Sermon for Lent

Sermon VII: Hearing the whole Truth

We usually prefer to hear things that we like rather than things that displease us, and, therefore, we have a tendency to be evasive when it is time to tackle certain uncomfortable subjects. But burying our heads in the sand cannot be of any use in order to solve a problem, or simply to comprehend the truth. And when the truth regards our eternal destiny, it would be a great madness to refuse to face it. The Apostles refused to consider the whole truth about Our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us repeat it. This was before their third conversion, prior to the effusion of the Holy Ghost in their souls. At this point, they had already accepted Jesus Christ, but not yet His Cross. Refusing to hear the integral truth, they were still remaining in the darkness, and they could not understand certain words of Jesus.

You remember, dear brethren, that we expounded in our previous sermons several reasons that prevent us from hearing the words of God. Haste and rashness of mind were two of them. We also mentioned last Friday the scandal of social and personal prejudices, how they only make us deaf to the word of God, and, in this regard, we had also denounced the occasion of prejudice with Bossuet as “an insolent enterprise toward the rights of God and against public liberty.” Prejudice is a social plague which can be very harmful to the true spirit of religion, affecting and infecting many souls, namely the souls who are guilty of such prejudices, and who may believe that they are religious when they are not.

There are souls of good will, but still too weak or too shy, who may suffer from prejudices. They feel confined or even incarcerated in a social fabric governed by rules and codes. They fear the reproachful look of their peers and neighbors, and unless they finally find the courage to break the institutional rigidity that surrounds them, they blend in with the masses like sheep. From the way people dress, to the kind of music to which they listen, from the food they eat to the people with whom they associate, everything is closely examined. The poor “trespasser” is already judged by the tribunal of the dominant ideology, and there is no appeal for the sentence, because “in our traditional community, we do not do such a thing.” But people are not always fooled by the hypocritical smiles of the public prosecutors, and since we cannot expect everyone to live the beatitudes and to be heroic in the practice of the virtues, it is not surprising to see people who turn away in order to escape the sectarian spirit of prejudice.

Let us leave this spirit to the Mormons, to the Amish, to the Quakers, to all these sects that have forgotten that among the gifts of God there is liberty, and that liberty is a condition to love God. Faith is not imposed on others by means of protocols and conventions, but it is proposed to the intelligence and to the heart. There is a true education in the Faith, an education that speaks to the intelligence and which moves the heart. Far from being indoctrination, it is rather a culture, and as such, it involves many fields of human life, like academics, arts, a certain enjoyment of life, and good taste, and some values and virtues like courtesy, civility, and urbanity, where refinement should not be excluded. These are Catholic, and, therefore, are universal marks of true Christianity, and we can see them flourish everywhere in the world where the Faith is sincerely lived. They flourish with different tastes, different colors, and different scents in different cultures, and they comprise a beautiful bouquet made of a great variety of flowers which embellish the society of men, and render honor and glory to God. When faith is truly received in a person or in a society, it does not confine men in a pharisaic system, but rather frees them from any system, and makes the society of men more enjoyable.

Finally, prejudices affect non-believers. Certainly, many of them may have their own prejudices toward religion and toward the Church, but this must not be cause to enable further prejudice. The prejudices of the faithful can only give more weight to the prejudices of non-believers.

Haste, rashness of mind, and prejudices are substantially the many obstacles that prevent us from receiving the full message of the Gospel. Let us add now the weakness of the will, which beckons us to refuse the Cross. Bossuet points out that the Apostles usually ask Jesus many questions regarding the mysteries of which He speaks. You remember that they did not understand the words of Jesus concerning His Passion: “But they understood not this word, and it was hid from them, so that they perceived it not.” But this time, instead of asking for some explanations as they usually do, Saint Luke reports that “they were afraid to ask him concerning this word.” Bossuet says that “one cause of their ignorance is that they were fleeing from the light, and did not want to hear what Jesus was saying about His humiliations.”

Yes, they had a true love for Jesus, but a love that was still human and sensible, to the extent that they refused to hear anything about His sufferings. Indeed, they knew that they were supposed to partake in His sufferings, and this hurt their feelings. Such is our human nature that we accept easily the greatness and the glory of Jesus, but we are reluctant when we hear about the Passion, the sufferings, and the death of Jesus. The contrast is huge between the crowd that welcomes with palms the King of Glory, who enters Jerusalem in triumph, and the few souls who accompany the man of sorrow on the Cross.

Let us take a look at Saint Mark, Chapter 10. The Apostles, who had followed their Master for three years, were thinking about their reward. Peter attracts the attention of Jesus on this point: “Behold, we have left all things and have followed you.” And, yes, Jesus promises a reward to those who leave house and family for His sake and for the Gospel. They shall receive a hundred times as much. But, He adds, with persecutions. (Mark 10:28-30) And right after, we see Jesus going up to Jerusalem. The Apostles are astonished, and, following Him, are afraid.

In Saint Matthew, Chapter 20, Jesus speaks again about His Passion: “And Jesus, going up to Jerusalem, took the twelve disciples apart and said to them, ‘Behold we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man shall be betrayed to the chief priests and the scribes, and they shall condemn Him to death, and shall deliver Him to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified, and the third day He shall rise again’.” And they still don’t want to hear this speech. James and John come right away, with their mother, and ask for the first place in the Kingdom of Christ. Then Jesus presents the Chalice.

Dear brethren, we have to understand that we cannot partake in the greatness and the glory of Jesus if we do not participate in His Passion. Again, we have to suffer, and we have to die. After Pentecost, the Apostles again hear these words. They hear them so well that they want to suffer for the love of God, and now they rejoice in their sufferings.

Christians, children of the Cross and of the wounds of Jesus Christ, do you hear these words? Do you understand that these words are spoken to all men, and not only to the religious? Open the Gospel and read: “And he said to all, ‘If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me’.” (Luke 9:23) He said to all!

Alas, many Christians want to be the disciples of Jesus, and yet refuse the Cross. They make their own Gospel that is a compromise with the world. “All take counsel of Thee on whatever point they wish, though they do not always hear what they wish,” Saint Augustine says. “He is Thy best servant who does not look to hear from Thee what he himself wills, but who wills rather to will what he hears from Thee.”

May the Blessed Virgin Mary teach us how to hear and to accept the whole truth!

Sermon for Lent

Sermon VI: Prejudices

The purpose of this Lenten Season, dear brethren, is nothing else than to increase our interior life, which is, according to Father Garrigou Lagrange, the knowledge of the truth and the love of good, or if you like, the knowledge and the love of God, who is the supreme Truth and the supreme Good. The interior life is also the knowledge and the love of anything true and good that proceeds from God. We already see, from this definition, that the interior life cannot germinate, develop, and blossom without faith and charity. It is by faith that we love the truth, and by charity that we love the good. Therefore, anyone who hears the word of God, and who wants to answer His call to holiness, will have to work on both virtues, which are distinct, but should not be separated.

As a matter of fact, as much as we progress in the spiritual life, we are more and more united with God, but we also are more and more united with ourselves. Original sin first, and then our personal sins, have dislocated us, and unless we work diligently toward rebuilding ourselves, there always remains certain anarchy within us. By seeking union with God, we seek to restore His image in us. We polish the mirror of our intelligence in order to find in it the undistorted reflection of the eternal truths.

Jesus has compared the Kingdom of God to a seed that grows and becomes a high tree. This comparison applies to the interior life, which is the Kingdom of God in a soul. The growth of our spiritual tree supposes three stages that are necessary. First, it has to come to life, to germinate. This is the first conversion, the one that we call justification, when a soul passes from the state of sin to the state of grace. The second stage is when the tree develops and becomes visible. “It is a state of life,” as Father Garrigou Lagrange says, “when we begin seriously to surpass ourselves, and when we begin to relate everything to God and not to ourselves. It is the admission into the reign of God, where a docile soul begins to reign with Him over its passions, over the spirit of the world, and over the spirit of evil.” Let us note, dear brethren, that at this stage, it is still only a beginning. The third stage is finally when the tree blossoms and when we can see its fruits and flowers. This is when a soul has no other desires other than pleasing God in everything, existing in a perfect union with God, reigning over its passions and faculties.

