William Hole, 1885
Translation of the Epistle for the Ninth Sunday After Pentecost (1 Cor 10:6-13)
Brethren: These things came to pass as examples to us, that we should not lust after evil things, even as they lusted. And do not become idolators, even as some of them were, as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.” Neither let us commit fornication, even as some of them committed fornication, and fell there in one day, twenty-three thousand. Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them tempted, and perished at the serpents. Neither murmur, as some of them murmured, and perished at the hands of the destroyer. Now all of these things happened to them as a type, and they were written for our correction, upon whom the final age of the world has come. Therefore, let him who thinks he stands take heed, lest he fall. May no temptation take hold of you, but such as man is equal to. God is faithful, and will not permit you to be tempted beyond your strength; but with the temptation will also give you a way out, that you may be able to bear it.
Continuation of the Holy Gospel According to St. Luke (19:41-47)
At that time, when Jesus drew near to Jerusalem and saw the city, He wept over it, saying, “If thou hadst known, in this thy day, even thou, the things that are for thy peace! But now they are hidden from thine eyes. For days will come upon thee when thine enemies will throw up a rampart about thee, and surround thee, and shut thee in on every side, and will dash thee to the ground, and thy children within thee, and will not leave in thee one stone upon another, because thou hast not known the time of thy visitation.” And He entered the temple, and began to cast out those who were selling and buying in it, saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house is a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of thieves.” And He was teaching daily in the temple.
The Saving Words of the Gospel.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Transcription of Sermon
Today, we see one of two instances where Our Lord weeps. This is the mystery of divine pathos. The Incarnate God has taken upon Himself our humanity and with it emotions. We have disordered emotions; His are perfectly ordered. We have what are called antecedent emotions; His correspond perfectly to each situation. In this passage, we see what literature calls an aposiopesis, which is when somebody gets choked up and can’t continue speaking. That’s what we see with Our Lord here. He looks at Jerusalem, starts to think of its coming spiritual and physical destruction, and chokes up, and doesn’t finish what He was going to say. And then when He refers to peace, He says, Would that you had even known today what is to your peace, He’s linking this personal peace with personal conversion. Wouldn’t we like to be ones who bring Him joy rather than further tears? Ironically, Jerusalem means city of peace, and He sees none there because of their universal rejection of Him. Why does He weep at their faithlessness, at their coming destruction?
In the Third Canto of Dante’s Paradiso, Dante meets this Piccardo Donati, this nun who had had some problems in her vocation, spent relatively little time in Purgatory, and then ascended to Heaven, and is in one of the lower stations of Heaven. Dante ascribes the three lowest rungs of Heaven for those who have failed in their vows in any way. And He asks this, this Picarda Donati, “Aren’t you envious of all of those other saints that are more advanced than you, all of those other saints who are closer to our Lord?” And she says, E ‘n la sua volontà è nostra pace; “In His will is our peace.” And then she goes on to say that, “He, Our Lord, is like the ocean towards which everything tends; that which He has created, and nature produces.”
So, how do we tend towards Him, not by nature, but by super-nature willfully? How do we live in a way that gives Him joy rather than tears, and as a result brings peace to our souls? How do we attain peace as opposed to comfort of complacency of our own making, if He wept at the rejection of Jerusalem? And as we heard, in 1917 when St. Francisco Marto of Fatima said that “God is so sad,” he said it in such a childlike, simple way, this fact. How much more sad must He be with our own age?
But Our Lord here exhibits what’s called the beatitude of “Blessed are those who mourn.” “Mourning” is not depressive states. “Mourning” is not an emotional thing; it’s in the will. And it regards seeing those things that we know displease Our Lord and allowing it to bring us grief in order to grieve with Him, not to grieve over our own feelings about it. And this is where we have to be very careful. We can see insanity in the world and in the Church, and get upset. We can see insanity in the Church, in the world, and increase Our Lord’s grief by complaining about it, by gossiping, by allowing it to affect us, whereas the true beatitude of “blessed are those who mourn,” doesn’t take into account how one feels, but rather takes into account how the Sacred Heart feels and goes about making reparation. And so, it means taking into account the Sacred Heart rather than our own feelings.
