Sermons of Fr Paul Robinson SSPX

When Our Lord was in the middle of preaching His famous Sermon on the Mount, He took some time to instruct the people on how to pray.He said to them, “When you pray, go into your room, and closing your door, pray to your Father in secret: and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. But in praying, do not multiply words, as the Gentiles do; for they think that by saying a great deal they will be heard. So do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. In this manner therefore shall you pray: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” (Matt. 6:6-9)What is interesting about this passage is that Our Lord speaks of God as our Father four times in a short space. He is not referring to the First Person of the Trinity so much as God in Three Persons.Almighty God is our Father in Heaven. He created us. He takes care of us. He is the source of everything for us. He wants us to join Him in Heaven. He is my Father because He created me. He is our Father because He created all of us.There are so many things that follow from this fact that God is our Father. But today, I want to highlight three of them.

Just three weeks ago, we had a momentous event in the life of the Church, the election of a new Pope. Robert Cardinal Prevost became the 267th successor of St. Peter and so the oldest institution in the world continues.And yet there are some in the traditional Catholic world who do not accept that Leo XIV is the Pope of the Catholic Church. These people are called sedevacantists.Sedevacantists are Catholics who believe that there is no Pope of the Catholic Church because the Pope has fallen into heresy. Most believe that there has not been a legitimate Pope since Pope Pius XII died in 1958. I want to warn you against this opinion.The sedevacantists represent something new in the history of the Church. There have been bad Popes throughout the Church's history, as well as anti-Popes, but never a movement of people who have claimed that the Pope had no authority over them and yet claimed to remain Catholic. It is striking that Our Lord Himself was not a sedevacantist. The religious leaders of His time were evil, yet He supported their authority, “ The scribes and the Pharisees have sitten on the chair of Moses. All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do: but according to their works do ye not; for they say, and do not” (Matt. 23:2) Perhaps this example of Our Lord is why there has been no real sedevacantist movement until modern times, despite the fact that there have been plenty of bad Popes.Perhaps another reason why there have never been sedevacantists until the current crisis in the Church is that no one in the Church has the authority to depose the Pope. There is a principle in Canon Law which states that “No one judges the first seat”. There are theologians who have speculated that the Pope might automatically lose office if he falls into heresy. But it is clear that no individual Catholic is in a position to say whether that has happened or not. Our Lord certainly does not ask us to decide whether this or that person is the Pope or not. The Church could never have any real unity if that were the case. Just think what would happen if a company would run that way. For Abp. Lefebvre, it was theoretically possible that a Pope could lose his office by falling into heresy. But, in practice, he realized that he was not in a position to make that judgment and the prudent thing to do was to give the Pope the benefit of the doubt. That was why, while he recognized the terrible scandals that were happening in the pontificate of John Paul II, he yet went to the Pope and tried to work with him to get permission to consecrate bishops. We will obviously be doing the same with Pope Leo XIV. Unlike Abp. Lefebvre, the sedevacantists do believe that they are in a position to decide with certainty that there is no Pope. But this seems rash, imprudent and prideful. It also seems to represent a bad ecclesiology. The Church simply cannot work that way.

This is a day of great joy for us. There are few things in this life that make you so happy as to see someone rewarded for the good that they have done.Today is the day that Our Lord receives His reward for the great good that He did for the human race. At the Last Supper, Our Lord prayed to the Father, saying, “Father, the hour has come! Glorify Your Son, that Your Son may glorify You, even as You have given Him power over all flesh, in order that to all You have given Him He may give everlasting life.”Today is the day that His prayer is answered, when He receives the glory that the Father has prepared for Him.And it makes us very happy to see this triumph of Our Lord,because we love Him and we know so well how much He deserves it.It makes us happy because His triumph is a very wonderful thing.It makes us happy because it gives us a glimpse of the glory that we hope to receive one dayWe are familiar with ceremonies of triumph that take place on this earth. Ancient Rome was famous for its triumphal processions. Julius Caesar would come back from conquering a foreign nation that he had subjugated to the Empire.The people would line the streets. First would pass by them the treasures of the conquered nation, all of the spoils that were going to Rome. Then would come the people of the nation who were now going to be made slaves of Rome. Then the defeated king and defeated general who would soon be executed.Then the Roman senate. And finally Julius Caesar himself, the great hero who was responsible for the victory. The celebration was so overwhelming that they would have a slave stand by Caesar to whisper in his ear to remind him that he was going to die one day, that he was not a god.This is an example of one of the greatest triumphal celebrations in human history. If we tried to compare it to something closer to us, we can think about when the Denver Nuggets won their championship in 2023. Thousands of people lined the streets. They put the players in the top of a fire truck and drove them down the streets. They received the adulation and adoration of the crowds.These triumphs are nothing compared to the triumph of Our Lord Jesus Christ on the day of His Ascension. Our Lord took His followers to the Mount of Olives. He blessed them. Then, on His own power, using the glorified body that He earned through His death, He lifted Himself up to Heaven.When He reached Heaven, He opened its gates. All of the angels were assembled to receive Him. He went first into Heaven. Behind Him, He brought with Him His spoils. These were all of the souls in the history of the world who had died in the state of grace. Thousands upon thousands of souls followed Him into Heaven, from the first man and woman Adam and Eve to St. Joseph and St. John the Baptist.Our Lord took His place in Heaven on His throne seat, at the right hand of the heavenly Father. He assigned to everyone else their place in Heaven.A new song was sung in Our Lord's honor, a more triumphal song than any we have ever heard on this earth.This triumph of Our Lord was greater than any triumph that we have ever seen here below, because it was more magnificent than anything that happens here on earth. It was a supernatural triumph, a celebration prepared by God Himself.

Yesterday was an important feast day for our parish, the feast of Our Lady Help of Christians. Before St. Isidore's existed, we had a chapel in Denver, on Winona Court and West 39th Avenue.The chapel was called Our Lady Help of Christians Chapel. When this church was built, it was decided that the church would be dedicated to St. Isidore the Farmer and that the school would be placed under the protection of Our Lady Help of Christians.It was in this way that we came to have two patrons, whereas in many SSPX parishes, the church and the school have the same patron.Today, I would like to help us get to know our patroness a bit better and remind us why we are dedicated to her. I think that it is especially appropriate to do that today, given that we are celebrating the results of our campaign and the faithful have been so generous contributing to the future of Our Lady Help of Christians Academy.The practice of referring to Our Lady as the “Help of Christians” goes all the way back to St. John Chrysostom.But the devotion to Our Lady under this title really started to take off in the 1500s. It was at that time that the Church was engaged in religious wars against the Muslims and the Protestants.We all know that Pope St. Pius V was asking the Christian world to pray the Rosary to Our Lady as the Catholic naval army was preparing to face off against the Muslims. But he was asking them to invoke Our Lady under the title of Help of Christians.After the victory at Lepanto, the invocation “Help of Christians” was added to the Litany of Our Lady, also known as the Litany of Loreto.But devotion to Our Lady Help of Christians really reached its high point in the 19th century. At the beginning of the century, Pope Pius VII was kidnapped by Napoleon and imprisoned by him at a place called Fontainebleau in France.Eventually, Napoleon fell from power and the Pope was able to return safely to Rome. Pius VII attributed his release to the intercession of Our Lady. As a way of thanking her, he added the feast of Our Lady Help of Christians to the calendar on May 24.This happened in 1815. It was in that same year that a great saint was born who was to be a promoter of devotion to Our Lady Help of Christians as well as a great educator.

