Trust in God
Sermon given on May 8, 1994 @ Immaculate Conception church in Post Falls, Idaho
+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost
Ecce sacerdos magnus qui magna opere tusat, Behold a great priest who greatly coughs. I’ve picked up an Idaho throat, I think. Therefore, I shan’t speak too long this morning and let me hasten to say that the few minutes delay at the beginning of Mass was my fault and not Fr. Doran’s. Fortunately, the church doors were still opened when I arrived.
My dear friends, dear fathers, it has been a great pleasure to be here for two or three days – it really is an inspiration. As you may know, in running any organization there is what is called the “good cop, bad cop” routine. You need a bad cop, you need one who is nasty and one who is nice. The Redemptorists used to do exactly that with the mission. When two priests used to preach a mission one of them would be a holy terror and the other would pick up the pieces. It is an old technique. I think since I can rely on Fr. Doran to be nasty enough I can say a few nice things today. It is an inspiration, it really is an inspiration to find a Catholic parish operating surely like a Catholic parish should operate with the various societies, the various groups for the young and the older, for the boys and the girls with its schools and it’s a whole unit and of course it is also a family.
Our age suffers bitterly from individualism. The excessive admiration of people who stand on their own. It is certainly true that we need sometimes to be heroic and we do need sometimes to stand on our own but human nature is not normally made to stand on its own. Human beings are made as Benjamin Franklin said, “to hang together or to hang separately.” And what is happening now today is that a vast majority of human beings in these big cities are hanging separately say with a noose around their necks - around their spiritual necks because their lives are so individual and so cut off from other people and they don’t know what it is that they are lacking and their instincts and their formation carries them or pushes them to be even more individualistic. If they think that they are in some kind of difficulty they don’t imagine that it is because they are standing too much on their own that they are without family or without parents or without children, or without uncles or aunts or without friends. They imagine that if only they were still more alone they would be happy and that the root of happiness is to stand on your own two feet. It is not the way God, the Lord God, designed human beings to work and it isn’t the way they work in fact. Man, as the great Aristotle said without the light of the faith many years ago, “Man is a social animal.” That is to say he is an animal designed and made to live in society. To live with his fellow human beings. This is true both naturally and supernaturally. We shall not be alone in heaven. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints. Not the individuality or loneliness of saints but the Communion of Saints. That is the supernatural bonding of Catholics in heaven and there is of course a supernatural bonding of them here on earth in the parishes. The parish is the natural unit of the Catholic Church – it is the family. I am sure many of you know, many of you are now realizing having come here. If the whole family thinks alike that is a great blessing, and if mother and father are united in the faith and they draw the children after them so that at least the family hangs together that is a great blessing and I am sure many of you know these terrible cases of the families being broken up and split by difference of belief or a complete lack of belief.
But even if the family hangs together, it is still not enough because while the Lord God definitely designed the family to hang together, He designed human beings to come into this world in a family with a mother who is a mother and with a father who is a father and not with a butch for a mother nor a wimp for a father but with a father who is a real father and a mother who is a real mother.
If you want to know how to do that the Catholic Church will teach you. The Catholic Church will unfailingly teach you and God love you if you wish to learn. That even if the family is as its meant to be still the family is not designed to stand on its own. I am sure that so many of you realize that the family is designed to mesh in with the bonds of charity; charity which is the bond of perfection says St. Paul.
The family is designed to join many other families in a larger grouping still and in the Catholic Church that grouping is the parish. And so, of course, it doesn't depend upon all of you. Some of you I am sure live too far away to be able to easily to get here during the week. But in the old days, in the United States of America there were many Catholic parishes across the land formed frequently by groups of immigrants who brought the Faith with them from the old country. And they often had the same language for instance and the same customs and they naturally and automatically bonded together in parishes not just families and they formed parishes which were the strength of the Catholic Church for many years surely in this country. And then of course strictly so that some of you live maybe too far away to take part in parish activities but if you live close enough you would be very wise if you take part in the parish activities. You would be very wise because God will give it back to you. In love of your faith and love of your church which will help you and your family to heaven.
Then make use of the parish activities if you live nearby and another thing most certainly that the parish can and should do as a parish and that is to sing the Common of the Mass. I may begin to play the bad cop for a few moments but St. Pius X was very keen that in the parishes all of the people should sing the Common of the Mass that is to say the Kyrie, the Gloria, the Sanctus, the Creed, and the Agnus Dei. Of course, this may be a Paschal Mass which you do not know so well but in many of our chapels and missions and churches of the SSPX here in the United States the people don't sing. It is a great shame. That they shouldn't that they may not sing the Proper is completely understandable - that needs some training and some practice and so knowledge of the particular chants this Sunday but when they know the Kyrie and the Gloria from having heard them very often they should sing. “To sing,” says St. Augustine, “is to pray twice.” The enemy knows how true that is. Have you noticed how the little children tend to naturally sing? And if they have not been taught anything else they will sing the abject advertising jingles that they see or hear in TV. I can still remember one or two from my own youth because the advertisers, Madison Avenue, know that singing and rhyming poetry or verse goes inside people. It goes inside their soul.
