Ascension & Skulduggery

 

The Christian life, when you think on it, is an ascension, a journey upwards to heaven in Christ. Our architecture proclaims the same, steeples, arches, windows soaring up to heaven like Chesterton's proverbial "flight of arrows."

That said, we particularize and focus the movement in tomorrow's Feast, celebrating Christ's being taken up into the heaven to sit in glory at the right hand of the Father. Yes indeed, our great High Priest who has entered the Holy of Holies in eternity. The veil is torn asunder.

buffoon, mountebank, corrupt, rainbow, malfeasant

Speaking of which, here's our top soldier in a camo mask, because nothing says warfighter leader like a camo mask. Thanks, LL, for the image and I'll resist the heady urge to say what a "mountebank buffoon." In related news, the US Navy's gone hot for a drag queen recruiter. Xi and Putin quake in their boots knowing diversity is our strength and their weakness. 

Do you remember the Ukrainian trans Unicorn Battalion? That did pretty well against, you know, pronoun ignoring weaponry. And go figure, a bullet doesn't care if your pronouns are satanically they/them. Perhaps there's a moral in that, if you care to draw it.

Sursum Corda,

LSP

A Short Palm Sunday Sermon

 

Here we are on Palm Sunday, the "gateway to Holy Week," and the liturgy of the Mass seems strange or jarring. One minute we're hailing Jesus as the Messiah while singing All Glory Laud and Honour and the next shouting out Crucify Him!, as we hear the Passion. It's as though we've been catapulted, in mood, from Easter to Good Friday. But of course we understand the connection.

Christ's kingship as the anointed holy one of God rests upon the Cross, his throne from which he establishes sovereignty over sin and death. He could, in that week leading up to his death, have chosen worldly power; the temptations in the wilderness surely returned with demonic intensity.

Stones to bread? Yes indeed, literal bread for himself and the world, to say nothing of spiritual bread in the form of the righteous wisdom he could have given from the gleaming, thunderstruck fastness  of Mount Zion. 

Instead of being scourged and nailed to a cross by Roman soldiers he could have ordered the angelic host to his defense, lest he dash his foot against a stone. And the kingdoms of the world? His for the asking, with all the glories therein.

Christ says no to this and by extension to the Devil himself. He follows a different path, the way of the Cross. What qualities took him there? Humility, for sure. He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant or slave, even to an agonizing, shameful death. Likewise obedience. 

Recall the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus prays that the chalice of suffering and death would be taken from him, but he continues, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass away from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou willest." (Matt. 26:39) This utterly faithful submission to the Father's will takes him to Golgotha, where he lays down his life in a perfect act of love for the forgiveness of our sin.

Humble, obedient, loving faith. The way of the Cross and the way to the empty tomb and everlasting life. It comes at a cost, obviously, but consider the reward, the green pastures of paradise.

I pray we're given the courage, by the grace of God, to acknowledge Christ as our King and follow him through the "grave and gate of death" to eternal life.

God Bless,

LSP

Sunday Sermon - Moneychangers

 

If you follow the newfangled lectionary, you'll have heard St. John's account of Christ driving the money changers and associated cattle out of the Temple. Picture the scene. 

There's the forecourt of the Temple turned into a cattle market, replete with FX grifters exchanging secular currency for Temple coin, and making a nice profit to boot.  Why? Because the Jews had to buy animals to sacrifice and the Temple didn't accept secular money. Enter Christ.

Zeal for his Father's house consumed him as he drove the beasts out with a whip, overturning the cattle market casino which had turned the Temple, the holiest place on earth, the focus of atonement as it then was, into a "den of thieves." 

The Temple was defiled and Christ couldn't stand for it, hungering and thirsting for righteousness he drove it out, and the message, on the face of it, is clear. No corruption, grift, skulduggery and malfeasance in the Holy Church of God. But there's more.

Sensing something deeper, bystanders ask for a sign, they want to know what our Lord's actions signify, and he tells them, "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up." Of course they're confused, but we're not. 

Jesus' cleansing of the Temple is a prophetic act which points to his death and resurrection, to his atoning sacrifice and its attendant victory. He will be the new Temple and its Sacrifice, as one. So Christ drives the animals and the moneylenders out of the Temple. Their time is done.

We're the beneficiaries of this, the blood of the Paschal Lamb is on the lintel of our souls, such that the Angel of Death passes over us. As living stones in the spiritual temple of Christ's Body, the Church, his sacrifice is operative within us, which brings us back to the wicked money changers.

For sure, the Church writ large must cleanse herself of corruption, but what about us, as persons, the Church writ small? Surely the same applies. We're Temples of the Spirit, says the Apostle, and so we are. Message to market?

Repent. Drive those knavish thieves, the world, the flesh and the Devil out of the temple of our souls so that we, clean, may find union with the Cross and the life which flows from it. Therein lies sanctification and beatitude, and herein endeth the Lesson.

