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 Manzoni

• This 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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.