We said last week that the laws of spiritual life are the same for everybody. We can see in the New Testament the progress, and sometimes the decline, of the interior lives of the Apostles. Bossuet invited us last Sunday to consider three different spiritual states in the Apostles since their vocations began, which was precisely their first conversion. Their second conversion certainly happened during the Passion of the Savior. At least it appears to be the case for Saint Peter, when after having denied Him, Jesus looked upon him. “Peter, going out, wept bitterly,” Saint Luke reports. That look of Jesus, accompanied with His grace, moved the heart of Peter, and his contrition was the principle of a new life, though his faith was not yet definitively and strongly established. The grace of the Resurrection, and finally of Pentecost, will achieve and complete the renovation of the new man within each of the Apostles, with the notorious exception of Judas, whose example should always remain in our memory. If such a man, one of the Twelve who had received so many graces, who lived in the intimacy of Jesus for three years, who had been a privileged witness of the miracles and all the deeds of the Savior, and a close listener of His magnificent doctrine, could fall, and who most certainly damned himself, why should I be so sure that I will persevere in the service of God? It is not rare to see Christians who boast in knowing the truth! Did not Judas know it better than all of these, he who was a close friend of the Incarnate Truth?

But let us return to the Apostles, and to their lack of understanding of the words of Jesus. Haste and rashness of mind explain the lack of understanding of God’s mysterious intentions. Another reason is certainly the great difficulty we have in accepting the Cross. The Lord is our God and our Redeemer. For those who have faith, this is not hard to believe. We admire Jesus Christ for His celestial doctrine, for His great authority when He teaches: “Never did man speak like this man.” (John 7:46) We admire Jesus Christ for His miracles, but when He speaks about His Passion, the spirit of darkness comes again to envelop our minds.

Jesus Christ does not redeem us by showing His divinity and performing powerful miracles, but by demeaning Himself and suffering like the least of men. And what does He want us to remember and to consider? After He rebukes an evil spirit from a boy, the crowd marveled at His power. And what did He say? “Lay you up in your hearts these words, for it shall come to pass that the Son of man shall be delivered into the hands of men.” (Luke 9:44)

As Bossuet explains, the Lord asks the disciples to lay these words in their hearts, because it is an incomprehensible thing to the spirit, especially when our minds are too preoccupied with the things of the world, as it is usually the case. Again, faith is not only a matter of intelligence, but is also a matter of the heart. “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.”

Faith cannot grow in a corrupted soul; we have already explained this. Vices and sins are the greatest obstacles to the understanding of God’s mysteries, but there are still other stains of the mind that we need to remove, which are the prejudices and preoccupations of the world. Therefore, it is necessary to come in front of God with a spirit totally dispossessed of itself and free, which is, dear brethren – let us admit it – something rare.

A prejudice is something that has already been judged utilizing a lack of knowledge and of wisdom, because of an element of narrow-mindedness, and/or certain habits, individual and/or social. It is the judgment of people who have no other rule than the rule itself, which has too often been established by their own opinion and authority. They judge and condemn out of hand anything and anyone that does not fit their personal and social straitjacket, and they usually induce others to accept their own standards.

If the Apostles tried to do so toward Jesus Himself, it is, after all, not surprising to see among ourselves people who act this way toward others. With Bossuet, we denounce this “rigorous censorship that we exercise over our brothers" and which “is an insolent enterprise toward the rights of God and against public liberty.” Judgment belongs to God only, and he who judges his brother is guilty of disobedience toward God, and guilty of making himself superior to his equal and equal to his superior.

If you look at your neighbor as if he were an incurable sick person, if you move away from him because he is, in your opinion, an incorrigible sinner, you offend God, Saint Augustine explains. You are like the Pharisee of the Gospel who condemns the adulterous woman, and who comes to the Lord with his rule: “Moses, in the law, commanded us to stone such a one.” Like him, you say, or think, “If you knew who this woman is.” Does Jesus condemn her? Does he scrupulously and literally follow the rule? Not only does He forgive her, but He also exposes the hypocrisy of her detractors: “He who is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.”

Would you say that you do not hear these words, brethren? Of course you hear them, and yet you still judge your neighbor! Are you so ignorant of your own sins that you dare to expose the sins of others? If it is the case, remember that God’s justice will be as rigorous as yours. I beg you to lay up in your heart the words of Saint Paul: “For wherein you judge another, you condemn yourself.” (Rom 2:1)

Let us go further. From where does our inclination to passing judgment come? Man is definitively curious, Bossuet says again. “Everyone wants to see what is hidden, and wants to judge the intentions. This curiosity makes us infer what we cannot see, and since no one likes to be wrong, suspicion quickly becomes certitude. Then we call conviction what is only speculation. And this is an invention of our mind” that we like, and in which we please ourselves. Don’t you see that this is the true scandal, and that this scandal comes only from your own imagination and your own misunderstanding?

Prejudices, dear brethren, lead us away from Jesus and His Cross. Because of them, we crucify our neighbor instead of being crucified. They prevent us of hearing the words of God and putting them into practice. And the worst is that because of our prejudices, we may think that we are just.

Sermon for Lent

Sermon V: Why do we not understand the Divine things?

“And they understood none of these things, and this word was hid from them, and they understood not the things that were said.” (Luke 18:34)

The Eagle of Meaux, Bossuet, says that the sacred history of the Gospel shows the holy Apostles in three different states since their vocation began. We can see them first in a great ignorance of the celestial truths, next in a glaring incredulity, and finally they appear to be filled with lights and knowledge, so enlightened that they proceed to enlighten the whole world. When Jesus Christ was still with them, their gross understanding did not penetrate the mysteries. When He left the world, the scandal of the Cross disconcerted them so much that they lost their faith. When the Holy Ghost descended upon them, their faith was immutably reestablished, and all the darkness that was yet enveloping their spirits vanished. These different changes which we can derive from the Gospel are of great use to us. Do not be tempted to think that they do not concern you. Saint Paul reminds us that “all scripture, inspired of God, is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, and to instruct in justice.” (2 Tim 3:16)

We know from the Fathers that the Apostles, chosen by God, do not only instruct us by their holy and salutary doctrine, but they also support us by their doubts, they strengthen our faith by their incredulity, and they teach us by their ignorance.

The sublime doctrine of Jesus Christ is the same for all. The laws of the interior life, an interior life which is absolutely impossible without the knowledge of this doctrine, are the same for all. There is both permanency and some constants not only in our nature, but also at the level of the Divine Grace, which makes our doctrine truly a science, as we have already said. And I beg you not to think for one instant that this science is reserved only for the intellectual elite of erudite persons. This would be totally contrary to the Divine Wisdom that wants to communicate Itself to everyone. Again, the doctrine of Christ is intended for everybody and proposed to everybody, but it is understood only by those who want to hear it and to receive it. Our Lord, who perfectly knows this, does even not deign to answer anyone who has no concern for the truth, and His silence after Pilate asked “what is truth?” is particularly eloquent.

The doctrine of Christ is first speculative, but it is not only speculative. In fact, it is ordained to action, according to the word of Saint James: "Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only." (James 1:22)

It is true that among the things we have to believe, there are some that are so mysterious and so high that even faith does not remove all the darkness that envelops them. Faith enlightens our intelligence and enlarges it. It gives it the greatest ability to understand the things of the earth as it gives us the knowledge of their Creator. Yet, faith is always received in a human and, therefore, limited intelligence. The part of darkness that remains even in believers does not come from the objects of faith that are believed, but from the limitation of the intelligences that believe. It is as much as we advance and progress in the interior life that we understand better the things proposed to our intelligence by faith.

“When Jesus Christ proposes to the peoples with sublime words the inscrutable secrets that He has seen within His Father,” Bossuet says again, “when He wraps with parables the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, so that the proud and ungrateful men may see and not perceive, and may hear and not understand, it is not surprising that the Apostles do not understand this mysterious speech.” On the other hand, it is quite astounding when the certainly clear words of Jesus are not understood. “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and all things shall be accomplished which were written by the prophets concerning the Son of man; for He shall be delivered to the Gentiles, and shall be mocked and scourged and spit upon, and after they have scourged him, they will put him to death. And on the third day he shall rise again. (Luke 18:31-33) Nothing is clearer than these words, and yet the Apostles do not appreciate them. Saint Luke makes sure that the readers of his Gospel grasp well that the Apostles understood nothing: “And they understood none of these things, and this word was hid from them, and they understood not the things that were said.”

Since all Scripture is for our instruction, we certainly have something to learn from the ignorance of the Apostles. By considering what darkens the minds of the Apostles, even in the presence of the light of the Sun of Justice, we may hopefully find out what darkens our minds to the extent that we sometimes miss the whole point of certain evidences of faith, or certain evidences that are to be learned from the Doctrine of Faith, which affect our life and the morality of our actions, and which will ultimately jeopardize our salvation.

