First Sunday of Lent - Traditional Latin Mass

Dominica I in Quadragesima (Mass of the 1962 Missal)
26 February 2023

 IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF THE SON, AND OF THE HOLY GHOST.  AMEN.

The Gospel of the first Sunday of the Season of Lent places before us Our Blessed Lord’s journey into the desert from the account of St. Matthew.  Soon after his baptism, whereby his identity as the Beloved Son is revealed, our Lord goes out into the wilderness of the desert to prepare for his saving mission.  The trip to the desert is not an insignificant detail and it is not a random journey.  Rather, it is the Spirit that leads our Lord into the desert to take on the Devil.

Perhaps it strikes us as curious that the very Spirit of God, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, would lead the Son into the terrain of the prince of this world.  But it is for a holy purpose.  That purpose can give us focus for what Lent should be for us.

Our Lord’s appearance in the desert can serve to call to mind the desert wanderings of the Exodus.  God was doing something important and salvific in the life and history of Israel and he was doing so in the unforgiving wilderness.  Is this not the challenge for every life of faith?  We become focused on the desert, where there is dryness and difficulty and suffering in our life and we become so nearsighted in our misery that we can no longer see the overarching narrative, that God is acting and doing something to bring about His purposes.  As was the case in the Exodus and so many other instances of the number forty in the Scriptures, so here with our Lord’s forty days and nights in the desert, we have a time of testing of faith and a time of purification to lead to greater strength in battle.  Likewise for us, our symbolic forty days of Lent is a time of testing and a time of purification.  The goal is that our faith become stronger as we become more and more purified from sin.

Our Lord has a full human nature united to his full divine nature.  After forty days and forty nights of fasting, he would have been very hungry and very weak.  Think of how unprepared we can be when it comes to fasting for just one day on Ash Wednesday!  The battle our Lord faced was inconceivable to our paltry penances.  In that immense weakness the Devil, the opportunist that he is, came to tempt the Lord.  And the three temptations presented by the Devil mark the classic temptations that theologians have noted as part of man’s fallen nature.  That classic formulation of temptation is that man’s downfall is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.  St. John the Apostle and Evangelist shows just how ancient this formulation is when he warns not to love the things of the world and writes in his First Letter, chapter 2, verse 16: “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world.”

The Devil’s first temptation refers to the lust of the flesh, that is, to the desires of the flesh, of the body, to pleasures of whatever kind.  Our Lord is hungry and the temptation is to fill his belly and to give himself the pleasure and satisfaction of eating, to respond to the desire of the flesh for food by turning stones into bread.  Keeping with St. John and the ordering sequence of the classic formulation of the threefold temptation, we’ll jump to the third temptation from the Devil in the Gospel selection today.  The lust of the eyes is the desire to possess and to take by whatever means necessary.  In the third temptation the Devil shows our Lord all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.  The Devil has a certain dominion over this world.  But the Lord has come to save the world, to pull it from the Devil’s grasp and to claim its proper ownership by God.  By offering the Lord all the kingdoms of the world, the Devil is tempting the Lord to gain possession of the souls he has come to save, but to do so – and here is the critical difference – to do so without suffering and without the Cross, but by worshipping the Devil himself.  And finally, the pride of life takes us back to the second temptation listed by St. Matthew in the Gospel selection.  Here the Devil tempts the Lord to show Himself for who He is as God and to do so in a very public way from the height of the Temple.  The Devil suggests that the Lord throw himself down to demonstrate his identity by means of the angels who would come to prevent his fall.

The Church places this episode before us at the start of Lent to show us that the Lord is recapitulating – and doing so successfully – the temptations of Adam and Eve and the temptations of Israel in the desert of the Exodus.  Where Adam’s sin turned paradise into exile and left him outside paradise in the desert, our Lord willingly goes into the desert to be faithful in resisting the classic threefold temptation.  Our Lord is faithful Israel.  Our Lord is the new Adam.  In all this he shows us that God Himself in His immense love for us comes to experience our weakness and to be victorious, and to do so in our very flesh.

