Luke 23:35-43 November 24th, 2019 Solemnity of Christ the King.
Today, in the Sacred Liturgy we celebrate the great feast of Christ the King. Our Lord is King and ruler of heaven and earth; and today, in this solemn Liturgy, we acknowledge this fact with our whole heart, mind, soul, strength, with our bodies and with our voices as we with great effort struggle to enter into full, actual, conscious and fruitful participation in this Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in which the King becomes present not only spiritual in our midst, but sacramentally, physically present.
Over the centuries devotion to Jesus has taken many forms. In the early centuries of the Church, we see this devotion very much directed to Jesus as the King of Kings. However, with the revelations of Jesus to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque in the 1800’s devotion to Christ became centered less on his Kingship and more on his Sacred Heart. With the Divine Mercy Revelations, this trend continues, but one could say with a more universal emphasis on the individual begging God’s Mercy not just on himself but one the whole world. With these two beautiful devotions, the Sacred Heart and Divine Mercy, which are surely mutually enhancive of one another and both of which point to heart of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist beating in love there for all men and woman, one could argue that devotion to Jesus as King of the Universe seems, at least in practice, to have been set aside for a more personal devotion. But when we look at the history of devotion to Jesus within the Sacred Liturgy we find it is always center on Christ as King, as the King, no matter the liturgical season.
Unfortunately, us moderns have a hard time with the notion of kingship; especially us Americans, we can understand it only in light of tyranny and the loss of our freedom. After all, our own independence as a country was from the monarchical rule of England. Jesus, however, is not a political King, nor is He a president. He is not a Democrat or Republican nor is He an Independent; in fact, His visible Kingdom on Earth--the Catholic Church, from which He rules, is not a democracy at all; it is a strict monarchy with only one King, Jesus Himself, with full dominion and power.
Jesus the King, therefore, is not a military or revolutionary leader; He is not a socialist or totalitarian. He is not a king of material wealth or worldly power. In fact, He came to the earth as King not to be served but to serve. He wants subjects, not of forced loyalty but subjects who follow him in the freedom of authentic love and truth
The Kingdom of God then does not mean food and drink, or economic prosperity, but instead righteousness and true peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. For Jesus’ kingdom is “the kingdom of Truth and Life, the kingdom of holiness and grace, the kingdom of Justice, love and Peace. The Kingdom of Jesus is a kingdom of true love, the essence of which is a man laying down his life for love of his friends.
In this, we discover that true love must be through Jesus, in Him, and with Him or else it is not true, for Jesus is the Truth. Love apart from Jesus and His truth results in our ideas quickly taking charge and then we end up creating our own version of a kingdom, the kingdom of man without reference to the kingdom of God. Consequently, it becomes just our made-up kingdom with a puppet on the throne—with an idiot king of our desire and making. What results is the dictatorship of relativism which our pope emeritus Pope Benedict continual warned against, for in this pseudo kingdom, the false kings will turn against the very people who put them in power and in the end they themselves will be destroyed by their own ideology—but not until the good themselves will have much to suffer.
Jesus’ loyal subjects, show their acceptance of Christ’s rule over them and His Father’s will for them and so accept God’s love and mercy for the world. Jesus became man to make this truth about the Father's love for man known and to enable men to accept it and live it, through the grace He won through his death on the cross and his subsequent victory over death in his resurrection.
Those who recognize Christ’s kingship and sovereignty, accept his authority given to His One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. By doing so, they allow Jesus to reign over them in His eternal and universal. And these faithful subjects live their lives on this earth by following His Way, the only true way, which is the royal way of the cross, which is the way of self-denial and sacrificial love, loving and serving God above all things and their neighbor as themselves for love of God.
The Solemnity of Christ the King ends ordinary time and thus the liturgical year. We now enter into the Season of hope--advent. Our readings take on the tone of the last things, death, judgment, heaven, and hell, topics that don’t at first appear to be hopeful. But the Holy Spirit wants us to be ready, not only for the coming of Christ at Christmas but for His Second Coming in glory at the end of the world. “Behold Jesus is coming amid the clouds and every eye will see Him even those who pierced Him.”
