The Soul is a Spirit created by God out of nothing and is made for a specific body. The Soul is to be the immortal form of a particular mortal body set within time and space. The soul is the form of the body but the body is the matter of the soul which specifies the individuality of that soul and is unique to it – they are made for one another. It is for this reason that there cannot be reincarnation of a soul into any other body. Thus, the Coming of a soul occurs at conception for it is created by God out of nothing at this point and is thrown into an Adventure in a specific body that will be specified by the time and place in which it will live, move and have its being. It will thereby have a history that will climax in being opened out to eternity and it is this that will make it the story of a human person! Although the soul is the form of the body, the soul outlives the mortal body when death comes to separate soul from that body. However, this soul and therefore YOU, will also outlive the earth, the stars, the galaxies and the universe!

Our Lord Jesus is the first born from the dead and brings into being a new creation, but He will come again to judge the living and the dead which we call the 2nd Coming. At the Second Coming there will be the General Resurrection from the Dead when the Blessed will find that their immortal souls will be reunited to their own resurrected bodies which are now made immortal, impassable, indestructible and glorious like Christ’s Glorified Body! But this final Resurrection of both the Blessed and the Damned will pivot on what you and I choose to be and to do in space and time in our specific mortal bodies!

It is vital to know that though the body comes from our parents, the soul is created out of nothing by God at the very moment of conception, to inform, animate and move a body uniquely fitted for it. It is from this moment of conception that a soul moves into being, time, space and materiality and sets sail on the great hazard of an adventure of Being and Becoming! An adventure in space and time, but experienced as history, in which on all sides the embodied soul is beset by risks, dangers, threats and temptations to it’s physical, it’s emotional, it’s intellectual, it’s moral and it’s spiritual life as it seeks to grow up to eternity! It is for this reason that Jesus Comes to bring us into the state of Grace.

The greatest hazard for mankind has arisen in our times in the systemic attack on the very notion, nature and existence of the soul in education, media, politics, popular culture and pseudo-science. When a man, a woman, a youth or a child is cut off from even knowing that there is a soul then life becomes the life of a sleep walker who is walking in ever growing darkness which is at first bewitching as a dream but steadily grows into a nightmare of an unholy horror. Their stories and their lives are hollowed out by the denial of the soul and, as a result, their lives are filled with untrammelled appetites and crashing waves of emotion that overwhelm mind and reason till it is as horizontalized as a corpse. Thus, they stumble in a dark downward plunging depression of directionless-ness that is the consequence of a life lived without any vertical and eternal compass and they become curved in on themselves with no eternal horizon till they truly become The Walking Dead, stumbling aimlessly around in time and space and finally lost for all eternity!

It is only the shock of death and the consequential after-shock that such a person discovers that though his or her body died, HE or SHE did not! For they find that their souls are standing in the eternal hall of the King of kings, a hall of judgment, where everything is now revealed fully and completely and where there is nowhere to hide!

What can be worse than to wake-up on the other side of death to the eternal truth that you were made to live forever but instead you had lived a life purely on the basis of a belief that death was oblivion and that you had no immortal soul? In otherwords, you abandoned the adventure of soul-making to follow the crowd, the herd, the mob, what everyone else was doing…because you thought there was safety in numbers! 

A shocking realisation that all through one’s life there were rumours, people, teachings, signs and evidence that bespoke of the reality that every human being had an immortal soul but which you had chosen to ignore, dismiss and even ridicule because that is what everybody else was doing. Like a Lemming you had followed the crowd over the cliff…to perdition!

As our family has found, the most powerful way to engage our grief, so as not to be overwhelmed by our loss, is to give thanks for the many signs of grace in mum’s life that like a libation was poured into our lives. We even give thanks for all Mum’s sufferings where she showed us how to carry the cross.

As Mum grew older and more frail, she strangely grew more real to us. We take to heart the words of St Paul in the second letter to the Corinthians where he writes: ‘So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day.  For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison’, [2 Cor 4:16-17].

