Corpus Christi Blog

(Continued).

(2) The Pillars: Catholic Doctrine
And then, dear friends, what else does our cathedral need? It needs solid pillars to support the vaults. What are these pillars? What foundation is needed to support the graceful slenderness of the Gothic rib-vaults? The Catholic doctrine we have received from the apostles is the only solid foundation we can find.

If everyone defends his own opinion, theological hypotheses, novelties, or a pastoral approach that contradicts the demands of the Gospel and the perennial Magisterium of the Church, then division will spread everywhere.

I am wounded when I see so many pastors selling off Catholic doctrine and sowing division among the faithful. We owe the Christian people a clear teaching, firm and stable. How can we allow bishops and episcopal conferences to contradict one another? Where confusion reigns, God cannot dwell! For God is Light and Truth.

(Continued from last week).

The great cathedrals of the West could have been built only by men of great faith and great humility who were profoundly happy to know that they were sons of God. They are like a song of joy, a hymn to God’s glory sculpted in stone and painted in glass. They are the work of sons who love and adore their heavenly Father! All were glad to carve into stone an expression of their faith and love for God, and not for the glory of their own name. Their art works were meant to glory and praise God alone. Modern Western man is too sad to achieve such works of art.

He has chosen to be a solitary orphan: how can he chant the glory of the eternal Father from whom he has received all? Well then, what shall he do? Before the ruins of Notre-Dame, some have been tempted to say: See, this building has served its purpose. Let us build something new, more modern. Let us build something after our own image! A building that speaks, not of God’s glory, but the glory of man, of the power of science and modernity.

“As a bishop,” said Cardinal Robert Sarah at a May 25th conference in Paris, “it is my duty to warn the West: behold the flames of barbarism threaten you!”

Allow me first of all to thank Monseigneur Michel Aupetit, Archbishop of Paris, and the curé of Saint FrançoisXavier parish, Fr. Lefèvre-Pontalis, for their fraternal welcome.

I have come to present my latest book: The Day is Now Far Spent. In this book, I analyze the profound crisis of the West, a crisis of faith, a crisis of the Church, of the priesthood, of identity, a crisis of the meaning of man and human life. I discuss this spiritual collapse and all its consequences.

This evening I would like to repeat these convictions I hold so deeply, by putting them into the perspective of a moving visit I made yesterday. Just hours ago I was at the cathedral of Notre-Dame of Paris. As I entered the gutted church, and contemplated its ruined vaults, I could not help but see in it a symbol of the situation of Western civilization and of the Church in Europe.

Friends, if you remember last week’s Gospel in which Deacon preached about what it means to be a follower of Jesus, what it means to be a disciple. Perhaps the last verse will jog your memory, “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the Kingdom of God”. In other words, to be a disciple, to truly follow Jesus we cannot be look back to what we left behind, but we must have eyes and hearts looking forward to where Jesus leads us. I bring last week’s Gospel up because today’s Gospel and the sending of the 72 others comes immediately after that verse. However, what I want to do today, is to continue the theme began last week about what it means to follow Jesus by highlighting perhaps the greatest example for us in St Paul, and unpacking a few but powerful verses of his writing in today’s 2nd reading.

St Paul is the first witness and teacher about what Christianity and Discipleship is all about. Keep in mind also, that before Paul became perhaps the greatest evangelist the Church and world has ever known, Paul was Saul- a devout Jew who persecuted the Church Christ established. So, if there is hope for a man like Saul, there is hope for you and I, and every lost soul we pray for.

Father Chad spoke to everyone about a “do-it-yourself” retreat in preparation for Marian Consecration. He welcomed everyone to share in this retreat and invited participants to come every Thursday night. The retreat is called 33 Days to Morning Glory. I would like to share a short story, or should I say, a gift from God, with everyone. In our house we have a prayer room. Every morning at 6:30 AM, before my wife, Rose leaves for work, I will go in there to light six candles – a candle for Jesus, St. Michael the Archangel, Guardian Angel, St. Joseph, St. Jude, and Mother Mary. In the middle of those candles is a statuette of the Divine Mercy image of Jesus. We start every morning with the Holy Rosary followed by the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. Then we pray for a list of people and finish with a prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel. When we're done, my wife will put out all six candles and finish getting ready for work. After my wife leaves, I would go back upstairs and do some work on the computer. One morning, when going back upstairs to our prayer room, I notice all six candles were still alight. I called my wife and told her, “you forgot to blow out the candles this morning.” She replied, “No, I did blow them all out.” So after that day, we would double check the candles before leaving the room.