Each one of us has the experience of attending a funeral. We assist at the Mass for the deceased and pray for his soul. We accompany the body to the cemetery and see the final rites performed over the body. Then we walk away.That's it. Nothing happens after that and we do not expect anything else to happen. We do not expect that the person buried in the ground is going to do anything. None of those who are at the cemetery do anything after they are buried. They do not move or get up. They all just stay in the ground.And the same will be true for us one day. We will also die; we will also be taken to the cemetery. We will be put in the ground, the people will walk away, and we will stay in the ground.The reason why we will stay in the ground and why everyone who is buried at the cemetery stays in the ground is that we do not have power over life and death.We are going to die when our soul will no longer be able to remain with our body and we will not be able to bring life back to our body. Neither will our loved ones. Neither will our friends.There is no one in this world that is able to restore life to a dead body. We have all of the body parts that we need. We have all kinds of technology and machines. But we cannot give life.In all of our experience, whatever dies remains dead and does not come back to life.Our Lord is the exceptionThe one exception to this, of course, is Our Lord Jesus Christ. Like everyone else, He was buried in a tomb. Like everyone else, those who buried Him walked away after His burial. Like everyone else, they thought that He would remain dead and would not come back to life.But that is not what happened. Our Lord did what no one else is capable of doing. He gave life back to Himself, He rose from the dead, and He came out of the tomb.How is it possible that He alone, of all the many people who have died in the history of the world, He alone was able to come back from the dead. It is because He is the only one who possesses the power necessary to do it. He alone has power over life and death. He alone is God.Our Lord promises He will raise us upThese two facts must be very clear in our mind: a) I am going to die one day and I will have no power to restore life to myself; b) Our Lord Jesus Christ is the only one Who has the power to restore life to someone who is dead.

Paschal candle dedicated to Our Lady with images of her titles on it. Two of them refer to Our Lady as a star: Stella Matutinis and Stella MarisWe speak of Our Lady as a star because she is a guide for our life. Before we had modern means of navigation, sailors had to rely on the stars in order to set the course for their ships. The stars keep the same position in the heavens every night and so always point in the same direction.Our Lady is the star of the sea of our life to guide us. She is also the “morning star”, the brightest star in the sky: she is the clearest guide for our life.I want to speak today especially about Our Lady as a guide for our youth, as a guide for those of you who have not yet chosen your path in this life. It is like having your ship in the dock and you are getting out the map and charting your course, but you have not yet set out on your voyage. You have your life but you have not yet chosen what we call your state in life.Our Lady is a great guide for you because God her the ability to live different states of life all at the same time and to provide a perfect model for all of them. There are some guides who simply tell you where you need to go but do not walk on that path. There are other guides who show you the way to go by walking on that path themselves. That is what Our Lady has done.She says to our youth, “There are three different paths that you can choose in this life. I have walked on all of them in a certain way, but you will only be able to choose one of them. Each of these paths involves a gift of yourself. You are free to choose the path that you desire but you must seek to choose one of them rather than remain at the crossroads your whole life.”God has given us three states of life to choose from. Our Lady is a model for all of them.

Our Lord Jesus Christ is the revelation of God. He shows us who God is.This is especially true at the end of Our Lord's life. We reveal what we are particularly in a time of crisis. It is the time of Our Lord's Passion that we see more clearly than ever before Who He is, Who God is.The Last Supper and the Passion make one thing very clear: our God is humble.Each event of the Last Supper and the Passion is a manifestation of Our Lord's humility.There are many aspects of Our Lord's humility that we could speak about. But I want to focus on one of them: Our Lord's effort to lower Himself in order to do good to us.We could say that Our Lord has to make a choice between two things: love and justice. If He chooses justice, He maintains Himself strictly in His state of Godhood. If He chooses love, He lowers Himself so that He can stoop down to His miserable creatures and assist them.We see what Our Lord chooses. He chooses love, a love that works through humility. The love of God uses humility as the most effective way to express itself and achieve its goal of doing good to us.On this night of the Last Supper, Our Lord performs three great acts of humility that enable Him to do great good to the Apostles and also to us.

Have you ever asked God for a miracle? I have.Why not? We know and believe that God is all-powerful.When you are all-powerful, that means that it takes you no effort to do anything that you do.How difficult was it for God to create the universe? It was not difficult at all. It took no effort. How difficult to create my soul? Easy.How difficult is it for Him to work a miracle? He can work any miracle that He wants, at any time, no problem. Curing cancer, removing tumors, raising from the dead, curing blindness, whatever.Besides this, it seems that Our Lord wants us to ask for miracles.His word about having faith the grain of a mustard seed. “the apostles said to the Lord: Increase our faith. And the Lord said: If you had faith like to a grain of mustard seed, you might say to this mulberry tree, Be thou rooted up, and be thou transplanted into the sea: and it would obey you” (Lk. 17:5-6). This seems to be a gratuitous miracle, without any purpose, and Our Lord is saying that they could ask for that.Our Lord working so many miracles without being asked. Today's miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes happened, even though there was no request or faith.Two Masses of this week will give us Our Lord's two greatest miracles: the raising from the dead of the son of the widow of Naim and the raising of Lazarus; in neither case was Our Lord asked to raise them from the dead.Meanwhile, there are many occasions in the Gospel when Our Lord immediately grants a request for Him to work a miracle. Most often, after He works the miracle, He praises the person for asking for the miracle and tells them it was because of their faith that He granted it. It seems that the manifestation of our faith by asking a miracle delights Him.Besides this, Our Lord encourages us to pray for whatever we need. His words are so strong and encouraging! “Ask, and it shall be given you: seek, and you shall find: knock, and it shall be opened to you. For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened.” (Lk. 11:9-10)

Right now in the United States, there is a lot of basketball being played and sometimes you hear commentators talk about second-chance points. This is when a team makes a shot, misses, gets its own rebound, and then manages to score.Second-chance points are not common because the defending team is in a better position to get the rebound. For this reason, teams know not to rely on second-chance points and always try to make a basket on their first try.In today's Gospel, we hear Our Lord speaking about what might be called second-chance graces. The people who were with Him were experiencing incredible graces but were not fully realizing it. They had in front of them the Incarnate God Himself. They were in the midst of the most important time of the history of the human race.Our Lord was working incredible miracles and so providing proof of His divinity. In today's Gospel, we also see that He was casting out devils. He was freeing people from slavery to the devil. But this situation was not meant to last long. Our Lord would only be among them for three years and then He would be crucified for our sins.If they do not accept Him now, chances are that there will be no second chance. He casts out the devil today and they say that He casts out the devil by the devil. Tomorrow, He is going to go away. Meanwhile, the devil is going to go and get reinforcements and come back to possess their souls. When he does so, who is going to help them?If they reject Him, there is not going to be anyone able to face off against the devil and they will be defeated by him. It is now or never. There will be no second chance.

We have made a lot of sacrifices for our capital campaign. But what good is it if we do not save our souls? That is the whole point of everything that happens here.A priest wants every single person in his parish to save their souls.We want everyone here to be reunited in Heaven one day. We don't want anyone to be missing.Fr. McBride and I don't want to appear before Our Lord and hear from Him, “Yes, you were at St. Isidore's in Watkins. You saved many souls. But look at all of these other souls who went to hell.”One of the most important prayers of the priest is: “Lord, do not let any one of the souls that you have confided to me be lost forever!”Mortal sinIf there is one thing that a priest worries about more than anything else, it is the souls that have a habit of mortal sin.What do I mean by a habit of mortal sin?I mean that mortal sin happens regularly, in a predictable way.The soul commits a mortal sin every day, every week, every month, whatever. It is not something that happens occasionally; it happens according to a regular pattern.It is when a soul usually confesses mortal sin when he goes to confession.ImpurityIf this is happening, we all know the reason. 99% of the time, it is because of impurity.The soul has gotten into a pattern of indulging in illicit sexual pleasure and cannot give it upThere are teenagers who start off on a bad habit of self-abuse. Then, they find that, when they want to stop, they are unable.There are teenagers and adults who have formed bad habits with technological devices. They have the behavior of addicts. They are always telling themselves that they are going to stop and yet they never do stop.What are we exchanging Heaven for? What are we exchanging the love of God for?

