Sunday, February 19th. Homily for the Extraordinary Form.
I think that one of the grave effects of concupiscence that you and I face is the tendency to take the great gifts that God has given us for granted. We can take for granted our health, those whom we love and who loved us. We can take our freedom for granted, especially our freedom to practice our faith; and in light of this, we can take for granted the great gift of the Holy Eucharist.
However, this tendency of ours of taken things for granted, again stemming from concupiscence, can actually become a way for us to become better, a way for us to grow in love or in the Charity St. Paul spoke about. This is why, I believe, God didn’t allow the grace of our baptism to take away concupiscence and its desire for sin. He wanted to allow us to have to struggle for that which is Good, True and Beautiful; and surely in the process, in light of our great weakness and blindness, come to realize more deeply our need for His help in that struggle.
Because everything that is good, true and beautiful is worth any amount of effort to posses and to be possessed by. The struggle can actually make us appreciated these things more; and I would even say the struggle makes our love for them grow. This is especially true for good, true and beautiful Love. To love is a struggle in and of itself. If it is to authentic love that is. It is a struggle to love others more than oneself. It is a struggle to Love God first and foremost above all else, and then to love your neighbor for love of God. And yes, it is a struggle sometime to love oneself; and even to accept the fact that God loves you. Yes love is difficult, extremely difficult, but it is worth the effort, worth the struggle.
There is that line from that Christian song which says, “They will know that we are Christians by our love…by our love.” Could you imagine if all Christians really lived that love, lived that love inspired by faith and hope. Could you imagine what would happen to our world? It would be literally transformed by love.
In fact, our world can be and will only be transformed when us Christians really start living with the love for which we have been called, by the love which has called us….the Love of God Himself. The world has to often been trying over the centuries to build the kingdom of man by politics alone without out reference to the Kingdom of God. It hasn’t worked, and it will never work. You’d think we humans would have figured this out by now.
History shows so clearly every time a country or a civilization advances to a certain level it collapses and falls into nothing; the primary reason always being a failure to follow or continue to follow the Creator’s laws and Commandments which are written on the human heart. This failure results in the breakdown of the moral fiber, the breakdown of the family structure; all leading to such things as infanticide; and finally, an invasion which begins from within before any invasion occurs from without.
When we look at our modern civilization, which was founded on Christianity and its tenants and truths, its way of living, we see sadly these very same things happening, the rampant spread of immorality, the families being torn apart, even the family being redefined; infanticide through artificial contraception and other abortifacients and of course abortion; and the invasion from within as we see atheistic Marxism taking over our country from within. I forget what leader in Russian said, “we will take over American eventually without firing a shot.”
All of this should not be the case, because us Christians have been given something that the others have not. WE have been given the great gift of the truth faith; the great gift of the True Church; the great gift of the priesthood which brings us the life giving, awesome, power of the Sacraments, which put us in touch, put us in the presence of Love Himself. We have been given the greatest gift, the greatest gift the world has ever seen, The Holy Eucharist who Is LOVE HIMSELF, better yet, He who is Charity…Deus Caritas est…God is Charity..The Eucharist is God…the Eucharist is Charity.
How complacent us modern Catholic Christians have become, so much we have taken for granted. And lets admit it, we all guilty in one way or another, to one degree or another. Yes, most Catholics don’t even attend Holy Mass; but for those of us who do we can sometimes fall into complaining about the most mundane things...”Mass is too long, the priest is not dynamic enough, He does this or that in Latin it should be in English; or He does that in English and it should be in Latin; the songs are too traditional, the songs are to liberal…yatta yatta yatta.
Last week a priest friend of mine was present at a talk given by Matthew Kelly. Kelly was speaking about those Catholics who say they don’t get anything out of Holy Mass.” What Matthew said in reply goes not only for those who say this, but it is good advice for all of us.
Matthew Kelley said the problem is not with the Holy Mass it is with us, with you and with Me…At every Mass God speaks to us, at every Holy Mass God wants to give us a personal message…Perhaps He wants to do this through the readings or the homily; maybe in one of the collects or one of the other prayers of the Mass; maybe through one of the songs. Matthew Kelley said that he takes a journal to Mass and listens for carefully and attentively for the Message that God wants to give Him. And then He jots this Message down that He gets at every Mass. Good Ideal. I know when I was on the other side of the pews, I began to realize the same thing. And many times God spoke to me during what I thought was a boring or poor homily, or he spoke to me through a monotone priest.
You know it’s been said, that one thing that will definitely snap Christians out of their complacency is a good old fashion persecution. Well, I guess we will see, because it persecution has come. Let us wake now from our slumber; let us repent from our sins, especially our sins of complacency and indifference; let us repent from our lack of effort and struggle; let us repent from our lack of love. It is time for us to put away childish things.
Let us beg God for His forgiveness and His Divine Mercy, let us beg Him for the help of His grace to be open to the grace that He offers us at this and every Holy Mass. God in fact doesn’t just want to fill us with His grace, He wants to fill us with His Love, known has Charity; He wants to transform us by it. God wants to transform us into His other selfs so that we can take this love known has Charity out into the world and transform it by our lives of holiness. And it needs to be transformed as never before…
We have the power to transform the world at our disposal, even at this late hour; it is the power of the Holy Mass, which is the power of Charity. Again the problem isn’t with the Holy Mass…Every single Holy Mass has the power to save the whole world; infinite Charity. The problem is with the faithful, beginning with you and me…for it is only by us Catholics that God’s love can be taken out into the world….If we have not charity we are as nothing…..
We are loved by a Great and awesome God who longs to forgive us and draw us to Himself. Let us open ourselves more and more to our this love by offering ourselves more fully to God at this Mass through the Blessed Virgin Mary, the spouse of the Holy Spirit. With Her help and intercession we can truly. “Go and live the Gospel with our lives.
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