At the heart of the mystery of baptism, God makes a promise to each of us in and through his Son, Jesus Christ, namely, that no one needs to live alone, to suffer alone, or to die alone. Our mother did not die alone as she entered the mystery of Good Friday on late Friday night and early Saturday morning of 3rd and 4th October: a time between the times when the first Friday flowed into the First Saturday.

Her death, and our future deaths, is that final testing in that Holy War, that  spiritual warfare, which fights over a soul from the moment of its baptism. It is the final test we will all undergo: whether we will die like the good thief or die like the bad thief; die a friend of God or die an enemy of God; die truly repenting of our sins or die unrepenting of our sins? It is a Holy War as we have to strive hard to die in the state of grace as St Paul says: I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race. I have kept the faith [2 Tim 4:7].

We are called to pray for the soul of Eileen Barrett and the greatest and most important prayer we can offer is to offer the Requiem Mass. This is required of us because her soul now stands before the Judgment seat of God to render an account of her life. The Requiem Mass is offered for her so that she may have a merciful judgment. Indeed, this is something all of us will have to do undergo as St Paul reveals: ‘For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the body.” [2 Cor 5:10]. But I wonder sometimes whether there will still be Requiem Masses and priests when it comes to our turn to enter our Good Friday?

What we can say now is that each of us has an appointment with Good Friday. Our mum has gone through her Good Friday; we here at this requiem Mass and later at the burial of Mum’s remains in Dunstable cemetery are in Holy Saturday, like the Apostles. But through this Requiem Mass, through the Masses offered for Mum and through our personal prayers we are praying that Mum, after a merciful judgment, may hear those joyful Easter words of Jesus: ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’ [Matt 25:34].

We know the Lord through his Church, the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, has provided for us the 7 Sacraments. With this Sacramental economy of salvation the Lord brings about the salvation of every soul who comes in search of him: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you [Matt 7:7].

Furthermore, through the Church, we have been given a powerful tradition that is an initiation into the paschal mystery. So let us speak of this Tradition that initiates us into Good Friday which the Church calls the Last Rites! As a family, we have found them a powerful source of grace and a great source of comfort for Mum and for us.

It is important to understand that the Sacraments are for the living. Thus, it is always vitally important that we call a priest to come to the sick so that they may be able to receive the Sacrament of Confession, the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick and the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Indeed, this can be done at home as well as in hospital, but it can also be done in the parish Mass, especially if the priest hears the Confession of the sick person before Mass. Having these sacraments at the Mass enlists parishioners to be a powerful source of healing and protection for the sick who go into hospital!

Why speak of Protection? In these days when so many in the medical profession have been infected by the culture of death or seemingly have not taken or not remembered the Hippocratic oath, we do need to pray that the Lord will assist those who minister to the sick so that they do so with a good heart, a good will, with attentiveness and skill. In the Litany of Anointing doctors and nurses are incorporated in our prayer, where it says: Assist all those who care for the sick: Lord have mercy. Something as a family we gratefully experienced as a grace in how some of the medical staff cared for our own mother in the hospital.

When a person is gravely ill and in possession of their faculties, it is the duty of a spouse, the family, relatives and friends to help the gravely ill person to turn towards the Lord. Indeed, when a sick person’s condition is clearly terminal, the work of a family must be to surround their loved one with love, with kindness and make sure that they receive the Sacraments of Confession, the Anointing of the Sick and the Eucharist. It is the time, the soul-time of Kairos, for them to gather round and to pray using the Divine Mercy, the Rosary and the Litany of the Saints to strengthen the faith of the sick person. Laity can also bless the death-bed and bless their gravely ill loved one with Holy Water. The love, care and ministry to the dying is at this stage a spiritual and corporal work of mercy that helps them to turn away from this world and turn towards Our Lord, Our Lady, the Angels and the saints.