But the Holy Spirit reminds today not to think this event as happening somewhere off in the distance future. Behold He is coming soon!!. This is the theme of Advent. For those souls who die this day, the second coming will happen today, and for each of us, our death is the second coming, for on that day we shall see the King face to face and He will question us about our love…
However, think about it, for you and me He comes even sooner; he comes this very day, on this very altar in the Holy Eucharist, sacrificing Himself anew, in order to totally and completely offer himself to us in love. He longs to enter fully into our hearts at our Holy Communion with Him if we but open our self to allow him to reign over us, for he will not stay by force.
Beginning today, let us as the Holy Spirit to help us more deeply acknowledge Christ as our King; let us start by offering our Hearts in an act of true thanksgiving at this Holy Mass, which makes the King Himself, His royal throne of the cross, His crucifixion, resurrection and ascension and His Kingdom truly present on earth, right here in this Church and in every Catholic Church around the world.
As we prepare to receive the fruit of the Crucifixion and Resurrection at this Holy Mass--Jesus Christ our King in the Holy Eucharist, the Kingdom of God personified, let us ask Him for the grace to hear His voice and to heed his words in testimony that we are committed to the truth of His Kingdom with every fiber of our being.
Let us ask Him through His Holy Mother to help us keep His Authority and the Holy Will of His heavenly Father and our Father, as the driving force of our life. Holy Mary, Queen of the Kingdom of Christ, Queen of our hearts, pray for us helps us to give our heart totally in love and fidelity to Jesus the King.
To Gain a Plenary Indulgence for the Feast of Christ the King
• Be in a state of grace
• Receive Holy Communion (should be easy, since this is Sunday, but you can receive within a few days so if you already received at Saturday vigil you can use that one)
• Go to Confession within 20 days before or after today
• Pray (out loud) for the intentions of the Holy Father (one Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be is sufficient)
• Be free from all attachment to sin (just do the best you can there)
And Publicly Recite the following prayer. It is sufficient if you read it out loud softly in a church open to the public.
Act of Consecration of the Human Race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Most Sweet Jesus, Redeemer of the human race, look down upon us humbly prostrate before Thine altar. We are Thine, and Thine we wish to be; but to be more surely united to Thee, behold each one of us freely consecrates ourselves today to Thy Most Sacred Heart.
Many indeed have never known Thee; many too, despising Thy precepts, have rejected Thee. Have mercy on them all, most merciful Jesus, and draw them to Thy Sacred Heart. Be Thou King, O Lord, not only of the faithful children, who have never forsaken Thee but also of the prodigal children, who have abandoned Thee; Grant that they may quickly return to their Father’s house lest they die of wretchedness and hunger.
Be Thou King of those who are deceived by erroneous opinions, or whom discord keeps aloof, and call them back to the harbor of truth and unity of faith, so that there may be but one flock and one Shepherd.
Be Thou King of all those who are still involved in the darkness of idolatry or of Islamism, and refuse not to draw them into the light and kingdom of God. Turn Thine eyes of mercy towards the children of the race, once Thy chosen people: of old they called down upon themselves the Blood of the Savior; may it now descend upon them a laver of redemption and of life.
Grant, O Lord, to Thy Church assurance of freedom and immunity from harm; give peace and order to all nations, and make the earth resound from pole to pole with one cry; praise to the Divine Heart that wrought our salvation; To it be glory and honor forever. R. Amen.
Sunday, November 24, 2019
Sunday, November 10, 2019
Death is not only the passage of our souls back to God, but one day our bodies will be reunited with our souls
Luke 20;20-28. Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time. November 10th, 2019
As we approach the end of our liturgical year, our readings are changing. We have heard Jesus talk about prayer over the last few months and all of a sudden now Jesus is teaching about the resurrection of the dead. Last week we celebrated All Saints Day-the Church triumph in heaven, and All Souls Day-the Church suffering in purgatory. All of these feasts and readings from the Sacred Scriptures remind us of the serious topic of death.