In this holy season we are to battle that classic threefold concupiscence inherited from Adam: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.  But our battle cannot be half-hearted and weak.  We need some manly courage to be serious about discipline.  This is precisely what we are not good about as modern Americans.  So many of us, I fear, do not move beyond a childish Lent where we give up chocolate or some luxury.  It’s fine to give up those things.  But I highly doubt anyone’s salvation will rest on giving up chocolate, or pizza, or soda.  Yes, give up things like that, but also do something serious, something really challenging.  Take up one practice of prayer and one practice of mortification.  For prayer: If you don’t already pray a daily Rosary, then do it.  Pray with the Scriptures.  After all, “man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.”  Or perhaps committing to come more often to adoration and even to committing to take an hour in our chapel each week would be a good new step in uniting yourself to our victorious Lord.  And for mortification: why not do more than the bare minimum?  I sometimes wonder about our modern regulations for Lent.  Do we really fast?  I mean, our modern rules for fasting are basically so easy that frankly it is not much of a challenge for most people.  So, how about willingly taking on more than the bare minimum?  It’s not required, I know, but perhaps fast on all Fridays of Lent, at least for most of the day up until the fish fry and then even there take only a modest amount.  I am sure these practices will increase the likelihood of a fruitful Lent where we can participate in the Lord’s victory and find renewal in the invitation to grow in daily prayer and the life of grace with the Lord.  As we heard in the epistle from St. Paul, “we exhort you that you receive not the grace of God in vain…. Behold now is the acceptable time, behold is the day of salvation.”

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF THE SON, AND OF THE HOLY GHOST.  AMEN.

Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday
22 February 2023

    Today we have begun the holy season of renewal known as Lent.  This season is a time of spiritual exercises, engagement in serious spiritual battle, by repentance, acts of penance, and the mercy of confession to be restored in the dignity begun in us at baptism.  At least that is what we should be doing in this holy opportunity of the season of Lent!

  There are two basic realities as we begin Lent that should cause us to reflect and to evaluate the direction of our lives.  (1) God is rich in mercy and loves us and He does not desire the sinner to die.  And, (2) we are wretched sinners who, in justice, deserve death and punishment for our sins, even eternal punishment.  I bet we don’t think of that nearly often enough.  Or maybe I should say that it would be likely that the modern American mindset would not bring the reality of our wickedness to mind with anything more than a rather generic evaluation that goes like this: “I’m a sinner, but I’m not the worst sinner there is.”

   The comparison to some other worse sin or worse sinner completely under cuts the drive that ought to characterize our Christian striving.  That type of thought reveals a rather soft, even limp, sense of the high degree of our calling and the horror that sin is in the eyes of God.  No wonder that we can often settle for a comfortable discipleship, one that, when it comes down to it, is rather easily accomplished without much effort.  This poor excuse for Christian vitality becomes all the more stark when we consider the length the modern American goes for other pursuits.  Would anyone call himself a fan of a team if he only showed up to the team events a couple times a year?  The modern American would sniff out that lie immediately.  But somehow being an active part of Christ’s Body the Church only every so often doesn’t strike some modern minds as being less than fully Catholic.  Would anyone who doesn’t train for a sport with serious dedication expect to be a starter on the team?  Absolutely not.  In fact, you’d probably be kicked off the team.  But somehow a soft discipleship that doesn’t really develop prayer, confess sin frequently, or follow Church teaching seems to be enough to get into Heaven in some minds.  Have you noticed how every modern American funeral assumes the deceased person is in Heaven, and theologically worse, assumes the person is now an angel who “got her wings”?  I have never once been to a funeral where I heard it said, “Well, we should pray because he’s probably in a worse place now.”  Now, I’m not saying we should assume Hell.  Don’t get me wrong.  But, assume Heaven?  How often might we hear excuses that seem to absolve a person from serious effort at growing in holiness and battling sin?  “Well, it would be really hard to give that thing up”, or “it would be big inconvenience”.  Really?  Harder or more inconvenient than damnation?  The modern American mindset can risk dismissing the things of the soul in a way it would never do with things of the body.  We can tend to grow lax and slack in what should be a striving that seeks to pass through the eye of a needle (cf. Mt. 19:24).  Thus, do we need a Lent to wake us up.  To shock the system.  To get us into spiritual shape.  And hopefully, being renewed in Lent, we eventually become less likely to fall to the trend of a soft discipleship the rest of the year.