Around 175 years ago, a small village in France with a population of only 200 people was receiving 100,000 visitors each year. People would sleep in the fields and wait in lines for days in order to achieve the end of their visit.What was so important that they would make so much of an effort and go through so much hardship? What were they all there to accomplish? They were there to make their confession to a saint. They wanted to tell their sins to a saint, hear what he would say in return to them, and receive his absolution.St. John-Marie Vianney would read the souls of his penitents. He would weep over the sins confessed to him. He would fix the innumerable problems that sins cause and restore peace to troubled souls. Many people would leave the village of Ars changed for life.We do not have any priest here at St. Isidore's who have the ability to read souls or who weep when sins are confessed to them. You do not have saints for priests.But your priests have the exact same power that the Cure d'Ars had, the power to cleanse your souls from sin. In that confessional box, the main thing that was happening in Ars is also happening here: the washing of souls with the Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ.Despite the fact that you do not have saints for your priests, it is yet extremely important for you have a love for the sacrament of confession, that you have a devotion to confession.Our Lord came on this earth and gave His life for our sins. But His Blood only reaches us through certain channels. The main way for you to access the Blood that He shed for you is through the sacraments of Confession and Holy Communion.How many are there among us who like to go to Holy Communion but do not like to go to Confession? How many like the Blood of Our Lord when it comes through the Holy Eucharist but not when it comes through the absolution of the priest?

This life is a contest of love between us and God.When we were in the seminary, we priests learned in moral theology that God has total dominion over all things, while we have partial dominion over some things. What this means is that everything that we have and that we are belongs to God, while we are only stewards of those things.You car belongs to God. Your house belongs to God. Your children belong to God. You belong to God. God has given you these things, but He has only made you a steward over them, an administrator of them. He has not given you the authority to do with them whatever you want.Why has God done this? Because He is your Father, because He loves you, because He cares about you. Because He wants this life to be a contest of love.It is sad that in the Enlightenment and Protestant world that we live in today, most people do not want such a God. They do not like a God Who only gives them a partial control over the things they give them, use and administration but not total ownership.And so they invent a God more to their liking. They invent the Freemasonic God, the Deist God. The Freemasonic God is a manufacturer; He is not a Father. He makes us but then He does not expect anything of us.Think about how it works with a car manufacturer. The cars roll off the manufacturing line. You go to buy one, you like it, you pay the price for it, and you drive it off. Does the manufacturer care what you do with the car after that point? No, not at all! You can use it for transportation; you can use it for target practice; you can use it for off-road racing, whatever.Modern people tend to want God to be like the manufacturer, where He gives us our life, we are born into this world, and then He does not care at all what we do with our life from that point. We can become an Catholic or an atheist, a Buddhist or a Baptist. We can be faithful or unfaithful, we can be loving or hating, we can be selfish or unselfish. God doesn't care.The thing is, however, this God does not exist. He is a false god, an idol created by modern man so that he can worship himself and his own free will.The real God is a father. A father does not just beget children and then leave them to do whatever they want. No, a father instructs his children, looks after his children, sets expectations for his children, makes demands of them. He wants to be united with them.Whenever a father gives something to his child, he does not give it unconditionally, he does not give it to be used however the child wants. The father gives the child life, gives the child his own name, gives the child food and clothing, gives the child the Catholic faith and a Catholic education. And he expects the child to use all of these things wisely and well.Notice that with the manufacturer, there is no union in selling the car. The good father and child, however, are on the same page, think the same way, want the same thing. They have love.What this means is that this life is a contest of love. God has set up our life such that He showers us with love through His gifts and then tests us to see if we are going to take those gifts and use them to love Him in return, or if we are going to take the gifts and use them for our own purposes.

#SSPX #prayerWhen God created man, at the same time He wanted to create the human family. He created one man and one woman, Adam and Eve, and then He married them. He made them two in one flesh.When God Himself chose to come down upon this earth in the fullness of time, He chose to do so in a family. The family had existed for the entire history of man up to that point, but now mankind would have a perfect example of what a family should be in this holy family, where you have God, the Mother of God, and the foster father of God.Families today are reminded not only that they belong to an institution that God has created but an institution that He has modeled for us.There are many aspects of the life of the Holy Family that we could speak about but today I particularly want to focus upon their example of prayer.

Today, we honor the holy name of Jesus. The Church has a special feast dedicated to this name. The name is holy because it came directly from God. It was given to Our Lady by the angel Gabriel just before she conceived Our Lord in her womb. It was given to St. Joseph by an angel in a dream when he was wondering what he should do about the pregnancy of Our Lady.Our Lady and St. Joseph gave Our Lord the name of Jesus on the day of His circumcision, in obedience to the will of God.The name is one of a role. It indicates both the purpose of Our Lord's life and who He is. He is one who saves. He is a rescuer. That is what it means to be a savior.In the case of Our Lord, there is no other savior. He is the only rescuer who is able to save us from death. No can bring us to life besides Him. No one is both God and man besides Him.This is why it is an honor for us to serve Him. It is an honor for us to serve the one alone who is the savior of the human race, the one alone who is the God-man.It is an honor for us to defend His name because “there is no other name under Heaven given to men whereby they may be saved”.It is important for us to understand that, without Our Lord, we are lost, whereas with Our Lord, we have true fulfillment in this life and the next.Our Lord teaches us the true meaning of our lives, He teaches us how to live them in order to attain happiness, and He gives us the means to live them that way through His grace in our souls. His teaching contains a paradox that is mysterious but true.He says, “He that finds his life, shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for me, shall find it.” He says this right after saying, “He that loves father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me; and he that loves son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me. And he that takes not up his cross, and follows me, is not worthy of me.” (Matt. 10:37)When you serve the noble and true ideal of following Our Lord in this life, and this is the highest ideal possible, you flourish in your life. When, on the other hand, you refuse to serve Our Lord and serve yourself instead, your life is very poor.

The life of man is marked by a paradox: there is in each one of us the desire to serve another because of the fact that we are creatures, but there is also in us the desire to be independent such that we want to stand on our own feet and be free from all control.Firstly, we have a desire to serve another. We cannot avoid the obvious fact that we are limited and helpless in many respects.We try to do things and we fail. Others have talents that we do not. We have a lot of desires which we recognize we have no power to realize.This leads us to look for someone to follow who is more powerful, more capable, who is able to protect our interests and help us achieve what we desire in a much greater way than we could by ourselves. This is why everyone wants a hero to follow.We live at a time in history when the importance of independence is emphasized in society more than it has ever been. Yet there is no less hero worship today than in the past.At the same time, we want to be independent, to be in a state where we do not serve anyone else. We have a fear of serving because we find it hard to trust anyone ruling over us. We realize that if we give ourselves over to serve another, that person might take advantage of us and make our lives worse instead of better.There is great suspicion today regarding everyone who holds power. There is a belief that power necessarily corrupts people. And so, the more power that they hold, the more corrupt they will be.Plus, we do not like to be told what to do. We feel like the act of obedience causes us to surrender our free will, something that is very precious to us.When we face this paradox that exists within us—that we both want to serve and we do not want to serve—we have a number of possibilities as to how we will face it.

