Friends in Christ. today is Saturday, Our Lady’s Day, and so let’s take for our reflection this morning, the first words we say in the Hail Holy Queen. We say: ‘Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, ‘Our life, our sweetness, and our hope …
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Here we address Mary as our ‘Mother of Mercy.’ Now the Blessed Virgin has been given this office of mercy by her Son Jesus, to gather up the sinners and to bring them home. Our Lord revealed to St. Catherine of Sienna that he had created Mary to catch men and especially sinners.[i] It is only required that the sinner call on this Mother, and repent of his sins.
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When any mother sees her child crying before her because of his misdeeds, she does not consider his failures but rather the intentions with which he comes to her. In fact, Mary said to St. Bridget: ‘However much a man sins, I am ready immediately to receive him when he repents; nor do I pay attention to the number of his sins, but only to the intention with which he comes, for I am the Mother of Mercy.'[ii]
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St. Bernard says, if a mother knew that her two sons were at enmity with each other, that each plotted against the other’s life, would she not work as hard as possible to reconcile them? This would be the duty of a good mother. And thus he says, does Mary act. For she is the Mother of Jesus and the mother of us. When she sees a sinner at enmity with Jesus Christ, she cannot endure it, and so she does everything in her power to make peace between them.[iii] The Blessed Virgin will do anything she can to get us safely home.
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I recall in my own youth, returning home late, past curfew; quietly tip-toeing upstairs in the dark; only to hear mom call out: ‘Son, is that you, are you home?’ A mother cannot rest until her child is safely home. Mary awaits any sinner who wishes to come home, but he must repent and turn from his sin.
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St. Alphonsus says, ‘whoever aspires to be a child of this great mother, must first abandon sin.’ Richard of St. Lawrence says, ‘no one can be a child of Mary without first trying to rise from the fault into which he has fallen.’
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So on this Saturday let us find confidence in Mary. And if we fear to face our Heavenly Father for the dread of the sins of our life, let us first go to our Mother. St. Gregory says: ‘Resolve to sin no more, and I promise that undoubtedly you will find Mary more ready to love thee than any earthly mother.’
[i] Glories of Mary, p. 204
[ii] Glories of Mary, p. 72-74
[iii] Glories, p. 74
All Christians need on-going formation, in order to keep us close to the Fire. As they say, our spiritual life is like a plant: if it doesn’t grow, it will whither. Ideally, we do a half hour of mental prayer daily, a monthly recollection, an annual retreat, and also a time for intellectual growth.
This summer is our annual priest workshop for the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross; I attended one near Boston this year with about 30 other priests; a time for study and formation, but also a great time to renew fraternal friendships with priests from around the country…
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The classroom
The chapel here is perfect for prayer
… and fun too!
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Friends in Christ, today we remember the many Christians who were brutally executed in the early days of the Church. From the year 64 until 313, persecution of the Church was horrific. To be a good Roman citizen in those days, one had to worship the roman gods; Christians refused. And they paid for it. The apostles Peter and Paul were both martyred at the beginning of this persecution in 64AD.
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The historian Tacitus tells us, Christians were even made sport of. Thrown to the beasts in the arena, dressed up in animal outfits and then hunted for sport; One of the worst emperors at this time was Nero. At his parties, Christians were put on high poles, covered with oil, and set afire as living torches.
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In the Book of Revelation, it refers to the Roman Empire as the ‘Beast.’ St. John says (Rev 13) ‘whoever would not worship the beast was killed … and the beast waged war against the saints. Revelation describes the Beast (Rev 17) as having 7 heads. The seven heads are seven kings; As it is written: 5 have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come. These are the succession of Roman Emperors, Nero reigning when Revelation was written.[i] St. John gives a most curious phrase: “let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, its number is 666. This is where we get the number of evil, as 666. What does it mean?