Death is a hard topic to talk about; as it can make us feel fearful- it is normal to fear death, it is normal to fear death because death is not natural for us human persons.
Yet death is a reality for us which nobody can deny. And so, we all need to face the fact that one day each and every one of us is going to die. Our age is in denial of death. In fact, in our modern world, when someone dies we don't want to face it; so instead, we celebrate their life, as if we can somehow just pass over the sadness and reality of their death. Why do we want to avoid dealing properly with death? Is it because death reminds us of sin, for death is the result of sin, of our sin…this, is why we must die? God did not create death; he does not delight in the death of his creatures—we creatures created death by our sin, not God.
I would argue we also see this practical denial of death, even in our modern funeral liturgy, we no longer have black vestments which remind us of the horror of the wages of our sin, and its sorrow, which is our death. We are told that we wear white at funerals because we are people of the resurrection. Yes, we are truly people of the resurrection, but we can't just pass over the reality of death, and jump into the resurrection. Why? Because First, we must face reality of our sin and its horrible consequence—death; first, there must be morning, wailing, and sorrow for our sin, because sin is a refusal to love, obey and serve God who is all good and deserving of all our love; first, their needs to be confession for our grave offenses against God’s infinite goodness, and then an acceptance of our just punishment—death; First, all of this, only then the resurrection.
In our Gospel today, Jesus confronts all of the errors of death in his day, which are the same as in ours, just with different wrapping paper. Jesus confronts the myths about death held by the Sadducees. The Sadducees believed in the soul, but they denied the bodily resurrection of the dead. In other words, they denied that someday God will raise our bodies from the grave in order to be reunited with our souls; and in these resurrected bodies, we will be present body and soul at the final judgment before Jesus, who will come then not as merciful redeemer but as Just Judge. The Sadducees denied that we would spend eternity for better or worse in our bodies.
For the Sadducees death consisted of just the soul returning to the bosom of Abraham- the body simply was ignored. So what does it matter? Well, the practical result of this is, is that the body just isn’t important, and if the body isn’t important, then it doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do in or with your body. You can sin in your body, but not with your soul. At the heart of the Sadducee's error, then, is that it separates the body and soul of the human person.
But, we are creatures who are body and soul; we are not a body with a soul or a soul with a body, but we are a body and soul composite, we are our body and we are our soul. This is one of the great terrors of death, our body and soul are not made to be separated, and it is sin that is the cause of this unnatural separation…if you want to know how bad sin is, look at the mystery and horror of death…the wages of sin is death.
How does this error of the Sadducees look in our day: We see it when someone gets caught in the act and gives an apology that consists of admission, not a confession, similar to the following: “Yes I did this bad thing, but that is not who I am.” But it is how you are. Our acts define who we are, what type of person we are. This is why there needs to be repentance and healing and forgiveness and transformation from Christ through his representative, the priest.
We also see this separation of the body and soul in our day, the idea that the body can be a different gender than the soul. And so, a person wrongly believes, I must mutilate my body to conform to what I think is the gender of my soul. And for your part, you must—or you will be forced, not only accept it but approve of it, thus, denying the truth of the human person as God has created, male and female he created them. (There is push to force even catholic hospitals to have to perform the “transitional mutilation…surgery”
We also see this error in everything from extreme body piercing, tattooing, to all forms of immodest dress. We see it in all forms of promiscuity, fornication and debauchery all carried out in the body… St. Paul reminds us, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.” We are to use our bodies to adore God both here at Mass, keeping them pure and undefiled by, with the grace of the Sacraments, living according to His Commandments and the teachings of His Holy Catholic Church.
After death too, we see the Sadducee’s error in a lack of respect of the body as a former temple of the Holy Spirit, by not burying the ashes of one cremated, placing them instead on the mantel of the fireplace or spreading them on the ocean or even making them into jewelry. St. Augustine, said that after their death we are so careful with the personal effects of our loved ones so that they are not lost, we should have the same care with regards to their body. The body should be buried with respect…this is one of the seven corporal works of mercy by which we will be judged…to bury the dead (by the way when the body is cremated what is left should never be called cremains, but instead called a cremated body, and it should be treated as such, a temple of the Holy Spirit and buried properly in sacred ground).
