We continue this third weekend in Advent our theme of hope. It is after all Gaudete Sunday. Gaudete is taken from our first reading, which is from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Gaudete in Domino semper, iterum dico gaudete…Rejoice in the Lord always again, I say, rejoice.
In light of the tragic events this week it seems very hard to rejoice this weekend. We are indeed a country in morning. We pray for the families of those who lost their little children in the Elementary shootings in Connecticut as well as for the families of the adults that were killed as well.
For many, their hope has been shaken by the unspeakable horrors of small children being massacred by a deranged individual. After all, it is children who give us hope in this world…they are the hope of the future and we just lost 20 precious little ones. But this advent we are reminded of another little child, a child who is our hope personified. He is Emmanuel God with us…God with us even in the darkest darkness of this world, even in the midst of unspeakable horror and unspeakable sorrow.
Yesterday, I was speaking to a very nice lady. We began to speak about the tragic events that unfolded in Connecticut. I said unabashedly, that the cause of this evil was not the lack of gun control; stricter gun laws will not help us even though we will hear this as never before in the coming weeks and months. In fact more gun control will only take away our rights as law abiding Americans to protect and defend ourselves and our families; especially father’s right to protect and defend his family from evil men or even from evil governments. I told this very nice lady that the source of this evil is from the lack of peace in this world coming from the grave injustice of abortion and other crimes against life such as artificial contraception and homosexual acts and so-call Homosexual marriage.
When a country allows the killing of millions upon millions of little children in the womb, it is only a step before the killing of children outside the womb begins to increase. We see this happening more and more from little children being kidnapped and sold into prostitution in other countries, to children being abducted, then molested and killed and their lifeless bodies dumped into the woods, such as just happened to two beautiful girls in Iowa. Evil begets more evil. If we kill little children in the womb and ripped them limb-by-limb out of their mother, what’s to stop other evil from being done to children outside of the womb?
In my conversation I also pointed out how many times I hear married couples say that they are afraid and so don’t even want to bring children into this world. They say the world is such in such a terrible state that they question whether it would even be right to bring children into such a dark time. But this is the very problem; the problem is, is that we don’t have enough children. We have aborted millions and prevent millions of others from even coming into existence through artificial contraception and overall un-openness to new human life, to new human persons. And we are as a country, accepting more and more homosexual acts and “marriage” which are nothing by life-less acts which in no way can bring new life, new children, new persons, new hope into the world.
Children again are our hope; we need more children a lot more children, not less. And we need holy marriages, which rear these children and teach them the truth about God so that they can love him and adore him in this life and be happy with Him forever in the next. Thank God we have 15 mothers pregnant right now here at the parish—15 new lights of hope about to come into our world. Praise God there is hope!!! Indecently, there is a even greater crisis right now than a crisis of vocations to the priesthood; it’s a crisis of holy marriages which beget children some of who later become our priests and religious and our holy husband and wives who produce more children to adore God with their lives.
In this advent time and during Christmas we hear over and over the words of the angels to the little shepherds out in the field…Peace on earth good will to men. However the problem is, is this is not what the angel said…no, he said instead, “Peace on earth to men of good will.” That is peace on earth only comes to men of good will who promote true justice. And true justice begins with accepting the truth especially the truth about the Human Person made in the image and likeness of God and redeemed by the precious blood of the Christ Child.
And so true Justice comes about by always accepting, defending and protecting the littlest and most venerable among us…and who is the most vulnerable if not little children in the womb who can’t escape from the butchers tools of unspeakable evil. Not a gun mind you, but a suction machine, chemicals, a force grip and a scalpel. Guns don’t kill people, any more than suction machines and scalpels kill people—only people kill people.
If we want an end to the violence we are currently experiencing in our country and our world, if we want peace, then we must in justice defend life, born and unborn, young or old, sick or healthy, mentally or physically disabled or not disabled, embryonic or completely developed human persons. We must do everything we can to protect the life of all human persons from natural conception to natural death, or we will never have peace…never! We will only have more violence and more war…for “Abortion is truly the greatest threat to world peace in our world today.” (Blessed Mother Theresa of Calcutta).
Recently our Holy Father in his Message for World Day of Peace said, “Peacemakers are those who love, defend and promote life in its fullness,” The pope noted that “serious harm to justice and peace” comes from denying the true principles of respect for life and promotion of the “natural structure of marriage as the union of a man and a woman.”
Pope Benedict XVI, boldly stressed that pro-lifers are the ‘true peacemakers’ and that those who would support abortion promote a “false peace.”
The path to the attainment of the common good and to peace is above all that of respect for human life in all its many aspects, beginning with its conception, through its development and up to its natural end. True peacemakers, then, are those who love, defend and promote human life in all its dimensions, personal, communitarian and transcendent. Life in its fullness is the height of peace. Anyone who loves peace cannot tolerate attacks and crimes against life.