   Our Catholic faith and teaching has a remarkable ability to hold together both the truth of God’s immense love for us and the truth that we are sinners who need to take seriously the call to repent and to convert in order to be fully alive here and to have eternal life in Heaven.  When we speak clearly and admit that we are sinners deserving punishment, we are not downplaying God’s love and saving desire for everyone He has made.  When we speak clearly and admit that God has made us for Himself and He offers mercy to all, we are not obscuring the fact that our sin is real, it does real harm, and it is deserving of punishment.  Both are true and we hold up both at one and the same time.  Lent is a time to uncover the unintentional, weak attitudes that sometimes lull us into being miserably out of spiritual shape and discipline.  God loves us.  And we are sinners.  We do not presume God’s mercy by treating sin lightly.  We also do not despair of salvation by thinking God unable to save us by His rich grace.  We begin today, the collect said, a “campaign of Christian service” by taking up “battle against spiritual evils” “armed with weapons of self-restraint.”  By faith and baptism we are drafted into this campaign and we should be ready to wage war.  May the Lord bless our efforts and may His holy angels protect us in this season of battling the forces that pull us away from His generous love.

Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica VII per Annum A
19 February 2023

 Before we go through the process for the Annual Catholic Appeal, and with the historic moment of the consecration of the Shrine of Bl. Stanley Rother fresh on our minds, I want to say a few words about the pattern of the consecration of a Church (a temple being another word) compared to the pattern of how we enter and progress in life as Christians (that is temples of God; dwellings of the Holy Spirit).  I want to reflect on this because of the providential words in the second reading: “Brothers and sisters: Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?  If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for the temple of God, which you are, is holy” (1 Cor. 3:16-17).

 The evocative ceremony of dedication of a new church speaks to us powerfully.  Before the dedication starts we already have a beautiful building, but it is only a building.  The most stark sign of this is that the sanctuary with the altar is not decorated as normal, much like Good Friday when the altar is stripped to recall the Lord’s death.  The altar stands in the center of an undedicated church as an empty table.  But once consecrated, the altar and sanctuary are vested as the place of encounter with God, where the Lord Jesus comes in his resurrected Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist.

 What did we witness with the consecration of the Shrine on Friday (whether live in person or watching on TV or livestream)?   I want to highlight some of the major moments in the ceremony of the consecration of a new church and connect them to how we become temples of God as we heard in the second reading.  (1) The minister with authority (in this case a bishop) claims the property for Christ and his Kingdom and it is handed over to him by those who built it.  Until our baptism we are under the dominion of Satan for he is permitted power in this world.  We are subjects of the kingdom of darkness.  But then a minister with authority claims us for Christ and his Kingdom when we are handed over to him by those – usually parents – who helped make us.  (2) At the consecration, the bishop blesses water and sprinkles the entire building with it to drive out Satan and to bless the structure.  At our baptism water is blessed and we are washed clean to drive out Satan and to wash us clean of sin.  (3) Another major moment of a consecration is that the altar and the walls of the new church are anointed with perfumed sacred chrism to set them aside for the honor and glory of God.  Likewise, we become Christians – the literal meaning is “anointed ones” – by also sharing in an anointing with sacred chrism at baptism and confirmation, so that we should understand ourselves and conduct ourselves as set aside for God.  (4) Next, there is the incensation of the altar and the entire church.  So often in our living of the faith and gathering for Holy Mass, at least at the principal Masses with more pageantry, we are incensed along with the altar and the gifts for offering.  Incense is always a sign of the presence of divinity (that’s what is understood by the Three Kings bringing incense to the Baby Jesus).  Being made temples of God, His presence dwells in us.  And the incense reminds us that our prayers, our speech, our aspirations, our hearts rise up to God just as the smoke rises in the air before us.  (5) Next, the altar is vested and the candles we are so accustomed to seeing are finally lit and things look as we expect them to be in a church.  When we are claimed for Christ and become temples of God and the dwelling of the Holy Spirit at baptism, we are given a lit candle for we have received the light of faith and we are to make our world less dark by letting faith shine in our actions.  We should vest – we should dress up – for our encounter with God in this temple for we are called to put on the vesture of God’s kingdom.  (6) Finally, all of this is done to set the new church aside as the place where God comes in His Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist on the altar.  Once we are claimed for God we are called to be united to Him.  We are to guard this temple, to let nothing destroy it, especially to recognize sin as the destructive force it is, so that we live in a way that we are ready and able to receive the Lord in Holy Communion for nourishment in this life and ready and able to greet him when he comes again in glory.