In our Gospel, Jesus points out that the Sadducees were wrong. And as we read in the book of Maccabees, the Scriptures do point out clearly the bodily resurrection of the dead and an eternity spent again in our bodies. In his condemnation, Jesus is pointing out as well all of the errors of death in our day and reveals to us the truth. Our faith tells us with certainty that the body is created as good and will be reunited with our souls after our death, at the end of the world. Jesus confirms this by answering the questions concerning marriage after the resurrection.
Death is not only the passage of our souls back to God, but one day our bodies will be reunited with our souls. So those who have already died are awaiting the resurrection of their bodies. Even the souls of the just that are now with God are not totally complete; they await the last day when their bodies will be reunited with their souls.
The truth is, is that on that last day we will be judged according to the works we performed while in the body. And this last judgment will be given to us after our souls have been reunited with our bodies—at the Last Judgment, all souls will be united to their body. For those who have done evil, their bodies will be horribly disfigured and they will suffer in those bodies eternally separated from God in hell.
But for those who have used their bodies to glorify God, they will receive a renewed body, a glorified beautiful body—the unimaginable beauty of their soul will shine through their bodies. This glorified body will have no need for food or drink or even marriage. Instead of the pleasures of food and drink and earthly marriage, there will be much, much greater pleasure. Earthly pleasures in the body are only a small hint to what pleasures God has in store for us.
Because at the end of our life, God will judge all of our deeds, all that we have done and all that we have failed to do, it is easy for us to be afraid of death and especially in the judgment that follows our death. However, St. Paul gives us encouragement in today’s second reading. He tells us that Grace is given to us in order to “encourage our hearts and strengthen them in every good deed and word.”
With faith and confidence in God’s grace, we can face our sins and ask God to help us each day to live this life on earth using our bodies and souls in a way that we will be ready to die and meet him. But we strive with the to use our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit. We must not only treat our bodies as holy and sacred temples, but we must also use them assisted by God’s grace (again which comes to us through the Sacraments) to live holy lives, holy lives lived out in the body. Then we will be able to share in the joy of the resurrection, and live out eternity in heaven not only in our souls but in our bodies as well. If we are ready, meaning if we are holy, if we have taken care of our souls by confessing our sins and amending our lives, if we have been striving to by God grace live out God’s Holy Will in our body on earth, then far from fearing death, we will long for it so we can be with God forever and see Him face to face.
The Holy Eucharist is the key to the Resurrection of our bodies to the eternal glory of the Father, for the Holy Eucharist is the resurrected human body and blood of Jesus reunited to his human soul, along with the fullness of His divinity. It is through our Holy Communion with Him if we have faith, that gives us the grace to transform our earthly bodies into glorified bodies like Jesus in order to share in the happiness of all the angels and saints in the resurrection of the body in heaven. We become what we eat and we come to share more and more fully in the victory of Jesus until our communion with Him is consummated in an eternal union with the blessed Trinity, along with all of the angels and the Saint, whose bodies and souls together, like ours, will be glorified with the splendor of the Father love.
We live and move and have our being in Christ, and through the Sacraments, we are members of His Mystical Body, the Church, and children of Our Heavenly Father. Let us ask Jesus to help us deepen our faith, hope and charity and so be prepared to meet him face to face one day not with fear but with hearts full of joy. Even now, our bodies are being transformed into glory. Let us also continue to pray for our dead, all of the Holy Souls in purgatory. Holy Mary, Mother of God, Mother of the living not the dead, pray for us sinners, now and especially at the hour of our death. Holy Mary, we know you will honor all of the Hail Mary's we say in our life and you will be there for us at the hour of our death. Amen. God Bless you all.
