SSPX Sermons

As enter the period of transition from Christmas and Epiphany to Lent, it is time for us to reflect on how to prepare for this penitential season. It is a time of clearing out obstacles to God's grace. When it comes to our penances, mortifications, and resolutions, they must always be done out of the love for God. All of these entail some degree of suffering, but we must remember the suffering of Our Savior for us while elevating these acts above the level of mere self-improvement and toward growing closer to God.

The Feast of the Purification, otherwise known as Candlemas, represents the end of the Christmas liturgical cycle. It is also a feast directed toward Our Lord and Simeon's great longing for the day of His Incarnation. Simeon represents the expectation of the nations, awaiting the day when God would come to dispel darkness from the world.

When Our Lord heals both the leper and the Centurion's servant. He awards both men for their faith, humility, and submission to His will. The account of these miracles of Christ are united in these men overcoming their discouragement and looking to Our Lord with both faith and a willingness to submit to God's will. Every person has set backs. Every person gets discouraged. But ultimately, uniting our will with God's, as trying as that can be at times, is the true path to sanctity. He will never abandon us.

In the Gospels, we are met with the story of the leper who says a simple but profound prayer, "Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." He desires to be rid of his affliction, but ultimately he leaves it up to God's will. In a distant time before this leper met Our Lord, we are taught in Scripture of Job, a man who lived righteously his whole life with much abundance, which was taken away. Despite numerous temptations, he remained faithful to God and, like the leper, practiced a holy indifference to worldly comfort out of a desire to conform his will to God's.

The missionary spirt of the Catholic Church is driven by a sincere desire to deliver the truth for those poor souls who are without it. Sadly, the ideology of ecumenism has both deprived the Church of this spirit and promoted the idea about what is good in other religions. By the great grace we have been given as Catholics, it is incumbent upon us to spread the faith, to teach others who want to know, and by our acts, demonstrate how knowing God's revelation has transformed our lives and can transform others as well.

Holy Mother Church assigns the liturgical calendar to reinforce crucial lessons for our lives. Of the seven sacraments, two are designated by God for the good of society: the priesthood and marriage. At the Wedding at Cana, God specifically elevated what was natural to the supernatural by blessing that union. God's grace given through these sacraments are meant to give us the strength to fulfill their ends. In marriage specifically, we are are called upon to undertake the blessing that Our Lord gave us from the beginning, namely to be fruitful and multiply while also supporting our spouse with care and love.

Holy Mother Church assigns the liturgical calendar to reinforce crucial lessons for our lives. Of the seven sacraments, two are designated by God for the good of society: the priesthood and marriage. At the Wedding at Cana, God specifically elevated what was natural to the supernatural by blessing that union. God's grace given through these sacraments are meant to give us the strength to fulfill their ends. In marriage specifically, we are are called upon to undertake the blessing that Our Lord gave us from the beginning, namely to be fruitful and multiply while also supporting our spouse with care and love.

When we reflect on the Nativity, our minds go immediately to St. Joseph. He lived a life of uncertainty, but he was called by God to accomplish the greatest task any man in history was called upon. He may have believed he fell short of that calling, but we know he did not. He embraced this call from Our Lord and answered it with unwavering faith. He may never have believed himself sufficient to what was asked, but through prayer and faith, he accomplished the greatest calling any man could be asked to answer.

As we enter the new year we are confronted with laws and policies that seek to suppress the Catholic Faith. In the face of these obstacles, do we have the faith, hope, and charity to meet these obstacles before us? We are confronted with a multitude of temptations that make us believe that we are the ultimate authority over our lives. Yet in these times of grave difficulties, we can turn to our Our Lady. Through the 54-Day Rosary Novena, there is an opportunity to fortify our faith and meet the temptations of the world. This beautiful devotion affirms our commitment to God and stands as a bulwark against the ways of the world.

The Holy Family stands as an example of what a family should be. The Church itself is a family as well. Yet today there is a revolution that seeks to undermine the proper order of both human families and the Church family by removing their hierarchical structure in favor of a bottom-up approach to authority. Added to this is the temptation to view the family not as a home, but as a hub where each individual member may pass through living their own life, but without a common commitment to the good of the whole. This problem is exacerbated on contemporary distractions like electronic devices which allow people to shut themselves off from one another. To combat this errant individualism, families must commit to sharing a common life, ranging from taking meals together to praying together as one.

In 1892, Pope Leo XIII published an apostolic letter exhorting Catholic families to look to the Holy Family for inspiration and guidance. Fathers, for instance, should look to St. Joseph as a model of vigilance and care. They bear the heavy burden of being answerable to God for the spiritual welfare of their families. They must support their families in knowing, loving, and serving God. At the same time, mothers should look to the Blessed Virgin to cultivate the necessary virtues of love, modesty, resignation, and perfection of faith for the good of their families as well.