Finally, in the Rites of the Dying the priest has a vital role in giving the Sacraments but he is also there to give the Apostolic Pardon and Viaticum. The Apostolic pardon is given to the dying at the conclusion of Confession or the Penitential Rite and it promises full remission of the temporal punishments for sin. Thus, is a soul prepared to meet his or her maker, when they hear those powerful words of the Apostolic Pardon proclaimed by the priest: ‘By the Authority which the Apostolic See has given to me, I grant you a full pardon and the remission of all your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, + and of the Holy Spirit. Amen’.

Now Viaticum is the receiving of the Eucharist after making a final profession of faith based on the Baptismal promises that we say at Easter. It is the duty of all Catholics to ask for Viaticum for themselves or their loved ones when in a state of grave illness. Viaticum makes the sick Christ-like because they have chosen to enter the mystery of Good Friday and to die a death like his! Viaticum once received means that our loved one is now in a state of grace, whereby, they can offer their sufferings and their dying for their sins, for their loved ones, for conversion of sinners and for the reparation of sins of their loved ones and humanity itself and such offerings are powerfully efficacious.

Given this mysterious reality of how the soul conformed to Christ on the cross enters their last agony, this is not the time for those close-by to gossip or engage in useless worldly conversations. Rather, it is a time for those around the death-bed to assist the sick person with weapons like Gospel readings, Psalms, Litany of the Saints and other litanies and especially the Divine Mercy and the Rosary. In so doing we help our loved one to turn from this world and turn towards the Lord and go to God in faith, in hope and in charity.

In conclusion, we as a family give thanks for the love and blessings that came through Mum’s faithful and devout service to God, the family and the Church. Indeed, all of us today give thanks for my mother’s generous welcome, her feasts at table, her works of mercy and her amazing conversations. She was indeed a great conversationalist!

So, I would like to end by going back to the year 387AD. A meeting occurred that year that reminds me of the final conversations, we the family, had with our Mum over the three weeks before she went to the Lord. A few days before St Monica died, she spoke to her son, St Augustine, and said these words:

“My son, for my own part, nothing more gives me delight in this life. I do not know what I still do here, or why I am yet here, since the hopes of this world are already faded. One thing there was for which I desired to linger for a while in this life, that I might see you a Catholic before I died. My God hath superabundantly conceded me this grace, since I see that you already despise earthly happiness to serve the Lord. What then have I to do here?” [Book IX of ‘Confessions]

At the hospital on Friday early evening, Mum and two doctors talked to us, the family. Mum expressed her desire to leave the hospital and come home back to the family home. What we did not realise, at the time, and what she was actually telling us and the doctors, was this: she wanted to come home, to go home! The Lord answered her prayer and so she came home and there entered the mystery of Good Friday.

We pray that we too, when we come to our own initiation into Good Friday, that we may come home to our true home where there will be no more tears, for the LORD God will wipe away tears from all faces [Is 25:8]. The Lord God in raising Jesus from the Dead has shown us the future and that future is that we have a real, true and eternal home, the home that is the house of our Heavenly Father.

It is there in God’s house that we hope to meet Eileen Philomena Barrett again. But not yet. The Lord has given each of us a mission. Before we can go to heaven, we must first accomplish that mission on earth that has been given to us by the Lord when we were baptised into the life, death and resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

By a first born son.

From the dawn of mankind, human beings, unlike animals, have also surrounded eating and drinking with rituals, ceremonies and celebrations. As such we have given thanks to the divine for a good harvest, we have celebrated significant events with food and drink be they birthdays, weddings, graduations, awards, anniversaries, funerals and we have offered up oblations [bread and food], libations [wine and liquids] and sacrifices [food and animals…even humans] along with grace at meals.

In the Catholic Church, under the appearance of bread and wine, we, Catholics, offer up but also eat and drink the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ at the command of Our Lord: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” [John 6:53].

Here we go beyond metabolism where food and drink is changed into us and we discover the mystery of Theabolism, where we are changed into that food and drink that is the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ! We go beyond a ritual to a sacrament that brings us both into the mystery of the Eucharist and also brings us upwards to the divine so that we become what we eat and drink and what we eat and drink is the Divine Life that fits us out from the inside out to become beings made to transcend space, time, energy and matter and become godly beings sharing God ‘s life.

