Deacons of the Annunciata

 

ANNUNCIATION

OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

25 March 2023

Ordination to the Diaconate

Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary

Laudetur Jesus Christus!

Praised be Jesus Christ!

       You men have an ideal day for your ordination as deacons. I can think of two reasons in particular for saying that, both of them bound up intimately with the nature and importance of the Feast of the Annunciation. Both reasons have to do with the Blessed Virgin Mary, most assuredly. They also touch upon the instrumental role which you men will play in the work of salvation in our world. Granted for all of us here present, our role in this work was already set in the Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation. The Church teaches that this work takes on a new character with your ever-growing share through the Sacrament of Holy Orders in Christ’s mission. As of today that share is a deacon’s work of proclamation, diakonia, and martyrion, which draws life and strength from the Sacrifice of Calvary. You have two reasons then for special rejoicing today!

        We’re taught that once upon a time in history, in the history of Christianity, the year started not on January 1, not on the 1^st Sunday of Advent, but on March 25^th, 9 months before Christmas and the Birth of the Savior. Famous words of St. Bernard of Clairvaux explain the importance of today’s feast as the starting point. The saint begs Mary to hesitate no longer but to say yes to the Archangel Gabriel, sent by God to ask her consent to bring about salvation through the Virgin Birth of our Redeemer and King. In the ancient liturgical rhythm of vigils and feasts it was only proper that the mysteries of the Lord’s Birth and of His Cross and Resurrection be preceded by greater vigils tied to the cosmic mystery of the earth’s return from the dead of winter to the life and hope of spring. Whether the spread of the Gospel to the southern hemisphere or other influences brought about the uncoupling of the two calendars (Church and State) or how the restriction of the vigil of Christmas to Advent came about, it all happened very subtly and very wisely. Nothing has been lost of St. Bernard’s cry on March 25^th to Mary to say yes to becoming the Mother of God, without taking anything away from Advent as it leads us well to the celebration of the Nativity. So your ordination today is fortuitous and suggests countless points of meditation on the new sharing in and through the Mother of God that you have in Christ’s work.

       Secondly on this Feast of the Annunciation, I would argue that a deacon’s proclamation of the Gospel (think of St. Philip the deacon, in the Acts of the Apostles), a deacon’s service to the Church (diakonia, think of St. Lawrence for the Church of Rome), and a deacon’s witness unto spilling his blood for Christ (think of St. Stephen, the protomartyr) are all cloaked in the mantle of the Blessed Mother and her whole-hearted yes to the Archangel Gabriel.

       For your time as deacons bind yourselves intimately to Mary! Place yourselves at her feet and learn from her! Learn from her message on behalf of her Son at Cana: “Do whatever He tells you!” Learn from her constant witness of obedience to the Will of the Father in service to her only beloved Son! Draw close to the mystery of her heart pierced through time and again unto the consummation of her sacrifice with His on Calvary!

       Rejoice! Rejoice! Rejoice! You men are intended to be deacons of the Annunciata!

       Nos cum Prole pia, Benedicat Virgo Maria!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

A Catholic Liturgy Classic of the Early 20th Century

 

Just recently (on a transatlantic flight) I had the joy of reading the 2022 enlarged reprint in English by Romanitas Press, Kansas City (4th edition, three previous by Herder) of the book by the French Benedictine monk, Dom Gaspar Lefebvre, O.S.B. “Catholic Liturgy: Its Fundamental Principles”, originally translated into English in 1924, from his work of 1920: “Liturgia: Ses Princips Fondamentaux”.

Don't mind if I simply recommend this work in all its parts. I read Chapter X The Divine Office with particular interest, for the good counsel it gives on praying the traditional Breviary. As an older man who has been praying the traditional Office for less than six years, it reassured me in the crisis to which I succumbed after previously reading advice by Pius Parsch suggesting the amount of Latin study which should go into a proper recitation of the psalms, not to mention the hymns of the Latin Breviary (Woe is me!).

Dom Gaspar is good all around, writing with balance and perspective, not to mention depth and eloquence. In this spirit, the monk's Chapter VII Holy Communion is unbeatable for description and analysis of the situation with the reform of the Communion fast, as it presented itself almost a 100 years ago. He helped me in particular to deal with a question posed to me by the Prior of the Benedictine Monastery in Norcia concerning an article he sent in reprint from a Sub Stack: "Ricostruire Montecassino. Dinamiche della pratica del digiuno eucaristico tra ricerca di Dio e ricerca di se'." posted by an anonymous author Clusinus on December 5, 2022.