In various and often surprising ways, God reveals Himself through signs and miracles in order to draw humanity close to Him, including pagans such as the Magi. And it is the Magi who provide a model of adoration, knowing as they do that the most fundamental duty of man is to worship the true God. Through adoration and worship, we profess our complete dependence on God while acknowledging there is nothing higher than Him.

When God created Adam and Eve, he also created the family by uniting them in marriage. When Our Lord came down from heaven, He did so in the context of the family, specifically the Holy Family consisting of Himself along with St. Joseph and the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is easy to conceive that it was within the Holy Family that Christ learned the practice of prayer. The Gospel of St. Luke testifies to the fact that, as a family, they visited the Temple to pray. And so we, too, can use the prayer life of the Holy Family as a model for how we ought to pray united as a family.

The blessed and holy name of Jesus is the one that God has chosen for Himself. While in the Old Testament God's name was forbidden to be spoken, with the coming of Christ, God provides His people a name to speak aloud in prayer for their salvation. Jesus's name is Who He is: Savior. However, even with this great gift, we are forced to ask ourselves, "Do we really want to be saved?" For out of our pridefulness and misplaced desire for self-reliance, we want to earn salvation on our own merits without the divine assistance of Our Lord.

In the Acts of the Apostles, we have the example of Ss. Peter and John putting Christ first by going to the Temple to pray. When they encounter a lame beggar, this poor man is healed through Jesus's name. For the Apostles know that through the Holy Name of Jesus, everyone, even those who have fallen away from God spiritually, may be saved.

It is an immemorial custom to make resolutions at the start of a new year. Yet, rarely are these resolutions kept. Far too often we make broad resolutions that are impossible to keep. The better course is to particularize our resolutions, focusing on specific faults, and hoping, by the grace of God, we can overcome them.

Material riches are not the key to happiness. This is a lesson repeated through both Scripture and popular culture, yet most struggle to accept it. Our Lord came to us in poverty. Although our respective stations in life may call upon us to have material resources, we must not abandon the call to have poverty of spirit, that is, detachment from material goods.

Please visit SSPXPodcast.com to learn more or find out how to make a one-time or recurring donation. Your generosity contributes to the Society keeping faith with the motto of its patron, St. Pius X, to “restore all things in Christ.” Please Support this Apostolate with 1-time or Monthly Donation >> Have feedback or questions about the DD or our other shows? podcast@sspx.org - - - - - - Explore more: Subscribe to the email version of this Devotional- it's a perfect companion!Subscribe to this Podcastto receive this and all our audio episodesSubscribe to the SSPX YouTube channelfor video versions of our podcast series and SermonsFSSPX News Website:https://fsspx.newsVisit the US District website:https://sspx.org/ What is the SSPX Podcast? The SSPX Podcast is produced by Angelus Press, which has as its mission the fortification of traditional Catholics so that they can defend the Faith, and reaching out to those who have not yet found Tradition.  What is the SSPX? The main goal of the Society of Saint Pius X is to preserve the Catholic Faith in its fullness and purity, to teach its truths, and to diffuse its virtues, especially through the Roman Catholic priesthood. Authentic spiritual life, the sacraments, and the traditional liturgy are its primary means of bringing this life of grace to souls. Although the traditional Latin Mass is the most visible and public expression of the work of the Society, we are committed to defending Catholic Tradition in its entirety: all of Catholic doctrine and morals as the Church has always defended them. What people need is the Catholic Faith, without compromise, with all the truth and beauty which accompanies it. https://sspx.org

The mystery of Christmas reveals the great goodness of God. To appreciate this gift, we must reflect on our own rebelliousness, stubbornness, and pride. This is why it was necessary for Our Lord to go to the extraordinary length to provide the unfathomable gift of His Incarnation for the sole purpose of saving us. God chose not to break us down through His strength, but rather lowered Himself to become one of us to lead humanity from darkness to light.

Let us rejoice in the birth of Our Lord. Let us rejoice in this incredible miracle that has freed us from the bondage of sin. He has arrived to overcome the curse of sin. He stands victorious over satan out of His great love for us, His creation. He stands triumphant, renouncing the deeds of the flesh, ushering us into God's kingdom by His miraculous Incarnation.

Holy Mother Church gives us an entire season to prepare for the reception of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. It is easy for us to reproach ourselves that we did not spend this season preparing ourselves adequately for such a wonderful gift. However, when we look to the Blessed Virgin, we are given an exquisite model of the proper disposition we ought to take. She demonstrates the humility, openness, and abandonment to Divine Providence that we are all called to accept.

The love we feel for one another as demonstrated in the love of Hilaire Belloc for his wife is minute compared for the love Our Lord Jesus Christ has for us. Our Lord came across time, willing to submit Himself as a child, in order to save us. There is no greater love.