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We know that Roman letters also stand for numbers, we call them Roman Numerals. So the letter X stands for 10, the letter V stands for five, and so on. Therefore, every word adds up to a number. The ancient people used such numerology all the time. This is called ‘gematria.’ and it is used often in scripture. For example, King David’s name in Hebrew is the number 14, and this is a symbolic number. Well, the Emperor’s name, Nero Caesar, when put into Hebrew, is the number 666. So most scholars are sure that this number refers at least in one sense to the Emperor Nero, who was responsible for the martyrs of Rome that we honor today.
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In every century, governments try to oppose the Church. It is happening here as well. By teaching the truth of right and wrong, we are at odds with present society. They are beginning to say that the church is intolerant; soon we may be considered an enemy of the State, just like the early Christians. But this is our glory: to witness to the truth.
Friends in Christ, today is the Feast of the two great pillars of the church: St. Peter and St. Paul. St. Peter, the first Pope, was given the keys of heaven by Jesus. St. Paul was the greatest missionary the Church has ever known. Both achieved the greatest honor a Christian can have: They gave their lives as martyrs for Jesus Christ.
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If you go to Rome someday, you should visit ‘The Church of St Paul at the 3 Fountains.’ It was on that spot that St. Paul was martyred. His head was cut off, and as legend says, when his head was severed, it bounced and struck the earth in three different places, from which fountains sprang up. These fountains still flow today.
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If you go over to the Roman Basilica of St. Peter, under the high altar is the crypt where lie the bones of St. Peter. Jesus had foretold that Peter would be crucified, and in fact he was. But when the time came, he felt so unworthy to die like Christ, that they crucified him upside down.
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But these saints suffered greatly even before they were martyred. St. Paul tells of how he was one time scourged, other times beaten with rods, even stoned – And Peter suffered too. For example, we read today of the persecution by King Herod. When they wanted to go after the Church, they struck at the head of the Church, and that was St. Peter. Of the first 30-some Popes, nearly all were martyred. So Peter was arrested and thrown in prison. The whole church then did what we would do if the Pope were in prison; they began praying. As it says: ‘Prayer to God was made without ceasing by the Church for him.’
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So, there he was, chained up in this dark and gloomy prison. ‘What am I going to do, he thought? In that jail there were four guards guarding him, it seemed hopeless. But in the middle of the night, a bright light flashed in the cell, and an angel appeared. ‘Peter, wake up, put on your sandals, and let’s go!’ The chains fell off of his hands. But what about the guards? Well, they walked right past the guards. It suppose the angel put them to sleep. Now Peter wondered if he was dreaming because it says: ‘He followed him out, not knowing that what was being done by the angel was real.’ They passed through the first guard and the 2nd until they came to the iron gates that protect the city. Now what? At nighttime, the gates are locked. But what is this? The gates opened by themselves! And after going down one street, the angel disappeared. Then Peter thought, its really true! An angel has freed me! All of this is explained in the Acts of the Apostles.
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So, on the run, Peter goes to the house where St. Mark lived, for a place to stay. Now the people in there were praying so hard for Peter to be released from jail: ‘Please Lord, let Peter be freed, please Lord let Peter be freed. And then? !KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK! A young girl named Rhoda[i] goes to the door. She looks through the peep-hole – its Peter! But she was so excited that she forgot to open the door! Rhoda then runs in to tell the others – its Peter outside! He’s here! You’re crazy! They said. It must be his angel! (This is, by the way, an example of belief in guardian angels so clearly shown in Sacred Scripture).
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So they kept praying – ‘please Lord, let Peter be freed from prison, please Lord let Peter be freed from prison.’ But Rhoda insisted that it is Peter knocking, and that they should let him in. !KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK! Disregarding what everyone says, Rhoda will not give up on Peter. She goes and opens the door and brings in Peter and they are amazed! So he waves his hand for them to be quiet, and tells them how the angel had freed him from prison.
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Friends, Peter went through a great deal of anguish in those years, and as we said, so did St. Paul. You can’t just be a martyr after an unvirtuous life of leisure! As the Apostles lived their Life in Christ, being faithful in numerous difficulties, they were really training for the greatest honor: martyrdom.
