I received a Homily from a faithful priest that was given this past Sunday, August 26th regarding the current crisis in the church. Prudence dictates that I keep the priest anonymous. His homily is included at the end of this post.
People need to hear what he has said. It is best for us to do all that we can during this time of crisis to keep a prayerful peace of soul. Trusting in God to purify and save his church.
I decided to put on blinders and ignore all the blogosphere gossips and commentaries. One idiot said the church will implode from within. I didn't read it because I was so 😠mad! Even if it appears true it does more harm than good to write about the crisis in this way. The Church belongs to Christ. He will support the pillars! Have Faith.
When we die and go to meet our JUDGE He will not ask us what did we think about the Pope, or this Cardinal, or that Priest. He will be judging our transgressions against the law. We have to account for our own sins and actions. Did we help the Pope or that priest by our prayers and sacrifices, or did we Judge them? Worse yet, was our Judgement in error and did we spread our erroneous judgements? God will hold you accountable for this. PRAY FOR THEM AND WAIT FOR GOD'S INTERVENTION. These problems cannot be undone WITHOUT A DIVINE INTERVENTION. It will happen our Lady at Fatima said Her Immaculate Heart will Triumph. Do you believe it will happen? I do! Credo!
We need life jackets to persevere and ride out the raging storms we are passing through. God gave us many warnings of the current crisis. Warnings with instructions on how to successfully pass over the raging waters. The first warnings were given in scriptures, the most relevant is the book of Jude. It is the shortest book of the Bible aptly depicting the current crisis. Read and pray over the book to see how God wants us to live through these days.
Also recall the visions of St John Bosco in the 1840s. Remember the 2 Columns and the ship, representing the church. The pope was guiding it as it traveled through a fierce storm. Other ships were bombing it with canons and it almost capsized. Finally seeing two columns in the distance it made its way towards them and found safety and anchored between them. The first column was the Eucharist and the second was Our Lady. Placing its anchor here the storm could no longer toss them about in this safe harbor. Let each one of us find that safe harbor in the church wirhb the pope.
We must continually work on our own faults and deepen our personal union with Jesus. Taking the speck from our own eyes first so we can see clearly how to help our brethren. Our strength will come from the Eucharist and Our Lady;
Her message at Fatima pleaded for us to:
"Pray, pray very much and make sacrifices for poor sinners! Many souls go to Hell because there is no one to pray and sacrifices for them!"
Homily by a faithful priest
Sunday, August 26, 2018
“If it does not please you to serve the Lord, decide today / whom you will serve.” “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord.” – Words from the first scripture, the Book of Joshua. The desertion of the disciples of Christ recounted in this Gospel must have been a source of great grief to the Divine Teacher who was instructing them on how to attain eternal life; but they would have none of it.
This was not the first time God had been spurned and dismissed by ungrateful men who want anything else but what God offers them. What is it that fallen humanity seeks? Pleasures of the flesh and of the tongue, having lots of money, being held in esteem by others, having good looks, being considered important, and having not eternal life hereafter but ongoing life in this world. These are the base aspirations of many men–base even by human standards, for it might be that someone would wish to gain knowledge about many good things. That’s a far more noble thing than those just mentioned.
There may also be the desire to achieve virtue, that is, to become a good man, a good woman. That’s certainly a worthwhile goal, and there are a few honorable people who seek this. And there are other good things that one might aspire to: creating art or writing; having worthy and satisfying employment; mastering skills in language, music, sport, or craft; better yet: offering oneself in service to humanity by being a teacher, a physician, a helper to the poor, the suffering, or the hungry. So then: there are unworthy, ignoble human pursuits, and there are worthy ones. Yet any and all of these have not a penny’s weight to claim a reward in the next life when they’re done on the natural human level. (Saint Paul went so far as to say that giving up all one’s possessions, and even giving up one’s body to be burned alive, would be devoid of any value!) On the other hand, even the most menial occupation (“digging ditches” was once said to be among these) can gain huge dividends in heaven if they’re done in a state of grace and with a supernatural intention. All depends on the state of one’s soul and the reason motivating the good deeds.