Christmas is the night when God gives Himself to us. Isaias gives us a name to call Our Lord when He comes: “God with us”. And he also emphasizes: “A child is born to us. A child is given to us.” It is difficult for us to understand because it exceeds our understanding.God is born, in person. God is born for you, for your sakes.There is a particularity about Christmas, a concreteness, that has to be noticed and emphasized. There are many ways to look at the Nativity scene, many ways to contemplate it. But tonight, at least, I would like you to think about what it would be like if you were the only one there. Just you and the divine Child.When we are there alone with the Christ Child, we are going to realize something right away. We are going to realize that our human condition is important.We are going to look at this Child and say to ourselves, “God is a pure spirit, infinite, eternal, all-powerful. Yet He takes on flesh; He becomes human and He confines Himself within the limits of the human nature that He has created. He has started off as an infant, just like I did, an infant that cannot talk, that cannot walk, that cannot feed itself, that is helpless in every way.”The Christ Child is saying to us, “I have come to be close to you in the very human nature that I gave to you. I have taken on your human nature, as a gift to you. You must accept your human nature as a gift from me. You must reach your salvation through the limits of your human nature.”By that, I mean that we have to live in and love the reality that God has made for us.The limitations of our body: sometimes healthy, sometimes sickThe limitations of a world tainted by sin: sometimes good, sometimes evil we cannot stopThe limitations of desire: sometimes desires realized, many times desires that cannot be realized

#homily #gaudeteFor the past month, there has been a lot of news concerning who President Trump is choosing to be part of his next cabinet when he takes over the reins of government on January 20.When a new name is announced and you read the reaction of the person chosen, you hear them saying something like, “I would like to thank President Trump for his trust in me. This is the honor of my life. I will do my utmost best to serve the American people”.Whenever a person in a place of power singles out someone and chooses them for a particular role, that person feels honored and has a great desire to the do the task assigned.This is how the Apostles felt when they were chosen by Our Lord Jesus Christ to be His followers and the leaders of His newly-formed Church. He told them at the Last Supper, “You have not chosen me but I have chosen you and appointed you that you should go, and bring forth fruit, and your fruit should remain” (Jn. 15:16)St. Paul would often begin his epistles by saying, “Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God” and would emphasize that he received his mission from God Himself.Throughout this time of Advent, there is a figure who appears time and again in the Gospels, the precursor of Our Lord Jesus Christ, St. John the Baptist. At the end of every Mass, we read about him that, “There was a man sent from God whose name was John. This man came for a witness, to give testimony of the light, that all men might believe through him.” (Jn. 1:6-7)St. John today makes the bold claim that he is a figure fulfilling a prophecy of Isaias some centuries before that there would be a prophet who would prepare the way for the Messias.We still speak of these figures today, and especially of Our Lady, because they were given important roles in the kingdom of God. It is one thing to be given a role by a powerful man; it is quite another thing to be given a role by Almighty God.

St. Isidore Capital Campaign website: growstisidore.orgToday, I want to speak to you about glory.It's the second Sunday in a row that we have a Gospel about the Last Judgment.Typically, when we think of the LJ, we think of a terrifying spectacle, where the world will be consumed in fire, where everyone on the earth will die, where all nations and towns will be wiped away. No more Denver, no more NYC, no more USA.It is true that the LJ will be a day of wrath, a day of trembling and mourning.But it will be a blessed day for the saints. It will be the day that they enter into their glory, body and soul.It is the day that Our Lord will say to them, “Well done, good and faithful servant, come take possession of the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world.”This is what we want to happen to us on that day. We want to hear Our Lord say to us that He is going to give us possession of a kingdom.We should want to receive as much glory as possible on that day. It is good for us to desire heavenly glory!But it is not enough to desire it; we must also ask ourselves what we must do to receive it.This is a “thought experiment” that St. Ignatius has us do when we are on retreat.When I appear before OL one day for my judgment, what will I wish that I had done?What things will I have done that I will be glad about?What things will I have done that I wish I did not do?What things will I have left undone that I wish I had accomplished?

#resurrection #catholicAt the beginning of the second century, around the year 100, a man named Justin was born in the city of Flavia Neapolis. That is a town in modern day Palestine.Growing up, Justin was educated as a philosopher in the school of Platonic philosophy. He was a pagan and he heard talk about a group of people called Christians. He was told that they were terribly immoral people.But this did not make sense to Justin. He saw the Christians appearing before Roman judges and willingly being martyred for Christ. He said to himself that it was impossible that they would be doing this while living an evil life or a life of pleasure.St. Justin went on to investigate Christianity and become a convert. Since he came from the pagan world and understood it well, he was in a good position to make the right arguments with the pagans to convert them to Catholicism.St. Justin was eventually martyred when he was about 65 years old and we celebrate his feast day on April 14.One of the things that St. Justin tried to do was to convince the Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, to stop putting Christians to death. For this end, he wrote two works of explanation and defense of the Catholic faith that were called “Apologies”. This does not mean that he was saying sorry in these works; rather, Apology was a Greek word meaning “a formal defense of one's opinions and conduct”.There is one part of St. Justin's first Apology that I would like to focus upon today. It is the part where he defends the resurrection of bodies and his defense relates to today's Gospel.

#Catholic #SSPXWhether you drive to St. Isidore's from Byers or Bennett, Aurora or Denver, or elsewhere, you come to a church in a rural setting, surrounded by farmland.You come to a church that was built by farmers and which is dedicated to a saint who was a farmer, St. Isidore.You come to the traditional Latin Mass, which often presents Gospels for your reflection that have some relation to farming. There are at least eight Sundays of the year when this happens. This Sunday and next Sunday are two examples.The reason for this is that Our Lord often drew from farming in His teaching. He compared Himself to a shepherd and us to sheep.He compared the Church to a field and us to plants. He talked about seeds being planted and bearing fruit, or landing on the wrong ground and not bearing fruit, about seeds growing up with weeds. He talked about mustard seeds, about vines and vineyards. He compared people to trees and said that we should judge them according to their fruits: how they act and what effect they have on others.Our Lord once came upon a fig tree and cursed it for being barren as a symbol of a soul not making progress; He told us that we should look at fig trees to know what season we are in.Our Lord is the Creator of Heaven and Earth. So, we should not be surprised that, when He comes from Heaven down onto this Earth, He teaches us about Heaven using the things of Earth. He teaches us about His design of Heaven using analogies with His design of Earth.One of the main things that Our Lord is teaching us when He compares us to plants is the duty we have to grow in holiness over the course of our life. It is not acceptable to Our Lord that He would give us this life as a time to make our way to Heaven and then we end up using it for other things.

As we come to the feast of Christ the King this year, everyone has politics on their mind. There are important elections coming up in less than two weeks that will decide the course of our country for the next four years.The coincidence of this feast and the elections provides for us an opportune moment for us, as Catholics, to remind ourselves of our politics.Our political stance is very simple: we have a king to whom we pledge our wholehearted allegiance, Our Lord Jesus Christ. We recognize Him as our God, our Redeemer and as the head of the race to which we belong, the human race.We strive with all of our might to submit our entire lives to Him, to follow His will in everything that we do. It is an honor for us to be able to serve Him.We believe that He established a Church that is a divine institution, the Catholic Church, and that this Church communicates to us the truths that our King came to teach us and the way of life that our King wants us to follow.We know that when we serve this King by living a devout Catholic life and especially by following Him on the royal way of the cross, He gives us a share in His royal power. He gives us the power to rule over the world, the flesh and the devil.Through our service of Christ our King, we become truly free. We have the ability to refuse all that works to destroy us; we have the ability to direct ourselves towards our true good.We know that, if we are faithful to our King during this life, we will be given a kingdom in the life to come. We will be given a share in the eternal reign of Christ the King for all eternity in Heaven. We will join in the triumph of Our Lord, Our Lady and the saints forever.This is our politics; this is our plan for our life. For us, Our Lord Jesus Christ is everything.

With the sudden death of Bishop Tissier de Mallerais on October 8, there are many who are concerned about the future of the SSPX, realizing that the SSPX needs bishops to survive.This is a good moment for us to remind ourselves about three things: why the consecrations of bishops took place in 1988; why there have not been more bishops consecrated since then; and what we might expect for the consecration of bishops in the future.

In our Catholic doctrine classes for the past three weeks, we have been going over Pope Leo XIII's beautiful encyclical on marriage Arcanum Divinae.Early on in the encyclical, he says the following: “the Universal Church has always taught that Christ our Lord raised marriage to the dignity of a sacrament; that to husband and wife, guarded and strengthened by the heavenly grace which His merits gained for them, He gave power to attain holiness in the married state”.When Our Lord made marriage a sacrament at the wedding feast of Cana, he raised it to the supernatural level. From that point, marriage was not only able to accomplish natural things like bringing children into this world and having husband and wife assist one another.It was now also able to accomplish supernatural things. Among those supernatural things is this one: your marriage is able to make you holy. Your sacramental marriage is able to draw you closer to God and get you to Heaven. It has the capacity to make you a saint!

