9th Sunday after Pentecost – July 29, 2012

(Epistle 1 Corinthians 10: 6-13; Gospel Luke 19: 41-47)

          In his letter to the Roman’s St. Paul expresses his love and concern for his fellow Jews. “That I have a great sadness, and continual sorrow in my heart.” He loved them so much that he says, “I wished myself to be an anathema from Christ for my brethren, who are my kinsmen according to the flesh.” (Romans 9: 2, 3) Paul’s kinsmen were the adopted children of God and enjoyed the glory of the Covenant and the Law and the promises and the worship of God as He gave it to them. But many of them turned Scriptures into a snare for their own destruction, as was foretold in Isaias 6; they will “hear, and understand not: and see the vision and understand it not.”

          “Gentiles!” Dom Guéranger wrote, “you that have been substituted for those broken branches (the Chosen people), and are grafted on the stem of the covenant (Romans 11: 17), learn a lesson from their fall. . . If you are faithful to the call of His grace, He will be faithful to you, and preserve you from temptations which you could not resist.” (Guéranger, The Liturgical Year) We are meant for a glorious eternity in resurrected bodies that are not subject to illness or death. But do not be complacent. Remember that God broke off the disobedient Jews, the branches of the original Covenant. The faithful Jews, who knew and worshipped the Messiah, remained, and God grafted the Gentiles on through the New Covenant established by His Son.

          Today’s Epistle is a list of the sins and chastisements of many Jews, and which led finally to their demand for the crucifixion of the God-Man. Jesus prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem in today’s Gospel. Abbot Guéranger writes that “the ruin of the Jews is a prophetic image of the destruction of the world, which will have rejected the Church.” Can we not see the rejection of the Church today? God takes second, third, fourth, fifth, or no place in the lives of many so-called Christians. Great is the number who call themselves Christians, but few is the number who follow Christ and His One True Church. We see the rise of Islam to oppose the religion of the Lamb of God. We see the acceptance of all forms of sexual perversion. We see legal rights of beasts placed above the rights of people, and many more evils.

          We can talk about politics, but we must also talk about repentance. Do you want to save our country? Then save yourself. “Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord. . . For they that work iniquity, have not walked in his ways. Thou hast commanded thy commandments to be kept most diligently. O! that my ways may be directed to keep thy justifications. Then shall I not be confounded, when I shall look into all thy commandments. I will praise thee with uprightness of heart, when I shall have learned the judgments of thy justice.” (Psalm 118: 1, 3-7) This is sound advice for a loyal Christian and for a good citizen.

         

We already know something about the judgments of God’s justice. When Moses led the Jews out of Egypt only a handful lived to enter the promised land. “Forty years long was I offended with that generation, and I said: These always err in heart. And these men have not known my ways: so I swore in my wrath that they shall not enter into my rest.” (Psalm 94: 10, 11) This can happen to us, too, that we will not enter into God’s rest, which we call heaven.

         

           Last week I said we all have the same basic vocation: to live, to die, to be judged. But while we live our purpose is to know, to love and to serve God; then after we die, to be with Him forever in heaven. If we live a sinful life, a life of crime, we can expect God’s justice. So if we want to save our country, each and every citizen must save himself or herself from sin. When all or most are obedient to God’s Law and to His Church, the country will do quite well.

          In today’s Gospel Jesus wept over Jerusalem and the people He loved. I have taken the following from St. Augustine’s Prayer for Tears: “ O Lord Christ, Word of the Father, Who came into this world to save sinners, I beseech Thee, by the innermost depths of Thy mercy, put in order my manner of life, take from me what is harmful to me, and what displeases Thee. Grant me what Thou knowest is pleasing to Thee, and profitable to me. Who but Thou alone can make clean what was conceived of unclean seed? Thou art the Omnipotent God, Infinite Mercy, Who makes sinners just and gives life to the dead; Who changes sinners, and they are sinners no more.” This then is the politics of the hour – to confess our sins, to do penance and to amend our lives so that we sin no more. If I do that I change our country for the good. Even if it’s only a tiny change in a nation of 314 million souls, it is a change that makes a difference. +++

         

We Celebrate the Tridentine Latin Mass

8th Sunday after Pentecost – July 22, 2012

8th Sunday after Pentecost – July 22, 2012

(Epistle Romans 8: 12-17)

(Gospel Luke 16: 1-9)

The main idea in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans is that we are unable to produce perfect justice and absolute good without the grace of God. Nowadays many people have a self-centered and pompous idea that the human mind is independent, but we Christians believe that we can only be fully moral and honest in life by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. We know that the Gospel of Christ is the power of God, that it makes unholy people holy and it enriches those souls that search for perfect justice.