For instance, it is clear that, for whoever reads well the Gospel, Jesus is the Bread of Life, and that one has to eat His flesh in order to have eternal life. He who does not believe at all in the Revelation will not see the necessity of receiving the Body and the Blood of Jesus, which is, after all, logical and coherent. But how is it possible that so many Christians, who claim to follow Jesus Christ, do not understand, or even explicitly reject, the teaching of Christ concerning His body and His blood? Yet, it is a doctrine that He has magnificently expounded with great clarity, found in Chapter 6 of the Gospel of Saint John. All Christians can read these words, and they can see that when they were spoken, there were some disciples who left Jesus. Their reason could not adapt to the brightness of faith, and they remained in or returned to the darkness. And once again, and we will never grow tired of repeating it, those in darkness do not comprehend the light, because they simply cannot.

It is clear for whoever reads well the Scriptures that matrimony is a holy and divine institution, and that divorce is a serious trespass against the Divine Law, as it is clearly explained in any Catechism book. "Are there any reasons that justify divorce? No, divorce is never acceptable. It is a grave offense against the natural law, and it is immoral also because it introduces disorder into the family and into society. This disorder brings grave harm to the deserted spouse, to children traumatized by the separation of their parents, often torn between them, and because of its contagious effect, which makes it truly a plague to society." Our Lord has made clear once and for all that “what, therefore, God has joined together, let no man put asunder.” It won’t surprise us that the non-believers, who live in a time of enslaving consumerism, of hedonism, and of self-interest, regard marriage from a mere materialistic and practical point of view, and, therefore, marry and divorce as their passions dictate, and when the mood suits them. But how is it possible that so many Christians who read or hear the word of God justify what cannot be justified, if not because of the ignorance of the mind or the corruption of the heart, as we spoke about two weeks ago? Faith is not given to ignorant minds that are ignorant because of their own fault, or to corrupted hearts. Once again, and we will never grow tired of repeating it, those in darkness do not comprehend the light, because they simply cannot.

It is clear to whomever reads well the Scriptures that homosexuality is a sin and an abomination, which even appears to be a result of the denial and disobedience of God, according to Saint Paul. By the way, we can here catch a glimpse of the infernal spiral to which mankind is attracted. We have already explained how corruption is a source of the lack or the loss of faith. We see also that a lack of faith usually generates more corruption. We are not too surprised to see this vice among the pagan people, even though it is against nature, but a careful reading of the first chapter of the epistle to the Romans shows us that it is this kind of thing that we should expect when people reject God. But how do Christians, who are supposed to know the word of God, accept such a shameful defiance? In the name of which Christian principle can they justify it? And here, I do not speak about those who have a disordered attraction, and who struggle and suffer with it while trying to live a good life. I speak about those who justify, and even publicly promote, homosexuality, and who relentlessly try to make everyone believe that it is something normal, just another way of life.

We said that sacred doctrine is first speculative, but then it is ordered to action. Therefore our actions and our way of life depend on how we receive the doctrine of Christ. Saint Thomas compares a well disposed mind to a well polished mirror, on which things appear as they truly are without being altered or distorted. He also explains that an act of intelligence is a movement, and he makes a comparison to corporeal movements. If you have to move, you can do it calmly by being sure you go in the right direction, and by avoiding the dangers you may encounter on your way. You can also rush with haste and, therefore, accept the possibility that you may go in a wrong direction or crash into an obstacle.

As Bossuet points out, it is very often haste and rashness that clouds and stains the mirror of the mind, impeding it from reflecting the true object which the intelligence considers so quickly. It is the source of all the prejudices that darken our intelligence and prevent us from receiving the teaching of Christ, even though it is clear and evident of itself. The truth may stand right in front of us, as simple and clear as it is, and yet, we do not see it, we do not hear it, and we receive it as we want to receive it, not as we should. We prefer to judge rather than consider the things and the facts. We do not penetrate the essence of the things, and we stop our minds at their exterior covers. We judge, and, therefore, we act according to the appearances, and not according to the realities. It is not the intrinsic and objective truth that governs our life, but our own subjective conception of the truth, which is a distorted and false image of it. And although we claim to follow Jesus and His teaching, the Gospel is not really and entirely the supreme and sublime rule of our life.

Look at the Apostles at this stage of their lives. They had already confessed that Jesus is Christ, the Son of the living God. For his profession of faith, Simon even had his name changed to Peter. Yet he dares to contradict his master: “Lord, be it far from you, this shall not be unto you.” Hear the answer of Jesus: “Go behind me, Satan, you are a scandal unto me.”

What about you, Christians, who profess the Divinity of Jesus Christ? Are you sure that you are not a scandal unto Him for not hearing all His words? Are you certain that your minds reflect entirely the shining light of the truth? Are you aware of the stains of your intelligence that may still darken it? Let me ask you again the same questions I asked last week: Do you really accept in your life the scandal of the Cross, or do you desperately, like the Apostles, seek to turn away from the Cross? Or are you sure that the Cross you carry is the one that Christ has made for you, and not the one that you have carved for yourself according to your own will?

As you see, there are still many questions that need to be asked and need to be answered. This Lenten season is the time to ask yourself the right questions, and with the grace of God, to answer them in all objectivity.

This is what we intend to do, and to continue Friday and throughout Lent. May the Mother of God continue to help us to open our intelligence and our heart to the Divine truth! May she help us to understand all the things that are said by her Son!

Sermon for Lent IV

These are the sermons I give on Fridays and Sundays during this Lenten season. The four firsts sermons are not really mines, but a translation of sermons given by Father Chanut, then Pastor of Saulx-les- Chartreux (France), in 1997 at Notre Dame des Armees (Versailles). These first sermons were originally two. I translated them and reordered them in 4 sermons with some minor adaptations and changes for our Community of Cherokee Village. To the Highest Glory of God !

Sermon IV: Suffering and Dying!

We tried Friday to see the connection between faith and charity, and we said that the junction of these two virtues has to be found in the Cross of Jesus. We dwelled on the words of Saint Paul, who wanted to know only Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. (1 Cor 2:2) Yet, we have to go further than a mere intuitive and sentimental comprehension of these words. Yes, these words are the sublime expression of the love that Saint Paul had for Jesus Christ and His Cross, but we still have to explain why the Cross is the point from which everything radiates and toward which everything converges.

We are subjects, in this valley of tears, to different kinds of sufferings and pains, and we are all in the expectation of death, which is the only certitude we have concerning our future. Certainly, we find consolations and comforts when we turn to Christ crucified. He did not simply suffer and die as any other man. As the liturgy of Holy Week will soon remind us, He suffered and died in the most horrible ignominy, relegated to the rank of the criminals of the worst sort, though He was the Just One, par excellence. Do we have to conclude that suffering and death are the whole lot of our existence? Certainly not! It is rather the opposite. The Cross is the proof that we cannot be resigned to the fact that suffering and death are the whole lot of our life. Aroused by an invincible inspiration, we look for more than consolation and comfort. We look for a remedy, and even more than a remedy, we look for a liberating victory.

When we turn to Jesus Christ crucified, if we only contemplate the sorrow of Christ that is beyond compare, according to Isaiah, and if we only contemplate a death that has been so dramatic and so cruel, it would quickly appear to be useless. The sufferings and the death of Christ cannot be the end of everything. But when we turn to Jesus Christ crucified, we learn why He suffered and why He died, and we also learn why we have to suffer and why we have to die. The Cross, that is temporally the end of the life of Christ, is also spiritually its completion, its crowning, and its achievement. When the Savior accepts to carry the Cross as the instrument of His torment, and accepts to be crucified, He also expresses the sense of His suffering and of His death. Thereby He explains what sense we can give to our sufferings and death, through Him, with Him, and in Him, as the great conclusion of the Canon of Mass reminds us every day. If you think for one moment about this, you will understand that everything is said in these words.

It is obvious that it is only insomuch as we make sense of our suffering and our death, and we overcome the incessant scandal of our suffering and our death, that the mystery of our existence becomes clearer. Our religion is the science of life only because the science of suffering and of death exists in the light of the Cross. Our religion teaches us how to recognize in suffering and death some accidents and means by which we are called to find our fulfillment in the fullness of being and of life.

Thus, what Saint Paul means when he says that he wants to know only Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ crucified, becomes now clearer. He tells us in what does the science consist, especially this supreme science without which any other science is not only vain, but also blinding. He who does not know why he suffers and why he dies, which is opposed to the aspiration to life and to happiness that is in our nature, has only a darkened knowledge of the other things. He may bustle, he may move heaven on earth, he may rearrange the world just as he likes, but he only undergoes his own existence after all.

So, again, when Saint Paul says that he wants to know only Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ crucified, he certainly expresses the deep sentiment that attaches him to Jesus. But we have to admit that he also he formulates a doctrine that is inseparable from his sentiment. Saint Paul exclaims that he loves Christ, and that he is bound up with Him, only to teach us that such an adherence is the essential and universal condition of salvation.