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You may have been following in the news that 27 year-old woman[ii] in Sudan who was sentenced to death for her Christian Faith. She was ordered to give up Christ, and become Muslim – ‘No,’ was her answer. Yes, she was happily married. Yes, she had a child. But she was determined to die rather than renounce her faith. Are we? Are we prepared to be another St. Paul and lose our head rather than our Faith? Or a St. Peter? Our Faith in Christ must mean more than our life, because we owe everything to Jesus Christ. We must be able to say what St. Peter said: I know and believe, that ‘you are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.’
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I think everyone here can all say ‘Yes,’ without hesitation – that we would each give our life rather than ever deny Jesus. But we can test ourselves to see if we would really do it. We just have to ask a few questions: Are we faithful to the Lord in small things? When friends or colleagues criticize the Catholic Faith, do we speak up? Can’t be a martyr if we won’t even do that.
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The martyrs gave their lives for Christ, yet today, many throw away their Faith for the most pathetic things: – in order to remarry outside the Church, many walk away – because their friends are in another religion, they go too – they want to live at their boyfriend’s apartment, so they walk away from God. Pathetic reasons.
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We have to make choices, to do what is right or to walk away from Christ. Do we tell the truth when under pressure to lie? Do we cheat when there is an advantage? God permits us many opportunities to show him our loyalty, but we aren’t worthy to be a martyr unless we can be faithful in small things.
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In the spiritual warfare that is part of life, we do have our Angel to help us like St. Peter did; and if we are on the run, we can always knock at the door of the house of Mary, who will always open to us. May the Blessed Virgin help us in our daily life to be worthy of the promises of Christ.
[Entrusted to the prayers of St. Mary, niece of Abraham]
[i] The name Rhoda means ‘Rose,’ and it is also interesting that the house he went to was the house of Mary, the mother of Mark.
[ii] Meriam Yehya Ibrahim
Beloved in Christ, it is a heresy to say that Jesus is a human person. He is not. He is a Divine Person who united himself to human nature. So in Christ, God joined himself to the whole human race, and because his Person is Infinite, he is able to contain all of us.
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Yet this connection to the entire human race – this bond that God formed with the human family – it took place when the Divine united himself to the Blessed Virgin Mary. For the Mystical Body of Christ, for the entire human family, the Blessed Virgin is the point of junction with God.[i]
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Jesus Christ possessed not only a physical body, but also his Mystical Body. Therefore, Mary, who bore the Savior in her womb, may also be said to have given birth to all of us, whose lives are contained in Christ. Mary is therefore the true Mother of all the Living.[ii]
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Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. And this Heart of our Mother – well, we cannot live without it. Maternal love is so inseparable from life, that we see it reflected even in the animal world. The need for our mother is an instinct of life, which we see from the first cry of an infant in the cradle to the last appeals of a dying man for his mother. And God did not intend that the supernatural life should be less human, than natural life, so he created Mary.
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The Divine Maternity, says St. Thomas, belongs to the order of infinite things. In some sense, the maternal love of Mary is infinite.
Because of Mary, Christianity has a unique spirit of hope and joy. Because of her it remains a religion of freshness and youth. Because of her it is a religion whose great mysteries are perfectly accessible even to little children. Their mothers on earth still tell them about the little Jesus and his mother, who is also their mother in heaven, and this was the same with St. Augustine, and St. Thomas, and all the rest.
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After the children and their innocence come the sinners; the sinners – For them especially, Christianity would lack some of its goodness if this Blessed Mother, were not there. The more wretched men may be, the more merciful is her response; she knows how to change their hearts by the goodness of her Immaculate heart.
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Just look at religions where Mary is lacking, or where she is not known. There, God does not seem to be so much a Father, and Christ is not so close; the Church is less of a family. Without Mary, our religion would resemble a Protestant church which has no Living Presence; a system that is well-ordered but cold: because there is no longer a Mother in the home.