 Brothers and sisters: You are the temple of God and the Spirit of God dwells in you!  The ritual of the consecration of a new church is never just about the building alone; rather, it is a reminder of the living building that we are called to be.  A new church receives consecration passively and remains an inanimate object.  That cannot be our consecration.  We receive consecration, but we must do so actively and to live daily in a way that shows us to be living stones who make other disciples to add to the cornerstone of Christ.  In this way, we are made perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect (cf. Mt. 5:48).

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica V per Annum A
5 February 2023

 Last Sunday’s Gospel proclaimed to us our Blessed Lord’s teaching of the Beatitudes.  In what can be considered a New Covenant parallel to Moses’ journey up Mt. Sinai to receive the Law in the Commandments of the Old Covenant, our Lord goes up the mountain and he gives the Beatitudes.  In Scripture a mountain is a place of God’s revelation and it is a place of divine encounter with mankind.  As we heard last week, adopting the posture of a rabbi, our Lord sat down and taught and his disciples gathered around him.  Thus, the setting of the Beatitudes and the Lord’s posture show us a revelation that gives inner vitality to our living of the Commandments, which have not changed and have not been replaced.  His posture also shows us a teaching with authority that is meant to guide our lives.

   Today’s passage comes immediately after the Lord delivers the Beatitudes.  In the brief passage today, the Lord uses three images that tell us of our mission as disciples in relationship to the world.  The Lord references salt, light, and being a city set on a mountain.  All three of these images that Jesus uses for his Church are continuations of images associated with the identity and calling of God’s People Israel.

Jesus says of his Church and his disciples, “You are the salt of the earth.”  Salt is a sign of permanence and purity.  God established his kingdom on an enduring relationship with King David and his sons by means of a covenant of salt.  Whereas you and I hear the Lord reference salt and probably only think of seasoning our food for taste, what we miss is that for the Jew salt had a ritual use.  It had a very particular use in that it was to be sprinkled on the offerings made in the Temple as part of Israel’s covenant fidelity.  Thus, you can read in the Book of Leviticus, “Ought you not to know that the Lord God of Israel gave the kingship over Israel for ever to David and his sons by a covenant of salt?” (Lev. 13:5).

Jesus says of his Church and his disciples, “You are the light of the world.”  The People Israel had the vocation to be a light to the nations so that God’s offer of salvation would radiate and grow and go out to all peoples.  Israel was a chosen people, but chosen to be a servant to all the world.  The Prophet Isaiah reports this prophecy of the Lord God speaking to Israel, “I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Is. 49:6).

   With a slight adaptation of the Gospel words, Jesus says of his Church and his disciples, “You are a city set on a mountain” (adaptation of Mt. 5:14b).  This image connects disciples to the privileged place of the Holy City Jerusalem, which was to be a city set on a hill drawing all people to itself and to the Temple.  Thus, the Prophet Isaiah also reports, “It shall come to pass… that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains… and all the nations shall flow to it” (Is. 2:2).  Light is not hidden but it is set on a lampstand so that it gives light by which to see.  Light is placed in prominence.  Like a city set on a mountain that cannot be hidden, Jesus says of his Church and his disciples, “[Y]our light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father” (Mt. 5:16).