Therefore, for the Apostle, the Cross is not only a fact, but it is also an idea. When we say an idea, we do not mean an idea such like the concepts of the Greek philosophy that are abstractions. No, it is an idea as a living principle to which Saint Paul refers in order to explain the living reality that we are, and to propose the idea of salvation that we have to pursue. And the scholastic theology tells us what such an idea means when, with Saint Thomas Aquinas, we contemplate ideas in God. The Divine ideas are, for the great Doctor, the spiritual and intellectual place of theology. In them, there is both a rational and a religious explanation of these things. And of course, when we say rational and religious, we do not oppose the two terms, but we consider the same reality under different points of view.

Saint Paul presents Baptism as a death. It is the death of the old man, or the carnal man, the man of evil or the man of sin. The death of Christ on the Cross is not only the type of this death, but its reason as well as its justification, as the death of Baptism receives from the Cross its whole effectiveness. “Know you not that all we who are baptized in Christ Jesus are baptized in His death?” he writes to the Romans. “In His death” means dying with Him and like Him. And then Saint Paul clarifies his thought: “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin may be destroyed to the end that we may serve sin no longer. For he that is dead is justified from sin.”

Thus, dear brethren, at Baptism and by Baptism, the man of pride that we all are is called to die and to be crucified with Christ. But let us not delude ourselves. The man of pride dies at Baptism, but not in a way that he does not have to die again, and not in a way that he does not have to be crucified any longer. By Baptism we can say that this man of pride feels obliged to die, and that he receives the grace of dying, but he still has to actually die by voluntarily renouncing himself. This is what Saint Paul reminds the Colossians when he urges them with these vigorous words: “Mortify therefore your members who are upon the earth.” By members who are on earth, we have to understand fornication, uncleanness, lust, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which are idolatry. It means all the desires and all the actions in which pride manifests itself are the members by which the devil exercises his malice upon us.

It is clear that the task that Saint Paul urges us to perform is a permanent and constant work that will end only with our death freely accepted. So we can summarize the doctrine of Saint Paul in this way. Living in bodies of flesh, which means bodies that comprise carnal appetites, with such a tendency for selfishness, we are inclined to be unaware of God and of others, and to consider ourselves a whole. Therefore, we are doomed to suffering and to death, because our reciprocal selfishness clash with everything else and usually ends in being crushed. No matter what we do, we cannot escape from our condition. But instead of enduring this like powerless slaves, we have to suffer and to die by renouncing the old man, the carnal man, and the man of pride. This is how we accept to be crucified as Christ accepted to be crucified. So, Christian life should be a continual death, and this is why Saint Paul says, “I die daily.” (1 Cor 15:31)

Nevertheless, dear brethren, do not be mistaken. It is only one aspect of Christian life, and you would be completely wrong in pleasing yourself by wallowing in this state. You would give such a negative image of our religion, which has been so many times decried as a religion of suffering and of death, and which glorifies suffering and death for themselves, a religion comprised of faithful who would have to suffer and to die just for the sake of suffering and dying, as if God were a Moloch pleased to see His worshipers struggling in tortures and vanishing in emptiness.

Yes, suffering and death are daily realities. There is no point in negating this. There is no point in diverting oneself in order to forget this. There is no point in trying to eliminate this reality without fighting our selfishness, which is the principle and source of suffering and death. Again, there is no middle. Either you endure suffering and death as slaves, or you accept them and want them by voluntarily suffering and dying. It is precisely through the Cross, as Saint Paul presents it, that Christianity offers us the means to accept and to want suffering and death as free men.

Let us be clearer. It is not a stoical resignation to what is inevitable, suffering and death, without the hope that exceeds them. Such a resignation is nothing else than an enslaving subjection. Along with this kind of resignation, there is always a protest that is more or less admitted. In order to not revolt against suffering and death, and to accept them with a cordial and sincere acceptance, we have to see through them something more, and to believe in something higher than them. This is why Saint Paul says that if we die with Christ, we shall live with Him, and if we suffer with Him, we shall reign with Him. Ultimately, the Apostle does not invite us to suffering and death, but to happiness and Divine life. “Buried with Him in Baptism,” he says, “in Whom also you are risen by the faith of the operation of God, who has raised Him up from the dead. (Col 2:12)

So, understand well that if Christian life is a continual death, it is only to our pride and selfishness that we have to die in order to increase daily in the true life. By doing such, we eliminate from our life any miscomprehension in the light of faith. We eliminate any interior conflicts, and we can blossom in the peace of eternity above the tribulations of time and of space.

When you consider the effects of pride that are present everywhere, within ourselves and at all the levels of society, within families and individuals, and when you hear Saint Paul and Christ speak of dying to yourself daily, if you are tempted to say that these words are too hard, please, reject this temptation. These words are too hard only because of the selfishness within and amongst us that only knock against each other. Consider the richness of the words of Christ who says, “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For he that will save his life, shall lose it, and he that shall lose his life for My sake, shall find it.” (Matthew 16:24) These words are nothing else than a call for a true, sincere, and total generosity. It is what, in the language of a Christian, we call charity. And charity, as it is something that proceeds from God, is something immense and tremendous like God, Who made man, Who becomes man, and Who dies on the Cross to redeem the sins of the world. To be and to remain in charity requires that we die to ourselves, to get rid of our selfishness, to get away from our individuality as flesh and blood. This is the gift of self, realized in the union to the God Who gives Himself in perfect charity.

And do not believe that God asks you for things that are above your strength, even though these thing might be impossible without the Divine grace. Before even thinking about martyrdom or any great work, simply thing about faithfully persevering in your daily thoughts, words and actions. The victor is the one who keeps the works of God unto the end. (Apo 2,26) To deny yourself means preferring the word of God to your own thinking and preferring the Commandments of God to your own will. This is what we call the new life in the Spirit.

It appears then that when Jesus teaches us how to suffer and to die, he simply teaches us how eternally live. The Cross of Jesus reveals and teaches the value of charity because by offering ourselves we forget ourselves and we can efficiently help to the conversion of sinners, the propagation of faith and to the salvation of the world as much as it depends on us.

In this in this light, dear brethren, that we have to consider during this Lenten season, our penances and mortifications, our public and private prayers, and our works of mercy. If for your own misfortune, you would refuse this high expression of charity that are the exercises of Lent, be aware that because of you, something would lack to the sanctification of the name of God, to the realization of His reign and to the accomplishment of His will. Because of you, the treasure of the Divine grace would become impoverished, while the power of darkness would be stronger in the world.

Sermon for Lent III

These are the sermons I give on Fridays and Sundays during this Lenten season. The four firsts sermons are not really mines, but a translation of sermons given by Father Chanut, then Pastor of Saulx-les- Chartreux (France), in 1997 at Notre Dame des Armees (Versailles). These first sermons were originally two. I translated them and reordered them in 4 sermons with some minor adaptations and changes for our Community of Cherokee Village. To the Highest Glory of God !

Sermon III: Knowing Jesus Christ crucified

We speak during this Lenten season about faith, but it would be vain if we were not talking about the works, too, simply because faith without the works is vain. Now, when we speak about the works, we have to understand not the materiality of the acts, but mainly the spirituality that penetrates them, and which makes them the works of Jesus Christ Himself.

The Christians who truly confess Jesus Christ from their heart can be recognized by the fact that they are always unsatisfied with themselves. What they know of the Divine science and of the evangelical knowledge is never enough for them, and they always want to know more. What they do, with regards to the works of mercy and of piety, is never enough, and they always want to do better.

According to a deep thought of Saint Augustine, which they may not have ever read but which they certainly realize in their interior life, is that what they find in the endless field of the truth is for them a new reason to continue their quest. They tell themselves with the great Doctor, whatever we have already found, we still have infinitely more to look for, and as we never stop searching, we are certain of finding. Notice, dear brethren, that it is their faith that tells them that they will find, as Our Lord told them, “For every one that asks, receives, and he that seeks, finds.” (Matthew 7:8) The faithful know that their quest is not vain, and cannot be vain, because God has never and will never deceive anyone.

They never grow tired of listening to the magisterial and apostolic teaching of the Church that unrolls for them the demands and the beauties of the Christian virtues. Since you are here, I can suppose that, dear brethren, you have to be counted among them. And you know with Saint Paul that we can sum up the entire doctrine in the Cross of Jesus Christ.