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In reality, mothers are often servants, handmaids, of their children, giving their all to help them. Mary was the handmaid of the Lord, and of her Son, and really of all her children – helping them, praying for them, serving them – all because, of her Immaculate Heart.
[i] Theology of the Mystical Body, Mersch, pp. 172-173.
[ii] ibid, p. 187.
Friends in Christ, during the French Revolution, many were killed for their faith. One goal of the leaders of the French Revolution, was to drive God out of society. The modern era had arrived: it was time for MAN to create the perfect world, and God and religion and Christ were in the way. As we know, thousands of priests, and nuns, and devout people were slaughtered in the name of progress. Over 16,000 died by the guillotine.
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In all of this there was a remarkable 22 year old young woman, named Catherine Doublot (of Besancon), who continued to believe that the love of God would never leave the world. Even a world full of hate. In her home were found over a dozen images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It was upon these images of God’s love for a sad, and confused world – it was upon these images that Catherine would often ponder and pray.
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The authorities discovered that she had these pictures of the Sacred Heart, and for this she was taken away to die at the guillotine; but she nevertheless went, still believing in the love of Jesus for mankind.
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Today is the Feast of the Sacred Heart. The Sacred Heart – displaying this painful, wounded, physical heart of Christ, which aches for his children – it is a representation of His divine love for humanity, and the flame shows us the power of divine love. Devotion to the Sacred Heart is very ancient, going back a thousand years. It arose in the Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries. Love of the Sacred Heart was already known to St. Gertrude, St. Mechtilde, and St. Bernard. This devotion was practiced by many in the various religious orders, and the Jesuits often used the image of the Sacred Heart, and hung it in their rooms.
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Nevertheless, it remained a private devotion until St. Margaret Mary Alacoque came along. Jesus appeared to her and made known his burning desire to be loved by all people; he gave us the 1st Friday Devotions, and so came about the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. After many requests for many years, in 1856, the Church established the Feast of the Sacred Heart. Why? So that we would know the burning love of Christ for us.
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‘God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.
Corpus Christi: The great Feast of the Body of Christ, the day that we pay reverence to Jesus in the Holy Eucharist.
Bells are rung as we approach an altar.
Stopping to pray at one of the four altars, beautifully provided by Catholic families
Off again to proclaim our Faith! Curious neighbors looked on to see our love of Jesus.
Father carrying Our dear Lord
Altar boys leading the way. Maybe they will all become priests!
The streets could not contain our love
The Lord has many loving children on this earth
Friends in Christ, after the death of Solomon, the kingdom of Israel split in two: the southern portion was called Judah, and the Northern part was called Israel. For many years, these kingdoms were ruled by corrupt kings, and after all the Lord God had done for the people they began to follow the ways of the inhabitants there, leading immoral lives and committing idolatry.
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It sounds a lot like our world today: we Christians, living in really, a pagan world – working, going to school, associating with such a world – we are supposed to be lights for the world, we influencing others for the good – but it’s easy today to be very influenced by the bad example we see around us. That is what happened to the people then. What did God do? He allowed them to find out where this leads – what kind of life you get when you leave the True God. Their whole world came apart, disintegrated; and they were overrun by their enemies, something they never thought could happen. How could this happen to the People of God then, and how can such a thing happen to a Christian in today’s world?
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The saints speak of one of the deadliest faults in the spiritual life, which is called Self Deceit. In a hundred ways, we deceive ourselves or allow ourselves to be deceived, and in this way, the devil pulls us away from God. It is so important to be honest with ourselves. In our daily meditation time we should be looking honestly at ourselves before God. Facing the truth of who we are. Jesus says, we look at the speck in our brother’s eye, yet we do not see this giant log stuck in our own eye. We can easily be blind to our own defects.