So how would the Enemy stop this happening?

The Enemy would stop this be replacing natural bread and natural wine with unnatural super-processed mimics of bread and wine! So they would close down the natural producers of food and drink and put in their place Global companies who would be the ones to buy up their land through the help of anti-people, anti-life and anti-nature of totalitarian States who pass so called Green Laws. The Mass would then cease to exist in our world.

Thus, all those ecclesiastical figures who today vote and follow the Green Inertia movement with their net nought policies are, at best, like turkeys voting for Christmas or, at worst, they are secret members of secret societies who despise the Common Man and the People of the Cross!

We need today to gather, as Catholics, our families and like-minded friends to develop a faith & culture table fellowship. Where we can discuss and share our critiques of what is happening to our country and in our world. But then to go further and consider all of our critiques in the light of what our Sacred Tradition of mystics and prophets have to say to us today in their exhortations, calls, challenges and warnings that make up their prophecies for our times. In this we have an important and vital fellowship around both the food of life and the word of life that flows from the Word of Life and the Food of Life central to all our mystics, prophet and saints which is called Sacrum Convivium!

Watch and Listen : O Sacrum Convivium

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGgK02bwF9s&ab_channel=pannonia77

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWkLOvh-9Kc&ab_channel=OCPmusic

• https://www.youtube.com/shorts/STFlJuoUVxQ

a time to be born and a time to die,
    a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
    a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace [Ecclesiastes 3:1-8]

But today we seem to be given by the super rich and the superpowerful new forms of the parody against life, the poor, the common man and liberty:

There is a time for killing and for more killing, indeed a time for genocide!

There is a time for War and a time for more War, indeed World War!

There is a time to kill the unborn, to kill the nearly born and a time to kill even children!

There is a time to kill the elderly and a time to kill the sick, young or old…’where do I sign?’ asks the relations, rendered inconvenienced by natural obligations of care!

There is a time to experiment, a time to experiment on human beings and a time to throw away unnecessary human beings!

A time to keep your life and a time for your life to be taken from you!

There is a time to plough and a time to reap but now we find it is the time to take away our farms!

There is a time to eat natural food, a time not to eat natural food and a time to eat non organics to save the planet!

There is a time to own and a time to sell.

But there is a time to take away everything you own…but you will be happy!

There is a time to own your life, to own your body and to own your liberty and a time to have it all taken away by champagne-drinking and food-gorging and party-going politicians and media moguls!

John Paul II warned of the rise of the culture of death 30 years ago in his writing ‘Evangelium Vitae’. Yet many in the Church had cooperated with this culture of death from USA to Europe by criticizing an over focus on life issues in politics like abortion and euthanasia and the near absence in Catholic schools to promote the Gospel of Life!

But as Christians have weakened their defence of the Gospel of life they are now shown today the seamless robe of the ethics of death in the recent votes in UK in our parliament on abortion, euthanasia, deprivation of the poor of cash and deprivation of land through the power grab by investment companies of farms, imposition by the State of id cards, the use of AI technology, the global surveillance and control of human life and indeed the process of discarding human life from the womb to the tomb!

The West now finds both politicians and the main stream media (MSM) promoting and making decisions for world wide war and human annihilation on the basis of a false theology of Dispensationalism and a false reductionist and materialist philosophy of man.

Watch video of Dr Taylor Marshall on Dispensationalism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaYYn9JzThQ&ab_channel=DrTaylorMarshall].