            The Jews were proud of the Law of Moses, and rightly so, because the Law gave them greater grace and understanding than the Gentiles had. However, many Jews made their whole virtue consist in the possession of the Law of Moses and thus rejected the Messiah, Who Himself was the final purpose of the Law. St. Paul asks in Romans 9: 30-33 how it is possible that Israel, following the Law of justice, did not find the Messiah in Jesus but many Gentiles, not following the Law of justice did reach Him. Paul answers his own question: Because they did not seek Justice by faith and they tripped on the stumbling-stone that Isaiah prophesied at Isaiah 8: 14 and 28: 16, “Behold, I lay in Sion a stumbling stone and a rock of scandal; and whosoever believeth in him shall not be confounded.”

           

            Today’s Gospel reading is a reminder of our judgment. Dom Guéranger wrote that we all have the same very basic vocation – to live, to die, and to be judged. The Unjust Steward in today’s parable was told to give an account of his stewardship. Whatever we have in life, our spouse, our children, parents, money, houses, cars, our personality traits, all the graces God gives us, it is all given for us to use. We will be asked at our judgment if we have used these things for good or for evil. When St. Augustine reflected on the accounting he would have to give of all the graces given to him said, “How unhappy am I, what will become of me, having received so many graces! I am more afraid on account of these graces than on account of the many sins I committed.” We will be asked about these graces: Where are your good works? Where are your prayers which would have rejoiced my heart? Where are your Confessions and Communions which would have caused Me to dwell in your soul?  Where are your penitential works which would have wiped out the temporal punishment for past sins? Where are the Holy Masses that you should have attended which would have brought you closer to Me? Let’s not appear before Jesus at our judgment with a satchel full of sins. Let’s’ fill our satchels with adoration, prayers and good works and we won’t be so terrified of what is coming.

            There is another lesson in today’s Gospel reading and that is to encourage us in the giving of alms.

As St. John Chrysostom put it: “We are not placed in this life as lords of our own houses, but as guests . . .” We are brought into life whether we wanted to come or not and at a time not of our own choosing. He who is rich in this life is a beggar in eternity. “Therefore, whoever you may be, know that you are but an administrator of things” that belong to God and that we have only “the right of their brief and passing use.”

When we do not administer our wealth in accord with the will of our Master, but abuse it for our own pleasure, we are unjust stewards. Riches possessed by a just man are simply a sum of money.   But riches possessed by an unjust person are a sinful burden of avarice – subject to the risk of loss or theft, a constant source of worry, corrupting their owner with enticements to sin. These riches are full of poverty. Don’t call your wealth riches. For if you call them riches, you will love them: and if you love them, you will perish with them.

St. Gaudentius, who was bishop of Brescia, Italy, from about 387 to around 410, gives the opinion that the Unjust Steward in this parable stands for the devil. In Genesis, the devil is well depicted as a snake, who is “more subtle than any of the beasts of the earth.” (Genesis. 3:1) In the Latin it is: serpens prudentissimus erat, where prudence is not spoken of as a virtue but as craftiness and cunning. In the parable of the Unjust Steward, the steward cheats his Master in order to ingratiate himself with others who might hire him as a steward when he is let go. The Lord praises him – but not for his goodness. He praises him because he prepared his fraud with such cunning, craftiness and subtleness.  By the very phrase “unjust steward” the Lord condemns his wicked prudence. Christ praises him in order to prepare His followers to be prudent, but not venomous; to be wise, but not evil, to use our own cunning and prudence against the Unjust Steward, the devil.

The mammon of iniquity is usually thought of as ill-gotten gains, but there is another interpretation by St. Augustine, that it comprises all the riches of the world however they are obtained.  Consider blessed Job, the undefeated champion of God. Job’s courage was unshakable and he bested every assault of the devil as he came against him with the force of a tidal wave. The more each attempt of Satan appeared irresistible, the higher Job’s patience rose, superior to every temptation. When Job finally lost everything and stood naked on the Earth, he was truly rich because his heart was full towards God.  Life and wealth are passing things, but we are called to eternal life with our Creator. Eternal life with God is wealth that brings lasting and worry-free security.