Even from prison, St. Paul insists on throwing off anxiety and remaining in the peace of Jesus Christ. This should provide us with an opportunity to reflect on what in life denies us peace. Surely, sin is the great disrupter of peace and sin is the direct result of the disorders present in our lives. Anxiety, too, robs us of peace. To overcome this anxiety, we must both look at all things with the eyes of faith and mortify our thoughts.

The blindness of the Pharisee's as to the identity of the true Messiah was not limited to the time of His baptism, but lasted throughout the life of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Indeed, it has continued through the life of the Church. Just like the people who lived in Christ's lifetime, people down through the ages up until today fail to recognize Our Lord in their midst. Rather than submit themselves to God, they cling to their conception of who the Messiah should be and thereby reject the only true one.

It is common for us to treat venial sin as not serious. Yet every sin imperils our salvation. When we choose sinful acts, we abandon our end. This is why we must be vigilant to be careful in every act we do. There are no "small" sins if we are serious about our salvation. Sadly, there is a temptation to overlook these sins as irrelevant without remembering that every transgression offends Our Lord.

The Church's doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of our Lady is a pinnacle of the liturgical year. By God's grace she was preserved from the stain of original sin. Her preservation from original sin is a sign of how God set her apart from all of humanity. She had a singular role in salvation history that was foreordained by God to be the vessel that housed Our Savior, Jesus Christ.

We know of the fall of man and the downfall of the human race. When we reflect on evolution, we might think that we begin at a low level and then developed into better people. But we did not. The tragedy of humanity is our God given capacity to achieve goodness, but without Christ there is no way to achieve it.

Our Lady's sanctity is highlighted in the feast of the Immaculate Conception. This feast underlines the fact that Our Lady is full of grace. In our own lives, we are given a choice whether to live by nature alone or to be open to God's grace. To accomplish this, we should strive to prepare ourselves for every sacred act we wish to perform or that God will ask of us based on our station in life. We must be ready for it if we wish to receive our Lord's grace.

At the end of time, Our Lord will come as a just judge, dispensing publicly and privately the punishment or rewards to each as is due. How we respond to this Second Coming of Christ is reflected in how we respond now to his first coming in the Incarnation. It is at this time that we are called to submit to Our Lord Jesus Christ. For if we do not submit to him now, during this season of Advent, surely we will not submit when He comes again in glory.

We must orient ourselves properly at the opening of Advent. It is a time of preparation for the coming of Christ in our souls and so we must take special care of our spiritual lives. The spiritual life does not happen by accident. This is why we must recall that this period preparation is needful for it disposes us toward the special graces He offers us.

Vigilance, that is, being mindful always of Our Lord can give us a certain special blessings and happiness. When the end times come, it will be too late to become mindful and virtuous. This is why St. Paul is adamant that we must turn our minds to the Lord immediately, never missing an opportunity to grow nearer to Him.

On the last Sunday before Advent, Holy Mother Church asks us to reflect on the last things. It is a moment when we are compelled to reflect on Christ not coming only as the redeemer or mediator, but as the Last Judge. Focusing upon this reality is not done out of morbidity or negativity, but rather to remember always that we must account to our Creator how we have lived.

The final judgment of our souls, which is referred to as the General Judgment, is one we do not always place before our minds. Yet it is crucial for us to prepare for it. Confession is indispensable, and for many of us a General Confession that is mindfully given, examining the course of our lives, is of the upmost importance. Once we make it, once we have found the strength, to be truly open about our sins, it is incumbent that we persevere in the grace of God.

In February 1917, Our Lady asked three children in Fatima to make reparation to her Immaculate Heart. Of those sins she requested reparation for was in response to those who fostered in the hearts of children indifference or contempt for our Blessed Mother. Distressingly, in our own time, we witness the Church fostering that very indifference, indeed blasphemy, toward Our Lady out of a distorted belief in "clarifying" the proper titles we should ascribe to her. That is why it is imperative that we daily renew our devotion to the Blessed Virgin, seeking always on behalf of ourselves and the entire Church forgiveness for this great offense.

When Our Lord performs a miracle, it is not by accident. It is intentional. This is particularly seen in the resurrections Christ performs. He is ridiculed because those present believe there is no hope, no chance for Him to accomplish the miracle that has been asked of Him. Yet we see that the faith of those depending on Him is met with Our Lord's benevolence. All that God asks is for us to let Him into our homes, into our lives, and He will be there.

Among the hardest questions of the Faith, is why our Lord has not prevented evil, including death? Yet by Lazarus's death and resurrection, God manifests His glory. He demonstrates His power, as master of life and death.

In the contemporary world, there are many misunderstandings concerning purgatory. Indeed, there are many who no longer believe in it, holding instead that almost all who die go directly to heaven save a few terrible people. However, the reality of purgatory can be found in the Old Testament and has been reaffirmed by the Catholic Church repeatedly. What is purgatory? How are we to understand it? And most importantly, what can we do for the souls who dwell there?