Watch video Pope John Paul II’s Gospel of Life at 30 – A talk by Maria Steen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA6at0GnvKc&ab_channel=IonaInstitute

Watch video ‘1907 Prophetic Dystopian Novel becomes Reality in the UK with the introduction of Assisted Su!c!de.’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORinIFYAFYA&ab_channel=DecreviDeterminedtobeCatholic%40thecatholicman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWWa2jv-ULE&t=39s&ab_channel=TheRemnantVideo

https://www.indcatholicnews.com/news/51900

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/catholicnews/2015/09/christ-is-our-only-hope-syrian-christians-pray-for-miracles-amid-islamists-carnage/

On Friday we had 1st November when some of us might have chosen to celebrate not just the Solemnity of the All Saints as it is a holiday of obligation. But we might have also celebrated All Saints Fireworks night, instead of Guy Fawes Fireworks, so as to celebrate the Saints in Heaven and celebrate the hope that we may get to Heaven and join that celestial company in the Beatific Vision. It is also a celebration that calls us to be saints, here and now, for we are on a great journey which is not on the road to nowhere but on the road with a definite destination, either it is the destination of heaven or the destination of hell! Meanwhile, others in the coming days will be celebrating the anti-Catholic memorial of the 5th November when the gunpowder plot was discovered which led to the execution of Guy Fawkes, and the subsequent aggressive anti-Catholic laws that followed!

On Saturday, we celebrate the Commemoration of All Souls when we both remember and pray for all those souls whom we have loved be they family members, relatives, friends and parishioners that have gone to God. November is the month of Prayer for the Holy Souls. It is a tradition where we personally put a list of our dearly departed in a Holy Souls envelope with a monetary sacrifice and place it in the Holy Souls Box before the altar. The Holy Souls are the souls in Purgatory who we do not just remember but also offer up sacrifices of our time, our treasures and good works be they through our monies, litanies, devotional prayers, fasts, visits to the cemeteries and in the weekday Masses of November.

Meanwhile, others have replaced this Spiritual and Corporal Work of mercy with Halloween and are caught up with a pagan festivity of ghosts and ghouls, witches and demons. It seems that what followed after the Gunpowder plot was a growing darkness in England. It was after the gunpowder plot that William Shakespeare wrote his darkest play to capture the death of the Catholic soul of England, it was called MacBeth. In place of the Catholic prayers and rites of the Holy Mass for the souls of the dead, we have the dark words and rituals of the three witches of Macbeth that would now pervade a very anti-Catholic England, and which has now become in our own times an even darker pagan England:

2 WITCH. Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg, and owlet’s wing,—
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

It seems the words are true ‘that when people cease to believe in God they do not believe in nothing, rather they believe in anything’ and so many today join in the rituals of ghost and ghoul, witches and demons with smiles on their faces and ‘Trick or treat’ on their lips! Many are tricked out of the eternal treat of Holy Mass for the treat of an infernal ritual all because the kids love to do it! Maybe the kids know more than their parents do! Maybe they are able to see that there is a dark side to life that all the comforts and platitudes of those who blandly say God is dead and religion belongs to the past, can no longer see.

So what does the month of the Holy Souls really mean? It means that there is, after death, a time of judgment before the judgment seat of God that no soul can escape. Here our whole life is put before us and it is then that we know for certain that heaven and hell are real! If we consider ourselves as we are now, many of us will sense that we are not quite ready to go straight to heaven, but hopefully few of us will feel we ought to go straight to hell!!! So many of us are stuck in the middle: neither bad enough for hell nor good enough for heaven. We know that there are things in our lives that are bad, sinful or even evil but we have not fully faced up to them or have not done sufficient penance over them.

It is here that this month of the Holy Souls calls each of us to consider that there are souls not in heaven who did not make proper amends for the sins they committed in this life. But keep this in mind, these are called Holy Souls because they are souls who before they died where fully contrite for all the sins they had committed. They are souls who are on the way to heaven because of the perfect contrition they made before they died. Unlike the souls of the damned that died in a state of impenitence and refused God’s mercy and forgiveness...even on their death bed. For God is merciful and does not want any of us to be lost and seeks us to the end of our days to come back to him. It is for this reason that God sent his Son, that his Son died on the cross for our sins and that his Son is raised from the dead. But God cannot take away our free will as we saw with Judas and the bad thief on the cross. If we deny God’s mercy right up to the end then on the other side of death is eternity where our will, our impenitent will, will be fixed for ever.