Who can allow us to enter into everlasting blessings except the Lord?  Yet, at the end of the parable Jesus tells us to make “friends of the mammon of iniquity; that when you shall fail, they may receive you into everlasting blessings.” Understand this parable then that we are to make friends of the poor with our wealth, so that when we die the poor will pray for us and Christ will receive us into His Kingdom. Why make friends of the poor? Because the Lord is poor. Christ tells us in Matthew 25 that, “You gave me to eat, to drink, you clothed me, you visited me when I was sick and in prison – that as long as you did this to the least of my brethren, you did it to me.” That’s how Christ is poor. And to be just stewards, we must give to the poor, who are our fellow stewards in need.

The parable of the Unjust Steward doesn’t stand alone in the Scriptures as unproven, because in Luke 19, we see an example of it in Christ’s life. When Jesus was walking through Jericho, Zacheus, who was chief of the publicans, a tax collector and a wealthy man, climbed a tree to see the Lord. When Jesus spotted him, he said, “Zacheus, make haste and come down; for this day I must abide in thy house.” Standing before Him then, Zacheus said, “‘Behold, Lord, ‘the half of my goods I give to feed the poor.’”  We see Zacheus making friends of the poor by means of his mammon of iniquity.  And lest he should be held wicked on other grounds Zacheus adds: “’And if I have wronged any man of anything, I restore him fourfold.’” And Jesus said to him, “This day is salvation come to this house.” +++

We Celebrate the Tridentine Latin Mass

7th Sunday after Pentecost - July 15, 2012

7th Sunday after Pentecost – July 15, 2012

Epistle Romans 6: 19-23; Gospel Matthew 7: 15-21

In the Epistle reading last week, St. Paul stated in clear language a central fact of Christian life: “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with [Jesus] that the body of sin may be destroyed, and that we may serve sin no longer,” so that we consider ourselves “to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God.”  St. Paul develops that in today’s Epistle.

Our first parents’ original sin carries down to us today. Our bodies, to varying degrees, are always at the call of Satan, who never lets us forget our vices. But death comes at last. Our souls are set free and Satan has no claim on us then. The original sin carried by our bodies is the “old man” St. Paul talks about, and this old man is buried under the waters of Baptism. At the moment of Baptism, Satan lost his possession of us, but throughout our lives he will try to get us back.  St. Paul tells us in Romans 6 that we will win eternal life if we serve justice with as much earnestness as we once served uncleanness and iniquity.

Living a life of sin degrades us, but Justice blesses us with peace of mind at every step we take in doing our duty. Once we are baptized we must keep watch over our inclinations to sin, which comes to life at the slightest encouragement. We are faced with the life-long job of mortification of the spirit and of the senses. Why are we called on to live a life like this? Because that’s the way Christ showed us. Jesus Christ is God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. He humbled Himself to become like one of us and lived among us for 33 years. In Him was the Spirit of God and of man. He mortified His Spirit, His Godhead, to become like us. As a Man He mortified His body even to the point of dying a painful death in order to redeem us from the Original Sin of Adam and Eve.

The Christmas song, Silent Night, says the world lay in sin and error pining. The world was pining, yearning deeply, for the Messiah. As promised, He came and He showed us how to live a life of freedom, freedom from sin and error. This is true freedom and comes from living a life of mortification of our spirit of rebellion against Christ and from mortification of our body. In simple words we restrain, with God’s help, the deadly sins of pride, greed, gluttony, lust, sloth, envy and anger (wrath).  With God’s help we will serve justice with as much earnestness as we once served the seven deadly sins.

Dom Guéranger wrote that there are many souls in hell who have gone through more pain and suffering to win their damnation than the martyrs endured who died for Christ. Even though they served Satan well, many did not enjoy even for a single day the vile rewards he promised them. Justice treats Her followers differently. “She does not degrade, she does not deceive . . . She blesses [those who keep her] with peace of mind at every step they take” in doing their duty. “She leads them safely to the perfection of love.” (Dom Guéranger, 7^th Sunday after Pentecost)  Ecclesiasticus 15: 1-8 tells us that he who possesses justice, shall lay hold of Wisdom: he shall find delights in that divine Wisdom, which surpasses all that earth could give us.