Indulgences are understood poorly today, and many anti-Catholic polemicists falsely hold them up as licenses to sin the future or that absolution is contingent on paying the right amount of money. However, an indulgence is not the forgiveness of sin; it is rather the expiation of temporal punishment due to sin. The Church's teaching on indulgences is entirely Biblical. Yet it was Martin Luther in the 16th century who, after years of upholding the Catholic position, opted to take his his own private spiritual struggles and elevate them to the level of new doctrines that ultimately rejected indulgences and indeed the teaching that any work can assist in our salvation.

The consecration of the Basilica of St. John Lateran, originally dedicated to Christ the Savior, was first celebrated on November 9, 324 AD by Pope Sylvester I. For over 1,700 hears, this church has stood as a symbol of the Catholic Faith and the home of many historical events, including five ecumenical councils. St. John Lateran's symbolic value may be more important now than ever as the Church remains beset by modernism and a crisis of faith. This unsettling state of affairs can be seen once again in the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith's recent rejection, in the name of ecumenism, of certain traditional titles for the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Bearing with one another is a struggle, but in the authentic Christian spirit we are called to do so. When we endure these sufferings of the shortcomings of others, which is part of accepting the cross, is part of uniting ourselves to Christ. We are so inclined to criticize others, regardless of our station of life. What we too often lose sight of is how much giving in to criticizing others and harboring discontent is how these poison our very souls. We quickly see the failures in others while ignoring our own.

The beatitudes are not an “extra” to the spiritual life. They are the foundation, expression, and summary of the spiritual life. There is a reason why poverty of spirit comes first, for it is where mercy, purity, justice, patience under persecution, and peace emanate from.

In the parable of the wicked servant, Our Lord appears to give a mysterious lesson. Yet upon reflection, this parable is about the law of mercy. The mercy we show others will be measured out and shown unto us. If we desire mercy for our sins, we must bestow it upon others.

The only thing certain in life is our death. We do not know when it will be or the circumstances, but it is inevitable. Yet we believed that through the virtues of the Blessed Virgin Mary that we may have a good death, one that allows us to repose in the grace of God.

Without God we can do nothing good. Here, at the close of the liturgical year, we are reminded again of our dependency upon God. Even the expiation for our sins is insufficient without our Lord's mercy. Although we know in our trust that He will grant it to us, we should never presume it is owed. Rather, we should rejoice in this great gift that is bestowed upon us.

Our Lord Jesus Christ is king by both His nature as God and also by His free decision to become one of us, to lead us out of sin to salvation. Out of devotion to Our Lord's right to rule, we have the feast of Christ the King. And in this feast we not only honor Him, but reaffirm the sacrifice on Calvary, the great gift Christ has bestowed upon us through this sacrificial act, and accept the love He freely offers.

When we honor the feast of Christ the King, we follow Jesus's directive to confess Him before men. Christ is like any other king, for He chose to reign over us out of love from the Cross, conquered sin, and redeemed us. And so we must ask ourselves how can we promote Christ's kingship in our everyday lives, starting with giving up our own wills, taking up our crosses, and humbly submitting ourselves to Our Lord.

It is God's will that our very first moment of existence is one of darkness, where we dwell in our mother's womb until we come out into the light. From the moment of our birth, we begin to perceive the world around us, first very poorly and then progressively clearer. At the same time, by God's design, our first contact with reality is with our mothers; we depend on her. This natural order that Our Lord designed reflects the design of the supernatural order, where from the moment of our baptism we come into true contact with our divine mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and must remain dependent upon her.

The parable of the wedding feast made by the king for his son shows in a concrete way the mystery of the Incarnation where God the Father has united the Son to the Catholic Church. There are further layers to this mystery found in how the Son of God serves as not only the Church's bridegroom, but her caretaker and defender as well. Moreover, the parable provides sobering words on the myriad of excuses we often make for not accepting the Father's invitation to the feast to our own peril.

Why do we have faith and confidence in the great sacrament of confession? We know that our sins can only be forgiven by the power of God for our sins are an offense to Him. Moreover, Our Lord has extended this power to the Church he established out of His goodness and mercy.

Prayer is a conversation with God. Yet we often allow our own struggles and complications to interfere with it. What we must understand is how simple it should be, so long as we make a focused effort daily to give our time and attention directly to Our Lord.

On every Marian feast, we should feel a special joy. For they are a reminder of the great love Our Blessed Mother has for us. One of the most visible signs of her love for us is the great gift of the Rosary, a devotion which has antecedents stretching back to the earliest centuries of the Church. Through it, we are promised many graces, not just for ourselves, but for those we hold in our hearts as part of our intentions.