If we consider how in every Mass during the Eucharistic prayer we pray for the dead then we now know why. The dead are in one of three places: if they are in heaven then they have no need of our prayers; if they are in hell our prayers cannot help them; so the prayers for the dead in the Eucharistic prayer is for the souls in purgatory, the holy Souls. So, the Holy Souls who died fully and truly sorry for all their sins, now need our help in making up for the damage their sins did on earth, namely, our acts of penance, our prayers, our sacrifices and our attendance at Holy Mass for the souls in Purgatory.

So we can do four things for the holy souls in this month of November:

1. Pray in our homes for all those we have lost among family, relatives, friends and parishioners and especially do this with your children;

2. If we are in this parish, we can go to one of the four cemeteries that will be blessed on Saturdays at 12noon;

3. If we are in this parish, stay after Mass and do the Memorial prayer for the dead;

4. Make sure you have made a list of your deceased loved ones AND put it in a Holy Souls envelope with a monetary sacrifice and THEN place it in the Holy Souls Box before the altar.

If we do not do any of these THINGS then what kind of a friend are we? What kind of a parishioner are we? What kind of a parish do we live in? What kind of a family are we? If we have never been seen doing this by our family, by our friends or by our parishioners for any of our own deceased - whom we say we loved - who will be left behind to pray for us when we go before God?

NB All Souls Indulgences

An indulgence, applicable only to the souls in purgatory, is granted to the faithful, who devoutly visit a cemetery and pray, even if only mentally, for the departed. The indulgence is plenary each day from the first to the eighth of November; on other days of the year it is partial.

A plenary indulgence, applicable only to the souls in purgatory, is granted to the faithful, who on the day dedicated to the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed [November 2 {as well as on the Sunday preceding or following, and on All Saints' Day}] piously visit a church. In visiting the church it is required that one Our Father and the Creed be recited.

To acquire a plenary indulgence it is necessary also to fulfil the following three conditions: sacramental Confession, Eucharistic communion, and prayer for the intention of the Holy Father. The three conditions may be fulfilled several days before or after the performance of the visit; it is, however, fitting that communion be received and the prayer for the intention of the Holy Father be said on the same day as the visit.

The condition of praying for the intention of the Holy Father is fully satisfied by reciting one Our Father and one Hail Mary. A plenary indulgence can be acquired only once in the course of the day. However, throughout the rest of November one can obtain a partial indulgence [following the usual conditions mentioned above] when one visits a cemetery and prays for the Holy Souls in Purgatory and for the intentions of the Pope.

Watch YouTube Video on a Sermon on Purgatory by the Jesuit Fr John Hardon SJ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgS369af1Rw&ab_channel=ReturnToTradition

There is of course the apocalyptic part of the Wedding ceremony! It is called the unveiling which is what the word ‘Apocalypse’ means. Indeed, the tradition of unveiling of the bride by the bridegroom is a tradition that is both Biblical and Mystical.

The unveiling points us to the Biblical truth that we find that the origins and truth of Matrimony is unveiled [revealed] at both the beginning of the Bible and at the end of the Bible - the Book of Genesis and the Book of Apocalypse. The unveiling points to the truth that from the beginning, in the Book of Genesis, Matrimony was both a Divine and a Natural institution that predates the Fall of Man. But after the Fall, Original Sin impacted on Matrimony such that it was affected by the post Fall state of the first Man and the first Woman, namely, being robbed of their graces and wounded in their nature. So much so that Matrimony has often been debased by polygamy, adultery, polyamourism and propertarianism such that it needed to be redeemed, repaired and given a new beginning, a new Genesis, which is what happened at the Wedding Feast of Cana!

At the wedding feast of Cana Our Lord Jesus Christ performed his first sign, his first miracle, of changing water into wine! He was unveiling to us that he was starting his Mission with redeeming, repairing and perfecting the wounded state of Matrimony. How? By turning and transforming a tradition of a Jewish wedding, namely, it was the Bridegroom who brought the wine for the wedding. So after the wedding feast of Cana had run out of wine Our Lady goes to her son, Jesus, with this problem and she tells the servants to do whatever her son tells them and Our Lord instructs them to fill the jars with water and bring them to the steward. When the steward tastes the wine he declares it better than the wine they had been consuming. The Steward goes to the bridegroom and scolds him for not observing the tradition that the Bridegroom brings the best wine he can find to the Wedding and serves the best wine first!