Clusinus is right in contending that the present one hour fast before receiving Holy Communion is no fast at all, because of a Sunday, a lay person can leave the remainder of his double latte in the car and still have fasted an hour by Communion time, if he gets to church 15 minutes before Mass time and, as a good Catholic, sits toward the back. Clusinus despairs of any sort of restoration (whether of the three hours discipline of Pius XII or of an earlier practice of absolute fast from midnight before Communion). He argues from the reconstruction of the Abbey of Montecassino after its wartime destruction in a horrendous bombing during World War II. He maintains as do many others that the restoration of the historic monastery might have been accurate in most details but is spiritless. 

 I told the Prior of Norcia, that I agree with Clusinus that the old Communion fast is beyond restoration in the sense that fasting from everything including water from midnight on would provoke a scandal among the folks (accustomed to their water bottles, gum, and cough drops as they are) which would be hard to make salutary. Even so, for the sake of helping the cause of stirring up our faith in the Real Presence of Christ, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, some kind effort to make receiving Holy Communion more deliberate has to be made.

One of my own suggestions, proposed by me at Forty Hours Devotions I have preached and in discussions with priests would be a return to the use of the Communion Rail, with Communion received kneeling (for those who are able) and most especially on the tongue. Oddly enough my argument has much to do with the Communion fast. Many people might leave the double latte out in the car, but they forget to get rid of their chewing gum. In bygone days (maybe?) that meant sticking your gum on the underside of the seat of the pew before marching up to Communion. While some still do that, as is evidenced by the church cleaning crews with their spatulas scraping the evidence off from time to time, Communion in the hand enables some of these offenders to just tuck their gum back in their cheek (think about it!).

I bet Dom Gaspar never faced such questions, but sadly we do. Even more tragically they take their toll on genuine faith in Christ truly present in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Christ our Light!

 

FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT (Laetare)

19 March 2023, Holy Spirit Parish

1 Sm 16:1b, 6-7, 10-13a

Eph 5:8-14

Jn 9:1-41

 

Praised be Jesus Christ!

       When you are in Year A like we are in 2023, of the 3 Year Cycle of the Lectionary, the Sunday Gospels are all quite long and this Sunday, recounting Jesus’ healing of the man born blind, is no exception. Today from John’s Gospel chapter 9, the Scribes and the Pharisees refuse to draw the same conclusion drawn in his own regard by the man whose sight was miraculously given to him by Jesus. Over the scorn of the leaders of the Jewish people and their denial of his testimony (clear evidence), the man boldly attests to the miracle worked for him. Jesus in His own words declares “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” God is at work in the world and unmistakably so by correcting an error or deficiency of nature. That happens with the clay Jesus made with His own saliva. It is not so much healing as it is reminiscent of the creation of man in Genesis, whom God formed to perfection from the clay of the earth. In their refusal to believe the man, the so-called leaders of the people show their utter blindness. The once born blind man is the one who sees clearly now and teaches us about the Christ, the long-promised Messiah come into the world.

As Jesus explained to His own disciples about the origin of this man’s blindness: “Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him. We have to do the works of the one who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

       “(I)t is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.” The man born blind is now whole and the Church would have us draw the necessary conclusion in terms of faith, making that clear in this Sunday’s second reading with a quote from the Letter to the Ephesians.

“Try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the fruitless works of darkness; but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light.”

       You often hear talk about God’s mysterious ways. To say that they are mysterious is not to say that they are totally unsearchable. Things are, even matters of faith are evident with God. Godlessness, unbelief, and the mental reservations or a certain pretended sophistication which dismiss faith in God’s word are the tragedy. They are ultimately a refusal to accept God Who reveals Himself in Christ. Without Christ, without the Lord Jesus we dwell in darkness. In the last analysis the blindness of this world’s movers and shakers (I think they call them influencers today) is damnable and only to be pitied. Faithless or unbelieving people deserve our pity and should occasion our prayer that they not be lost for all eternity. “We have to do the works of the one who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