#demons #angelsIn our images, we depict St. Michael standing over the devil and thrusting a spear into him while holding the scales of justice. This is because St. Michael is the victor over the devil.The book of the Apocalypse speaks about this victory. “And there was a great battle in heaven. Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels: and they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, who seduceth the whole world; and he was cast unto the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.” (Apoc. 12:7-9)This passage refers to the future when St. Michael will bind the devil in hell for all time. But we know that St. Michael already defeated the devil at the beginning of time, when the angels had to choose between God and themselves.We will sing about this victory at Vespers this afternoon in the hymn “Te splendor”. Michael bears thy standard dread, And lifts the mighty Cross on high. He in that Sign the rebel power. Did with their Dragon Prince expel; And hurled them from the heaven's high towers, Down like a thunderbolt to hell.The bottom line is that the devil is a loser and the good angels are winners. Everyone who rejects God is on the losing side; everyone who serves God is on the winning side.We are on the side of God; we are on the side of the good angels. And so we are on the winning side. But in today's difficult times, when evil is so triumphant, we can easily forget about the good angels and the fact that the devil has already lost.We obviously have to take the devil seriously. At the same time, we do not have to worry if we are leading a good Catholic life and we have a devotion to the holy angels.Today, I just want to remind us of the fact that the good angels are far superior to the devils. So, if we have a devotion to them, they will definitely be able to keep the devil away from us.

You know that Sts. James and John approached Our Lord to ask Him that they might reign with Him, that they might sit at His right and left hand in His kingdom, once He had entered into His glory. Our Lord, in response, said to them, “Can you be baptized with the baptism wherewith I am to be baptized?” (Mk. 10:38) And they said, “We can.”You see in this request the desire to be identified with Our Lord, the desire for a complete and total association, such that Sts. James and John would be inseparable from Our Lord in His kingdom. Of course, there was a merely worldly ambition in this request. However, we are meant to have a similar ambition: we must want to be completely identified with OL.Our Lord says to Sts. James and John: “You do not know what you ask.” And then He proceeds to tell them what they need to do to have their request granted, and predicts that they will indeed accomplish what is necessary. There are three stages in this whole scene: a) the brothers desire to be identified with Our Lord; b) they understand the means necessary to reach that end through Our Lord's teaching; c) they employ those means by dying for OL.Let me remark in passing how few there are who even make it to the first step. Who wants to be completely identified with Jesus Christ? Is not such a one considered to be a religious fanatic by the world, a fool? Is not such a one obsessive? But who is the fool? Is it the saints who are fools who become fools for Christ, or is it the worldlings who become fools for the world?We, above all people, must have this burning desire to be identified with Our Lord. We, above all people, must understand the wisdom of Christ, and the folly of the world.“Can you be baptized with the baptism wherewith I am to be baptized?” Of course, Our Lord is speaking about His death. And you see from this that it is not enough for Him to die. If He dies and moves towards us, but we do not move towards Him, then there is no identification. This is why He says, “He who does not take up His cross and follow me is not worthy of Me.” We have to live the life of Christ, repeat that life, we may say.Our Lord issues the call “Follow Me” but He also gives us most powerful means of answering it. These means are the sacraments and the Mass. With St. Thomas the Apostle, once we have embraced this desire of identifying ourselves with Christ, we say, “Let us go and die with Him.” How? Well, firstly, we are baptized.In this sacrament, it is not sufficient for sin to be wiped away. On the contrary, it is necessary for the candidate to “switch sides”, to take on a new life, a new mode of existence. Quite simply, the baptized must be brought into the life of Christ Himself.St. Paul is at pains in many passages to make Catholics understand that their lives are now assimilated to that of Christ. In the early Church, catechumens walked down steps to be immersed or buried in a pool of water before rising up and walking up the other side. This was a symbol, St. Paul remarks in Rom. 6:3-4, of their death and resurrection, mirroring those of OL. As a result, they can “walk in newness of life”; they now live the life of Christ.

One of the great roles of Holy Mother Church is to teach us how to speak to God, to create in our hearts the proper dispositions of religion. She does this especially through her liturgy, where we have a ceremony prepared for us such that all we have to do is enter into it and make ourselves one with it, as far as possible, in order to become holy.One of the most powerful ways in which the Church teaches us the sentiments we should have in our souls, and creates those sentiments in us is through her hymns. There are hundreds upon hundreds of hymns that have been created throughout the centuries, providing the Church with a vast musical repertoire.Among them all, there are two, however, that seem to stand out above the rest, two hymns of sorrow, two hymns concerned with the most lamentable topic possible: death.One is the Dies Irae, about the Last Judgment; the other is the Stabat Mater, about Our Lady witnessing the death of Our Lord.Both were composed in the 1200s; both were used as sequences at Mass and were among the five sequences that were kept by Pope Pius V when he canonized the Tridentine Mass.Both of them were set to music by great composers on their deathbed. Mozart was composing music for the Dies Irae when he died at the age of 35; Pergolesi was composing music for the Stabat Mater when he died at the age of 26.Both of them were lost to the liturgy of the Church when the Novus Ordo Mass got rid of Latin and Gregorian Chant. We are blessed to be able to hold on to them and profit from them by holding on to the traditional Mass.We are more familiar with the Stabat Mater than the Dies Irae because we sing the Stabat Mater whenever we pray the Stations of the Cross during Lent.The Franciscans have a great devotion to the Passion of Our Lord and you know that St. Francis of Assisi received the very wounds of Our Lord in his body. Less than a century after the death of St. Francis, the Franciscan Jacopone da Todi composed the Stabat Mater. His composition is so beautiful and inspiring that over 300 composers have set the words of the hymn to music.The hymns has twenty stanzas. The first four stanzas set the scene by telling the story of what is happening; the next four stanzas make an appeal to the one listening to the hymn to have sympathy for this mother who is standing at the foot of the cross of her dying Son. Then there are ten stanzas addressed directly to Our Lady, making beautiful requests of her. Finally, the hymn ends with two stanzas addressed to Our Lord, asking Him that we may go to Heaven when we die.I would like for us to focus upon those ten stanzas in the middle of the hymn where we make our appeal to Our Lady.

Once a man went off to the mountains for a hike. When he arrived at the trailhead, he read a sign that said, “For your safety stay on trail”. He did this for a little bit but soon he became curious about the glittery and shiny things that he saw in the forest next to the trail.So, he left the trail and entered into the forest as the sun started going down. As he got deeper into the forest, it got darker and darker. Pretty soon, he was lost. He tried to find his way back to the trail but he could not find it. He kept walking and walking for days without getting anywhere and without the light of the sun ever coming back, as in this forest, it was dark all of the time.The food in his backpack was running out and he finally just sat down on a rock, immersed in the darkness of the forest. A few more days passed and he was beginning to resign himself to death when he finally saw a glimmer of light off in the distance.After a time, he realized that it was not coming from the sun but was coming from a lady who was holding a child. He walked towards the light. He was very weak but he managed to reach the lady. As soon as he arrived at her, she said to him, “Adam, if you are willing to carry my child, I will show you the way out of this forest and up the mountain”.This story represents the history of the human race. God created us and gave us a path to follow. We strayed from that path and plunged our race into sin and the darkness of moral perversity.Centuries passed in a state of darkness for mankind. Finally, a glimmer of light appeared on the horizon. That light was the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary.Her coming was like the first glimmer of dawn for the human race. It was like the announcement of the arrival of a rescue mission for a dying world.We don't celebrate many birthdays in the liturgical year, but we celebrate the birthday of Our Lady because her birth is the source of our life. When we say in the Hail Holy Queen that Our Lady is “our life, our sweetness, and our hope”, we are not playing with words. We are completely sincere in saying that Our Lady is our life. We believe that we cannot live without her. We believe that the one who finds her finds life.

Having seen how St. Pius X was totally consumed with love for God, we may wonder how he could also have room for a great love for his fellow man. And, we may say that, in the end, there was not enough room, for he died of a broken heart.We all know that the spiritual life begins with humility. That virtue provides the foundation on which all else is built. But, then, once its roots have been well watered, the soul is able to grow and extend its branches and leaves, until it finally blooms flowers and starts to produce delicious fruits. Those fruits are the works of charity.Today, let us look at some such works in the early priesthood of our patron: his almsgiving, his poverty of life, and his tirelessness in working for others.