The Cross is to the true faithful the symbol of the renouncements entailed by Christian life. It is also the supreme revelation of God and the highest expression of His love, the unique secret of His Heart, and finally the triumph through which the disciples of Christ win over the world. The Cross appears to them as wisdom, light, and salvation. In one word, it is the Christian conception of Christian life.

Alas, and very far from it, is the Cross accepted by all the Christians. It is not rare, let us acknowledge it, to see among us some non-Christian perceptions of the Christian religion. Look at those who show the Cross as their emblem, and who refuse it as the principle of their life! Who, among ourselves, has never met one of these Catholics who walk with confidence, and whose soul is free from concerns? By the way, why would they be anxious? They strive, more or less deliberately, to not be involved in the questions, the doubts, and the anxieties that torment their co-religionists. They have certainly learned how to see in the Cross of Christ the symbol of the religion of Christ, but the idea that they form and which they demonstrate by their conduct is totally opposed to the Cross that they wear. If those prideful persons would only take an instant to think, they would immediately abandon the sign of the Cross, which appears to them as a weakness, as a reversal of the values of their life, and this, considered in the extreme, would exist, in their eyes, the disorder. It reminds me of my pastor when I was younger, who said about these sort of Catholics, who we see in various pilgrimages, who are facades of faith, that the banners they carry are often more Catholic than them. Our Lord had already spoken of them when He said, “This people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. And in vain do they worship me, teaching doctrines and commandments of men.” (Matthew 15:8)

The Beatitudes are to them a kind of extravagance for cranks. Listen to them, those lovers of the established situation in which they firmly settle and triumphantly flaunt themselves. They see God and His worshipers absorbed with power, and who have to claim their rights only by force. Listen to them, those poor glorious Catholics, who ensure that their Catholic identity resounds loudly, and who like to claim that they fully possess the truth. Let us ask them, what is the purpose behind the precepts of Christ that they know so well? They can list all of them, but they live their lives far from the light and the spirit of these precepts. They make the religion of Christ one of the elements of their worldly honorability. They take possession of Christ like a suit that they make to their own measure, according to their own manners and tastes, so that they can pride themselves on being in the truth and look down upon those who are not.

Let them be warned! Let them be careful not to be like the Pharisee of the Gospel, he who is pleased with himself, dwells on the misery of others, and finds in it the occasion of exalting himself above them. In fact, he does exactly the opposite of what Christ does for him. Jesus, indeed meek and humble of heart, presses upon our misery out of compassion in order to assume and bear it, as if He has been responsible for it.

What about you, dear brethren? Have you really accepted the dramatic scandal of the Cross where strength once became weakness? From the day when you entered into the life of faith, the Cross was marked on your forehead. You have been baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, which means in the name of the God of goodness, of light, and of love. And today, do you happen to be a true witness of the One who, on the Cross, gave the supreme proof of His goodness, the One who has made the true light shine, and the One who has manifested His love by the pouring out of all His blood?

Catholics, are you here on earth the imitators of the suffering God who dies on the Cross like a criminal, He who generously and freely became the brother of those for whom He dies? Ask yourselves, in all sincerity, if the Cross of Jesus Christ has not been until this day, maybe even not wittingly and consciously, not only a scandal but also a folly. When asking this question, I do not think only about the bloody sacrifice of Christ on the mount of Calvary, but also about the union we should have with this Divine Sacrifice, which is the scandal and folly. If in reality the Cross is such a scandal and a folly for so many Christians, how can we be surprised that it is only a scandal and a folly to so many unbelievers?

There are not a few, in fact, of those who nowadays turn away from the Cross, like in olden times when the Jews and the Gentiles turned away from it. Nevertheless, we have to make a distinction between those who are decidedly deniers of Christianity and those who live in incertitude and doubt, and who struggle more or less grievously in the darkness. The latter deserve all our compassion, but we have to expose and to relentlessly fight the former. It is not rare that some people, who are dogmatic to the extreme, and who head the field, assume the position of humility in order to disarm us. They are second to none in their claim to be the victims of those that they imperiously despise, raising their aggressive hypocrisy to the sublime level of the defense of mankind. There is not a week when the Holy Father is not the object of such vile attacks. Let them allow us to point out to them that their militant unbelief along with their incontestable savoir-faire, which may impress vain people, could not supplant in souls the faith that they intend to destroy.

We have enough of these new evangelists who have succeeded in destroying, but who cannot manage to build. With the help of the juicy contributions of the money moguls, they have consistently undermined and methodically ruined everything that humanity used to believe, which rendered right reason. But we have to notice that mankind is more than ever morally and spiritually in incertitude and in confusion. All of these fine gentlemen are entirely responsible for this, and have nothing in which to boast. But they forget that they are the adulterous fathers of the silliest superstitions, of the most insane sects, and they haughtily retort that thanks to them, a breeze of pity for human misery came into the world and, for this, the need for great social progress.

Let us say a word about that. This breeze of pity certainly comes from the Gospel, and no one can argue this fact, but mankind has already lost all its benefit. All deniers of faith are responsible for this failure. By rejecting the message of Christ, they made the western man lose the sense of man and his value, which Christ has so clearly and emphatically highlighted. They might be filled with human knowledge, or think that they are, but we have to tell them the facts. We have to tell these people, who set themselves up with so much confidence as the judges of Christianity, that they condemn out of hand, that they have absolutely nothing that can substitute for the Christianity which they have rejected. The real environment that they have imposed upon us, and in which we now struggle, is only a bloody chaos, where we discern at first sight only self-interests that fight against each other. What true sense of life have they given in this social and moral decadence? What ideal have they produced so as to overcome the intellectual and spiritual scandal they have set everywhere? What resolutions have they proposed in order to remedy the solitary and common misery that they have established?

We can see clearly that as much as they have deprived the western man from the Cross of Christ, they have broken the liberating impulse that was in him, they have dried up the source of beneficial and placatory generosities.

What is the Cross of Christ? We do not speak only and mainly about the sufferings of Our Lord Jesus Christ, even though there is nothing dearest to our piety or nothing richer for our instruction. But understand well, that in order to answer such a question, it would not be enough to be moved by the appalling spectacle of the sufferings of Christ. It would neither be enough to be edified by the example of His resignation. Even Saint Paul, who proclaimed that he knew nothing but Jesus, and Jesus crucified, speaks in his epistles about many other things that are not at a first sight directly related to the Cross. Did the Apostle forget the foundation of his profession of faith? Or did the Apostle express himself in such a sudden fervor so as only to tell of his ardent love for Jesus Christ? If you thought so, you would considerably wane the impact of his predication, and to tell the truth, you would roughly misread it. There is absolutely no doubt that the exclusive profession of faith to Jesus Christ crucified is a cry of love from Saint Paul, but it is infinitely more than that. This cry of love knows from where it comes and where it goes. It springs forth from a soul that is entirely irradiated by the integral truth of Christ. Whatever he knows and whatever he teaches, Saint Paul maintains that he understands it only in the light that shines from the Cross. And so can we understand and comprehend things only in the same light.

Since Saint Paul, dear brethren, nothing in this regard has ever changed, and nothing will ever change. Therefore, like Saint Paul, let us take the Cross as the center of our faith. Otherwise we have to renounce our understanding of, in its whole truth, the message of the Gospel. Do not imagine for one second that by wanting to know only Jesus Christ crucified, we have chosen to remain in ignorance. Furthermore, it is by knowing only Jesus Christ crucified that we shall know everything as everything should be known. Is the Cross the center of our faith because the apostolate of Jesus Christ ends on the mount of Calvary in the manner of the most desolate drama and of the most sublime martyrdom? This view is undoubtedly correct, as well as it is undoubtedly incomplete, because it does not show us any essential links between the Cross and the doctrine of Jesus in the way that this doctrine, as it reveals God and explains to us the world, also explains ourselves to us. So, is the Cross the center of our faith because it is the tragic symbol of the suffering of mankind, which only finds in the Cross the strength to not succumb to the temptation of despair and of blasphemy? No, it is not for this reason either.

Yet, we can all testify that the thought of Christ crucified has put back on their feet many cowards. It has provoked so many repentances. It has made so many pains endurable. It has eased so many agonies. But this is not sufficient to explain why the Cross is the point from which everything radiates, and toward which everything converges.

With the help of grace, we shall try to see why Sunday. Meanwhile, let us turn to Our Lady, whose faith, throughout her life, remained unflagging. Like any other believer, she used to see through a glass in a dark manner during her life on earth. Now she sees face to face, and she knows as she is known. Her faith had not been vain, because her charity was great. We said last week, and we maintain still, that it is possible that faith remains in a soul without charity, but it would be vain. This is even an extra motive for condemnation and reprobation, as we know by faith that we should love. It is charity that gives faith its full measure, and this explains the mystery of the Cross, bringing a light to the darkness that remains here, even in faith. It is charity which urges us to work towards our salvation, as it is charity which brought Our Lord to the mount of Calvary. May Our Lady always help us to remember this!

