, healing and performing miracles.  And now they would suffer the consequences of this rejection, as their rebellion of Jerusalem against Rome, Old Testament against New, was met by a disaster unparalleled in the entire history of the Jewish nation.  To quell the rebellion, Emperor Nero dispatched a great army under the command of General Vespasian.  In the year 70 A.D. the city of Jerusalem, along with its temple, were completely destroyed, and the Jews were dispersed in what became known as the Great Diaspora, losing forever their tribal identity and priesthood in the process.

And so Jerusalem was destroyed about the same time that the new Holy City of Rome was coming into its new greatness as the capital of the Catholic Church.  The curse, which the Jews called down upon themselves and their children when they rejected their Messiah, became a blessing unto the new Christians.  The Jews blasphemed that Christ’s Blood should be upon them and upon their children—and thus it was.  But meanwhile, the curse of Jerusalem was the blessing of Rome, as the Blood of Christ and the blood of the early Roman Martyrs were the source of such blessings on the Church that it would rise to be the powerful source of all truth and grace.

The history of man continued from that point on for many hundreds of years, with the apparent permanence of this status quo. The Jews were dispersed all over the world—poor, wandering Jews, who would be downtrodden and mistreated by their host nations, seemingly forever; and the Christians, blessed with the seven sacraments and salvation purchased by God himself.  It was a status quo which would meet with an upheaval in the twentieth century, however, when after two of the worst persecutions of the Jews ever to take place, the pogroms of Soviet Russia and the Nazi holocaust, the Jews finally did the unthinkable and returned to what they regarded as their rightful God-given land of Palestine.  In 1948, they founded the Jewish state of Israel.  They were still blinded of course by their persistent rejection of Christ and their allegiance to a covenant with God that had long ago been torn apart like the veil in their temple.

Israel was founded on May 14, 1948 and the Jews returned to Zion.  Exactly two weeks later, on May 28, 1948, Pope Pius XII appointed Fr. Annibale Bugnini as Secretary to the Commission for Liturgical Reform.  This may not seem like a particularly important event, but it was in fact absolutely catastrophic for the future of the Church.  In his new role, Bugnini immediately set about attacking the authority of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, and within two years he had begun his work of destroying the entire liturgy of the Catholic Church. He began by abolishing most of the Church’s most ancient ceremonies of Holy Week, including the Mass of the Presanctified on Good Friday.  And this was just the start.  His intention all along was to gradually whittle away at the unchanging character of the Roman Mass until he had completely destroyed it.  And sadly, it met with little resistance.  Even with the benefit of hindsight, several supposedly traditional groups embrace his early work of destruction, and thus participate in his conspiracy against the sacred liturgy of the Church.  We must not forget, however, that his intention all along was the complete destruction of the Mass, which is founded upon the Blood of the New and Everlasting Covenant between God and man.  His satanic ambition was no less than the nullification of the New Testament.

By 1967 Bugnini’s work was just about done. In June of that year, there took place, again not by coincidence, the Six-Day War in the Middle East, during which Israel captured part of the city of Jerusalem, laying claim again to that city as their capital.  By October of that year Bugnini presented his complete draft revision of the new Mass to the bishops for approval.  Again, the fate of the two holy cities of Rome and Jerusalem found themselves mysteriously intertwined.  The Devil continued his work of destruction against the new testament between God and man, while at the same time fulfilling the ambitions of those who persist in holding to the old testament.

In this week before Pentecost, the United States was the first country to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. What new attack should we expect on the eternal city of Rome as a result?  Perhaps the canonization of the new Mass in the form of the canonization of the man who foisted it upon us, Paul VI?  The pattern is there for all to see, and every day we take a step closer to the final battle.

And what is our role in all this?  Simply to do what the Church, the trueChurch of Christ, wants us to do.  That is to reject every attack on the Church’s sacred liturgy, especially the work of Annibale Bugnini, and instead to preserve the traditional Sacraments.  These are our seven pillars on which our faith is founded, the seven “hills” of Rome. The Mass especially, in which Christ’s Blood once again and in its daily celebration, provides the source of all the graces we receive from God.  Let’s be quite clear: we can never dare to call ourselves truly Catholic unless we are firmly dedicated to the continuation and restoration of the authenticliturgy of tradition.  How can we think of ourselves as Catholic if we accept to worship according to the rites devised by the enemies of the Church? 

The battle we fight is on a higher plane than we perhaps realize.  When we consider the history of Rome and Jerusalem, we see the hand of God and get a small glimpse of his serene intervention in the affairs of man.  Today especially, this day on which we celebrate the birthday of our Church, this Pentecost, let us pray that God will again send to us his Spirit, and that he will renew the face of the earth. That he will in fact renew the New and Everlasting Covenant, and restore true faith and worship to the eternal city of Rome and to the world.