Those who insufficiently value human life and, in consequence, support among other things the liberalization of abortion, perhaps do not realize that in this way they are proposing the pursuit of a false peace. The flight from responsibility, which degrades human persons, and even more so the killing of a defenseless and innocent being, will never be able to produce happiness or peace. Indeed how could one claim to bring about peace, the integral development of peoples or even the protection of the environment without defending the life of those who are weakest, beginning with the unborn. Every offence against life, especially at its beginning, inevitably causes irreparable damage to development, peace and the environment. Neither is it just to introduce surreptitiously into legislation false rights or freedoms which, on the basis of a reductive and relativistic view of human beings and the clever use of ambiguous expressions aimed at promoting a supposed right to abortion and euthanasia, pose a threat to the fundamental right to life."
Along with principle of respect for life, the Holy Father spoke of the “need to acknowledge and promote the natural structure of marriage as the union of a man and a woman in the face of attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different types of union; such attempts actually harm and help to destabilize marriage, obscuring its specific nature and its indispensable role in society.”
He noted that these principles are “not truths of faith,” but “inscribed in human nature itself, accessible to reason and thus common to all humanity.” Efforts to promote them, he said, “are all the more necessary the more these principles are denied or misunderstood, since this constitutes an offence against the truth of the human person, with serious harm to justice and peace.”
Other requirements for world peace mentioned by Pope Benedict include:
- “the dismantling of the dictatorship of relativism and of the supposition of a completely autonomous morality which precludes acknowledgement of the ineluctable natural moral law inscribed by God upon the conscience of every man and woman.”
-“for legal systems and the administration of justice to recognize the right to invoke the principle of conscientious objection in the face of laws or government measures that offend against human dignity, such as abortion and euthanasia.”
-“the right of individuals and communities to religious freedom.”
On the last point, the pope lamented the lack of religious freedom, even in Western nations.
“Sadly, even in countries of long-standing Christian tradition, instances of religious intolerance are becoming more numerous, especially in relation to Christianity and those who simply wear identifying signs of their religion,” he stated.
He urged that “at this stage in history, it is becoming increasingly important to promote” religious freedom “not only from the negative point of view, as freedom from – for example, obligations or limitations involving the freedom to choose one’s religion – but also from the positive point of view, in its various expressions, as freedom for – for example, bearing witness to one’s religion, making its teachings known, engaging in activities in the educational, benevolent and charitable fields which permit the practice of religious precepts, and existing and acting as social bodies structured in accordance with the proper doctrinal principles and institutional ends of each.”
It is important to note, that there is still hope for our nation, our society, our families and our world. I ended the discussion yesterday with the kind lady by telling her we can’t lose hope. But hope begins as always in the individual heart, our heart. For hope has a name and is with us now…It is Jesus Christ the Christ Child truly present with us daily both in Spirit and in the Flesh in the Holy Eucharist. This Advent reminds us that Christ has come, but he is coming again, not just at the end of the world but He is coming soon in His Holy Spirit to this world of injustice and sin; but He first wants to possess more fully our hearts.
In His Divine Mercy the Father as set a limit to how far evil can go. That limit is here; it is the final hour of God Mercy before the hour of His divine justice comes. It is not to late for us to become greater instruments of God Mercy so that the Holy Spirit through grace will purify our world. If we, not those out there, but we here present do not allow our Lord to come into our hearts more fully and completely then the Holy Spirit will purify the world by fire. By grace or by fire, either way, the purification of our world is coming and along with it the great era of peace that was promised by our Lady of Fatima, but it is up to us how it will come about.
The message of hope in this year of faith is that in faith, “we begin by speaking with Jesus in prayer, listening to what he tells us in the Gospels and looking for him in those in need (Pope Benedict tweet) (and performing works of mercy toward them). “Our hope is based on the truth that, “we as believers are never alone. God is the solid rock upon which we build our lives and His love is always faithful.” (Pope Benedict tweet) Daily, “we must offer everything we do to Lord, ask His help in all the circumstances of daily life and remember that He is always with us.” (Pope Benedict tweet)
We can change our world into a world of peace and justice and love; it is not to late; there is still hope. Let us allow the little Christ Child to change the world by first changing us more and more into his own image and likeness; let us do this by consecrating ourselves to Jesus through our lady, giving Him everything through her, and offering Him daily, all our daily spiritual and material duties no matter how small and insignificant so that she can magnify them and make them an acceptable offering to our Lord. Let us in other words, offer Jesus ourselves and all that we are, have and do, all for the Sacred Heart of Jesus, all for the Immaculate heart of Mary, all in union with St. Joseph. Amen.
Thank you!
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