Sermon for Lent II

These are the sermons I give on Fridays and Sundays during this Lenten season. The four firsts sermons are not really mines, but a translation of sermons given by Father Chanut, then Pastor of Saulx-les- Chartreux (France), in 1997 at Notre Dame des Armees (Versailles). These first sermons were originally two. I translated them and reordered them in 4 sermons with some minor adaptations and changes for our Community of Cherokee Village. To the Highest Glory of God !

Sermon II

The other enemy of Faith: Corruption

Last Friday, we were contemplating ignorance as a major enemy of Faith. We said, with Pope Benedict XIV, that most of the souls perish because of ignorance, and we were deploring the lack of knowledge of so many faithful regarding the object of faith and the reasons that support the Faith. Today, we focus on another and more pernicious enemy of the Faith, namely corruption. Corruption also, corruption above all, I should say, conspires against the Faith.

You all remember, dear brethren, that the Son of God has revealed a very deep truth when He said, “Blessed are the clean of heart for they shall see God.” With these words, He does not only tell us that those who have a pure heart will see God face to face at the light of glory, but He also tells us that those people will see God in our present condition with the light of Faith, which is like the dawn of the light of glory. The soiled souls do not have this privilege; the perverted hearts do not receive such an honor. Or, if they actually do, it is in a limited measure with a restricted grace.

It is not that the loss of Charity always leads to the loss of Faith. Losing the friendship with God does not always mean losing His light. Faith can subsist without the works. It can still shine through the darkness of a corrupted soul. But it is not less certain that corruption is often more than an obstacle to the Faith. It is often its ruin because a guilty life makes man unworthy of Faith, and also makes him its enemy.

Corruption makes man unworthy of Faith. There is no need to demonstrate this, as you all know, at least since Friday, that Faith is not only a science that one can acquire by studying, or lose by a lack of culture, but that it is first a gift from God, a particular grace that He offers to men, and a supernatural virtue that enriches them. God is Master of His gifts, the free dispenser of His grace. God gives to whomever it pleases Him the virtue that makes the believers so as to make them Saints. But to whom does He give such favors? For whom does He keep such a treasure? Is it for those who have no respect and no consideration for such a gift? For those who fear it instead of desiring it? For those who respond to this gift only by abusing or neglecting it? It would be a weird and bizarre idea in God’s wisdom, mercy, and justice to think that He is as liberal and magnificent toward those who have no other laws than His will, and no other rules than His word, as He would be for those who despise His will and His word, and who claim to be the disciples of the free-thought and of the independent moral. We read in the Gospel that He orders those who announce His doctrine to go forth from those who refuse to hear it, to shake off the dust from their feet. He acts in the same way when He is not heard. He withdraws from an unfaithful soul and takes with Him His despised gifts. According to the word of Jesus, the Kingdom of God shall be taken from them. When Jesus speaks about the Kingdom of God, we have to understand first the Faith that shows its way and that is the principle of justification.

It is the effect of sin to envelop with darkness the pervert souls. Sin puts between God and a sinner a distance that increases as much as the prevarications multiply. Saint Augustine remembered the state of his soul when he wrote in the Second book of His Confessions: “Instead, the mists of passion steamed up out of the puddly concupiscence of the flesh, and the hot imagination of puberty, and they so obscured and overcast my heart that I was unable to distinguish pure affection from unholy desire. Both boiled confusedly within me, and dragged my unstable youth down over the cliffs of unchaste desires and plunged me into a gulf of infamy. Thy anger had come upon me, and I knew it not. I had been deafened by the clanking of the chains of my mortality, the punishment for my soul's pride, and I wandered farther from Thee, and thou didst permit me to do so. I was tossed to and fro, and wasted, and poured out, and I boiled over in my fornications.”

To those who do not have Faith any longer, or who have just a flagging Faith, we can ask what they have done in order to prove themselves unworthy of the Divine grace. After all, we can wonder: You had Faith once! And now you have ceased to believe? But when did you stop believing? I bet you did not lose Faith as an inattentive person loses his keys. It happens - and we have examples - that Faith becomes suddenly established in a soul but there is no way that Faith can abruptly disappear. Let us take a closer look! Did you lose your Faith when you were becoming better, and when your determination for virtue was growing? I’d rather reckon that you noticed the extinction of your Faith only after a more or less long period of its fading, when little by little you became more and more oblivious of God and of His Law, more and more an enemy towards yourself and towards your duties.

It is the old story of an adolescent, who is bothered by disordered desires, and who finally decides one day that God does not exist, or at least that the Religion is not God, so that he can free himself and abandon himself to the temptations that gnaw at him, unless it is simply to laze better and to run away from the fight. All the priests have seen such a weak and prideful person, who, after a life of piety and of observance, walks away slowly but surely from the altar and the confessional, moves back to the last pew of the church, and finally end by passing the door to sink into the darkness of apostasy. After that, because of a certain concern for convenience, and in order to give a good image of themselves, these souls would readily add to their apostasy a sacrilege of the day of their marriage, and often a perjury later, as they will certainly not keep the promises of their marriage.

Do not believe that they lost their Faith on the day of their defection, or even during the following days. God is so good! God is so good and so constant in His love that He cannot abandon His poor creature so quickly. It is as deliberately as they multiplied revolts and prevarications that they eventually lost their Faith. It is only after they had despised so many times and for a long time the Master, who called them back, that the Divine light could no longer shine before their eyes, or that it could shine only in the midst of the darkness, and they were unable to understand it. The darkness did not comprehend it, Saint John says in his prologue.

Thus, dear brethren, unbelief comes slowly, on a way that is not the way of virtue, nor the way of honor. It is a sinister ghost who slips in during the middle of the night. It is an unhealthy plant that grows in the muck of revolt.

That explains why, alas, the Faith remains languid, if not dead, in so many souls. Look where our contemporary generation is now, if we consider it at all the ages and all the levels. Look at the youth, deceived by bad masters and flattered by vile seducers! They get carried away by their passions, and they rush headlong into depravation while being too busy deifying themselves through the fleeting idols that the media like to incense. Some statistics published in 2007 say that 62% of the population in the country had their first sexual intercourse by the age of 18. The media, which we were denouncing Friday for participating in the work of the destruction of the Faith, would tell you that this is normal. There is no doubt, for whoever is a little bit lucid and aware of the situation, that television is one of the greatest means of corruption in our society. It is unfortunately not the only one.

Look at the middle-aged, manipulated by ignoble, ambitious people, and deceived by incapable liars! Blinded by their interests, they blithely run after their fervid greed, while being too busy deifying themselves through the terrible idols of the enslaving consumerism.

Look at the elderly, dazed by fiddled mirages and reassured by costly artifices! Blinded by indifference, they leisurely damn themselves in a sacrilegious oblivion, while being too busy deifying themselves behind an immoral minstrel of criminal betrayal.

Weep over these living dead! Weep over these living dead of every age who fall asleep in the arms of indifference, where everything fades and everything is forgotten. Listen to them who mutually lead each other toward perdition and live a life of pleasure. They claim to be irreproachable because they have some principles. Their principles are vaguely generous, covered by the mask of tolerance, the great universal virtue of our time that allows them to hide their betrayal. Listen to them who justify themselves in the name of guilty prejudices! Listen to these harbingers of the evil spirit whose pride serves the virtues that they give themselves!

Pride! This is what is certainly contrary to the spirit of religion. A proud person is unable to receive the gifts of God, and first of all, the gift of Faith, which is hidden from the wise and prudent of the world but revealed to the little ones, according to Jesus. The primary condition required of a soul to receive and to keep the Divine light is first to feel its need, which means to confess one’s own darkness and insufficiencies. Without this confession, and if you think yourself wise and savant, and if you remain filled with the sentiment of your own excellence, then you are for sure one of these proud people who will be scattered by God Almighty, and one of these mighty dethroned, as the Blessed Virgin reminds us in her Magnificat.

Lent calls us to a detailed examination of conscience and to different kinds of penance, so that we can spotlight what we still lack in order to remain children of light, or to be better and better children of God. It is not enough to sing out loudly Attende Domine. We have to pray it with our whole heart. It is one of the best remedies against pride. You tell the Lord that He is your King. Be sure that He truly reigns over you by keeping His laws. You tell Him that He is your Redeemer. Be sure that He really saves you by accepting His graces. You tell Him that you weep and groan. Be sure that He listens to you by weeping over your sins. You ask Him to wash away the stains of your sins. Be sure that He forgives you by going to the confessional and doing penance.

