Sermon, Sunday Within Octave of the Ascension, May 20, 2012

Sunday Within the Octave of the Ascension, May 20, 2012

(John 15: 26, 27 & 16: 4)

            How could we be justified in faith if our salvation was rooted and founded only in things we can see with our eyes? It was in answer to this question that Jesus told St. Thomas, “Because thou hast seen me, Thomas, thou hast believed: blessed are they who have not seen and have believed.” (John 20: 29) When Jesus had accomplished all that related to the preaching of the Gospel and to the mysteries of the New Testament He was raised up to heaven in the presence of His disciples. We celebrated that Feast day this past Thursday. So what had been visible in Christ bodily is now veiled in mystery. The purpose of this was so we may have a stronger and a more perfect faith. What was once seen and believed in Christ when He was here bodily, was now succeeded by revealed truth, and this truth, being taught by the authority of Christ’s Church, was believed and followed by the faithful. “Blessed are they who have not seen and have believed.”

     The Apostles were greatly uplifted by our Lord’s Ascension so that whatever made them afraid in the past, now caused them to turn the gaze of their souls upwards towards the Divinity of Jesus Christ. It was then that the Son of Man, the Son of God, became known in a more perfect and holy manner. When He returned to His Father bodily he began to be more present to us in His Divinity as time went by and His humanity became more remote from us.

     It was because of this that our Lord said to Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection when she drew near to touch Him: “Do not touch me, for I am not yet ascended to my Father.” (John 20: 17) It was as if He said to her: “I do not want you to approach me in a bodily manner, nor that you should know me by the feel of My Flesh. I would rather you wait for what is higher and greater, which I am preparing for you. When I have ascended to my Father then you shall touch me more perfectly and more truly, for you shall know what you do not touch and you shall believe what you do not see.”

     In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus promises to send the Paraclete,  the Holy Ghost, the third person of the Blessed Trinity.  The Holy Ghost removes fear from our hearts, and changes hatred into love in the hearts of our enemies. He is also called the Consoler because He delivers us from all confusion of soul and bestows upon us incredible joy.  The martyrs experienced this joy even while being tortured and killed by the enemies of Christ and His Church.

     Our Lord warns the Apostles of the suffering they will endure, that they will be put out of the synagogues and that “the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you, will think that he doth a service to God.” This is an astounding statement. Those Jews and Romans who kill Christ’s followers will think they do a service to God. They have a zeal for God, but not according to the New and Everlasting Covenant established by Jesus. The Messiah was the inheritance of the Jews. When they refused to accept Him, they forfeited that inheritance. They were the Chosen People as we learn in the Old Testament books of the Bible, but today, the Chosen People are all those who accept Jesus Christ and all He taught. Those who accept Christ and all that He taught will find themselves in what is called today the Traditional Catholic Church.

     It is worthwhile to expand on that a little.  It is popular today to believe that everyone worships the same God, since there is only one God, and that however you worship Him is okay.  This is called religious indifferentism, and it says that all religions are equally worthy and profitable to man, and equally pleasing to God. This error is widely held. 

     What do we really say when we say that all religions are equally good? We ignore reason, because we say that if two religions are opposed in their beliefs, then both are correct.  It’s insulting to God to suggest that truth and error do not matter to God, who is Truth Itself. The great religions of the world, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the religions of India and the Orient are in direct contradiction with each other. To suggest they are all equal before God is to say that God has no love of Truth. Defenders of Indifferentism may say that all religions agree on some basic things. However, if they do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood they shall not have life in them. (John 6: 53) It is also wrong to suggest that all Christian religions are equal, but I won’t go into that today other than to say that Jesus Christ, the promised Messiah and the Son of God, established one Church, His Church, and imbued it with authority and its priests with certain powers, among them the power to forgive sins. If the Catholic Church, which is the Church Jesus established, binds people to believe everything it teaches then whoever does not believe everything it teaches does not belong to the Christ’s Church. If post-Vatican II churchmen say differently, they are not preaching the one true Faith.

