by Father Pius Mary Noonan OSB PhD
Notre Dame Priory in Tasmania
July 28th 2024
Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
Today’s sacred liturgy brings before our eyes the well-known parable of the pharisee and the publican, the one proud, the other humbled, the one who praises himself, the other who glorifies God, the one who is rejected, the other who is received and pardoned. The parable reminds us of that most fundamental attitude of reverence in prayer, of humility, of not being talkative and making up speeches when we come before the Lord, for then we risk singing our own praises, not God’s, and in God’s presence the only real attitude to have is one of adoration and silence.
This attitude of the publican’s prayer finds a remarkable expression in the traditional rite of the Mass in which the priest is obliged by the very rubrics of the Mass to humble himself, bowing and genuflecting often, signing himself frequently, saying many prayers that manifest contrition for his sins in a subdued voice, even hiding himself by turning towards the Lord instead of putting himself forward to pray facing the people. The traditional liturgy, which is quite simply the Roman liturgy, – notwithstanding the ongoing lies that pretend it is not – is a teacher of every virtue that we must practice when we pray, for indeed we do not know how. When we come to church, we are like little children who neither know how to speak nor how to act, and whose mother teaches them the way to pronounce and fold their hands. The priest is the child who learns from tradition how to offer Mass, how to be attentive to details, how to make himself little before the throne of the Divine Majesty, and in doing so, he in turn teaches the faithful. Such is the liturgy handed down for centuries, and going back to the apostles themselves who learned it from our blessed Lord. When we attend the traditional Mass, we are assisting at the kind of prayer that Jesus Himself practiced and taught to the apostles.
These considerations are inspired by today’s Gospel. The lessons given to us this morning at Matings inspire us to follow up on last Sunday’s homily about the Sack of Rome. As we well know, and as I mentioned last week, there are always those who seek to bury their heads in the sand; there are also those who, due to a crooked theology, will have recourse to every possible way out in order to deny that such events are chastisements are from God. Such people believe that the goodness of God is such that He never punishes his children when they do wrong. Recently the same heretics have tried to convince the world that God only blesses, always, everyone, regardless of their fidelity to Him. This morning at Matins, the holy traditional Divine office gave us some providential readings that refute such nonsense. The Scripture reading was that of Jezebel, the wicked usurper who caused Israel to sin and was responsible for the death of Naboth and many others. The spine-chilling story of her awful death is found in the Fourth Book of Kings, ch. 9. To illustrate this story, the Roman liturgy gives us a homily of St John Chrysostom in the epistle to the Romans. He begins by pointing out that Jezebel was punished worse then Achab for she it was who pushed him to kill Naboth and confiscate his vineyard. Chrysostom goes on:
“When we see anyone sinning, let us, so far from goading them on, even pull them back from the pit of iniquity, that we may not have to be punished for the ruin of others besides ourselves. And let us be continually in mind of the awful judgment seat, of the stream of fire, of the chains never to be loosed, of the darkness with no light, the gnashing of teeth, and the venomous worm. ‘Ah, but God is merciful?’ Are these then mere words? And was not that rich man punished for despising Lazarus? Are not the foolish virgins cast out of the Bridal chamber? Do not they who did not feed him go away into the fire prepared for the devil? Will not he that hath soiled garments be bound hand and foot and go to ruin? Will not he that demanded the hundred pence to be paid be given over to the tormentors? Is not that said of the adulterers true, that their worm shall not die, nor their fire be quenched? Are these but mere threats then? ‘Yea, it is answered, dost thou venture to make such an assertion, and that too when thou passest jugement of thine own opinion?’ (Sounds very much like the modern: ‘you’re being judgmental!’).
“Why, I shall be able to prove the contrary, both from what he said, and from what he did. For if you will not believe by the punishments which are to come, at least believe by those that have already happened. For what have happened, and have come forth into reality are surely not threats and words. Who then was it that flooded the whole world, and effected that baleful wreck, and the utter destruction of our whole race? Who was it that after this, hurled those thunders and lightnings upon the land of Sodom? Who that drowned all Egypt in the sea? Who that consumed the six hundred thousand men in the wilderness? Who that burnt up the synagogue of Abiram? Who that bade the earth open her mouth for the company of Core and Dathan, and swallow them up? Who that carried off the threescore and ten thousand at one sweep in David’s time?” (St John Chrysostom, Homily 25 on the epistle to the Romans, Breviary, 10th Sunday after Pentecost, II Nocturn).
Here my dear Friends, we have the very marrow of the Gospel. A Father of the Church warning us that God’s threats are real, just as His punishments in the past were real. It has to be one of the most wicked betrayals of the Gospel of our Lord when we have bishops running around telling people that God does not actually punish, and that all will end well and everyone will be saved. I say it again: any prelate, any priest who dares to say such things, who dares insinuate such things, is guilty of heresy before the Church of God and all of Catholic tradition. It is false, it is wicked, it has no justification whatsoever. All it does is reassure sinners so that they will stay nice and comfortable in their sin, until they meet their Maker and pay the everlasting punishment for listening to the heretics and not making an effort to actually go and read what God has revealed to us.