We know that Our Lord says that “where your heart is, there also your treasure is.” And I believe that this indicates that every man must have some love within him, some predilections, and that it is the central love of his heart that really directs and explains all of his activity.And when we try to plumb the heart of our sainted patron, I do not think that it is too difficult to find what was burning in its depths; indeed, we find there an overwhelming love of God. To say this may seem obvious and even trivial, but I believe that it can be missed in the hype about the many activities of our saint. For this reason, I want to speak today about St. Pius X's love of God.Really, I believe that it was this great love of God in St. Pius X that makes of him for us our hero. There is a certain sadness that afflicts us at seeing all of the causes dearest to our heart failing in an apostate Western world. God has been forcefully driven from the public sphere by the revolution, the highest places in the Church have been occupied by secularized clerics, and civilization at large has descended into the sewer of base hedonism. Evil seems so triumphant and the blindness it engenders irremediable.We are tempted to ask ourselves: isn't there anyone around to stand up for the rights of God? Are there any fighters for the good who are left? Must our age be one without champions?And then we look back at that great figure in white, that towering pontiff of 100 years ago who faced off against the same formidable forces that are triumphant today, the same one who said that “evil triumphs when good men do nothing?”And what do we see? We see Modernists cowering in fear, the immoral abashed at their behavior, the heretics hesitating to voice their opinions. We see the good rallied around the peasant Pope, young men and women rushing to consecrate their lives to God and Church, Catholics banding together in confraternities and guilds and political groups to fight the revolution tooth and nail.In short, we see this Rock of a Pope, standing in gigantic proportions, a look of calm and fierce determination on his face, pushing forward step by step into a world of darkness, with an entire army gathering around him, driving back all that is bad and wrong and evil in this world and the world below.This picture is not too far from the truth, as you know! And how can all of this be possible? Because of a most ardent love of God. Because of something we call an interior life.

When the Israelites were traveling in the desert, God was with them every step of the way. He made His presence manifest to them by appearing as a pillar of cloud during the day and a pillar of fire during the night.He provided for them. He gave directions to them through Moses. He rained down food for them from Heaven every day except the Sabbath. Once, he caused water to flow forth from a rock to slake their thirst. Once, he caused a huge flock of quails to descend upon their camp in order to provide them with meat.Despite this constant presence of God with the Israelites, St. Paul tells us that, with most of them, “God was not well pleased”. God was not pleased with the Israelites because the Israelites were not pleased with God. They were not satisfied with His care for them. They were constantly engaging in complaining, which is the subject of this sermon.Once, when the Israelites came to a certain place in the desert, they started to complain about the food that God was giving them, because He gave them the same thing to eat all of the time. They cried out loud, “Would that we had meat for food! We remember the fish we used to eat without cost in Egypt, and the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now we are famished; we see nothing before us but this manna” (Num. 11:4-6).Consider what is going on in this situation: the Israelites were slaves to the Egyptians in Egypt. They had a terrible life where they had to work all day long under severe taskmasters. The Egyptians were systematically killing their own children. God delivers them from the Egyptians with great miracles. They have now gained freedom.Despite all of this, they are complaining because they don't have the food that they want. They are looking back at their life of slavery and desiring to have that life back because they could have a variety of food. They are willing for their children to be killed and for them to be slave workers; as long as they get to eat their favorite food again!Bottom line: the Israelites had almighty God Himself taking care of them in the desert, feeding them and protecting them. Despite this fact, they were not content but complained.The same is true for us. God is with us every step of the way of our life. He is providing for us all of the time. Yet we are not happy. We complain.We have been set free from the slavery to the world by our baptism. We are fed with the very Body of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. Yet we feel sorry for ourselves. We think that God is not doing enough. We pine for the material things of this world.

The role of the priest to preach to the faithful is a difficult one because we have to preach about things that exceed human understanding. Any topic about God is going to be something that is above us and that we are not fully able to grasp.This is particularly true for the topic of today's sermon: God's love for us. God has a love for you that exceeds all other loves. Just as God's power exceeds all other power, just as His wisdom exceeds all other wisdom, so also His love exceeds all other loves.God's love for us is infinite but we are finite. We only have a limited and finite understanding of an infinite love. What little we are able to understand is just a small part of the reality.How do we know that God loves us? How do we measure the love of God? We know that the essence of love is doing good to another. When you love someone, you look after them, you give them whatever you can so that they can thrive.We know that God has given us everything that we have and everything that we are. But this thought is too vague and often leaves us cold. We just think “everything comes from God” and we move on. I think it is important sometimes to zoom in on a single thing that God has done for us and look at it carefully.I want us to think about the fact that God has given us this Earth as our home, that He created it as a home for us, and that He prepared everything on Earth for us humans. We were the last things that He created. He waited until the end to create Adam and Eve and He said to them, “Fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth.”I have made this place for you to rule over!

As bad as it is to be physically impaired, however, it is even worse to be spiritually impaired. God has not only given us our senses to know reality; He has also given us a mind. We are supposed to use our mind to know the world around us, to understand the truth.We find this difficult because we are wounded by original sin with the wound of ignorance. This makes it laborious for us to discover the truth and it also makes us susceptible to being influenced in the wrong way in regard to the truth. There is a lot of noise for us to sift through.But there is another difficulty that we have independently of that wound. It is the fact that we have the wrong perspective on reality. We tend to think that we are the center of reality because we are at the center of what is perceiving reality. We tend to think that the world revolves around us because we are at the center of our perception of the world.This leads us to having a spiritual impairment or what might be called a “spiritual disability”. It is through the practice of our Catholic faith that we seek to overcome our spiritual impairment and see reality correctly. Our faith assists us to see reality as it is, with God at its center and with us as just little, tiny creatures.When the world turns away from God and exaggerates the rights of man, it increases spiritual disability. Ungodliness in society makes people detached from reality, unable to see reality. It makes people full of pride; it makes them think that they are god, not only that they are the center of reality, but they actually have the power to make reality.When spiritual disability becomes extreme, we give a special name to the condition that the person is in: we call it “madness”. After a century of deifying man, we have reached a point where we can say that a certain madness afflicts modern society. I think that, when people look back on this decade of the 2020s, they might well call it the “decade of madness” one day because society is so far from reality.There are stories of this madness that come out every week. This past week, a woman boxer had to quit a match after 45 seconds because she was being pummeled by a male boxer in the Olympics. Many were rightfully crying out how unfair it was for a man to be boxing against a woman and how it made all of that woman's efforts useless.

We live in times that are difficult in the Church and the world, in that they are collapsing in a certain sense. In such times, it is very important that we maintain the theological virtue of hope.People are tempted to think that God has abandoned His Church or abandoned the world, or to think that the grace of God is not working any more, that this world is too far gone. That would be to fall into the sin of despair.Today, however, I would like to speak about the situation in which there is too much hope, when hope goes too far. That is when we trust that some good thing is going to come to us, when in fact we have no reasonable grounds for doing so. For instance, if we thought that God would give us Heaven even if we were in the state of mortal sin, that would be a false hope.Such a false or immoderate hope is referred to as the sin of presumption.

You belong to a counter-cultural movement called Traditional Catholicism. But the world at large does not at all share your traditional Catholic faith and in some respects is hostile to it.You come here to St. Isidore's because you want the traditional Catholic faith, the same faith taught by the Apostles and held by Catholics throughout the ages. You come here to be instructed in the same moral law that they followed and to receive the sacraments in the traditional forms that have nourished souls throughout the ages. You come here to put your children in a school where they will be taught and formed in the Catholic faith.Then you leave St. Isidore's and go out into a world permeated by a post-modern pagan, anti-culture. And there is this struggle to maintain a Catholic identity. What you do away from St. Isidore's is just as important as what you do here for the maintaining of your faith.In today's parable, Our Lord teaches us that we have to be just as prudent in attaining our supernatural goal as the world is in attaining its natural ends. We must be smart in using our material resources which come from God.