     This does not mean that all non-Catholics are condemned to hell. As Catholics we are not permitted to judge others, as Jesus is quoted in Matthew 7:1, “Judge not, that ye not be judged.” Our Lord will judge all people. It is our job to act charitably toward others, and that means all others in the world, even if they hate us and persecute us. That’s not always easy to do.

     Let us trust in the mercy of God that we shall be given a zeal for our faith through our obedient hearing of the Word of God in the sermons of our priests, and from this obtain an eager desire to put charity into practice so we may give a good account of ourselves before the Judgment Seat of Christ and receive the reward of salvation. +++

We Celebrate the Traditional Tridentine Latin Mass

5th Sunday after Easter, May 13, 2012

Fifth Sunday after Easter, May 13, 2012

(John 16: 23:30)

“Amen, amen, I say to you: if you ask the Father anything in my name, he will give it to you.” St. Basil says there are two methods of prayer. The first, and highest, is to give praise to God. The second, and lower, is the prayer of petition, where we ask God for what we want. Basil urges us to leave everything behind and begin with the praise and glory of Him Who made all things.

St. Basil’s prayer: O, Lord, patient and forbearing, I praise Thee because Thou hast spared me who offend Thee daily, giving to all of us a season for repentance; and because of this Thou art silent and patient with us, O Lord, that we may offer glory and praise to Thee Who has the care for the salvation of all of us. You help us, sometimes by fear, sometimes by counsel, sometimes through the prophets, and last of all through the coming of Thy Anointed One: “For thou has made us, and not we ourselves.” (Psalm 99: 3)

Christ’s words again: “Amen, amen, I say to you: if you ask the Father anything in my name, he will give it to you.” That sounds like a wide open invitation, but it isn’t. St. Augustine cautions us about the meaning of this invitation.  Note that Jesus says “ask anything in my name.” We cannot ask for anything in His name that works against our salvation. I think this is why St. Francis of Assisi prayed for whatever he needed for his salvation, and that's a good short prayer for us every morning. Augustine also wrote regarding this, that we have asked God for things that are nothing when compared to what we should have asked for. So Christ says, “Hitherto you have not asked anything in my name.” And following this, “Ask, and you shall receive, that your joy may be full.” And that is what St. Augustine says we should ask for in Christ’s name, that our joy may be full. If our joy is full it means we have overcome the world as Christ has, and we are in heaven and do not have to ask for anything else.

It is difficult for us to give up our sense of control over people and events, but we can and should do just that. This can't be done in one day, but we can practice letting go all through our lives, and we can practice trusting in God in small steps. It’s like practicing the attributes of sainthood, prayer and good works. That will bring us to heaven. We can practice letting go of control by understanding that the things we ask for that are necessary for salvation will be given to us in God's good time, not in our time. We cannot pray: “God give me patience, and give it to me right now!” Instead, we practice trusting in the promise of our Lord that whatever we do need will be given to us in God's time.

St. Paul did not receive what he prayed for, although he did receive what he needed for salvation. In 2 Cor. 12: 8, 9 Paul writes, “Lest the greatness of the revelations should exalt me, there was given me a sting of my flesh, an angel of Satan, to buffet me.” Three times Paul asked to be relieved of temptation, but he was told by the Lord, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for power is made perfect in infirmity.” And so Paul tells us, “Gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me.” So along with St. Paul, we also can expect to be tempted to commit sin all through our lives, but also along with Paul, we can trust that God's grace will be sufficient to keep us from sinning.

Another example from today's Gospel reading is that we may pray in Christ's name for the conversion of someone in particular, but what if they do not convert and eventually die outside the true faith. What then of our Lord's promise: “If you ask the Father anything in my name, he will give it to you”? Note that Jesus says, “He will give it to you.” If the Father does not give the grace of conversion to those you are praying for, He will give to you the reward of your charitable act of praying for them. Also, we simply do not know if that person dies unrepentant, and we do not know the extent of God’s mercy toward anyone.

