The Feast of St. Mark

 

It's the Feast of St. Mark today. Mark was close to St. Paul and St. Peter, and his Gospel is believed to be the earliest; he was martyred in Alexandria. The wicked Venetians stole his relics from that city in the early 9th century A.D. and adopted the Evangelist as their patron saint. Perhaps you've enjoyed the basilica built in his name.

Here's Austin Farrer, preaching in Trinity College chapel to students:

Happy is the man who learns from his own failures. He certainly won’t learn from any one else’s. Here I am on a safe ground, for you are all failures, are you not? when it comes to serving God. So there is no fear of my missing my target in any of you, and especially, perhaps, just at the end of a vacation. Vacations tend to be spiritual disappointments. It is humiliating how, when you get back into your families, childish faults of temper reassert themselves which you hoped you had outgrown; humiliating how, as soon as you lose the encouraging company of your Christian friends here, your religion languishes. You have not prayed nor worked nor controlled yourself as you hoped to do. God has given you much; you have not given anything worth mentioning to God. Well, St Mark went back from the work in Pamphylia (if he is indeed the same man), and in Gethsemane none of the disciples behaved with credit. It is by these desolating experiences that God teaches us to trust him, not ourselves. The more emptied out you are, the more hope there is of your learning to be a Christian. Now is the very moment—there will never be a better—for you to put your trust in the God who makes something from nothing, who raises the dead.

 

The more emptied out you are, the more hope there is of your learning to be a Christian. Now is the very moment—there will never be a better—for you to put your trust in the God who makes something from nothing, who raises the dead. 

Such wisdom and truth.

Pax et Bonum,

LSP

A Short Sunday Sermon - The Canaanite Women

And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us. But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs. And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table. Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.

I found this short reflection on Sunday's Gospel helpful (Matthew 15:21-28):

What are the cries of the Canaanite woman if not a prayer to the Lord? What is her pursuit of Him if not a pivotal point in her life where she turns to His word? Her humility, her acceptance of the fact that, yes, she was an unworthy dog who was asking only for a few crumbs as a blessing, only what was left over from the table of the masters, what is that if not repentance and confession? And the final answer of the Lord is nothing other than His open embrace, God’s acquiescence in the face of unshakeable faith.

Today’s Gospel doesn’t merely tell us about a miracle performed by the Lord. It presents us with the way to approach the Lord, the only way by which we avoid the traps of the idols of this world and are able to cast ourselves, in tears, into the embrace of our Father. It presents us with how the Father operates in order to open to us the path of return to Him, without doing away with our freedom. It presents us with the face of our Saviour. It presents us with the way in which we must open our souls to His miraculous Grace. In other words, it presents us with the feast of our salvation... (Archbishop Christodoulos (Paraskevaïdis) of Athens (1998-2008, †)

And note the final verses of the miracle. Christ identifies the pagan and possibly occultist Canaanite as a "dog" but when she admits as much, "yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table," a remarkable thing happens. The dog becomes a woman, "O woman, great is thy faith." A miracle, the last has become the first, blessed are the poor in spirit, and the demon is driven away. 

We are the spiritual heirs of this woman. By the grace of God, may the quality of her faith be our own so that we too, with her, will be raised up to the full stature of sons and daughters of God, and the evil which afflicts us banished to the Pit from whence it came.

Vade Retro,

LSP

Sutherland Springs, Apocalyptic Reflection

Last Sunday we walked out of Mass uplifted, at least I did, refreshed in mind, body and spirit and then on arriving back at the Compound, pouring a glass of the right stuff and clicking on Drudge, things didn't seem so good.

There it was, Devin Kelley had killed 26 people and wounded at least 20 in an act of murderous, irrational, rage. "Why," asked one hardened LE Officer, "was it Satan?" Good question. Try phrasing the act another way. "A man of iniquity, full of bestial wrath, blasphemously profaned the Temple with the blood of the martyrs."

Satan

Put that way, Kelley's massacre sounds apocalyptic and it was, quite literally, for his victims; they met their last day. As such, Sutherland Springs serves as a partial type or prefigurement of the Apocalypse. What does this look like? We know the broad outline because Christ tells us, in Matthew 24.

Wars and rumours of war, earthquakes and false Messiahs. Here we find the birth-pains of the second Advent. Then follows the birth-crisis, the triumph of paganism and the setting up of idolatrous cult, the abomination of desolation on Mount Zion, accompanied by ferocious, such as the world has not yet seen, persecution of the Church. 

Virgins Wise And Foolish

The Apostle Paul and St. John The Divine  add to the mystery, telling us that this phase of blasphemous ascendance is led by a man, the son of perdition, or Antichrist, who is endowed with supernatural ability to "deceive the very elect." At this time there will be a great "falling away" or apostasy.

Then after the travail comes birth itself, the second Advent of the Son of Man, presaged by cosmic upheaval, who appears on clouds of divine glory to vanquish evil and vindicate the faithful. At last the Bridegroom returns. In the onrushing face of this, where do we stand?

A Typical Wise Virgin

Hopefully like the wise virgins who had the sense to stock their lamps with oil.  Herein lies a symbol. The lamps represent faith, which holds the light of good works, of mercy, love, forgiveness and compassion, all fueled by the oil of love and the indwelling presence of the Spirit who is the personification of love.

The message, then, is simple. We must be filled with the fire of divine love, as light shining in the darkness and then, when the Bridegroom finally appears, we will see Him and He us, granting us admittance into the marriage feast of the Lamb.

Bad Virgins!

To return to Sutherland Springs; those people, knowingly or not, were prepared for their apocalypse. They were loving God in worship. 

May God grant us grace to do the same. And, not to put too fine a point on it, if you're licensed, carry.

Your Old Pal,

LSP

The Miracle of The Widow of Nain

There's been a momentary lull in the War on Weather, giving us all time to reflect on the miracle of the widow of Nain, which is the Gospel reading for Sunday. In it we find two processions.

One is a procession of death, led by the grieving widow who has lost her only son. The other is a procession of life, led by Christ. At the point of contact, Christ is moved with great compassion and love. "Weep not," he tells the woman, and in power summons the son's soul back to his body and restores him to life. 

The widow and her son are, of course, types or figures of ourselves and the Church who are met, loved and given life by Christ. I found this reflection helpful, here's the conclusion:

The story of the widow of Nain is a wonderful story. It reminds us that the Gospel, like the Christian life itself, is seamless and perfect. The demands made on us are no less than the demands of love and of faith. As the Apostle John said, God is indeed love. And He responds to us, to the Church, as we in faith and in love cry out to him. For ourselves, for each other. For the living; for the dead; for the entire world. We cry out for mercy and for love and always – always – God responds. It is for this – faith and love – that we will be held accountable at the dread judgment seat. Nothing else. Not buildings, not numbers, not visible success. Faith and love. This is our life in the Church, it is our life in Christ.

You can read it all here, and if you think, in a fit of brazen, stiff-necked, secularist nihilism that it's all a load of pious nonsense, consider the reverse of the qualities of faith and love and see how far they get you.

God bless,

LSP