To live an ordered and happy life we begin with faith, then proceed to works of justice. This is how we gain knowledge and wisdom. We do not understand all there is to know about God or about other people, even those we love, but however much we do understand of life, we will always have to labor for justice. This is a tiring life, but a complete life that leads to freedom on earth and joy forever in the Kingdom of our Lord.

 In today’s Gospel, our Lord warns us to “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” Catholics have been spoken of as sheep because throughout history many have willingly gone to their deaths as martyrs rather than to sin against God, like sheep going in for the slaughter.  Jesus is not speaking here of Catholics who believe something in error, like some today who hold that without baptism of water there is no salvation.  Some men will do all in their power to replace the purity of the Word with their own foolish ideas. The wolves, however, are those who mislead the faithful purely for their own gain or in order to destroy the Church.

The Catholic Church has had to put up with these wolves since its beginning. In Acts 20: 29 St. Paul says, “I know that after my departure, ravening wolves will enter in among you, not sparing the flock.” These false prophets apparently followed St. Paul wherever he went, and they have been an irritant to the Church and the True Faith right up until today. But it is in the battlefield of error that the Church brings out the armor of God. Our combat against evil is not without dangers. Our enemy, Satan, has many tricks and is a liar from the beginning.  He can stir up in our soul many little weaknesses, weaknesses which favor error. This may not result in extinguishing our faith completely, but it can dim the bright life of faith in our lives. However, we can triumph over lying. We can be faithful to the teachings of Christ and His Church and in doing so we become ourselves a light to the world.

Prudence is our guide in our battles against evil. If we practice prudence it becomes a habit of the mind which allows us to easily tell the difference between false teachers and the faithful interpreters of our Holy Faith. We study the rules of our Faith, then Prudence applies our Faith to the circumstances we find ourselves in at any time. Prudence is itself a virtue, but its function is to lead us to the right practice of the other virtues. We can understand this when we realize that without prudence the virtue of bravery will become foolhardiness, the virtue of mercy will become weakness and the virtue of temperance will become fanaticism. Prudence allows us to live a truly virtuous life.  

How do we know whether a virtue we practice is real and will lead us to heaven? I must be sincere; do it out of love for God. The virtue must be perfect, that is, we must practice all the virtues not just the ones we are comfortable with. It must be free from selfishness. Don’t practice virtue in order to look good in the eyes of men. Lastly, our virtues must be steadfast, that is, we must continue to live a virtuous life, all our lives and not just for a certain period of time. This is because the devil will continue to tempt us and try to win us back right up to our last breath. Apocalypse (Revelations) 2: 1-5 addresses the perfection and perseverance of virtue. Here God is commending the Bishop of the Church at Ephesus for his many good qualities, but then goes on to tell him, “But I have somewhat against you, because you have left your first charity. Be mindful therefore from whence you are fallen: and do penance and do the first works. Or else I come to you and will move your candlestick out of its place, unless you do penance.”  If God threatened the good bishop of Ephesus, shouldn’t we be concerned about our own souls?  

Many of us do not persevere. We go to confession and the next day commit the same sins we just confessed. We love God with all our strength for a short length of time, and then we forsake Him. Why? Look to Satan. Satan is extremely angry at seeing one of his sinners now in a state of grace, after confessing his sins and doing penance. We have a common expression that someone is “madder than hell.” Well, that someone is Satan, and he’ll do everything he can to get you back under his power where he hopes to keep you. +++

We Celebrate the Tridentine Latin Mass

Sermon 6th Sundat After Pentecost 7/8/12

6th Sunday after Pentecost – July 8, 2012

(Gospel Mark. 8: 1-9)

(Epistle Romans 6: 3-11)

The Introit prayer in today’s Mass is interesting. “The Lord is the strength of his people, and the protector of the salvation of His Christ: save, O Lord, thy people, and bless thine inheritance, and govern them forever.” The first half teaches us what it is that gives us our courage. It is our faith: “The Lord is the strength of His people.” And we find a conviction of our own nothingness when we pray, “The Lord is the protector of the salvation of His Christ . . . govern them forever.” We are nothing without His protection.  With our faith we understand, as Abbot Guéranger wrote,  that “All the truth, all the goodness, all the beauty of created things, are incapable of satisfying any single soul; it must have God. So long as man does not understand this, everything good or true that his senses and his reason can provide him with . . . is . . . nothing more than a distraction from the one object that can make him the happy being he was created to be.” The Lord patiently waits for all our human schemes to fail, then He will help us if we permit Him to help.