When Jesus said, “Amen, amen, I say to you: if you ask the Father anything in my name, he will give it to you,” we are hearing a promise of our salvation. It is not to give us the power to determine who will be given grace and who will not. We’re not given the gift of faith to exalt us, to make us important as St. Paul said, “Lest the greatness of the revelation should exalt me.” We are given faith to help us find our way to God's Kingdom. The path to His Kingdom is found through practice of the virtues: Faith, Hope, Charity, Prudence, Justice, Temperance, Fortitude and all those character traits that flow from these. When we see these traits in someone, we call that person “good.”

In the opposite direction: the path to the kingdom of Satan is found through practice of the vices, which are the opposite of the virtues. First listed formally by Pope Gregory the Great and later enumerated by Thomas Aquinas, they are: vainglory (pride), avarice (greed), gluttony, lust, sloth, envy, anger. When we see a person living a life of vice, we call that person “bad”, and we pray for him.

No one in life has complete joy because the joys of this life are always mixed with sadness. So when Jesus says, “Ask, that your joy may be full,” He is talking about heaven where there will be no more tears and where our joy will be full. To ask for this kind of joy does not mean only begging through our prayers to receive it, but also living a worthy life so we can grab hold of it when we die. It won’t work to seek heaven by praying well, but continuing to lead a wicked life filled with sin. We can pity those who hurry to church in order to receive something, and give no thought either to the Word of God or to their own sins. They do not sorrow at their sins, nor do they fear final judgment, but smiling and shaking hands all around they turn God’s House into a place of endless gossip ignoring the words of King David: “In his temple all shall speak his glory.” (Psalm 28: 9, KJV 29:9) +++

We Celebrate the Traditional Tridentine Latin Mass

4th Sunday after Easter, May 6, 2012

Fourth Sunday after Easter, May 6, 2012

Epistle – 1 James 1: 17-21

Gospel - John 16: 5-14

Christ promised He would be with us always, even to the end of the world. (Matthew 28: 20) So why did He go back to His Father in Heaven? As He told the Apostles, it was necessary that he go, “For if I go not, the Paraclete [the Holy Ghost] will not come; but if I go, I will send him to you.”

It was as if Jesus said: if I do not withdraw My Body from your eyes, I cannot through my consoling Spirit lead you to your spiritual vision, that is, to faith. So the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, brings us this blessing: that Jesus, being removed from our eyes, is now revealed to our purified inward vision, our faith, in the form of God in which Jesus remains equal to the Father. What does that mean in plain talk?  

If Jesus had stayed on earth, people, being people, would naturally tend to worship Jesus the Man, rather than Jesus, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. In India they tell a story of an angel who appeared to Buddha and said, “Tell me how many years you wish on Earth, and they will be granted to you.” And Buddha without hesitation said, “Eighty years.” His followers later asked him, “Why only 80 years when you could have had a thousand?” And Buddha told them, “Because if I live longer people will be interested in how I was able to live so long and would not pay attention to  what I taught.” So let us remember that it is God we worship, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Let us remember that the Word of God,  Jesus, taught us by His words and by His example how to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Jesus continues in today’s Gospel, “because I have spoken these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart.” Now, some consider that a pious life is filled with sorrow and melancholy, but nothing could be further from the truth. Pious Christians enjoy interior joys and consolations, even in bad times. This joy a peace of mind that has its foundation in a good conscience, in the grace of the Holy Ghost, and in the expectation of eternal joy in heaven. These joys and consolations are so great that these Christians would not exchange them for all the joys and happiness in the world.

Compare all the pleasures and joys of men since the beginning of the world with the happiness of the saints in Heaven. All of earth’s pleasures are more insignificant than a grain of sand when compared to the whole earth. St. Augustine says: "This glory, this beauty, this majesty, which will be our [happiness], surpasses our hope and love, our wishes and desires. This [happiness] may be acquired, but it cannot be sufficiently appreciated: it can be merited, but not described."

To help us reach that heavenly joy, Jesus has given us a gift. St. James the Apostle reminds us in the Epistle today that “Every best gift, and every perfect gift is from above: coming down from the Father . . .”  This gift from Above is the seven Sacraments which give us grace, that supernatural gift which allows us to gain heaven. The Epistle reading ends by saying, “with meekness receive the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.” It is because Jesus left us physically and sent the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, that we are able to hear the Word and engraft it into our hearts and souls.  If we obey His wishes we come to understand how Jesus combined two separate operations into one. On one side is the humble submission of man, and on the other side the great generosity of God in His gift of grace through the Sacraments.

