#homily #gaudete

• For 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.org

• Today, 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 #catholic

• At 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 #SSPX

• Whether 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 #angels

• In 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.