• In a relay race, there are typically four runners who have the job of passing a baton to one another until they get to the finish line. If any one of the runners drops the baton, his team is disqualified.
• The first runner begins the race with the baton; he does not receive the baton, but owns it. The other runners do not start the race with the baton. Rather, their job is to receive it from the runner behind them and then pass it on to the runner in front of them.
• This is exactly how it works with the Catholic faith. The human race is, as it were, running towards the end of time, which is the finishing of human history. That is when each of the runners will receive their reward through the resurrection of their bodies, which will rise in either a glorious state or a damned state.
• The baton that has to be passed on is the Catholic faith. The baton contains the beliefs of the Catholic faith, but it also contains the practices that enshrine and protect those beliefs.
• The first runner in the faith is Our Lord Jesus Christ. He owns the baton and puts in it all that we need to save our souls, that is, to reach the finish line and win the race. His role was only to give the faith, not to receive it. Our role is to both receive and give. We receive the faith from those who have gone before us and we give it to those who come after us.
• Already, in the first generation of Christianity, St. Paul is talking about this process of receiving and handing on. He tells the Corinthians that he received the faith from Our Lord and he handed that same faith on to them. He says, “I delivered to you a faith. You received it and are standing in it and it is saving you. I also received that same faith.”
• This is the very nature of our faith. We are traditional Catholics because our faith is a traditional faith. It is a handed-on faith, a received faith. Our faith works by way of a relay, a receiving from one and a handing on to another.

• The Assumption of Our Lady into Heaven was the effect of the way that she lived her life and, particularly, three moments of her life: the moment of Our Lady’s conception, the moment she became Mother of God, and the moment of her Son’s death.

Immaculate Conception

• The moment of her conception is important because it is the first moment of her existence, the time of the creation of her soul and the making of her body. It was the first moment of the existence of the body that would one day rise from the dead and be taken up to Heaven.
• We know that the most important aspect of this moment is that God preserved her entire person from sin. Her body was taken from two souls afflicted by original sin, Joachim and Anna, but God prevented her soul from contracting any sin. As a result, we can speak of her body as being sinless as well, as having no contact with sin.
• You know that sin is the thing that causes death. And death is the thing that causes the corruption and destruction of our body. But God prevented this cause of death from touching Our Lady, at the first moment of her existence.

Mother of God

• This blessed creature, who was conceived without any sin, began to grow up. She maintained the purity of body and soul that God had given to her. She was perfectly faithful to her gifts. She did not commit any sin. She lived in humble submission to God.
• This behavior, this holiness prepared her to become God’s mother. It prepared her to receive into her body God Himself. And of course, that was what happened on the day of the Annunciation. Her body changed. God both came inside of her and gave her the power to form His body from her body.
• Her pure body became the source of the body of God.

Co-Redemptrix

• Our Lord was born and she named Him Jesus or Savior, because He was to save the world from its sins by an act of Redemption.

• On the day of our baptism, we came to the church alive with physical life but dead in supernatural life. It was because of this fact that our soul was dead with sin that we, or our godparents, had come to ask for eternal life.
• Then, we went through the ritual of the baptismal ceremony during which we underwent a symbolic death. The pouring of the water on our heads was like a burial in water from which we then rose again to a new life. The ceremony was a symbolic dying with Christ and a symbolic rising with Christ to a new life.
• What was not symbolic was that, when the water was poured upon our heads, the death of sin was driven from our souls and a new life started to dwell there, a supernatural life.
• This is what St. Paul means in today’s epistle when he says, “we were buried with Him by means of Baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ has arisen from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life.”
• What this means is that, before Baptism, our soul was not capable of doing anything in the supernatural order. It could not move in the supernatural realm and was dead to that realm.
• We know that an animal is dead when it does not move, when it does not have self-movement. We go up to a dog that we are not sure whether it is sleeping or dead. We move it with our foot and nothing happens. Because the dog does not move, we conclude it does not have physical life.
• Our soul before Baptism was like that in the supernatural order. We were not able to make any supernatural movement.
• After Baptism, our soul becomes alive with a new type of life, a supernatural life. That life does not get rid of our physical life or lay on top of our physical life; rather, it goes inside of it.
• The life of God goes inside of our spiritual soul and gives it new capabilities.
  • It goes inside of our mind and gives our mind the ability to believe the mysteries of the faith.
  • It goes inside of our will and gives it the ability to choose a supernatural good, to love God above all things, to seek the salvation of our soul above all things.
• St. Paul focuses particularly on one new ability that the new life of Christ in our soul gives us the ability to do: it gives us the capacity to be dead to sin.