   As the assembly of Israel received the Law in the Commandments on Mt. Sinai, so in the New Covenant the assembly of the Church receives the Beatitudes on the mountain top.  Disciples should receive this authoritative teaching from the Lord as a revelation of our relationship to God, a revelation of our identity in belonging to Him, and a revelation of our mission, our vocation.  There is a very popular and pervasive idea in culture, and even among Christians, and you hear people directly and indirectly promote this idea all the time.  It’s probably why we need something like a New Evangelization.  The idea is that faith is a private affair, a purely personal matter, that should be kept out of polite company and public discourse.  That idea needs to be completely dismantled and dismissed for the parasite that it is on our vocation and mission as disciples.  That erroneous idea did not come from the Lord on the mountain of authority.  Rather, it comes from secular elites from the high places of halls of power and money.  I bet there are times in your own life that you can admit that this parasitical notion has infected you and your sense of how to live the faith in the world.  We can easily fall prey to it.  Is it more comfortable to have a faith that is conveniently packaged and sealed, opened only on Sundays and in private places?  Probably so.  But that is not who we are called to be!  That is not what we are called to do!  To those who accept the idea that faith is a private and purely personal affair, we should say: Then explain the images of salt of the earth, light of the world, and a city set on a mountain!  Those would be totally bizarre and nonsensical images for Jesus to use if his idea was that faith is only private, if his idea for his Church and his disciples was that we be a club concerned only about ourselves and tucked away from interaction with the world.  No, the Church’s mission, fulfilling that of Israel’s, is to evangelize and to spread the Good News of the Kingdom precisely TO the world!  Our light must shine before others, Jesus says.  We are not being the disciples the Lord calls us to be if our faith is not evident in how we live our lives in public.  Cultural powers use every means they can to cudgel us into a private faith that has no bearing on our daily living.  They draft laws and orders that require us to act contrary to our faith.  They seek to criminalize those who do act according to their faith.  The government seeks to force religious employers to pay for contraceptives.  There are those who want to force people with religious convictions to be part of funding for abortions.  The cake shop owner in Colorado is a good example of how the powerful elites seek to force small business owners to participate in events celebrating immoral activities and fictions like gay marriage and transgender reveal parties.

   Our world, made good by God, loved by Him, and which He desires to return to Him for fullness of life, is stale, dark, and flat – is soul-less without God – and Jesus and his Church are to be its salvation.  You and I aren’t Christians on mission if our faith is only a private affair.  From the Gospel: “But if salt loses its taste…. It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.”  May that never be said of us.  We can’t lose our seasoning.  Start with yourself and include your family in a daily habit of prayer to keep your seasoning.  The Rosary should be a natural devotion for us.  Frequent confession to be healed of sin and a regular sacramental life keep our light burning brightly.  Being willing to share your faith in how you raise your children and in your friendly witness to those around you at work, in your neighborhood, and in public is a way to be a city set on a hill.  In all this we do not seek to have ourselves seen, but rather to let our witness drive others to glorify the heavenly Father and to be brought into the covenant of salvation.

Fourth Sunday after Epiphany (Traditional Latin Mass)

Fourth Sunday after Epiphany (Mass of the 1962 Missal)
Rom. 13:8-10; Mt. 8:23-27
29 January 2023

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF THE SON, AND OF THE HOLY GHOST.  AMEN.              

The setting of this Gospel selection is the Sea, also called the Lake, of Galilee.  It had – and still has – a reputation for being dangerous due to sudden storms that can arise.  Fishermen knew these dangers well and they became seasoned to the temperamental nature of the Sea of Galilee.  The Gospel text clearly describes the storm in strong and dramatic terms.  Perhaps to put an exclamation point on the danger so that we don’t diminish the severe nature of this storm, we should note that, the disciples, experienced fishermen who knew the sea well, were clearly terrified thinking this storm might be their last and they would not make it to shore.  In fact, this tempest was more than just a violent storm.  The Greek words limjohnson@saintannechurchnh.orgterally refer to a great shaking of the sea, something like an earthquake.  This conjures up the image of something like a tsunami.  Thus, St. Matthew describes the situation as the ship being “covered with waves.”  The ship is being swamped, taking on water badly, and the men on board, experienced as they were with the Sea of Galilee, think they are likely going to die.  Thus, they cry out: Lord, save us, we perish!  The disciples are being put to the test so that they learn not to surrender to their fears.

