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