When Arius wanted to transmit the Arian heresy he made new hymns; he made Arian hymns for the people to sing. When Luther wanted to get over Protestantism to the people he also made new hymns “Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott” for instance and others and with the music and the words the idea behind that music and those words goes into the soul. Music has a deep effect on the soul. One of the great instruments of the devil today for capturing the youth, perhaps the first in line the first instrument with which he really begins to get inside the youngster, is that Rock music. When I was teaching at a school in England I can remember that the boys, this was a few years ago so things have got worse instead, when the boys of 12 or 13 arrived at this school their hair was neatly brushed and their buttons were all done up on their jackets and their tie was tied and the top shirt button was buttoned but give them three or six or nine months give them especially the beginning to listen to rock music and the button behind the tie became undone the tie dropped an inch the buttons of the jacket became undone the hair became tousled and it was that music that was getting into them and so you'll be very wise if you make sure that the Church's music goes into your little children especially.
The soul is impregnated with the Chant when it sings the chant. When a young soul is learning how to sing the chant as some of you here are doing - immense good flows into the soul. I remember visiting a French family once - the mother was actually Jєωιѕн who was converted to Catholicism but she was a very good musician and she had taught all of her nine children to play some instrument except the littlest - four year old Henry who had not yet learned but all of the other children learned to play an instrument. They formed a little band and they put on, when I visited them, a little concert of Mozart. They played a Mozart divertimenti (?) or serenade for my benefit and the other eight children played the violin, a flute, a clarinet, a cello, a piano and so on and she had arranged the Mozart. Young Henry sat on my lap and he listened at four years old - he listened. It was quite clear he was listening and I could see that rock music would not get to first base with young Henry. There is already in that little soul beauty and order with this lovely music of Mozart and when that ugly jarring horror and crashing comes at his ears he is going to say "No way, no way!". And of course his mother who would teach him and teach him an instrument then he'll join, I am sure he will join a band probably. It is not everyone who could do such a thing in the family but maybe it is just a thought maybe the youngsters - the boys who parade across the parking lots who march and counter-march across the parking lot maybe if they had a few pipes and whistles and drums it would add to the effect. Some strong and virile music that would suit them as boys and future men. So that the boys learn to be men as the girls learn to be women.
My dear friends you have a great deal running for you here. It is an immense gift in our day and age and a miracle but it is a miracle which, I will play good cop again, depends upon you because if you weren't looking for the truth and if you weren't looking for discipline you wouldn't be here and you wouldn't be responding to what is offered to you here as you obviously are. And the Lord God could easily be taking it away again. If you wish to keep what you have you need only appreciate and make use of what Our Lord makes available to you and make sure also that you thank Him. I am sure many of you realise just how much… just what a privilege it is to be able to live in a Catholic parish today in 1994. Make sure that you thank God for it. Because when He is thanked for His gifts put yourself in His place. This was said about Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal many years ago. I think it was St. Catherine Laboure who saw her hands with the rays coming down to the earth and she saw that some of the rays were colored black instead of shining rays of light from her hands down to the earth and she asked the Mother of God why are some of the rays black. And the Mother of God replied that they are graces which are being refused. Imagine how often and in how many places today that the grace of God is being thrown back in His face. Tragic...tragic. Imagine then the sacred feelings of the Sacred Heart.
For when he finds his graces and his gifts being gladly received amidst so many that refuse them put yourself for a few moments in His shoes and then act or pray to Him correspondingly. I said yesterday my dear friends or the day before that we may have some dark days ahead of us but remember the Lord God of Hosts, the true God, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Sacred Heart of Jesus, this God all-powerful, the only thing that stops Him acting is that human beings have free will and they don't want Him to act. They want Him to get out of his universe again. Tragic! They want to get Him out. They want to take over… they want to take His place. Man wants to be God and even unfortunately the highest authorities of the Church are talking constantly as though man should replace God. Man, man, man...tragic! Well, God is all-powerful, He could protect anything He chose to protect; it is completely protected and it is so obvious. If you stop for one moment to think - the devil is merely a creature and he cannot raise his little claw without the permission of God.
Of course, the Mother of God has from her Son a complete power, not a divine power, but a complete power over the devil . She crushes him like a snake beneath her feet. But the Lord God doesn't always run things the way that we want - we can ask for something in our prayers, I was quoting to you the example of St. Therese of Liseux yesterday I think - we can ask for something from our prayer and it seems to be the opposite but have trust in God. He knows want He is doing - do not doubt His wisdom or His providence and if He seems to abandon us or to abandon you don't believe it. Remember Our Lord on the Cross, “My God, My God why hast thou abandoned me,” and yet the truth of the matter was God has in no way abandoned Him. The Father was at that moment granting Him the salvation of mankind - the darkest, the apparently darkest moment - the greatest moment of Our Lord's life on earth. So, my dear friends, we may be due for some dark moments, I am not a prophet and I don't know but I must say it looks logical. Trust God and make full use of and make thanks to the Lord God and His Blessed Mother for all the gifts of His, the immense gifts of His, that all of you can appreciate, that can make use of, here and now at least for the time being.
+ In the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Ghost, Amen.
Topic: Bishop Williamson Sermon - Trust in God (Read 1193 times)