Vice cannot come to an agreement with the truth that repudiates it. A guilty life does not ally with a faith that disturbs its false peace and condemns its shameful distractions. There are between the heart and the spirit such connections that if one is unhealthy, so is the other. When the heart is in evil, the spirit remains rarely in the truth.

Most of those who believe no longer have some interests for not believing. They reject religion less because it lacks of proofs to support it, and more because it lacks of tolerance for their guilty passions. The truth of religion is banished from their convictions only because its moral is banished from their lives. When you believe, you feel obligated to do good and you suffer from doing evil, because after the Creed that imposes on us to believe in the dogmas, there are the Commandments that impose on us to carry out our duties.

Certain of the formerly faithful, before they deserted and perjured themselves, tried to keep to some external marks of respect, and changed only little by little their sentiments and their habits. How long did this hypocrisy last? Faith does not accept any compromises of this sort. It blackens all hypocrisies, tears off all the masks, and accepts nothing without the reform of morals. This is what troubles and exasperates, or at least what frightens, so many souls. We would be less timid concerning the Faith if we would be less corrupted. We would feel stronger if we would be more virtuous. But corruption costs little while virtue costs a lot. Then we prefer self satisfaction rather than sacrifice, and thereby apostasy rather than faith.

It is today as it was at the time of Saint Augustine, and as it will ever be. Faith has two kinds of enemies, the ignoramus and the pervert. The first reject faith because they don’t know, or they have forgotten, that it is salutary. The latter reject it because they know that it is hostile to their passions.

What about you, dear brethren, who have the joy to possess the Divine Faith? You can be saintly proud of it and keep it as a treasure. However, be well aware that this treasure can escape you, if, by any chance, you do not apply your intelligence and your will, always enriched by grace, to it. Remember that you will escape the misfortune of others only if you take care to keep in you the treasure of Faith by the observance and the practice of the Commandments and of the virtues. Lent reminds us that among these practices, there are penance and alms.

Now that you know that you can lose your faith because of ignorance and of corruption, make sure that you fight against them within yourself, and never think that you are definitely safe and protected from either of them. Take great care to always know more and more the science of God, while hunting down the darkness that overshadows it, and seeking the light that makes it radiant. Be attentive to receive the graces that God has prepared for you in His great goodness. Try to practice the Christian virtues the best you can by applying yourself to the observances that support them, and by running away from the occasions that weaken them. The more we become worthy of the Faith by a holy life, the more we believe in its truths.

Lenten Sermons

These are the sermons I give on Fridays and Sundays during this Lenten season. The four firsts sermons are not really mines, but a translation of sermons given by Father Chanut, then Pastor of Saulx-les- Chartreux (France), in 1997 at Notre Dame des Armees (Versailles). These first sermons were originally two. I translated them and reordered them in 4 sermons with some minor adaptations and changes for our Community of Cherokee Village. To the Highest Glory of God

First Sermon

The enemy of Faith: Ignorance

God has revealed Himself through Our Lord Jesus, and He has given the mission to His Church to teach the truth to all men. But God did not promise that all men would be faithful to His teaching. On the contrary, when going to Jerusalem, and right after He told the parable of the unjust judge and of the troublesome widow, Our Lord announced bad days when Faith would be so flagging that He wondered if the Son of man will find faith on earth when again He would come. Most certainly, these days of universal defection have not yet come, since you are here present at the foot of the altar, and, throughout the world, many Christians desperately try to remain inviolably faithful to the Faith and to the promises of their Baptism. Yet, if it is true that faith is not extinct in all, no one would deny that it is weakened in most of the people.

The splendor of the revealed truth is too often mixed with obscure opinions that have been invented, that is, when they are simply not otherwise destroyed by some aggressive impious negations. It seems that these terrible days predicted by the Son of God are now approaching. There will be only miscreant hearts with blasphemy on the lips.

What are the reasons for such a situation? Is it because the Divine truth, the object of faith, would have ceased to be true, and therefore it could no longer earn men’s respect? Or, is it because the Divine truth, the object of faith, would have changed, and therefore no longer establish itself in the spirit of men with its sovereign authority? To say this, or simply to think it, would be an outrage against God’s authority. We profess that the truth comes from God who is the source of any truth, that it has descended from eternity, and that it is as immutable and permanent as eternity. It cannot be distorted in its source or in the organs that deliver it to us, because God did not want His Gift to be derisive. Indeed, it would have been a derisive gift if God would have permitted that the truth could have been corrupted by those whose have received the deposit of truth, and by those who are its organs in the Church.

Now, you could say that there might be some hybrid theologians whose theories infest all the levels of the teaching of the Church. But should we be surprised? Did not Our Lord warn us when He denounced them? Have you forgotten that many false prophets shall rise and shall seduce many? And that because iniquity has abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold?

We all know that the stewards of the truth can fail. But we also know from our personal experiences that Sacred Scripture and Grace always keep the fullness of truth’s strength in those who want to adore in spirit and in truth. We all know that the truth cannot change toward men, but that, on the other hand, men can change in regard to the truth, and actually, they do. They can despise it because they know it no longer. They can fear it because it accuses them. The worst is that they can ridicule it when it no longer satisfies their desires. Ignorance on one hand and corruption on the other: this is what diverts them from the way of truth and puts them on a wrong path that always leads to a lie.

The most illustrious and enlightened Pope of the eighteenth century, Benedict XIV Lambertini, said that most of the souls perish because of ignorance. It is even truer nowadays when ignorance in matters of faith has become such a common evil and a quasi-general wound. There are certainly lights in the beginning of this century, and nobody in this congregation would deny the scientific and technological progresses since. But men have extended their knowledge in temporal things as much as they have limited it in the things that pertain to eternity. It is now an incontestable fact that in matters of religion, ignorance is almost universal. Some people even consider religion as the enemy of progress, but this is an old chimera from the philosophers of the eighteenth century. It is not worth to speak about this, as I don’t see any people in this congregation who prefer to ride a horse instead of driving a car, or who have candles instead of electric lighting.

Faith is first of all a supernatural virtue, and as such it has for an enemy corruption, as we shall address later. But faith is also a science: the science of God. In this regard, its enemy is ignorance, since science and ignorance are two incompatible things, because they are contrary. The science of faith has two objects: the doctrine itself, and the reasons upon which this doctrine is based. The doctrine bears its own justification within itself, and it is already a proof of its divinity, an intrinsic proof. The motive of credibility on which it is based justifies it, too, and this is the second proof of its divinity, an extrinsic proof. These two proofs are the two flying buttresses that support the edifice of Christianity. To whomever ignores them, Christianity is but an edifice without solidity, simply good as a shelter for simple and credulous souls.

Let us say at this point that the knowledge of the proofs that support the faith must be proportionate to the degree of the fitness and culture of the mind, and that unto whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required. God proportions His demands to His giving, as we can hear from the parable of the talents. For the humble and little people who can lend to the faith only a straight mind and a sincere heart, the God of goodness has particular attentions and truly paternal considerations. For them, He gives sudden illuminations and intimate lights that compensate for many things. Their faith, that we unjustly sometimes call blind faith, is as valuable as the faith given to the great genius.

On the other hand, let us be well aware that this special grace from God - faith - is not given to those who are guilty of serious negligence. It is refused to those who can learn more and who actually content themselves with learning less. This negligence can concern the doctrine itself. The doctrine comes from God, and nothing comes from above without the lights that flow from such a source. For that reason, the Catholic doctrine has always delighted those who study it, who appreciate its cohesion, who penetrate in its depth and discover the Divine secrets that make it a doctrine entirely different than any other, the most sublime that has ever been proposed to men. In just a few lines, the Creed tells much more than all the philosophies of the earth. The Decalogue teaches with its ten precepts much more than all the codes issued from the hands of men. The Gospel, to one who knows how to read it, is such a Divine book, that a ravished soul has no more words to say than the Apostle Thomas, my Lord and my God!

Hopefully, dear brethren, you do not receive these words without thinking, and you do not cover an intellectual laziness with the sumptuous dress of the simple hearts. Whoever can learn the heavenly things must learn them. There is no indulgence for those who can read, and yet do not know by heart their Creed and the Ten Commandments, and who do not read frequently the New Testament, especially if they claim to follow the ancient Latin liturgy. If we go further, and if we strain our ears to the words of the Doctors, we penetrate with them into the intimate depth of the sacred doctrine where a dazzling light shines, the Divine light that shines into the eyes of the soul and uncovers for it the most ineffable marvels of God. And yet, who, among the great thinkers who are in vogue, even thinks about these Divine and sublime things? Who, among them, try to discover them with a studious desire? And even among those who still pretend to be Christians, do we have to mention those who do not have any more religious knowledge than that which they acquired during their childhood, especially in our time, when for more than thirty years, the initiation to the Christian doctrine has been too often reduced to sensations and feelings? Whoever can learn the heavenly things must learn them. There is no indulgence for those who have been to college, and yet balk at referring regularly to the great spiritual authors, especially if they claim to follow the ancient Latin liturgy.