       Even so, God’s ways are indeed mysterious. We can see that from the First Book of Samuel in the story of God’s choice of David to be the second king of Israel. In our Old Testament reading for this Laetare, the 4^th Sunday of Lent God gives the Prophet Samuel a real challenge. Without clearer instructions, old Samuel is sent to anoint a new king for Israel from among the numerous sons of Jesse of Bethlehem. “I have chosen my king from among his sons.” It was a political act on Samuel’s part to proceed to anoint a new king while the old one was still reigning. In taking this risk, Samuel was expressing God’s judgment against the reigning king Saul, who disobeyed God and hence lost God’s favor. The choice fell to David, the youngest of Jesse’s sons, whom his father had not even thought to bring home to the sacrificial feast from tending the flocks. We see clearly in this account that the all-surpassing power belongs to God; He and not the chosen king is the one to rule God’s people. God rules and He manifests His power by His choice of the shepherd boy. “The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.”

       Over the years and especially today, if I personally have had to use any skills I might have learned as a Vatican diplomat then it is rare that I use them with foreign governments or political figures. The movers and shakers of this world are not really that. “The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.” God rules in Christ! The Jesus Who made the clay with His saliva makes all things new and whole.

Before my retirement, the biggest controversies or tensions my job has called me to try and work through were almost always Church internal, where Catholics are divided among themselves. The refusal of the Jewish authorities to listen to or accept the witness of the man born blind hits all too close to home when it comes not only to inner church conflicts but to what is most important in our world. “It is unheard of that anyone ever opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he would not be able to do anything.”

       I am going to stop short of saying more and just urge you on this Laetare Sunday to rejoice, to rejoice in the power of Christ to save. Easter is very near! Through His Suffering and Death the Lord Jesus has made all things new. Our willfulness, our panic, our sleepless nights have more to do with darkness than they do with God. Give your life to Christ!

“We have to do the works of the one who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

       Praised be Jesus Christ!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Lifegiving Water from His Side

 

THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT

March 12, 2023 – Holy Spirit Parish

Ex 17:3-7

Rom 5:1-2, 5-8

Jn 4:5-42

Praised be Jesus Christ!

        From the Book of Exodus today we have an account of a major crisis in Israel’s camp in the desert of Sinai provoked by a water shortage.

        “The place was called Massah and Meribah because the Israelites quarreled there and tested the Lord, saying, ‘Is the Lord in our midst or not? …Why did you ever make us leave Egypt?’”

        Throughout the Exodus account there are references to Israel bemoaning their misery in the desert (for lack of food and water above all, but basically just for being stuck in the middle of nowhere living under tents, with leaders like stuttering Moses and his brother Aaron, guides not of their own choosing). It should come as no surprise their crying out about their regret at ever having left their place of slavery in Egypt. “Why did you ever make us leave Egypt?”

        In popular parlance from the more recent past one finds references to Catholics longing for the fleshpots of Egypt. This expression (longing for the fleshpots of Egypt) refers to anyone’s longing to return to the slavery of sin, choosing it over the freedom of the children of God. Faithfulness to God comes at a cost. Life under the Exodus cloud in the desert away from the land of slavery and for us today living as faithful Catholics implies making sacrifices; it requires self-denial and most likely even suffering. “Why did you ever make us leave Egypt?”

        Israel’s crisis, their longing for the creature comforts of Egypt despite the indignity of slavery, has a corollary in the lives of a lot of Catholic people even yet today. People will tell you they consider themselves abandoned by God in their misfortune and question overall the benefits of religion. What good has it done for them they ask, to turn away from sin and to be faithful to God, faithful to the Church, when there’s no apparent gain in it for them at least not this side of death? More often than not faithfulness to Christ, renouncing sin, means depriving ourselves of all sorts of earthly goods with seemingly no immediate return.

One of the most common temptations or faults is to envy the rich, to bemoan our fate. But the so-called prosperity Gospel (that God materially favors His own) is not Catholic teaching; it is not even New Testament. This appears in glaring fashion in Jesus’ Gospel parable about the beggar Lazarus ignored and abandoned at the gate of the rich man’s house. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus has Abraham responding to the rich man in hell. “He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’” [Luke 16:24-26. NRSV, Catholic Edition Bible (p. 2850). Catholic Bible Press. Kindle Edition.]