• Today, we have one of the vocation stories in the Gospels. These are some of the most beautiful stories we read about in the Gospels, and we find them in all four Gospels.
• They all consist in three things: a meeting, an invitation, and a following.
• These stories are beautiful and powerful for us because they are a representation of our own life.
• Of course, they are particularly a representation of the life of a priest, a monk or a nun, those people who have given their lives for the service of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
• But they are also a representation of the lives of the Catholic faithful. All of the faithful are called by Our Lord to be holy, to follow Him, to love Him and serve Him in their lives.

• The vocation story in today’s Gospel helps us understand what we need to do to answer the call of Our Lord. It is interesting that Our Lord was not content with preaching from the boats of these fishermen whom He was going to turn into fishers of men.
• He could have just stopped preaching and said, “Come, follow Me”. But, instead, He wanted to work a miracle before issuing the call. Why did He do this?
• Because great reverence is needed to follow the call of Our Lord. It is not enough that we see Him as a great preacher; we have to see Him as God.
• Our Lord works this miracle of a great catch of fish, so great that there are more fish than can be contained in one boat. Both boats were even sinking when they were filled with the fish. When St. Peter sees this, he has an immediate realization: this man is holy. I don’t think St. Peter knew yet that Our Lord was God. But he knew that He was holy: only a holy man could work such a miracle.
• When St. Peter sees the miracle, a great reverence for Our Lord awakens in his heart. He casts himself on his knees, in an attitude of respect, submission, and petition. He realizes how sinful he is in comparison to Our Lord and tells Our Lord that he is not worthy to be in His presence.
• But, in fact, the truth is the contrary: the reverence of St. Peter for Our Lord is what is going to enable him to answer the call of Our Lord and fulfill his great vocation of being the first Pope.
• The same is true with answering the call to holiness. Our Lord calls all of us to a greater union with Him. It is reverence that will enable us to answer that call. Reverence will make us want to pray, will make us fervent in our prayer, will make us fear sin and keep a close watch over ourselves.
• Reverence is often what leads Catholics to traditional Catholicism. They start to realize the respect that is owed to God, that that respect is not given in the New Mass, and that the TLM treats God with the respect that He deserves.

• Today, we celebrate the feast day of the pillars of the Catholic Church, Sts. Peter and Paul. St. Peter was chosen by Our Lord to be the first Pope. He preached the Gospel to the Jewish people and established the headquarters of the Church in Rome, where he was eventually martyred.
• St. Peter was buried on the Vatican Hill in Rome and a church was built on the spot. This is the same place where the Vatican Basilica is today. The bones of St. Peter are in the crypt below the Vatican and so the central church of the Catholic Church is literally built on St. Peter.
• St. Paul, meanwhile, spread the Gospel to the Gentiles, starting communities of Catholics all throughout the Roman Empire. He also ended his life in Rome, where he was likewise martyred.
• The institution for which these two saints died is the only divine institution on this earth. By this, I mean that it is the only institution specifically founded by God.
• When Our Lord came on this earth, He founded one institution before leaving this earth, what we call the Catholic Church. His association with this institution is so close that we speak of the Church as the Bride of Christ. God is married to the Church He founded.
• What this means is that Our Lord chose to make the Catholic Church the one institution on this earth that would communicate the fruits of His Redemption to mankind. Our Lord takes all of the graces that He merited on the Cross and He has them pass through the Catholic Church to souls, especially through the administration of the sacraments by the priests of the Church.
• It is for this reason that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church. There is only one Savior, Jesus Christ. He has chosen to found only one divine institution on this earth, the Catholic Church, and He has only given to that Church the power to save souls, the power to communicate to men the graces that flow from the Cross for the salvation of souls.

• 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 day

• We 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 exception

• The 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 up

• These 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.