Christ’s followers must live for God and have eternity as the goal of their whole being. If they’re insincere about that they’re fools to be mocked and despised. There’s no gain in feigning, pretending, to be Christian: that is, in talking about being religious but contradicting it by one’s deeds and real intentions. The Church is suffering with gaping wounds today because many fake Catholics, fake priests, and bishops, and cardinals are being unmasked and revealed for what they really are. And by “fake” (a term indelibly entrenched in current usage by President Trump) I don’t mean that they’re not legitimately baptized or ordained. I mean rather that they are insincere in their intention to serve God and obey His commandments.
There are many variations of these phoney Catholics. There’s the Socialite-Catholic who’s religious only for outward respectability by his neighbors; there’s the Cultural-Catholic who’s enamored with Catholic literature, history, ceremony, philosophy, or art but not with its beliefs and its moral restrictions on conduct; there’s the Professional Catholic who serves on church boards, or who works in chancery offices, or who is otherwise employed by the Church; most egregious of all are the Professional Clergy whose ministry is a merely a job to make a living, and to have position and prestige because of the Church, but who abuse youth, who spend Church monies on themselves, who don’t believe in the Gospel and in the doctrines of the Church and who sell the Church out to leftists such as politicians or media personalities who support abortion or gay rights and who still think they’re Catholics but are nothing of the sort.
The quotation from today’ Psalm is apropos of them: “The Lord confronts the evildoers to destroy remembrance of them from the earth.” We call them apostates. Here’s God’s judgment on such people, according to Saint Peter: “it would have been better for them never to have known the way of justice, than after having known it, to turn back (2 Peter 2:21). As our Lord said of Judas, the original apostate, “Woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed: it were better for him, had he never been born” (Mt 26:24). To see these “convictions” as divine justice meted out to the deserters, opportunists, and the fakes is only one side of the whole picture. There’s also God’s side–the grief of Christ being forsaken by His own people. The sufferings our Lord endured to redeem humanity are as far as it’s possible to go to win them. There’s nothing more God could have done to save them, because He will not save them against their will.
The great mystery is that there are some, perhaps many, who prefer evil to goodness, darkness to light, sin to grace, salvation to damnation. The sin of apostasy (leaving Christ, or being a religious fake) is an outrage to our Redeemer and is now becoming the ruination of the Church. I’m sad for God! That may be a simpleton’s clumsy way of expressing the would-be exasperation of the Heart of Christ, vulnerable to the treason of these deserters, deceivers, and connivers. Nor should we exculpate ourselves simply because our sins or our half-hearted Catholicism are have not been made public knowledge. We too must answer to God for our sins. There are altogether too many bad things besetting the Church and the good society of men. It’s too much, too great, approaching a breaking point
Solutions, however, are readily at hand, as they have always been: prayer (with some fasting) for the conversion or the ousting of the fakes and the predators; and striving mightily to be very good and sincere Catholics ourselves. If we deeply and honestly desire the glory of God, we will remain true to Christ and to the Catholic faith and refuse to be defeated by the disheartening apostasy and scandal that’s taking place. There is no alternative way of being Catholic but to believe wholeheartedly in Christ and in the Church He founded, the Church which, as Saint Paul instructs us, is “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing...holy and without blemish.” The Church is the true spouse of Christ; she’s not a fake in what she teaches and in what she offers us, and she most assuredly is not given to us to be a pretense for the wicked and the insincere to hide behind. We must beware lest we ourselves become deserters! (a temptation from hell). Fidelity, sincerity, true devotion: this is Catholicism. “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord” (words we heard from the first lesson).
We must not become discouraged over the shocking apostasy of this present time, nor should we join in it. There’s nowhere else to go but to stay with the Lord and with the authentic faith of the Catholic Church. Ours ought to be the words of Saint Peter in this Gospel: “Master, to whom else shall we go? You are the Holy One of God.” “Faith of our fathers, holy faith. We will be true to thee till death.”
Please pray for this priest and all faithful priests to find the safe harbor between the two pillars of the Eucharist and Our Lady as we wait for the Lord to cleanse His House and right all the wrongs. Oremus pro Inviciem; Let us pray for each other!-Spera Rose
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