        As the saying goes, Heaven comes to those who wait. More to the point would be that our charity and personal sacrifices should be animated by a longing for the world to come. You cannot avoid choosing. In real life there is no form to fill out for life choices with a check box “undecided”. My heart, if it is not set on Christ’s Kingdom, is set on damnation. “Why did you ever make us leave Egypt?”

There is more to it than the ultimate question of Heaven or Hell. There are daily choices big and small to be made. We choose Christ in the community of the Church; we have to join His people wandering about in the desert. No matter how clever, how smart, how noble we might be, we cannot blaze our own path to God and eternal happiness.

Not far from rejecting old habits of sin and in that sense refusing the indignity of a life of slavery, I am going to go out on a limb to state that the conflict between Moses and the people in the desert at Massah and Meribah reminds me of the push back which some very good priests get from their people when the priest dares to preach the fullness of Catholic truth. Adherence to Christ is an all or nothing proposition. Our temptation is to pick and choose from the list of duties placed on us by the Church under pain of sin, such as when Father insists on our obligation to get to Mass not only on Sundays but also on the six Holy Days of Obligation in the US Church calendar. This issue has more frequently to do with Catholic moral teaching. To be clear, to reject traditional Church teaching is not so much balking at old-time religion but rather a rejection of the newness of the Gospel. They refuse to live out the Gospel’s demands in the midst of contemporary society which is hard to distinguish from the paganism and superstition of old Greece and old Rome. “Why did you ever make us leave Egypt?”

        Through the figure of water provided by God, this reading from Exodus is linked with our Gospel from St. John about living water. Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well: “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

The only miracle Jesus worked at the well in Samaria was to tell the woman everything she had ever done. He did not give them a new and inexhaustible source of water to replace Jacob’s Well. The Lord called her and those who listened to Him because of her witness to come to faith in Him the source of living water. “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans gives us the bottom line of our boast of our boundless joy arising from Christ’s sacrifice, in the Lord’s saving death upon the Cross out of love for the sake of our salvation. The Lord invites us to choose the road less traveled which passes by way of Calvary. In your Lenten prayer and reflection this week, ask the Lord to enlighten you and help you to step up to the challenge of the trek through the privations of the desert with God’s People by way of an intimate share in His Cross unto glory.

        Praised be Jesus Christ! Bruised, derided, cursed, defiled! O Sorrowful Mother, take us to your Son! Really!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Bracing for Suffering

 

SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT

5 March 2023 – Holy Spirit Parish

Gn 12:1-4a

2 Tm 1:8b-10

Mt 17:1-9

Praised be Jesus Christ!

        From our second reading this Sunday, we hear St. Paul, writing to Timothy, one of his chosen disciples and a first-generation bishop in the Church of Apostolic times. Paul exhorted the young man of whom he was truly proud, whose mother and grandmother Paul had known for a long time; he wrote to him in these words: Timothy! “Bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God.” This Sunday the Church directs those words to us as well. “Bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God.”

        The sense of Paul’s words may not be all that clear to people of our day and time. Often today we totally miss what is essential to Christian witness, to doing our part to proclaim the Gospel. What our “share of hardship for the Gospel” might be is also far from clear to us. We tend to have an impression of what our duty is in witnessing to the Gospel that is much too social, too society based, if you will. That could be because as practicing Catholics we find ourselves outside the dominant culture maybe even persecuted by the Godless forces in present day society. But that is not to say that we find ourselves in a different place than did Paul and Timothy. We just may need to rethink our approach to the Christian life. Maybe we have more in common with Paul and Timothy in the pagan world of their time than we might think. This Lent might just be our opportunity to discover or rediscover what living and witnessing to the Gospel is truly about. “Bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God.”

        To that end the Church’s choice of our First Reading from the Book of Genesis could help us understand our calling by having us reflect on what God intended in His call to Abram, soon to be renamed Abraham. God asks a sacrifice of Abram, namely that he leave his father’s house. God called Abram out of Ur of the Chaldees to come and live in what would be called the Promised Land. ‘“All the communities of the earth shall find blessing in you.’ Abram went as the Lord directed him.” The blessings come about for Abram because the old Patriarch cooperates with God’s plan; he lets God work in his life. All the communities of the earth shall find blessing in you.

