Take Note You Heathen

 

The Nicene Creed. Heretics wilt and melt before this and pull weird stunts.

Cheers,

LSP

Sunday Homily

 

"Faith without works is dead," says St. James the Apostle, much to the annoyance of Luther who felt the letter an "Epistle of straw." Of course it was, to a former Augustinian friar who held that good works were "like fleas on the skin of a dead dog." Tell us what you really think, Martin.

Still, and Luther aside, we instinctively get what James is telling us. If you believe in something and that belief isn't enacted then it's not worth much, it ain't right. Worse, it starts to take on the sulpherous, pharisaical odor of hypocrisy. And our instinct's not wrong, faith which isn't animated, which doesn't move is dead, immobile. It doesn't "profit."

James drives it home:

What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food. And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.

 

What doth it profit to be full of belief, such as to move mountains, but be devoid of faith's animating principle, which is love, the Holy Spirit. Benedict XVI puts it well:

Being “just” simply means being with Christ and in Christ. And this suffices. Further observances are no longer necessary. For this reason Luther’s phrase: “faith alone” is true, if it is not opposed to faith in charity, in love. Faith is looking at Christ, entrusting oneself to Christ, being united to Christ, conformed to Christ, to his life. And the form, the life of Christ, is love; hence to believe is to conform to Christ and to enter into his love.

 

Right on, let's act accordingly, and be sure that the raging, nihilist hatred of Devil and his anti-kingdom, to say nothing of the gates of Hell, shall not prevail.

Keep the Faith,

LSP

Private Mass

While not able to worship publicly at this time, I did offer the Mass this morning on all our behalf. This service is known as a Missa sine populo (Mass without the people) or a Private Mass. 

However, the grace in this worship is very far from private and ripples or reverberates throughout the whole Church, not least our part of it.

This is because all of us are joined to Christ and one another in a mystical, spiritual communion. As the Apostle Paul teaches us, "For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body." (1 Cor. 12:13) And so the blessing of even one faithful Communion at the Eucharist extends to us all.

Please know that you were all offered up at the Altar of Our Lord this morning and rest assured of my daily prayers. May God bless, preserve and keep you. 

Be strong in Him and take courage, for Christ has "overcome the world,"(Jhn. 16:33) and neither death nor Hell itself have any power over us.

With much love and every blessing,

LSP