A Short Sunday Sermon

 

Do you like sermons which go on for 30 or 40 minutes? I don't, and typically run outside for a cigarette and a cup of coffee, if available, while the preacher's banging on interminably. That in mind, I'll try to keep it short lest you lose interest and dive into the nearest gun shop.

The miraculous feeding of the 5000. Positive divine power proof that Jesus was God; mortals can't do such things. Our first lesson, the divinity of Christ, but what else? Start at the beginning of the passage and what do we find? Jesus stepping ashore from his boat, God made Man stepping onto the shore of the world, the Incarnation. Once there he beholds the crowd, the mass of broken humanity, and moved with compassion, cures the sick.

Behold the character of the Incarnate Word; full of compassion, with mercy, pity and love, he heals the sick. There on that shore it was physical disease, which points to a greater cure, our deliverance from sin and death, of being made whole again by the great physician of our souls. Where is this achieved?

On the Cross, and again the miraculous narrative points us to this, to the "lonely place apart" where the day is well-spent, to Gethsemane, the Praetorium, to Golgotha itself and the Cross, where our Lord cries out, "It is finished," and darkness covers the land even as he feeds us with the miraculous food of his body and blood.

Look what we have in just the first half of the Gospel passage, an outline of Christ's redemptive work, but we have to ask, where do we get this supernatural food? In the Eucharist, which is emphatically prefigured in the miracle. What happens?

There in the dark, recall his Passion, he takes the small offering of  5 loaves and two fish, signifying what? The Law and the Prophets, the 5 senses of Man sanctified, the sevenfold order of creation, Jesus himself who is the bread of life? All this perhaps and more and, having taken this up he blesses it, breaks it and gives it to the disciples to distribute.

He does the very same thing at the Last Supper, the first Eucharist, where from his compassion he feeds his disciples with the miraculous food of his body and blood shed for them on the Cross for the remission of their sins, for their healing and life. He does the same for us today in the Mass, where our Lord steps ashore to heal us, to make us whole again with God, nourishing us with the supernatural food of his body and blood.

What can we do in the face of such mystery? Draw near with faith to the sacrament of our Lord's Body and Blood, wherein the Great Physician heals us, forgiving our sins and raises us to eternal life.

God Bless,

LSP

Sunday Reflection

 

After his baptism, Jesus goes out into the wilderness to fast and pray, to gain strength for his journey to Calvary and the Cross. Hating this, Satan attempts to divert him by way of three temptations, three "shortcuts from the Cross." 

We're familiar with them, if you're the Son of God, turn these stones to bread, cast yourself down from the Temple and the angels will bear you up lest you dash your foot against a stone and finally, the offer of all the kingdoms of the world on the condition Christ worshiped Satan.

There they are, the sins of the flesh, of pride, and of greed which if Jesus had succumbed to them would have hijacked his mission of redemption. Stones to bread, why go to the Cross if you can win men's hearts by feeding them? What need for the agony and shame of Golgotha when you can perform a marvel, a sign which converts the people? And why endure the agony of crucifixion when you can establish an earthly kingdom here and now?

Why not indeed. Because in all of Satan's beguilement redemption doesn't occur, the people remain in their sin and subject to death and Hell regardless of how well fed, self-sufficient and well governed they are. No Cross, no Resurrection, no life.

I like Fulton Sheen's observation. The first temptation is economic, the second a marvel and the third political; bread and circuses under the aegis of diabolic power. Perhaps this sounds familiar, as it was in the days of ancient Rome so now. But consider the second or in Luke's case third temptation.

Throw yourself down from the Temple, says Satan to Christ, throw yourself away from the Church. Who will catch you? Angels, yes, but surely fallen ones, demons, and will they hold you up in their claws and talons, elevating you above the ground of reality, of God himself? Maybe for a time, until they don't and the Faustian pact resolves on collision with the rock.

Thus warned, we pray and meditate on God's holy Word, practice fasting, abstinence and self-denial, give alms and tithe, repent and confess our sins. All the disciplines of Lent by which we beat back Satan and find unity with the Cross and from there the risen life of Easter.

God bless,

LSP

A Sign

Sometimes a picture's worth a thousand words. So here's a visual aid for Morning Prayer.

Out demons, out!

LSP

Holy Wednesday Reflection

I find this helpful, perhaps you will too:

Light From Darkness

 

It is out of that uttermost gloom of My God, my God, why have you forsaken me that the light breaks. The light does not merely shine upon the gloom and so dispel it; it is the gloom itself transformed into light.  For that same crucifixion of our Lord which was, and for ever is, the utmost effort of evil, is itself the means by which God conquers evil and unites us to himself in the redeeming love there manifested.

 

Judas and Caiaphas and Pilate have set themselves in their several ways to oppose and to crush the purpose of Christ, and yet despite themselves they became ministers. They sent Christ to the cross; by the cross he completed his atoning work; from the cross he reigns over mankind.  God in Christ has not merely defeated evil, but has made it the occasion of his own supremest glory.

 

Never was conquest so complete; never was triumph so stupendous.  The completeness of the victory is due to the completeness of the evil over which it was won. It is the very darkness which enshrouds the cross that makes so glorious the light proceeding from it. Had there been no despair, no sense of desolation and defeat, but merely the onward march of irresistible power to the achievement of its end, evil might have been beaten, but not bound in captivity for ever.  God in Christ endured defeat, and out of the very stuff of defeat he wrought his victory and his achievement.

 

Archbishop William Temple (1881-1944) Mens Creatrix.

God in Christ endured defeat, and out of the very stuff of defeat he wrought his victory and his achievement.

Behold the mystery,

LSP

Lift High The Cross

The ISIS caliphate is gradually being driven back from Christian towns in Iraq, such as  Qaraqosh, near Mosul, where a large Cross was erected to celebrate the town's liberation.

The Cross, sponsored by a French charity, SOS Chretiens Orient, was blessed today in the presence of militia from the Christian Nineveh Protection Units (NPU) and the town's Christian population hope to return and rebuild their churches.

In the meanwhile, ask yourself why the governments of what used to be known as the free world were silent in the face of the head-chopping savages of the ISIS Caliphate's attempted Christian genocide in Iraq.

Ask yourselves, too, why our lying, hypocritical, smug, elite media were silent when Mohammedan fanatics murdered, tortured, raped and enslaved tens of thousands of Middle Eastern Christians. To be fair, The Atlantic covered Qaraqosh's liberation in April. Still, the silence of the secularists was and is deafening. 

Imagine, if you can, the roar of outrage from the governments and media of the West if Christians had been the perpetrators of these atrocities. But no, the murderers were Muslims and that religion, the beneficent religion of peace, gets a pass every time.

Pray that the NPU and others like them roll back the killers of the Caliphate and lift the Cross high in Iraq's ancient Christian communities.

God bless,

LSP