        We are talking about being chosen by God, about God’s election or favor. The Gospel account of the Transfiguration on top of Mount Tabor is as good an indication as any of just how profound the mystery of Divine favor can be. Peter, James, and John see Jesus transfigured. There He is, Son of God and Son of Man, glorious in the mystery of the Godhead, flanked by Moses and Elijah, standing for the Law and the Prophets being fulfilled in His Person. Christ is there for them in the fullness of the Divine promise. But this theophany is meant to arm them to face the scandal, the horror of a world which rejects its gentle Savior and nails Him to the Cross. “Bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God.”

        There have been times in my life, maybe more so in the last ten years, when I have felt maybe more blessed, more consoled and appreciated as a witness to the Gospel. As far as I can tell, this has not come about for anything in particular to which I can point as a personal achievement. Maybe it has to do with letting myself be led by God, with cooperating with His grace in my life, I really can’t say. What St. Paul wanted for St. Timothy and what he and the Church want for us is simply for us to be caught up into the cloud on high with Christ. He wants us to hold our tongues and hear the words of the Father: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”

        These days there’s much talk out there about the success at the box office of this new film, The Jesus Revolution, and about a Christian revival which seems to have begun on the campus of a small Christian college in Wilmore, Kentucky, where a worship service has been rolling, nonstop, for over two weeks. The event at Asbury University is so popular, people have flown from across the country, standing in line outside of the college’s main chapel for an opportunity to take part in the singing, praying and discussion unfolding within. The Asbury Revival, as it has been called, has captured the attention and imagination of many. What is going on there? And what, exactly, is a Christian revival?

        Witness! It is an important word, but I don’t think the word revival helps us to understand it. My message for this our Second Sunday of Lent would be that witness has to be tempered by our obedience to God’s word, our attentiveness to Him as He makes known His will for our lives. The psalm verse says as much about the result of our corresponding to God’s favor: “Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.”

        The Prophet Isaiah reports God’s words to Israel, putting it this way: “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” [Isaiah 30:15 NRSV, Catholic Edition Bible (p. 2029). Catholic Bible Press. Kindle Edition.]

        Elsewhere in Psalm 51:17 we hear, “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” [NRSV, Catholic Edition Bible (p. 1511). Catholic Bible Press. Kindle Edition.]

        “Bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God.”

        I am sure Timothy understood what Paul meant by those words because of the lessons he had learned and appropriated for himself from his mother and grandmother. In your prayer and reflection this Lent, give yourself to doing the same!

        Praised be Jesus Christ!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

In His Temptation and His Fast

 

FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT

26 February 2023, Holy Spirit Parish

Gn 2:7-9; 3:1-7

Rom 5:12-19 or 5:12, 17-19

Mt 4:1-11

Praised be Jesus Christ!

        “The serpent asked the woman, ‘Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?’”

        My suspicion is that for many people the story of the fall from grace of Adam and Eve is sort of innocuous when in point of fact (among other things) it is more than telling about human psychology when it comes to sin and sinning. The forbidden fruit thing seems a bit of a reach and that would certainly be the case for some if not for many people. The problem with that judgment or attitude of skepticism about the teaching of Scripture, which can move us to play down the gravity of our sins, to ignore God’s law or excuse it from binding us, is exactly the point I’d like to make this Sunday.

For the last century and up until just recently, the overriding tendency in many Catholic circles and especially among priests has been to deny or at least play down our guilt for sin. For any number of misguided reasons, the tendency is for sinners to refuse personal responsibility for their actions or to ignore the lesson taught by the Book of Genesis and handed down to us by the Church about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the center of the garden of paradise. People balk in their personal lives at the possibility of their being accountable before God for their actions and omissions.  They miss the gravity of the challenge to God’s command whispered by Satan into the woman’s ear: “The serpent asked the woman, ‘Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?’”

        The point of the Genesis account and what the Church teaches us about original sin and the human condition is that Adam and Eve out and out challenged God’s authority when they ate of the tree. “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so, through the obedience of the one, the many will be made righteous.” We ignore that we were conceived in Adam’s sin and fail to comprehend that life, eternal life, everlasting salvation can only be ours in Christ, the second Adam (Hence the need for Baptism).

My point would be that in terms of personal sin, some of us follow the pattern of the first Adam all the while harping about our diminished responsibility for our actions. We refuse to acknowledge our offences against God. We excuse ourselves claiming diminished responsibility for our acts and omissions or stubbornly insist that we cannot imagine God as all that serious about things we judge to be of little or no importance (as if it were up to us to judge God’s law…). We turn our backs on Christ, failing to let Him into our lives when He comes knocking on the door.