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Father Faber in one of his conferences speaks of how even so-called pious people can be totally deceived. We mix our devotions so easily with worldliness. We have our many prayers, and yet we must have many clothes and comforts. We give alms yes; but then we indulge ourselves in luxuries. We have the Holy Sacraments, and yet we eat and drink to excess. Works of mercy one day, conniving and manipulation of others the next. – it is so easy to deceive ourselves, and allow the world to take us over, even while keeping an external veneer of piety.
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We also deceive ourselves by confusing desires with facts. For example, we may read a wonderful book by a saint about the virtue of patience; we ponder it in the chapel, we experience sweet feelings of the wisdom of what the saint is saying about patience. ‘Ahh, how beautiful is the spiritual life,’ we think. We think we are holy. Then we go home and at the least annoyance unload on our spouse with complaints and whining. We think we are so ‘spiritual,’ but thinking does not make it so.
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The Northern tribes of Israel lived lives of self-deceit, until it was too late. This should be a sign to us, to be honest with ourselves before God in our life.
Friends in the Lord,
In the Gospel today, Jesus urges us not to amass treasures on this earth, but rather in heaven. He gives three examples of how earthly treasures easily vanish:
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Things made of metal rust apart. I once owned a Pontiac Sunbird – the thing rusted apart so fast you could almost see it disintegrate. Material things decay.
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Jesus also speaks of the problem of moths. Some may have an experience of pulling a favorite coat out of the closet, only to find some huge moth-eaten hole in it.
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And Christ reminds us of how our treasures can suddenly disappear when a thief takes them.
In commenting on this, Thomas Aquinas explains these things symbolically. (Cataena) Rust, he says, represents pride. Just as rust covers over beautiful metal, pride obscures the brightness of a virtuous life.
Moth-eaten clothes are symbolic of jealousy. As the moth eats away at precious garments, jealousy eats away at friendships, and destroys the reputation of our neighbor.
The thieves who rob us, represent the devils who want to rob us of heaven and take away the happiness of a Christian life on earth. In times of war, a person sends their valuable things to relatives to keep them safe, knowing that when the attackers come, they might loot the people of their valuables. So too in the spiritual life. We are at war in this world, with the demons and enemies of the Church; We must therefore send ahead to heaven those things which are of value: Good deeds, honesty, sincerity, purity, almsgiving, and prayers; these things form us as a person, and will be our glory in heaven. The evil pleasures of this life will fall away and not survive the trip.
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St. Paul says, be careful how you build your life in this world. If you build your life on gold and silver, which are the virtues, these will survive. But if you build it of wood and straw, these will be burned up in fire.
Some people accumulate many things in this life, material things to which they cling – but at death they lose all interest in this, they only wish they had done some good in their life.
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Jesus says, where your treasure is, there also will your heart be. If we make Jesus and good works our treasure in this world, we will be very happy in the world to come.
Feast of the Most Holy Trinity
Beloved in Jesus Christ,
in the 14th chapter of the Gospel of John, St. Philip makes a request to Jesus. ‘Lord, show us the Father, and then we will be satisfied.’
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– Show us the Father? – For a long time, Jesus had been telling them about his Father in heaven; and he even had told them: ‘I and the Father are one.’ So here comes Philip, and he says: ‘Show us the Father.’ Jesus says, ‘Philip, how long have I been with you explaining these things; if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father!’
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Jesus is the revelation of God in the world. God has ‘put on flesh,’ to be with his people, to walk with us, to love us, and to teach us something about what God is really like.
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In Our Lord’s public life, he spoke many times about his Father in heaven, and he usually did it with parables. For example, the story of the Prodigal Son. This son, who leaves home and wastes his father’s fortune on loose living – But he comes to his senses and returns to his Father and asks for forgiveness, asking to just be allowed to work as a hired man. But this Father not only forgives him, he throws his arms around him, kisses him, and throws a party. Christ tells many such stories really, to teach us about what God is really like.
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Cardinal Ratzinger, in his book Introduction to Christianity, he says in so many ways, we see what God is like through Jesus: God is loving, he is just, he forgives, he is filled with emotion when his child returns, he yearns for us.