The people in today’s Gospel were not afraid to abide with Christ in the desert and to put up with the lack of food and drink. This deprivation or fasting they put upon themselves is so important for souls who aim for the perfection of Christian living.  If we allow Him, Jesus will create that desert in our hearts so that, while we are in the world, we are not of the world. When the Jews were led forth from Egypt by Moses, they said: “The Lord God of the Hebrews has called us; we will go three days' journey into the wilderness, to sacrifice unto the Lord our God.” (Exodus 3:18) Today we read the Disciples and thousands of believers retired to the desert. There they were fed a miraculous bread. Let us develop the habit of avoiding the frivolities of earth and retire into the interior desert of our hearts and souls. We will receive this miraculous Bread today, the Body of Jesus Christ, and it is in this Bread that we will find Christ most liberal with His graces.

In his Epistle today, St. Paul speaks of how Baptism changes our lives through the forgiveness of sins, “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with [Jesus] that the body of sin may be destroyed, and that we may serve sin no longer,” so that we also reckon ourselves “to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God.”

Three thousand years ago King David was established for us as a type of confession and repentance and of a person being “dead to sin, but alive to God.” After his sin with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah, David was confronted with these sins by the Prophet Nathan.  Despite his high position, despite his wealth and power, David did not resent Nathan for chastising him, rather, he made an immediate and complete confession of his sins and wept with sorrow for what he did. How far the mighty fall we say. But it is not the might and wealth that makes great men fall, but pride that makes them fall so far. King David rejected that pride and made a humble and complete confession and repentance of his sins. What we admire today of David is not his wealth and power but rather his humility of heart and love of God. That has survived these past three thousand years, and will continue to survive into the future. David’s wealth and power died with him as it does with all of us.

Today’s Gospel reading tells us of the miraculous multiplication of seven loaves and a few fish. A similar miracle occurred some time previous to this as reported by St. Matthew (Mt. 14: 13-21) and involved five loaves of bread and two fish. Our Lord didn’t always feed people through miracles. If He had, people would have followed Him for the sake of the food and not for what He had to say. We know He saw that these people were in danger, because He said, “If I shall send them away fasting to their home, they will faint in the way; for some of them came from afar off.” So in His compassion He fed them.

The Apostles still were hesitant to believe in His power, even after the miracles He performed previous to this. And so they asked Him, “From whence can any one fill them with bread here in the wilderness?” Jesus did not rebuke them for their unbelief, and by not rebuking them He teaches us today that we should not rebuke those who are ignorant of the Truth or those who do not understand. Instead of rebuking them He asked, “How many loaves have ye?” After having the people sit down Jesus took the few loaves of bread and gave thanks to His Father – thereby teaching us to give thanks for our daily bread. After giving thanks He did not give the bread to the people Himself, but gave it to His Apostles to distribute, and the same with the fish. In doing this, our Lord shows us that His gifts, the Sacraments, and especially the Eucharist, are to be dispensed by his priests, as His Apostles were later to become.

There is a fundamental lesson in today’s Gospel about who Jesus Christ is. He says to His Disciples,” I have compassion on the multitude.” In this statement we see the sympathy and pity of human tenderness that shows us Jesus was fully human. And in the miracle of feeding thousands of people with a few loaves and a few fish we see our Lord’s Divinity. Today’s Gospel is a clear presentation of the truth that Jesus Christ has two natures, one human and one Divine.

Both miracles of the multiplication of loaves and fishes, the one reported by St. Matthew and the one from today’s Gospel, took place on a mountain. Seven hundred fifty years before these events Isaias the Prophet described the coming Messiah saying “the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be prepared on the top of mountains and it shall be exalted above the hills.” (Isaias. 2: 2) Long before the Messiah appeared his lofty bearing was described for us.

Who are those our Lord speaks of who “came from afar off?” Certainly some came from a great physical distance, but mystically, the meaning refers to those who after sins of the flesh, and sins of lying, thieving, murdering and others, have now repented and come to the service of the Lord. For the more a man sins, the further away from God he is. Those Jews who knew Jesus to be the Messiah came to Him from close at hand, because they had learned of Him through the Law and the Prophets. But the Gentiles who believed Christ, in a manner of speaking came from afar because no sacred writings from their past had prepared them to believe in Him. +++

We Celebrate the Tridentine Latin Mass