                But the threat here may well have been more than severe weather.  That possibility comes as a hint in the response from our Blessed Lord who, the text says, “commanded the winds and the sea.”  The Greek for “commanded” is the word for “rebuked” which is used in other places where our Lord commands by rebuking evil spirits in exorcisms.  This could be a clue that demons are behind the manifestation in nature of the earthquake and sudden storm causing a great commotion on the sea.  In fact, the Church has exorcistic prayers used when there is threat of severe storms, to pray that forces lurking behind terrible threats of nature may be calmed.  Decades ago, after a particularly bad hurricane season, a past archbishop of the Archdiocese of Mobile, Alabama, ordered that after all Masses the Divine Praises be recited asking for God’s protection from storms.  It’s a practice they still do today.  The Church, the Barque of St. Peter, still today prays against threatening storms as she makes her way through the troubled waters of the kingdom of man.  In traveling through so many storms in history and in the present day, the Church manifests or shows – in fact, she carries – the divinity of Christ to the world.

                We know that the Church has faced and still faces violent storms as she makes her way through history.  We don’t always see through the veil and we can’t always clearly identify spiritual realities in this valley of tears.  But we can assume that in some cases the forces lurking behind troubles that come from outside and within the Church may well be the evil manipulation of demons.  In today’s Gospel selection we may have the hint that demons were behind the storm.  But we can also suggest that demons may also have been behind the manipulation of the disciples’ fears as they despaired while the Lord slept in the boat.

                The ship of the Church continues her voyage giving witness to the Lord who is God among us.  We are not disciples literally in a boat but we might as well be, because we are rocked about and overcome with the waves of godless secularism and leftist ideology that seeks to corrupt and refashion everything God has revealed in nature and in the revelation given to the Church.  We are tossed about by the tsunami of being lied to daily by cultural elites and their mouthpieces in the mainstream media as they seek to advance a globalist agenda.  And the demonic forces that seek to pry our faith from us can be seen in the waves that swamp us even from within the Church.  So many have surrendered the authentic faith in favor of having their ears tickled by false doctrine.  Perversion, sin, and crime among our shepherds have left trust destroyed.  We have whole generations who know almost nothing about the faith but who can spout every relativistic antiphon that undercuts moral absolutes and the fact that the Lord established one true Church for our salvation.  We have Synods that are little more than manipulative committees with pre-determined outcomes, and bishops and popes who say confusing and foolish things.  Come to think of it, maybe this is the Sea of Galilee!

                And the Lord seems to be asleep through it all.  And we cry out: Don’t you care?  Save us for we perish!  My brothers and sisters, our faith is being tested mightily.  Will we be like those who do not trust in God, surrendering to our fears, and so hear the indictment of our Lord: Why are you fearful, oh you of little faith?  Even in this storm-tossed existence, the Church carries the Lord and manifests his divinity in this world.  Demons want to attack.  And sadly, both outside and inside the Church there are those who cooperate with and fall prey to demonic manipulations.  The Deposit of Faith is our sure rudder and anchor in our times.  We should call upon the Lord in daily prayer by which we pour out our troubled hearts to him.  Reading the Word of God and coming before him in Adoration should be standards for this rocky journey.  The daily Rosary should be a natural reflex for us.  How poor we would be if we left Our Lady and her rosary to dangle only from our rearview mirrors!  Frequent confession is a must so that we are washed of the sins that will only lead us to despair.  And worthy reception of the Lord’s gift of self in Holy Communion increases our faith in our storm-tossed times.  In time we will marvel at the great calm that the Lord commands because he has authority over all things.  Lord, we beg of you: see the wind and the seas in our time and rebuke them so that we may marvel as did your disciples: What manner of man is this, for the winds and the sea obey Him?

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF THE SON, AND OF THE HOLY GHOST.  AMEN.