When we read that only one-third of Catholics believe in the real presence, we know that our Lord weeps. So, what do we do? We have to be all about solutions. We have to prepare ourselves more for Communion. Receive with as much love, and gratitude, and devotion as possible. Increase the quality of our thanksgiving. Spend time with Him in Adoration. Offer up our Communions in reparation to the Sacred Heart. This brings Him joy. We know that. When we hear all sorts of heresies coming from people and places that ought to know better, we know Our Lord weeps. What do we do? Do we whine about it and add to His sorrow? Or do we go about forming ourselves in the Faith, immersing ourselves in the deposit of Faith, in the Catechism, in the Fathers, in St. Thomas Aquinas? You know, the study of the Faith has a purifying effect on the intellect. For everything bad we’ve ever seen or thought about or heard, it needs to be purified. And this direct contact with the Truth has this purifying effect.
Sometimes the devil will remind us of past sins that have already been forgiven. And we can get focused on that, lose sight of our Lord and His mercy. And He weeps again because we’ve taken our eyes off of Him, and we put them back on ourselves. Sometimes, people say they’re worried that there’s some sin that they haven’t confessed that they’re unaware of. Our Faith is founded on principles and facts. We don’t confess feelings. If we have the impression, we’d leave it, we dismiss it. Ask your Guardian Angel to remind you if there’s anything that you need to confess still. Ask him, and then leave it in his hands. When it comes to you, say it in your next Confession, and then leave it again. We ought not become neurotic, and narcissistic, and scrupulous because, again, it’s all about us and where’s Our Lord in all of this? He’s weeping because we’ve taken our heart and our minds off of Him again.
Some rather simple particular things that we can do that we know bring Our Lord joy is praying for the dying, praying for the souls in purgatory, teaching the faith, becoming missionaries, bringing the faith to others in order to work for the saving of souls, not just delegating it through our prayer. But we also have to be prepared for that. If we are not men and women of God, what do we have to offer? And the way to become men and women of God is not complicated. Our Lord doesn’t ask of us anything exotic.
We ought to begin our day with a morning offering, giving Him all of the thoughts, words, and actions of the coming day, giving it to Him. And then, throughout the day, remember this offering and re-consecrate these things to him. We ought to make space for mental prayer. A priest ought to do at least an hour of mental prayer. Laity ought to do 15 to 30 minutes of mental prayer a day. Daily rosary, a little spiritual reading, study of the Faith, and then all of those things that make up our vocation, our duties. At the end of the day, having tried to give Him glory with our thoughts, our words, our actions, we take stock, we do an examination of conscience. We thank Him for the graces of the day, we thank Him for our ability, and those times when we cooperate with His grace. If we find that we didn’t cooperate with His grace, we ask pardon, we take note, and we work on it more tomorrow. We ought to choose a small penance for every day, Sundays, Sundays and feast days excluded. We ought to fast once a week, and fasting can take all different shapes.
Living to please Him and longing for Him throughout the day has a purifying effect on our hearts. It prepares us for Him. If you think about the souls in purgatory, they don’t remember their sins. They’re so hyper-focused on Our Lord. They’re not thinking about themselves. We have to be something like that here and now, and we do this through desire, through longing for Christ. This longing for Christ, this desire for Him, has a purifying effect on our hearts or minds. It detaches us from creatures and reattaches us to the Heart of Christ.
John Henry Newman – I imagine everybody’s going to be quoting him now for a while – He said, “A well catechized child is already a prepared missionary.” In other words, this immersion in the Truth then is the preparation that one needs. And the Truth is not a bunch of ideas, the Truth is a person. It’s Christ himself. And in living that way, then we can bring joy to Our Lord and make up for many divine tears.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, the Holy Ghost.
~Fr. Ermatinger