So Our Lord uses these two traditions of a Jewish wedding to show, by way of a miracle, that he is the true Bridgroom, the Bridegroom-Messiah of Israel for he is the one who puts new wine into the hearts of the wedding couple and all who come to him. It is the new wine of grace that transforms matrimony into a sacrament for the giving of grace!

Thus, as Our Lord could change water into wine so fallen broken matrimony is changed into a Sacrament. A Sacrament that would be a sign and an instrument of grace, beauty and perfection making couples ultimately fit for heaven in and through the nitty gritty struggles and trials of married life.

Thus, the tradition of the vow of marriage reveals this that both spouses have entered a covenant wherein promises are made to love each other for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health. So it is that a couple’s vows open the way for the Sacrament to transfigure them to be fit and real enough for the Kingdom of Heaven!

As a Sacrament, Holy Matrimony will now point to Christ as the Bridegroom who brings the new wine of grace and it also points to the Church as the Bride of Christ who opens herself to receive the new wine of grace which will thereby open the spouses and their children to the perfection of the Kingdom of Heaven, as we see from the Wedding Feast of Cana in the Gospel of John [2:1-12] and the Marriage supper of the Lamb to his Bride, the Church, in the Book of the Apocalypse [19:6-9].

Here, at the wedding feast at Cana, Our Lord points to how traditions are vital in communicating both the meaning and the grace of the Gospel that he brings. It is here that we see that Our Lord affirms tradition as a vehicle of both revelation and grace. The tradition of the Bridegroom serving the best wine first is used by Our Lord to reveal how he is the Bridegroom Messiah and how Holy Matrimony has been raised to the level of the sacrament. As a Sacrament, Holy Matrimony unites past, present and future: the past [Adam and Eve in Genesis 2:20-24], the present [Miracle at Wedding of Cana John 2:1-12] and the future of God and Man, of Christ and the Church, and the Church on earth with the Church in Heaven [Apoc 19:6-9].

Not surprisingly, the Catholic Church affirms that the deposit of Faith given by Our Lord to his Apostles and through them to the Church is manifested in not one way as with Protestantism with it’s ‘Scripture alone’ error but in two ways. These two ways are Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture - the Oral and the Written tradition of the Revelation of Our Lord Jesus Christ who bestows to his Apostles the Deposit of Faith. As stated clearly by the document on Revelation at the Second Vatican Council called Dei Verbum:

Hence there exists a close connection and communication between Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture. For both of them, flowing from the same divine wellspring, in a certain way merge into a unity and tend toward the same end. For Sacred Scripture is the word of God inasmuch as it is consigned to writing under the inspiration of the divine Spirit, while Sacred Tradition takes the word of God entrusted by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit to the Apostles, and hands it on to their successors in its full purity, so that led by the light of the Spirit of truth, they may in proclaiming it preserve this Word of God faithfully, explain it, and make it more widely known.

Consequently it is not from Sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed. Therefore both Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture are to be accepted and venerated with the same sense of loyalty and reverence.[n. 9]

Indeed, here is also a modern problem for Modern priests who were taught that Revelation is summed up in the triad Scripture, Tradition and Magisterium. It is not! It is to easy to Protestantize this triad to mean that Scripture is prior to Tradition such that if things in tradition ranging from lives of saints, to rites, liturgies, practices and devotions are not in scripture than despite it being in Tradition it is merely a legend and of no significance or value. However, the fact is that Sacred Tradition is both chronologically and logically prior to the written text of Sacred Scripture known as the Bible as it was only with Pope Damasus I in 382 AD at the Council of Rome that the writings in the Canon of the Old Testament and in the Canon of the New Testament were both affirmed and specified to its contents i.e. the books, Gospel accounts and letters. One of the criteria used to put a book or a letter or a Gospel account into the Canon was whether or not they were used in the Liturgy of the Apostolic sees.