Your Old Friend,

LSP

Parable of the Sower

I've been reflecting on the Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13 because it's the Gospel for Sunday in our newfangled, confusing, tripartite lectionary. We all know the story and how it illustrates the four different conditions of human heart or soul upon which the Word falls. 

But consider this, from Gerard Manly Hopkins:

Although the letter said
On thistles that men look not grapes to gather,
I read the story rather
How soldiers platting thorns around Christ’s Head
Grapes grew and drops of wine were shed.

Though when the sower sowed,
The wingèd fowls took part, part fell in thorn,
And never turned to corn,
Part found no root upon the flinty road—
Christ at all hazards fruit hath shewed.

From wastes of rock He brings
Food for five thousand: on the thorns He shed
Grains from His drooping Head;
And would not have that legion of winged things
Bear Him to heaven on easeful wings.

Christ, in Himself, transforms and redeems our fallen nature, turning hard, rocky, thorn-choked ground into abundant life. He invites us to share in this victory; God grant us the humility to enter into compassion and life, to repent.

Your Ancient Friend,

LSP

Holy Saturday - The Harrowing of Hell

Our Lord's body lies in the tomb, he has descended to the dead, to Sheol, to Hell, ad infernos. The light of the Gospel, of the Word himself shines out in the darkness of Hades.  The hand of salvation reaches out into the Pit for the salvation of souls.

Harrowing? Yes, for the satanic anti-kingdom. God has broken its gates, he's stormed the stronghold and scattered the Enemy. There, in the dead, leaden, tortured fastness of Hell stands Christ triumphant, Victor, offering the hand of salvation and life to the captives of the demon-ridden underworld. St. John Chrysostom exults:

"The Savior's death has set us free. He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it. By descending into Hell, He made Hell captive. He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh... It took a body, and met God face to face. It took earth, and encountered Heaven."

As Jesus lies in a grave in a garden, the light who is light shines in the darkness, a brilliant flare of truth, beauty, love and mercy, of life itself. Rejoicing in the triumph, may God give us grace to cry out to him for mercy, so that we too may enter Paradise.

The harrowing of Hell? For sure, and of our own souls also.

God bless,

LSP

Ash Wednesday 2020

Memento, homo, quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris — Remember, O Man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust all brought into stark relief as we kneel to receive an ashen cross on our foreheads. No, fool, you're not a God, you're mortal and destined to return to the earth from which you came. 

Remember, the memento mori is cruciform, in the shape of the same Cross which defeated death by death. Here we find life, our mortality shot through and transformed by eternity.

So Good Friday lives within Ash Wednesday and with it the green pastures and flowing waters of paradise, of the empty tomb and Easter. O death, where is thy sting? Still, before we dare claim the victory we must ally ourselves with it, or rather the Victor himself. And so to Lent.

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all those who are penitent; Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Wishing you all a holy and blessed penitential season,

LSP

Ash Wednesday

Here we are again at the beginning of Lent and that's usually the Compound's cue to unleash TS Eliot's poem, Ash Wednesday. But here's something new, an excerpt from a sermon by the late Fr. Crouse.

In the Scriptures for last Sunday, Quinquagesima, the Lenten theme was brought to still more perfect clarity, with Jesus’ announcement to the twelve: “Behold we go up to Jerusalem.” That is the central theme of Lent. We go up to Jerusalem with Jesus, to witness there the almighty charity of God in the Passion of his Son, and to be transformed by that same charity. As with the blind beggar by the road to Jericho, in that Gospel lesson, the blind eyes of our faith are to be opened to the glory of his sacrifice, and, as St. Paul told us on the Epistle lesson, that charity, that obedient, self-giving love, that steadfast, clear-sighted willing of the good, which is manifest in Calvary, is to be the substance of our own new life, the very essence of our spiritual maturity, the good and honest heart, the very habit of life of heaven, without which – whatever our gift, our struggles and achievements – we are “nothing worth”; just “sounding brass and tinkling cymbal”, just noisy nonsense.

The Scripture lessons for those weeks of preparation have shown us the meaning, and the character, and the urgency of the pilgrimage of Lent. Now it remains only to undertake it, and today’s lessons urge us to do just that; with penitence for our wickedness and carelessness and double-mindedness; with a discipline which is not just external forms, but the inner discipline of mind and heart; striving not for worldly self-improvement, but for the treasure of eternal good. It is only by earnest, and persistent, and sometimes painful discipline that we are weaned from mindless conformity to worldly ends, and find that renewal of the mind which is spiritual freedom and maturity. That liberation is what Lent is all about. “Behold we go up to Jerusalem.” There is our treasure, in the charity of God, and there must our hearts be also.

I find that helpful, you can read the whole thing here.

God bless,

LSP