Our generation is dealing with everything except the science of God. The life of most of our contemporaries passes in the preoccupations of their personal interests, in the agitations of business, in the inebriations of pleasures, in the aspirations for glory or fortune, and sometimes in the fear or the hatred of the truths of the Faith. This is where so many Christians are today, puppets of the lies and errors of the world. Too often they have just been able to put up some contestations that were as weak as their religious instruction, and ended by lowering their flags and capitulating in front of the spirit of the world. In these Christians, ignorance is great, and is graver as it is deliberate. Because they did not know the doctrine, or simply because they had but insufficient notions of it, this doctrine has perished in their souls.

It has also perished for another reason. They have ignored the truths of faith, but their ignorance of the reasons that support these Divine truths was not less. God indeed did not speak to men without proving that the word that they heard was His word, and, therefore, they must listen to Him. He took great care to teach men about this, as He knows very well, He who knows very well our nature, that if faith would remain in the state of a teaching without any other proof than the ones drawn from its own truth, this truth would be perpetually contested insomuch as man’s spirit is subtle and ingenious when the truth is at stake. We can incessantly argue about truths, even when they are evident. When the spirit lacks of rectitude and of sincerity, and above all, when the heart lacks of honesty and of generosity, there is only one thing that cannot be held in honest discussion, and this thing is the well established fact. Facts are obvious by themselves, and nothing is starker than a fact. God has established the truth on facts, and these facts have filled the world. They have moved it. They have changed it. And their marks remain still visible to the eyes of everybody. In spite of all, the Church exists. She exists even sometimes in spite of herself, as Pope Pius VII pointed it out with keenness in front of Napoleon, but she still exists. The Church, established over the ruins of the ancient world that she had vanquished, that appears in the midst of the new world as a visible phenomenon, throughout all times and history, always close to her end but always re-emergent, still exists. Jesus Christ is the center of all these facts and it is toward Him that they all converge, from the prophecies that had announced Him, to the prodigies that have accompanied Him during His life, and that have been repeated after Him by His Saints. They give the most authentic and the most striking testimony of the divinity and authority of Christ and of His doctrine. It is a whole story that is History, which began in the Garden of Eden and will end on the shards of the universe. All its pages have been written by God, either composed by His own hand or by His using the hands of the Prophets, the Apostles, the Martyrs, or the faithful. Brethren, do you know well the Holy History and the History of the Church, or even the profane history, insofar as it is related to the economy of salvation? What are your usual readings and favorites books? Is it the Bible? Is it any serious work on Christianity and its mysteries that may enlighten and strengthen your faith? When did you last read the Scriptures on your own accord? When did you last read the catechism? When was the last time you read the life of a Saint? Which authentically Catholic magazine or newspaper do you regularly read? This Lenten season is certainly a good time to put aside profane books and magazines and to open some that would be beneficial to your souls.

Such is our contemporary generation, indifferent, or even hostile, to the faith. Yet neither indifference nor hostility leads toward truth and universal happiness. Ignorance comes often from the environment in which we live, where religion is often the butt of jokes, mockeries, contempt, and sarcasms. It comes from education that is often not enough serious or enough Christian, and that which is often provided by unworthy mercenaries and agents of the enemy. It comes from the teaching of history that is so often distorted and falsified to the point that we can say for the last two centuries it has been a flagrant lie. Finally, it comes from philosophy that has forgotten what it owes to Christianity and has brought back the crassest errors of the pagan centuries by adding all the subtleties of cluttered and messed-up metaphysics, wrapped with sophism as much despicable as they are perfidious. Thus we can hear so many alleged scholars and savants who blaspheme. They blaspheme what they ignore, and they don’t forget to object that our predication is awkward, as our generation is enriched with so many new experiences, intoxicated by so many scientific progresses, and altered by important moral innovations. They tell us that our doctrine, conceived in the distant time of antiquity that has now vanished, was maybe suitable for the past ages of the Christian society, but it cannot interest our current society when thousand of upheavals have changed the lives of everyone. They maintain that all these social, cultural, technological, and moral changes compel our contemporaries to turn toward a future of evolutions that we cannot even imagine. This doctrine eventually expose them, and they consider the past as a period of childhood, which might be still susceptible of arousing the curiosity of some erudite persons, but certainly not capable of enlightening the conscience of modern men. They would demonstrate, with certainty, that we are doomed to failure, and that the only thing we can arouse is the same sarcasm that the Athenians of the Areopagus once threw in the face of the Holy Apostle Paul: We will hear you again concerning this matter.

They do not content themselves with fighting the religion. You also have, dear brethren, to feel guilty for their rejection. In the old days, they just had to make people laugh with some caricatures or jokes, or to make people cry with pathetic examples in order to attack the religion with success. But today, in a time when the religion becomes almost invisible and silent on matters that concern it, it requires more effort and cleverness to touch the faithful. Almost every week they present certain prestigious brains in vogue imbued with science, philosophy, and history, who declare with pride to the good people that like everything flashy and new, that they repudiate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. They bring instead new beliefs that are finally not so new, since they have been running in the world forever. The New Age is certainly more ancient than Christianity.

The loose and carefree multitude receive without discernment all the inanities, the lies, and nonsense words that are chucked everyday on the television, the radio, the newspapers, the internet, and so forth. We all know what the Evil Genius has already done with the media. Common people engage without effort the so called “information.” The periodic dissemination of the scandal and of the poisoning of souls is very well managed. You may be startled by a book or alarmed by a newspaper, but it is not enough. Then there are radio and television, which tell, narrate, entertain, and amuse. They slip in the midst of their programs scandalous narratives, perfidious insinuations, odious lies, and impious and subversive doctrines. Once the news or so called information programs are over, they deliver, under the cover of fiction, things that are as surprising as they are painful. The more expert they are in the art of impiousness, the more they have an audience. Evil becomes in our modern society an object of speculation.

How can religion not be shaken and weakened in so many souls in such a context? Religion assures first and mainly the eternal interests of men, but the great majority of men is not concerned with religion until they pass the door of death. In such an environment, it is not surprising that faith is weakened. It would be the greatest of miracles if faith would conserve all its vigor in the faithful at a time when the powers of hell are more than ever stirred. We should rather marvel at the fact that the Divine truth still subsists in so many faithful even though they are only a remnant. It is such an admirable thing to see that this Divine truth continues to reign, victorious and triumphant, over the spirit of the faithful. How strong it is in their souls, so strong that it cannot be shaken by so many attacks! It is because God is there to defend it and to guard it. God makes Himself its invisible Protector after He made Himself its infallible Revealer. God does not permit that the gates of hell prevail against this Divine Truth, and avenges this Divine Truth on all its enemies. God makes from the multitude of the true faithful a guard of honor of the Divine truth, as worthy of it as much they are faithful and generous.

Brethren, let us thank God for our faith if it is still strong in our souls. Let us beg His mercy if it has weakened, and let us think about what we should do to invigorate it again. Let us not accept ignorance and do what it takes to learn more and more our faith. Ignorance is certainly one of the greatest enemies of faith, and, therefore, of men. We still have to deal with another and certainly more pernicious enemy: corruption.

Summer Latin Session for Clergy

Place: Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary, Denton, Nebraska (Airport access: Lincoln NE).
Dates: Noon on Monday 6 June-Noon Friday 10 June
Cost: $400 for instruction, room and board
Instructor: Prof. John M. Pepino, PhD
Entrance requirement: to have done seminary-level Latin and to be a priest or seminarian in good standing (testimonial letters required; sample available upon request).
Purpose: to help clergy whose Latin has become rusty to understand liturgical texts better.
Means: review of the core grammar and vocabulary of liturgical Latin. Afternoons are spent on lessons; mornings on homework.
Texts: Roman Missal and Breviary, 1962 edition; work is done on photocopies. Bring a grammar and Latin dictionary.

For an application packet or questions, please email or write to John Pepino:
patres@fsspolgs.org
c/o Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary
7880 West Denton Rd
Denton, NE 68339.

Upon this Rock

The issue of February is now available online with just one click:

http://www.arlatinmass.com/images/uponthisrock/2011/02February11.pdf