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Still, the world says that such things are ridiculous; yes, they will admit that there is probably some form of ‘supreme being;’ but it is absurd, they say, that this Being should concern himself with us, or come down to us. They say that we are naïve to think this; that these ideas are left over from a primitive world of ignorant people.
Our tiny and unimportant planet – this speck of dust in the universe, shows that we are nothing; it is absurd that a supreme being would concern himself with us, with our sins, or our problems –
They will say that God is not like that Father who throws his arms around a lost son and kisses him. God is like a Force or an Energy-field in the Universe. How vast is the universe, and what a tiny, unimportant speck our earth is, so GET REAL! – So say the “modern people.”
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But in fact, things are really flipped around just the opposite. For these “modern people,” THEIR God is actually too small. They have made their idea of God, as a narrow image of themselves; an idea that God is not able to embrace the whole universe and each person – as if God has limitations and is not able to leave his chair to visit the heart of each person. Their God is way too small. The True God is actually very great.
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God reaches down to the smallest, because to him, nothing is too small. This is the true greatness we would expect from a Supreme Being, that the great would stoop down to the little.
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Imagine a powerful executive of Chase Manhattan Bank; why would such an important person have any interest in helping a dirty, street person in the gutter? Well, if he does help such a person, we would call him great. Then isn’t God greater because he compassionates his tiny creatures?
If he stoops down to this speck of dust, and takes concern over each of our problems, unite himself to us, and suffers our own life with us?
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Today is the Feast of Most Blessed Trinity. And this is a uniquely Christian revelation, that God is a communio of Persons.
Buddhism, Islam, the other religions – they don’t know this about their Creator, they don’t know. they don’t know what St. John says straight out in his Epistle: ‘God is love.’ We know this because it was revealed by Christ.
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You can’t have love, by one person. There must be a lover, and a beloved. God himself, if we may say, is an eternal chase of love. 3 Persons in One God. The Father loving the Son, the Son loving the Father, and that LOVE is the Person: the Holy Spirit.
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Now Our Savior has said that if we love God, the Three Persons will come to live in us. ‘If any one love Me, my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and we will make our abode with him (John 14:23).
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Calling on these 3 Divine Persons then, must be part of our daily life. Speaking every day to Our Heavenly Father, to Jesus, our Savior, and to the dear Holy Spirit
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It was by calling on these Divine Persons, that a glass of poison shattered, to save St. Benedict. It was by calling on these Divine Persons that St. Anthony fought the devil, that St. Catherine challenged the emperor, and St. George defeated the dragon. It was in the Name of the Father, Son, and Spirit that St. Lawrence healed the blind, St. Sebastian healed a mute woman, and the martyrs gave their lives.
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The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – These are the Divine Persons by which Jesus commanded us to batpize: ‘I baptize you in the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.’
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We praise these Divine Persons every time we say the Glory Be. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. The Glory Be is one of the earliest-known prayers praising the Holy Trinity, and it was an answer to the heretics who denied the Divinity of Christ; ths prayer, the ‘Glory Be,’ should certainly be part of our daily life.
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God is not a Force, or an Energy-Field, or a vapor; He is a communio of Persons. The meaning of the Holy Trinity is that God is love. And the world of nature shows this God of love: St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi, when holding a flower in her hand felt wounded by Divine love, saying, God has thought of creating this flower – that I might love him.’ The blue sky, the birds of the air, every tree and each star above, seems to say to us, ‘I am a messenger from God – He loves you.’
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Mary can show us the way into the heart of the Holy Trinity. St. Alphonsus says, see with what love the Most Holy Trinity blessed Mary. The Father crowns her by sharing his power with her, the Son his wisdom, the Holy Spirit his love. Well, God desires the same for us. He wishes to share with us his power, his wisdom, and his love. May all things be to the eternal glory of the most holy Trinity.
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Entrusted to the prayers of St. Teresa of Avila