As we approach the end of our liturgical year, our readings are changing. We have heard Jesus talk about prayer over the last few months and all of a sudden now Jesus is teaching about the resurrection of the dead. Last week we celebrated All Saints Day-the Church triumph in heaven, and All Souls Day-the Church suffering in purgatory. All of these feasts and readings from the Sacred Scriptures remind us of the serious topic of death.
Death is a hard topic to talk about; as it can make us feel fearful- it is normal to fear death, it is normal to fear death because death is not natural for us human persons.
Yet death is a reality for us which nobody can deny. And so, we all need to face the fact that one day each and every one of us is going to die. Our age is in denial of death. In fact, in our modern world, when someone dies we don't want to face it; so instead, we celebrate their life, as if we can somehow just pass over the sadness and reality of their death. Why do we want to avoid dealing properly with death? Is it because death reminds us of sin, for death is the result of sin, of our sin…this, is why we must die? God did not create death; he does not delight in the death of his creatures—we creatures created death by our sin, not God.
I would argue we also see this practical denial of death, even in our modern funeral liturgy, we no longer have black vestments which remind us of the horror of the wages of our sin, and its sorrow, which is our death. We are told that we wear white at funerals because we are people of the resurrection. Yes, we are truly people of the resurrection, but we can't just pass over the reality of death, and jump into the resurrection. Why? Because First, we must face reality of our sin and its horrible consequence—death; first, there must be morning, wailing, and sorrow for our sin, because sin is a refusal to love, obey and serve God who is all good and deserving of all our love; first, their needs to be confession for our grave offenses against God’s infinite goodness, and then an acceptance of our just punishment—death; First, all of this, only then the resurrection.
In our Gospel today, Jesus confronts all of the errors of death in his day, which are the same as in ours, just with different wrapping paper. Jesus confronts the myths about death held by the Sadducees. The Sadducees believed in the soul, but they denied the bodily resurrection of the dead. In other words, they denied that someday God will raise our bodies from the grave in order to be reunited with our souls; and in these resurrected bodies, we will be present body and soul at the final judgment before Jesus, who will come then not as merciful redeemer but as Just Judge. The Sadducees denied that we would spend eternity for better or worse in our bodies.
For the Sadducees death consisted of just the soul returning to the bosom of Abraham- the body simply was ignored. So what does it matter? Well, the practical result of this is, is that the body just isn’t important, and if the body isn’t important, then it doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do in or with your body. You can sin in your body, but not with your soul. At the heart of the Sadducee's error, then, is that it separates the body and soul of the human person.
But, we are creatures who are body and soul; we are not a body with a soul or a soul with a body, but we are a body and soul composite, we are our body and we are our soul. This is one of the great terrors of death, our body and soul are not made to be separated, and it is sin that is the cause of this unnatural separation…if you want to know how bad sin is, look at the mystery and horror of death…the wages of sin is death.
How does this error of the Sadducees look in our day: We see it when someone gets caught in the act and gives an apology that consists of admission, not a confession, similar to the following: “Yes I did this bad thing, but that is not who I am.” But it is how you are. Our acts define who we are, what type of person we are. This is why there needs to be repentance and healing and forgiveness and transformation from Christ through his representative, the priest.
We also see this separation of the body and soul in our day, the idea that the body can be a different gender than the soul. And so, a person wrongly believes, I must mutilate my body to conform to what I think is the gender of my soul. And for your part, you must—or you will be forced, not only accept it but approve of it, thus, denying the truth of the human person as God has created, male and female he created them. (There is push to force even catholic hospitals to have to perform the “transitional mutilation…surgery”
We also see this error in everything from extreme body piercing, tattooing, to all forms of immodest dress. We see it in all forms of promiscuity, fornication and debauchery all carried out in the body… St. Paul reminds us, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.” We are to use our bodies to adore God both here at Mass, keeping them pure and undefiled by, with the grace of the Sacraments, living according to His Commandments and the teachings of His Holy Catholic Church.
After death too, we see the Sadducee’s error in a lack of respect of the body as a former temple of the Holy Spirit, by not burying the ashes of one cremated, placing them instead on the mantel of the fireplace or spreading them on the ocean or even making them into jewelry. St. Augustine, said that after their death we are so careful with the personal effects of our loved ones so that they are not lost, we should have the same care with regards to their body. The body should be buried with respect…this is one of the seven corporal works of mercy by which we will be judged…to bury the dead (by the way when the body is cremated what is left should never be called cremains, but instead called a cremated body, and it should be treated as such, a temple of the Holy Spirit and buried properly in sacred ground).
In our Gospel, Jesus points out that the Sadducees were wrong. And as we read in the book of Maccabees, the Scriptures do point out clearly the bodily resurrection of the dead and an eternity spent again in our bodies. In his condemnation, Jesus is pointing out as well all of the errors of death in our day and reveals to us the truth. Our faith tells us with certainty that the body is created as good and will be reunited with our souls after our death, at the end of the world. Jesus confirms this by answering the questions concerning marriage after the resurrection.
Death is not only the passage of our souls back to God, but one day our bodies will be reunited with our souls. So those who have already died are awaiting the resurrection of their bodies. Even the souls of the just that are now with God are not totally complete; they await the last day when their bodies will be reunited with their souls.
The truth is, is that on that last day we will be judged according to the works we performed while in the body. And this last judgment will be given to us after our souls have been reunited with our bodies—at the Last Judgment, all souls will be united to their body. For those who have done evil, their bodies will be horribly disfigured and they will suffer in those bodies eternally separated from God in hell.
But for those who have used their bodies to glorify God, they will receive a renewed body, a glorified beautiful body—the unimaginable beauty of their soul will shine through their bodies. This glorified body will have no need for food or drink or even marriage. Instead of the pleasures of food and drink and earthly marriage, there will be much, much greater pleasure. Earthly pleasures in the body are only a small hint to what pleasures God has in store for us.
Because at the end of our life, God will judge all of our deeds, all that we have done and all that we have failed to do, it is easy for us to be afraid of death and especially in the judgment that follows our death. However, St. Paul gives us encouragement in today’s second reading. He tells us that Grace is given to us in order to “encourage our hearts and strengthen them in every good deed and word.”
With faith and confidence in God’s grace, we can face our sins and ask God to help us each day to live this life on earth using our bodies and souls in a way that we will be ready to die and meet him. But we strive with the to use our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit. We must not only treat our bodies as holy and sacred temples, but we must also use them assisted by God’s grace (again which comes to us through the Sacraments) to live holy lives, holy lives lived out in the body. Then we will be able to share in the joy of the resurrection, and live out eternity in heaven not only in our souls but in our bodies as well. If we are ready, meaning if we are holy, if we have taken care of our souls by confessing our sins and amending our lives, if we have been striving to by God grace live out God’s Holy Will in our body on earth, then far from fearing death, we will long for it so we can be with God forever and see Him face to face.
The Holy Eucharist is the key to the Resurrection of our bodies to the eternal glory of the Father, for the Holy Eucharist is the resurrected human body and blood of Jesus reunited to his human soul, along with the fullness of His divinity. It is through our Holy Communion with Him if we have faith, that gives us the grace to transform our earthly bodies into glorified bodies like Jesus in order to share in the happiness of all the angels and saints in the resurrection of the body in heaven. We become what we eat and we come to share more and more fully in the victory of Jesus until our communion with Him is consummated in an eternal union with the blessed Trinity, along with all of the angels and the Saint, whose bodies and souls together, like ours, will be glorified with the splendor of the Father love.
We live and move and have our being in Christ, and through the Sacraments, we are members of His Mystical Body, the Church, and children of Our Heavenly Father. Let us ask Jesus to help us deepen our faith, hope and charity and so be prepared to meet him face to face one day not with fear but with hearts full of joy. Even now, our bodies are being transformed into glory. Let us also continue to pray for our dead, all of the Holy Souls in purgatory. Holy Mary, Mother of God, Mother of the living not the dead, pray for us sinners, now and especially at the hour of our death. Holy Mary, we know you will honor all of the Hail Mary's we say in our life and you will be there for us at the hour of our death. Amen. God Bless you all.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)