We actually have here a living example, right before our eyes, of the failure of the teaching office of the Church to convey in a convincing manner the fulness of God’s revelation. And it is because of this that God has no other option but to let go and punish. Let’s not forget what Our Lady said at La Salette: “If my people do not wish to submit themselves, I am forced to let go the hand of my Son. It is so heavy and weighs me down so much I can no longer hold it back”. The calamities that hit France after that are well known, the Franco-Prussian, the wholesale slaughter of the First World War, and then the loss of sovereignty during the Second World War, to name only a few.
So why, you may be asking yourselves, why, Father, scare us with these stories? Can’t we just be like other people and get along with the world and not rock the boat? Precisely because that is what has led us to the situation we now find ourselves in. Sixty years ago an event took place in Rome at which the enemies of the Church prevailed upon her to cease her resistance. Resistance stopped, from the top to the bottom of the Church, and since then everything Catholic has been swept away, bit by bit, one after another. There is only one way to set things straight again and that is to return to resistance. The very essence of Christianity is to resist the world. Our Lord made that clear from the start: If they persecuted me, they will persecute you. If they are not persecuting us, it is because we have ceased to resist and are being led along like sheep to the slaughter. Only what’s dead flows with the current. St John too was clear: Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, is the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life, which is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the concupiscence thereof: but he that doth the will of God, abideth for ever (1 Jn 2:15-17). And St Paul: If I seek to please men, I am not the servant of Christ (Gal 1:10).
We must resist the disintegration of our faith and our culture, and we must do so openly, calling out errors by name, and calling out the people who condone them. Nor can we give into the temptation of “catacombism”, which was part of the mentality promoted by many of the architects of the modern apostasy, and which essentially says that we need to go and hide in the catacombs and not enter into open conflict with the world and its errors. Such people live in the illusion of being able to survive without fighting; it is the denial of the militant conception of Christianity. And it is based on another lie, for the Christians of the catacombs did not run away from the battle. The lived in the world, fully aware of their duty of conquering the world for Christ, and exposed themselves to martyrdom which many of them suffered. Pius XII writes: “The Christian, if he does honour to the name he bears, is always an apostle; it is not permitted to the Soldier of Christ that he quit the battlefield, because only death puts an end to his military service” (Pius XII).
No, we cannot be prisoners of silence. We must speak the truth of the faith, and we must do so with clarity, prepared to bear the consequences. On the occasion of the 14th centenary of the death of St Benedict, Pius XII wrote: “I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world” (Mt 28:20). At no time in history does this promise lose its force; it is verified in the course of all ages flowing, as they do, under the guidance of Divine Providence. But when enemies assail the Christian name more fiercely, when the fateful barque of Peter is tossed about more violently, and when everything seems to be tottering with no hope of human support, it is then that Christ is present, Bondsman, Comforter, Source of supernatural power, and raises up fresh champions to protect Catholicism, to restore it to its former vigour, and give it even greater increase under the inspiration and help of heavenly grace.” (Pius XII, Ency. Fulgens Radiatur, 21 March 1947).
St Louis de Montfort wrote of the apostles of the latter days whom he describes thus: “They shall be clouds thundering and flying through the air at the least breath of the Holy Ghost; who, detaching themselves from everything and troubling themselves about nothing, shall shower forth the rain of the Word of God and of life eternal. They shall thunder against sin; they shall storm against the world; they shall strike the devil and his crew; and they shall pierce through and through, for life or for death, with their two-edged sword of the Word of God, all those to whom they shall be sent on the part of the Most High” (True Devotion, 57).
Reading those words, one cannot fail to think of Phinehas, grandson of Aaron the High Priest. When the Israelites began to whore with the daughters of Moab and to worship the Baal of Peor, the anger of the Lord was kindled and he ordered Moses and the judges to put to the sword the men who had defiled themselves with the pagan women. Thereupon, one of the men of the people, with unspeakable shamelessness, took one of the Midianite women into his tent in the very sight of all the people. When Phinehas perceived this, he took a spear in his hand and went into the chamber where they lay together and pierced both of them, the man and the woman through their private parts. Thus the plague on the people of Israel was stopped. But twenty-four thousand died as a punishment. (Cf. Numbers 24). We sing the praises of Phinehas every Saturday at Matins, in psalm 105: Then Phinehas stood up, and pacified him: and the slaughter ceased.
The story frightens us. Few today are capable of understanding the action of this holy man, praised by God and the Church. Why? Because we have lost the zeal for the holiness of God; we have lost the fear of God and hatred for sin; we have compromised with a false spirit of irenicism, and we are afraid of offending people but not God. But while we fear offending the world, we leave God waiting, thereby making manifest where our true allegiance lies.
Let that cease, my dear Friends. Let that cease in our lives. The time is short. Let’s use it well to turn back to God, for we have only one life and one soul, and there is no second chance.