The seven Sacraments agree with (Wisdom 9: 1) where we are told that God has built a house and it rests on seven pillars. God also gave us a type and a foretaste of Christ’s Church in the tabernacle of Moses – a magnificent candlestick with seven lamps to provide light (Exodus 25: 37). Also, in John’s vision of heaven in Apocalypse 1: 12, 16 [KJV Revelation] he sees God surrounded by seven candlesticks and holding seven stars.

Satan mimics God with the seven deadly sins, which he uses to make us his slaves. Our Lord tells us, too, that when an unclean spirit leaves a man he returns with seven spirits more wicked than himself (Luke 11: 24-26). We also read that Jesus drove seven devils out of Mary Magdalen (Mark 16: 9). At the end of time, Christ’s arrival will be announced by seven trumpets (Apocalypse 8: 2), and that seven angels will empty seven vials upon the earth. These vials contain the wrath of God (Apocalypse 16: 1).

Those of us who want to be with Christ forever love these merciful Sacraments. Everything we and society need has been provided for in these seven. Christ calls us from death to life by Baptism and Penance (Confession). He strengthens us in the supernatural life by Confirmation, the Eucharist and Extreme Unction. He secures to His church both priests and people by Holy Orders and Matrimony. The Churches of the East, even though they broke from Catholic unity centuries ago, have retained the seven. But Protestantism proved itself to be a pretended reformation by breaking the sacred seven Sacraments, and separated itself from the spirit of the Christian religion. The doctrine of the Sacraments cannot be denied without denying the true faith. If we want to be a member of His Church we must receive this doctrine as coming from Him who has a right to insist on our humble submission to His every word.

To those who believe this, the Sacraments appear in all their divine beauty and power: we understand because we believe. This belief is the fulfillment of the text from Isaias: “Unless ye believe, ye shall not understand.” (Isaias 7: 9).     +++

 “How lovely are Your tabernacles, O Lord of hosts that my soul longs and faints for the courts of the Lord."

(Psalm 83: 2, 3)

           

We Celebrate the Traditional Tridentine Latin Mass

3rd Sunday after Easter, April 29, 2012

Third Sunday after Easter, April 29, 2012

(Jn. 16: 16-22)

St. Joseph the Worker, May 1, 2012

After the Last Supper, where He established the Mass we celebrate today, Christ gave a long discourse to His Apostles, which is in John’s Gospel. Today’s reading is a part of that discourse. Jesus says, “A little while, and now you shall not see me; and again a little while, and you shall see me, because I go to the Father.” St. Augustine writes that Jesus was telling His Apostles that in a little while they would not see Him because he goes to His Father, and again a little while they will see Him. He went to His Father after He died, then they saw him again for 40 days, then He went back to His Father, and we are now in that “little while,” which has lasted 2,000 years and will end when Jesus comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead.

The Apostles didn’t understand what He was saying, so He explained to them further that they will “lament and weep, but the world shall rejoice; and you shall be made sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy . . . I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice; and your joy no man shall take from you.” This great promise was preserved in writing by Holy Mother Church in the Gospel and preserved and retold to the faithful through the centuries in the Bible and in other publications and in sermons at Mass.

We are wanderers from our true home. We are sorrowful because we cannot see God Whom we love, and it is through much hard work and sorrow that we reach our crown in heaven.  Psalm 125:  5 says it well: “They that sow in tears, shall reap in joy.”

Our Lord also told His Disciples in this discourse that the world will rejoice. Now, whatever joy the worldly find in their lives is the only joy they will know because they have no hope for the joys of heaven. Jesus compares what the Apostles will experience to a woman in labor, that when she brings forth the child her joy is so great that she no longer remembers the pain. St. Paul reiterated this in his letter to the Romans, “For the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come.”