I want to tell you an amazing but true story. It is a story you know well. It is about a Jewish man who claimed to be God 2000 years ago. He chose twelve uneducated men as His disciples. After teaching them for three years, He commanded them to go throughout the entire world preaching the message that He had given them.They accomplished this command with incredible success. Over a period of 1000 years, they and their followers built a new civilization called Christendom, a civilization greater than has ever been known in the history of man.But the native peoples in North and South America, as well as in Asia, had to wait many centuries before the message of Our Lord Jesus Christ was preached to them. Catholic missionaries did not even know that these places existed until the voyages of Christopher Columbus and Magellan. As soon as they knew they existed, they went there.In Korea, where Fr. Kim is from, it was not until the early 1600s that Catholicism arrived and it was brought there by a layman. Now, 400 years later, thanks to the efforts of the missionaries, 11% of the population of South Korea is Catholic.Why has there been all of this urgency, throughout the centuries, to bring the Catholic faith to the various nations? Because it is a matter of life and death, eternal life and eternal death. Our Lord said that those who believed and were baptized would be saved while those who did not believe would be condemned. And when He said condemned, He meant condemned to Hell.This is often what motivates souls to pursue a priestly or religious vocation. They realize that the main drama in this life is about the eternal destiny of souls. They realize that the real success after this life is over is going to be the salvation of souls.

Holy Mother Church dedicates this Sunday to the capital vice of anger. Let us look at three different types of sinful anger and then a story that illustrates a Catholic view on anger.First type concerns those whom we call “irritable”: they are angry too quickly and for a slight cause. These are people who blow up for no reason or who easily snap. Those who are around them know that they can lose their temper easily.Second type concerns those who are sullen. They are angry for too long because they are continually refreshing the memory of the injury done to them. They stew over their anger. Instead of trying to get rid of it, they foster it within themselves and keep it burning.Third type concerns those who do not rest until they have exacted revenge, or a certain punishment on those who have done them wrong. This is even worse than simply holding a grudge; it entails holding a grudge and passing into action in order to harm the other.The Betrothed by Alessandro ManzoniThis story has such a Catholic spirit on the question of anger. It shows how dangerous is the spirit of revenge and how we must imitate Our Lord's spirit of forgiveness.

Sermon for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, 2024

We are tempted today by the false idea of religious indifferentism: this is the idea that all religions are equally good, that they all lead to Heaven.The Athanasian Creed is very clear in saying the opposite. Its opening words say the following: “Whoever wills to be in a state of salvation, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith, which except everyone shall have kept whole and undefiled without doubt he will perish eternally. Now the catholic faith is that we worship One God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the substance.”These words, while they represent what we believe, are very jarring to modern ears. Modern people say: “Why is this the case? How is it that we can be damned to Hell for a single false belief? “How can God damn me to Hell for the way that I think? Did He not give me free will? Why would He care what I think?”1. The truth is part of what gets you to Heaven. You cannot get to Heaven without the truth. The truth of the Trinity is a truth about God Himself. It is God telling you Who He is. If God tells you who He is and you refuse to believe it and worship something else, then you are not worshiping the true God. You are worshiping a false god!2. Heresy is a sin against God. We are obliged to obey Him because we are His creatures. If God tells me Who He is and tells me to believe Him, then I sin against Him by rejecting what He has said. I am saying that I do not believe Him. I am saying that I do not want Him. This is why belief in the Trinity was so important for Our Lord. Remember what He said:“Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19-20). “He who believes and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believes not shall be condemned” (Mk. 16:16)This is why the martyrs throughout the history of the Church were willing to die rather than deny the faith. They realized that when they were being asked to deny the faith, they were being asked to make a choice: lose your physical life or lose your eternal life.

When Our Lord came on this earth, He issued a new commandment, one that summarized and complemented the ten commandments given to Moses on Mt. Sinai.He did not issue this commandment from a mountain, accompanied by thunder and smoke, but He issued it in the midst of a last supper with His twelve Apostles.It was then that He said, “A new commandment I give unto you: That you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another.” (Jn. 13:34)The teaching of Our Lord transformed the world. It made the world Christian and civilized in the truest sense. It did so by teaching the world how to love. He clarified that true love means:We love God above all things. We acknowledge Him as our Father, we worship Him as our God, we seek to honor Him in all that we do. We follow His will. We love Him by keeping His commandments.Love means giving ourselves; it is not about receiving. It is about doing good to others. It is about sacrificing ourselves. It is about spending ourselves; it is about giving away our lives.Giving ourselves for God and for others means suffering. Love requires suffering. It requires that we carry a cross. This is what Our Lord makes clear for us. Do you want to follow the commandment of love? Do you want to be a lover like Christ? Take up your cross! Die on the cross! Our Lord has the most astonishing words to say to us: “He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life, shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for me, shall find it.”

The four sets of Ember Days are a beautiful part of our Catholic heritage. According to Pope Leo the Great, the Ember Days go all the way back to the Apostles. Think about the millions of Catholics for whom the practicing of fast and abstinence on the seasonal Ember Days was just part and parcel of their Catholic life.Despite their age-old practice, they were done away with in 1966 by Pope Paul VI and most Catholics today do not even know what they are.Let us hold on to these important practices so that we can love God more and live our faith better.

The book of Job tells us that “the life of man upon earth is a warfare”. We are in a battle over our own souls. We are besieged by the cares of this world, by our daily grind, by the relentlessness of life.In this battle, sometimes we need to attack life head-on; at other times, we need to retreat, in order to recuperate our spiritual forces and renew ourselves for the battle. Sometimes, it is by retreating that we are able to gain a victory that otherwise was not possible.The faithful may ask themselves: why do priests, monks, and nuns need to go on retreat? They are doing holy things all of the time. It is clear that the Church thinks it very important for those who have dedicated their lives to God to take this time once a year, in order to maintain their spiritual stamina in the battle for souls.If priests and nuns need this time, how much more do the faithful need it, when they do not have as strong a spiritual life?There are several reasons why retreats are needed for everyone: priests, religious and layfolk.

This feast represents the first stage of God's great plan to save mankind from death. It is a mystery of life.We know that one of the most horrible scenes that can be imagined in this life is for children to be slaughtered in front of their parents.This is what happens daily before the face of God. He sees everything that happens in this world. In so many cases, what is happening is that souls are dying before Him because of sin.Sin kills the life of God in our souls and it makes us insensible to spiritual things. We become numb in our souls through sin; we become like spiritual zombies.God the Father cannot stand to see His children dying in this world, and then dying eternally in the next. He wants them to live! And so He decides on a plan to give them life.God decided that He would restore the souls of His children to life through a woman, an extra-ordinary woman. It belongs to women to give life. They bear life in their wombs and they bring it forth into this world.Eve was the first woman to do this. She was meant to be the mother of all the living. But she put her soul to death and then led her husband to the death of sin.This did not make God abandon His plan to have life come into this world through women. No, He decided to bring another woman into the world through whom eternal life would be communicated. Because He wanted her to be able to give life, He made her alive.The Immaculate Conception is about Our Lady being full of life so that she could give life to others. God made it such that, the very first moment of her existence, she should be full of His eternal life. Her soul had physical life and divine life at that moment.

God is at the origin of two orders in creation, the natural and the supernatural.The natural order concerns God's material reality and the things of this earth. The supernatural order concerns God's spiritual reality, the things of Heaven.These two realms are very distant from one another. When we speak of two things being very far from one another, we say it is like the distance between heaven and earth.At the same time, they are connected. God does not separate them into two completely separate realms but He makes there to be an interaction between them. We ourselves are natural creatures but God has elevated us to the supernatural level.Many of the realities that we experience in our everyday natural level also exist on the supernatural level, only they are more elevated and sublime.I want to take one example of this today: that of motherhood. Let us look at the motherhood that God has created in our natural world and then look at supernatural motherhood.