        “But the serpent said to the woman: ‘You certainly will not die! God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is evil.’” Oh, the vanity of it all!

Be merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned. That’s a powerful psalm verse which too often through our own fault, through our rationalizations does not strike as close to home as it is intended. Be merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned. We deny that we can be acting in bad faith. After all, how can you say I am denying Christ’s judgment on my sins which comes to me through the mediation of the Church? How? Easy, because it is the truth. The question would seem to be what role does the Sacrament of Penance play in your life? How often do you go to confession? How do you see yourself there in confession? Are you under constraint? Do you only feel anxious about the experience? Do you brace yourself in a defensive stance for the priest’s words to you? Can you see yourself there in Confession as truly kneeling before the judgment seat of God seeking forgiveness and healing for things which are indeed your fault?

As I said, up until recently, that has been the overriding tendency in Roman Catholicism: to downplay our guilt and the possibility of serious or mortal sin in our lives. Just take a rather obvious thing, the Church precept which binds us to assist at Mass on all Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation under pain of mortal sin! How many people miss Sunday Mass without a good excuse and then march right up to Communion without first going to Confession? “The serpent asked the woman, ‘Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?’” And of course it touches on any number of traditional moral principles as well. In the last half century there have even been some rather prominent theologians denying the need for Confession and casting doubt on whether there is anyone in Hell and whether damnation for all eternity is really a thing.

Our Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent always recounts His forty day fast and the temptation of Jesus by Satan in the desert. The Church does not require anything as stringent of us as the Lord’s forty day fast, but it does ask us to identify with Jesus by doing some penance and uniting ourselves with Christ in resisting, in saying No! to the temptations of the Devil. “At this, Jesus said to him, ‘Get away, Satan! It is written: The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.’”

St. John Fisher, Bishop and Martyr, the only bishop in all of England to resist King Henry VIII taking over the Church in that country at the time of the Protestant Reformation, in his famous commentary on the seven penitential psalms, called his listeners and still calls his readers to recognize God in His mildness and mercy and to do our part to respond to the Lord Who is ready to forgive. St. John says that three things are required of us to scrub clean the tablet of our lives smudged by sin: contrition, confession, and satisfaction. The martyr saint classes contrition as something hidden. Our hearts must be filled with genuine sorrow for how we have wronged our merciful Savior. Confession is something concrete and tangible. We must confess our sins to the priest and receive absolution in the Sacrament of Penance. St. John explains that satisfaction is the third scrubbing of that tablet, which takes away, satisfies (hence the word satisfaction) for the punishment due for our sins. The three classic Lenten forms which satisfaction can take are prayer, fasting, or almsgiving. St. John especially recommends prayer as something even the poorest people without money can do, as something which even sick or frail old people unable to fast can do. So pray for yourself and for the poor souls in Purgatory!

Look into your heart, look to the obligations which are yours as a Catholic and especially in terms of your state in life! Stir up within your heart true sorrow for all the ways you have ignored God’s or the Church’s law, hurting our neighbor and offending God Who did not spare His only Son but gave Him up for all of us. Then make a truly good confession this Lent and receive Christ’s forgiveness through the ministry of the priest. Take seriously the penance the priest gives you in confession and moreover give yourself wholeheartedly to the discipline of Lent for your own sake. Your prayers, fasting, and almsgiving can be that third scrub which will enable you to pass directly from this life to seeing your loving God face to face without a stop-off in Purgatory. Your prayers for those who have gone before us in death can shorten their time of purification and bring them closer to seeing God as well.

“For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so, through the obedience of the one, the many will be made righteous.”

Praised be Jesus Christ!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Making up What is Lacking in the Sufferings of Christ

 

Sexagesima Sunday

12 February 2023

St. Dominic, Canton

Praised be Jesus Christ!