Today’s reading ends with our Lord telling the Apostles: “So also you now indeed have sorrow; but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice; and your joy no man shall take from you.” The Disciples had to mourn Christ who was murdered and then buried, but after His Resurrection they “were glad when they saw the Lord,” and no one ever took this joy from them. In the days that followed our Lord’s Ascension into Heaven, the Disciples suffered persecution and torment for Christ’s Name, but they suffered it gladly. They saw the people Christ had raised from the dead, they saw the resurrected Christ and saw Him ascend into Heaven. Because they saw these things they were inflamed with the hope of resurrection and the hope of seeing Him again, just as He promised. Later on, when the priests of the Temple scourged them, they continued preaching, “rejoicing that they were accounted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Christ.” (Acts 5: 41)

If we were reduced to sleeping in alleys and begging for food and suddenly a rich man found us and adopted us, we would soon forget our former desperate situation. This is what Baptism is like. The Rich Man who found us is the King of Angels, and the joyful life He offers us is beyond our ability to imagine. On earth, a rich man can only raise us from beggar to prince, but, through Baptism, the King of Angels raises us from earth to heaven.

We are living now in that time when we cannot see Him, just as He told His Disciples. But if we practice living a virtuous life, that is, if we constantly try to strengthen within ourselves the virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity, and of Prudence, Justice, Temperance and Fortitude, we can be sure that the world will harass us and persecute us. If we persevere, we will receive the promised reward. Christ’s Disciples saw with their own eyes the Resurrected Christ and saw Him ascend into Heaven to His Father. We know what they saw is true because they continued to tell about it and write about it even in the face of persecution and death.

We can also persevere, we can stick to it, and all our lives we can take heart in the words of Christ at John 16: 33: “In this world you shall have distress: but have confidence, I have overcome the world.”

This Sunday used to be the Feast of the Solemnity of St. Joseph. Devotion to St. Joseph was not part of the early Church. It began first in the East and in the 15^th Century the Latin Church adopted it making this devotion worldwide. Nowadays we celebrate the Feast of St. Joseph on March 19^th, and again, in two days, on May 1^st, we will celebrate the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker.

Pharaoh gave his ring to Joseph, the son of Jacob, and placed him in charge of everything in his house and his kingdom. In heaven, Joseph, the foster father of Jesus, has more influence with God than Jacob’s son had with Pharaoh. Pharaoh told his people during the famine to “Go to Joseph!” (Genesis 41: 55) We should go to Joseph, spouse of Mary, with our petitions. We can be confident that Jesus will listen to his prayers on our behalf because He, Who is God, listened to Joseph when He was a child living among us.

The Book of Tobias (Tobit) [KJV: Missing]

            This Book contains excellent examples of great piety, extraordinary patience, and of a perfect resignation to the Will of God. God heard Tobias’s humble prayer and sent Archangel Raphael, appearing before them as a man, to relieve him. St. Raphael found a wife for Tobias’s son, a woman who had been plagued by a murderous devil, and he cured Tobias’s blindness. Tobias and his son wanted to reward their new friend. St. Raphael’s response was:

            “’Bless ye the God of heaven, give glory to him in the sight of all that live, because he hath shewn his mercy to you. . . . Prayer is good with fasting and alms more than to lay up treasures of gold; For alms delivereth from death, and the same is that which purgeth away sins, and maketh to find mercy and life everlasting. . . . When thou didst pray with tears, and dids’t bury the dead, and didst leave thy dinner and hide the dead by day in thy house, and bury them by night, I offered thy prayer to the Lord. And because thou wast acceptable to God, it was necessary that temptation should prove thee. And now the Lord hath sent me to heal thee, and to deliver Sara thy son’s wife from the devil. For I am the angel Raphael, one of  the seven, who stand before the Lord. . . Peace be to you, fear not. . . It is time therefore that I return to him that sent me: but bless ye God, and publish all his wonderful works.’ And when he had said these things, he was taken from their sight, and they could see him no more.” (Tobias 12: 6-21) +++

We Celebrate the Traditional Tridentine Latin Mass