If you want to listen to the message of Fatima, and you believe that it provides a roadmap for salvation in our difficult times, there are two things you must do to honor Our Lady: recite the Rosary daily and make reparation on the first Saturdays of the month.Our Lady of Fatima asked for the daily recitation of the Rosary each of the six times that she appeared there. She stresses the daily Rosary so much because God has willed to communicate so much power and grace to the Rosary.Pope Leo XIII said, “The rosary is the most excellent form of prayer and the most efficacious means of attaining eternal life. It is the remedy for all our evils, the root of all our blessings.”

In 1978, four businessmen pooled their resources to found the home improvement chain Home Depot. The point of the store was to provide a place where homeowners could go to buy tools and parts to renovate or repair their house. One of the slogans over the years was, “You can do it. We can help.”Home Depot represents something of the American spirit. We have a go-getter, do it yourself attitude. Why hire someone when you can just figure things out, buy the parts and do it on your own. Doesn't that save a lot of trouble?What I want to point out in this sermon is that such a spirit is not proper in the realm of religion; it must not be translated to the religious sphere such that we become Home Depot Catholics, such that we pursue a do it yourself salvation.What do I mean by a Home Depot Catholicism or a Do It Yourself Catholicism?Home Depot Catholics come to church merely to acquire the material parts they need to keep their souls going and so attain salvation. Get Mass. Get confession. Get Communion. Throw some money in the collection basket. Go home. Save my soul.This is not the way that Our Lord established His religion, His Mystical Body. He established it in such a way that the members of the Catholic faith are not only united with Him, but they are also united with one another through Him. They all live the same life; they form one body together. And they are meant to live that reality by associating themselves with one another.

I would like to focus on the parable of today's Mass and explain what it means in relation to our salvation. The parable tells the story of a day of hiring.“Day” in this parable, as far as the story goes, refers only to a 12 hour period, or that part of the day that is in daylight. But the Fathers have understood this 12 hour period to be a symbol of two different longer periods of time, namely, the time before Christ, and the duration of our life.If we take the “day” of the parable as the time before Christ, following Origen, we can understand the various calls at the different hours as missions given to the great figures of the Old Testament by God to accomplish His work. They are to work in His vineyard, which represents the field of labor in which a person is living for Heaven and is trying to get as many people as possible to follow him on that path to Heaven.The second sense of the “day” is the span of the lifetime of each individual. Each person is called to work for the kingdom of Heaven, that is, for his own salvation.Some are fortunate enough to be called in the morning of their life, by being born into a Catholic family. Others convert as teenagers, others as young adults, others as mature men, others as old men. For each of these is reserved the denarius of salvation or eternal life.But there is a condition. Each one must remain working in the vineyard, once they are called. It is only when evening comes that the payment is given. Those who are not present at the evening, or the end of their life, will not receive payment from the householder. We must remain in the state of grace if we are to receive the reward of Heaven.

Modern society hates families. It is directed to pleasure and wealth and families are an obstacle to that. Even the Church today seems to be joining in on the attack against families by approving the blessing of same-sex couples.To attack families, you have to attack the components that make up families: men and women.Since men are the heads of families, there is a special attack directed against them.There is an effort today to make men anything but what they need to be in order to fulfill their God-given mission to be good husbands and fathers.The typical man that today's society creates is soft, pleasure-seeking, selfish, emasculated.This is why society so desperately needs good Catholic families today. This is why we pray, “Lord, grant us many holy Catholic families”. But to have good Catholic families, we must have good Catholic men, men of faith who have as their model not some football player, not some womanizing politician, not this Hollywood star or this MMA fighter, but Our Lord Jesus Christ.What society needs is men who dedicate their lives to the service of Our Lord Jesus Christ, to the service of His name, to the service of His Kingship, to the service of His Church.

Right before Our Lord left the Apostles on the day of His Ascension, He said to them, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to Me”. He also said to them, “I will be with you all days, even to the consummation of the world”.We believe that Our Lord is omnipotent. We believe that He rules this world. But how often are we also not tempted to think the opposite, to think that Our Lord is powerless?How often are we not tempted to say: “Lord, where is your power? Evil is triumphant today! How can you let things go so far? How can you let things get so bad? If you have all power.”How can you allow there to be such a crisis in the Church? How can you allow the Conciliar Popes to do so many scandalous things? How can you allow there to be a fake Catholic as President of the United States?Lord, if you have all power, when are you going to arise and use it?When Our Lord said that all power on Heaven and earth has been given to Him, He did not say how He would use that power. He certainly did not bind Himself to step in and consume with fires or floods anyone who commits evil.What we all have to understand is that there are two ways of exercising power, not one way. One way is certainly the way of exercising force on people and things. We compel them to do our will or we simply remove them from our way.God is able to exercise His power in another way than nuclear destruction. God can exercise His power by building up rather than destroying. He can compel people by love rather than fear. He can conquer by relinquishing power.

The crisis of today's world is a crisis of leadership. God has so created human beings and human society that it is absolutely necessary that there be leaders if the common good is to be fostered.There need to be good parents to direct and instruct children; there need to be good mayors and presidents to organize cities and countries and work for the welfare of its citizens; there need to be good bishops who labor unceasingly for the spiritual welfare of their diocese and all of its parishes.But authority is failing at every level today. Parents no longer want to tell their children what to do and take responsibility for their upbringing. Mayors no longer want to stop crime and enforce laws. Bishops no longer want to excommunicate egregious offenders against the faith, enforce the dogmas of the faith, and stand up against the world for the rights of Christ the King.St. Pius X was an incredible leader and, as a result, his eleven-year pontificate was one of the most fruitful in the 2000 year history of the Church.One of the bishops who knew him, Monsignor Baudrillart, identified in St. Pius X the three qualities that many modern leaders lack: “His look, his word, his whole being express three things: goodness, firmness, faith. Goodness was the man himself; firmness was the leader; faith was the Christian, the priest, the pontiff, the man of God.”

The life of God is greater than the death of men. God came upon this earth and men put Him to death. But God cannot die. This is what the Cristeros told the Communists who were trying to destroy Catholicism in Mexico. You may kill us and we will die. But God never dies. Dios nunca muereThe life of God exists before our life, during our life, after our life. The life of God is the existence that is at the basis of all reality. The life of God is the basis for our life. It is not so much that God lives; He is life itself.Our Lord died in His humanity, but He lived on in His eternal divinity. Nature was not dying but was being renewed by the death of Our Lord.The life of God is greater than the death of men, and the death of God is the life of men. By the death of Our Lord, we will all live again.

Discouragement kills hope. And “when hope dies, there is very little chance for faith and charity.” Hope is directly tied to the final end; it makes us believe that the end is attainable. When this belief is lost, we have no reason to go on.Why does discouragement have such a power over us? Dom Zeller compares it to the cockle which chokes out the good seed. The good plants are continually having to struggle against the weeds and that is what we do not like. We get tired of the struggle. Discouragement is tied to weariness and fatigue. Everything seems too difficult.In the end, discouragement is an “excuse to go on falling.” It tells us that we are justified in giving up the fight. This problem is rampant today in the realm of morals; we live in an age of ‘easy defeat'.In the end, the temptation to discouragement is necessary for our perfection. We need to prove our love. Our perseverance must be tried; our courage must be tried.“Courage is not courage until it has experienced fear: courage is not the absence of fear but the sublimation of fear. In the same way perseverance has to be tried by the temptation to give up, by the sense of failure, by an inability to feel the support of grace.”Dom Zeller points out the difference between the way the Catholic faces discouragement and the Stoic and the Buddhist do. The Stoic feels interior pain, but refuses to issue an external complaint with his voice. The Buddhist faces discouragement by trying not to feel anything at all.The Catholic, on the other hand, faces discouragement, shoulders it, and moves forward in the midst of it. “A man cannot deny discouragement any more than he can deny his existence. It is part of his existence. All he can do is to deny himself the luxury of discouragement; he can mortify his tendency to self-pity.”