Last Sunday for Septuagesima I was in central Italy, assisting in choir at the conventual Mass of the monastery in Norcia, the birthplace of St. Benedict and St. Scolastica. The young monk preached a very good homily on preparing ourselves for Lent already in Septuagesima by doing proper and good penance. His basic message was that we should be serious about Lenten penance, by doing so in a measured or balanced way. He admonished the faithful present at Sunday Mass and the monks as well not to overdo it by inventing their own penances and hardships. He told them simply to go by the rule. It was a very Catholic message. This Sunday, Sexagesima Sunday the second of the three Sundays of Septuagesima at the heart of our pre-Lent, is a very good time to address another topic which should be central to our being Catholic. It is the role of suffering in our lives, in the lives of us God’s chosen ones.

In his meditation quoted for this Sunday in BENEDICTUS, The Traditional Catholic Companion, dom Benedict Bauer (d. 1963) puts it this way. He says:

“St. Paul tells us that he who would serve Christ must undergo hardships of all kinds, and be prepared to fight the good fight for Christ. He must not expect to find his way to Christ by an easy way, but by way of hardships, self-denial, toil, patience in suffering, fidelity under temptation, and in an unwavering reliance on supernatural grace.”

        Today’s epistle is quite a long passage from 2 Corinthians in which St. Paul illustrates that very point by describing all the hardships he faced, the accidents like shipwrecks, as well as the brutal persecution and opposition he had to face as part of his life for the sake of the Gospel. My hope would be that you too can embrace all sorts of trials in life without seeing them as excluding you from God’s love. Apart from the ordinary things which come our ways as faithful Catholics, I think you know that I am talking about the harassment from some of the highest authorities in Rome and elsewhere which comes your way as traditional Catholics. This week we even had a bizarre story about the FBI taking that stance by Rome as their cue to pursue traditional Catholics and people who carry rosaries as suspected terrorists. I guess you might say we are keeping good company with St. Paul: “Brethren, you gladly suffer the foolish; whereas yourselves are wise. For you suffer if a man bring you into bondage, if a man devour you, if a man take from you, if a man be lifted up, if a man strike you in the face… forty stripes less one… beaten with rods… stoned… in perils of waters… robbers… in hunger… Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is scandalized, and I am not on fire?”  St. Paul!

It is the Old Testament figure of Job who in his great misfortune best sums up what our attitude toward unmerited suffering should be: “The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). Septuagesima and this Sexagesima Sunday in particular can be, at least I hope and pray that it will be a teaching for you about how God can and does manifest His love for you in this life, regardless of the misfortune which may come your way. Pope St. John Paul II makes this point forcefully in his Apostolic Letter of 1984 Salvifici Doloris (On Redemptive Suffering), written for the Year of Redemption. He starts off by quoting St. Paul [Col. 1, 23-24].

“If so ye continue in the faith, grounded and settled, and immoveable from the hope of the gospel which you have heard, which is preached in all the creation that is under heaven: whereof I Paul am made a minister. Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, which is the church…” The Holy Bible: Douay-Rheims Version (p. 3142). Catholic Way Publishing. Kindle Edition.

        Now penance (last Sunday’s message) is something we take on, first and foremost, out of obedience to the Church’s direction. Suffering is something else and is not really reasonable from a human point of view. That is why toward the end of the Book of Job God calls Job out for protesting the terrible hardships and loss which had come his way. How can we know God’s will for us? What might He permit us to endure? Honestly, we cannot be sure, we cannot know entirely. In traditional circles we hear and read a lot about the Kingship of Christ and about the social implications of His Reign. But acknowledging Christ’s Kingship over all does not mean that we can place the Lord Jesus on a golden throne. Rather we must seek Him with the Blessed Mother and St. John and with them we bend the knee before Him lifted high upon His Cross on Calvary. Christ’s glory is in His being lifted up upon the Cross, a sign of scandal and contradiction for Jews and Gentiles alike.

        Even if that Cross and the part of it which is ours weighs heavily upon you, bear it, embrace it with Christ our King! In preparation for Lent, spend this week with St. Paul, trying to make your hardships your boast! Sorting out my life from the point of view of our Gospel parable of the sower and the seed which does not always fall on good ground, I may think that when I have done my homework of prayer and study, of fasting and abstinence as directed in Church law, of avoiding temptation and rooting out bad habits, preparing the good soil, if you wish, then I’ve got it made. St. Paul and the Church remind us that even good soil demands labor of us and that good yield does not come without its share of sweat from our brow.

        So then, very simply with St. Paul rejoice this pre-Lent and Lent for your share of suffering with the King! Suffering is the lot of the apostle together with his Lord.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI