The Feast of St. Matthew

 

Today's the Feast of St. Matthew, a wicked tax collector who repented and followed Christ, much to the disgust of the self-righteous, hypocritical Pharisees. But what can we say? Christ tells us, "I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance." (Lk 15:7) 

Such a powerful warning and also an encouragement, the latter being that there's hope for us yet, think of Matthew himself or worse yet, the thief on the cross who turns to Christ in his death agony, "Remember me, Lord, when you come into your kingdom," only to receive the reply, "Today you will be with me in paradise."

What a corrective against the hideous, judgemental, pride of the Pharisee. By all means hate the sin, and we should, not least our own, but love the sinner. Matthew is an example of the effect of such grace.

O ALMIGHTY God, who by thy blessed Son didst call Matthew from the recipt of custom to be an Apostle and Evangelist; Grant us grace to forsake all covetous desires, and inordinate love of riches, and to follow the same thy Son Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

 

Here endeth the Lesson,

LSP

Christ Has Risen

 

Happy Easter,

LSP

Happy Easter

 

What good Masses at the Missions, full of joy. That in mind, wishing you all the best, new life in the risen and triumphant Christ. The strife, liturgically, is o'er, and so to score the uplift:

Turn it up and blast it out. Satan, Hell and Death is utterly refuted. Stand firm in that and do not surrender, ever,

Christus Surrexit Alleluia,

LSP

Listen Up Heathen

 

Yesterday was the Feast of St. Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist. Here's the late great Canadian, Fr. Crouse:

The mission of the Church is to call us out of darkness; by word and sacrament to set before our eyes the vision of God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ. That is at the heart of liturgy, and all the Christian arts; the light of pure, transcendent glory must shine through, and that is essential to all our intellectual and moral and ascetical disciplines, too. Without that vision, all else so easily falls into deceit and craftiness; or perhaps, at best, narrowness of spirit, or just pedestrian nonsense. But even pedestrian nonsense, you know, if that's all there is, is a pretty nasty form of hell (my emph, LSP).

May we, along with Matthew - rejoicing in his fellowship, and aided by his prayers - be granted grace, that in this liturgy, and in all the images of earthly life, we may glimpse the face of Jesus Christ; and then, beyond all earthly images, "beheld with open face" that everlasting glory. That is, after all, our calling.

I cannot add to that,

LSP

Easter - 8 Days After

 

Birds sing and fight ferociously with squirrels, Blue Terminator rests on the kitchen floor, Mex/Latino big bass pounds from the neighbor's compound and it's the second Sunday of Easter. Or the first if you're old skool lectionary.

Lectionary wars aside, here's some Farrer:

THE death and resurrection of Christ draw near to us in this sacrament.  The bread is broken - there Christ dies; we receive it as Christ alive - there is his resurrection.  It is the typical expression of divine power to make something from nothing.  God has made the world where no world was, and God makes life out of death.  Such is the God with whom we have to do.  We do not come to God for a little help, a little support to our own good intentions.  We come to him for resurrection.  God will not be asked for a little, he will be asked for all.  We reckon ourselves dead, says St. Paul, that we may ask God for a resurrection, not of ourselves, but of Christ in us.

 

Christ in us, crucified and risen. What can we do but with Thomas, fall down and worship at touching so great a mystery, my Lord and my God! Some call that the most magnificent confession of faith in Gospels.

Pax,

LSP

Happy Easter!

 

Christus surrexit alleluia!

LSP

Happy Easter!

 

I know, a day late and a dollar short, but Happy Easter!

Christ has risen,

LSP

Annunciation

 

You can stare, in slack-jawed rightist consternation at the unfolding coup in our country, or you can take time off from the news cycle and reflect on the Annunciation and the Angelic Salutation. Being unhealthily saturated with former, I went down the latter path today. How does the angel address the Virgin?

χαῖρε, κεχαριτωμένη, ὁ κύριος μετὰ σοῦ, which means: χαῖρε - "hail" or "rejoice." κεχαριτωμένη - "O graced" or "favored one." κύριος μετὰ σοῦ? The Lord is with you. And note, the word κεχαριτωμένη appears nowhere else, either in Scripture or any other literature, It's singular to the Annunciation. So is the grace attributed by the Archangel Gabriel to Mary, the Mother of God.

She is blessed beyond reckoning for her virtue and the task that God's commanded of her, to bear His Son into the world for our redemption. Jesus, "God Saves," both in Himself and by His actions, will come into the world through the Virgin's agency. The Word will be made Flesh for our salvation thanks to the assent of Mary's fiat, "I am the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto according to thy word."

Here we find a template or model of the Church writ large, the Mystical Body of Christ which bears the Savior into the world sacramentally. We see, too, a pattern which describes our own lives as Christians. God wants to be born and come alive in us because He loves us, and because He does He asks our permission to do so, as He asked Mary.

She says yes, with purity and humble, obedient, courageous faith. The weapons, when you think on it, which will crush the serpent's head. This is especially relevant now. 

Pray hard that we're given the grace to mirror Mary's quality of soul and for her powerful intercession that evil, darkness and deceit is driven far from us and from this country.

Ave Eva,

LSP

A Sunday Reflection - The Wicked Tenants

Do you remember the parable of the wicked tenants, the murderous usurpers who attempt to steal a husbandman's vineyard for themselves only to come to a miserable end? (Matt. 34-44)

It's a terrifying warning. What will happen to the tenants who beat, stone and kill the owner's servants and murder his son, asks Jesus of the priests and elders. They reply, unwittingly condemning themselves, "He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons." (Matt. 21:41) 

So it came to pass, and I usually take the opportunity to wax large on the siege of Jerusalem and beat on the iniquitous, apostate heretics infesting the Western Church. Watch out, you brood of vipers or the vineyard will be taken from you.

All well and good, and doubtless an appropriate sermon at, say, the Church of England's York Synod or the Episcopal Church's General Convention. But pause for a moment and consider the features of the vineyard.

It stands for Israel of course, planted by God, with a hedge, the Law, a winepress, the Altar, and a watchtower, the Temple. All of this is present in the new Israel of the Church, which is called to "render him the fruits in their seasons." What is this fruit and where is it offered?

On the wine press which sits between hedge and tower, Law and Temple, as does the Cross between the Incarnation and the Resurrection. And what is the Cross but Christ's sacrificial altar, on which the perfect fruit of the vineyard, righteousness, the Word made flesh, is offered to the Father.

The fruit then, ultimately, is Christ himself, righteousness incarnate, sacrificed on Calvary, and we enter into union with this offering and "yield it up" sacramentally at the altars of of our churches. There, we abide in Christ and he in us. "Abide in me, and I in you," says Jesus,  "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me." (Jn. 15:4)

This, surely, is the endeavor of the Christian life; as faithful tenants of the vineyard to live ever more closely in Christ, offering up the fruit which is pleasing to the Father, Jesus himself. And as we do, by the grace of God and the working of the Spirit, become channels of his righteousness in the world. 

Unless you're a wicked heretic of course, in which case the concluding words of our Lord ring true with awful effect, "And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder." (Matt. 21:44) 

And so we come full circle. Take note, Justsin Welby and, for that matter, everyone else.

God bless,

LSP

Christ's Prayer In The Garden

Today we're looking forward to Maundy Thursday and with it the events of the Last Supper and beyond. Christ washes his disciples' feet, institutes the Eucharist, then goes to the Garden of Gethsemane where he prays before falling into the hands of sinful men.

Such mystery, and we tend to concentrate on the prophetic action of the foot washing and the sacrament of Jesus' body and blood. The one, of course, begets the other. As the disciples are cleansed by Christ and made fit for the Passover feast, so too are we cleansed by the blood of Calvary and participate in the heavenly banquet of the Eucharist. 

True enough and that's the least of it, but what of Gethsemane and Christ's prayer in the garden. Here's Benedict XVI:

Jesus says: “Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet not what I want, but what you want” (Mk 14:36). The natural will of the man Jesus recoils in fear before the enormity of the matter. He asks to be spared. Yet as the Son, he places this human will into the Father’s will: not I, but you. In this way he transformed the stance of Adam, the primordial human sin, and thus heals humanity. 

The stance of Adam was: not what you, O God, have desired; rather, I myself want to be a god. This pride is the real essence of sin. We think we are free and truly ourselves only if we follow our own will. God appears as the opposite of our freedom. We need to be free of him – so we think – and only then will we be free. 

This is the fundamental rebellion present throughout history and the fundamental lie which perverts life. When human beings set themselves against God, they set themselves against the truth of their own being and consequently do not become free, but alienated from themselves. We are free only if we stand in the truth of our being, if we are united to God.

This is the fundamental rebellion present throughout history and the fundamental lie which perverts life. And what a perversion it is, the same tormented falsehood, for example, that tells Mothers they'll find meaning and fulfillment if they kill their children.

We know where this comes from, "He was a murderer from the beginning." We also know that Hell was broken on the hard wood of the Cross.

Have a blessed and holy Triduum,

LSP

Lepanto, Our Lady of Victories

Listen up, heathen. It's the anniversary of the battle of Lepanto, in which a combined catholic fleet under Don Juan of Austria, on october 7, 1571, took on the Turkish Sea Jihad and killed it. Dead.

The Mohammedans, under Grand Admiral Ali Pasha, had hoped to land an invasion fleet on the coast of Italy and seize Rome, which they curiously called the "Big Apple." But they were routed and victory is accredited to the miraculous intercession of the Blessed  Ever Virgin Mary.

Ali Pasha was killed in the action aboard his ship, the Sultana, which had engaged Don Juan's flagship, the Real. Pasha's severed head was subsequently displayed on the Real on the end of a pike.

Today's TransMed Jihad comes in a different form and the Moslems don't have a navy; neither, of course, do the Europeans. I'll leave it to you to figure out if the threat is any less real.

Salve Regina,

LSP

The Feast of St. Matthew The Apostle

Listen up, Heathen.

It's the Feast of St. Matthew the Apostle, so throw your grimoire in the trash, bin chalice, wand and sword, burn that dog-eared Tarot and say your prayers. Here's one, from the 1928 BCP:

O ALMIGHTY God, who by thy blessed Son didst call Matthew from the recipt of custom to be an Apostle and Evangelist; Grant us grace to forsake all covetous desires, and inordinate love of riches, and to follow the same thy Son Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

Saint Matthew, pray for us.

LSP