So in stead of the triad Scripture, Tradition and Magisterium, Revelation is best summed up in a quartet, namely, Deposit of Faith, Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture and the Magisterium. As the Lord bestowed to the Apostles his Word, the Deposit of Faith, which is manifested in Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture which is confirmed, determined and protected by the Magisterium who received the Holy Spirit to proclaim the Gospel and to teach all the commands of Our Lord to the nations.

Hopefully, as we have discovered and unveiled the meaning of Scripture through a host of critical techniques to unpack the literal and well as the spiritual meaning of Sacred Scripture over these last 60 years, may we also begin to do the same kind of critical work on Sacred Tradition and discover again its fundamental principles whose loss has so blighted our sense of history, our reverance in the liturgy and our celebrations of the rites, devotions and sacred practices in these last few decades. We stand today at a crossroads, where we to choose either to be a Modernist Catholic or a Traditional Catholic. Fundamentally, we have the choice of two roads:

• the road where we surrender the patrimony of the past to live for the present zeitgeit that rules the contemporaneous world;

• or the road where we hold to the patrimony of the past so as to engage and critique the present which then gives us that direction to the future that is always faithful to Christ, the Apostles and the legacy of the Doctors and Saints of the Church.

Just as it was in the time of Moses and in the time of the First Century in the Didache, so it is today that we face the choice of the road to death or the road to life:

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live [Deut 30:19];

There are two ways, one of life and one of death, and there is a great difference between the two ways [Didache ch 1]

Here in these conversations we find that all the whats are being asked, noticed and voiced but little work is going into reflection. Reflecting on these whats to ask the whys - such whys as these, namely, why is all this happening now? Why here in England is all this happening to us who have worked all our lives, paid our taxes, paid our dues and kept the laws of the land, even when many politicians have not, local or national?

Instead, what the Commoner is given to his or her questions is a narrative that derives from an alliance of the State, MSM, Big Corporations and mindless little companies who ape them, national institutions from the police, NHS, the Military to the Universities, all telling the Common people that it is they that are the problem. They are the problem because their minds are not woke but closed. The- powers-that-be consider the minds of the Common people closed and now they are even being called far right because they still hold to a belief in the Natural Law, they hold to a sense of pride about the History of their nation and they hold to a firm belief in Common Sense on matters truly human.

So, today we find that the Common People are being besieged by a woke and hive mind that has infected and corrupted the Elites, be those elites found in the Houses of Parliament, the Judiciary, the Government, the Police, the Military, Corporate Businesses and National institutions; it is an infection and thereby a corruption of isms that seeks totalitarian control over all the members of common Society. It is this ideological mindset that causes much of our strife and division. Many now after the Election are coming to see that there are no real differences between Tory and Labour as both talk the same talk for it is clear now that there are no parties only a uniparty. A uniparty that requires the Commoners be told that life, their life, needs to get a bit harder to save the planet, to save the country, to save the banks and now to save the government who has spent £17 billion on proxy wars around the globe for which the general public nor Parliament have given their consent.

So it is that the commoners must now shoulder Big Government’s Burden by being deprived of food, property, land, fuel, energy and finally cash, pensions and savings! So for those who voted for a change, the times ahead are going to be disappointing, hard and gruelling if not cruel for we should never have put our trust in princes nor in governments so easily bought by the superwealthy as evidenced by their allegiance to the WEFbefore country. The super-wealthy like to both keep their wealth and also like to keep the Common people at bay, preferably by keeping them poor, dumb, blind and sick, indeed in the words of Scrooge, to even enact policies to ‘deplete the surplus population’ of this common rabble! Never has this been so clear as in the times in which we now find ourselves: watch the brilliant researcher, Witney Webb, and her findings on the global public private partnership that is initiating a global neo-feudalism - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8myLQpu59g.

But, whether it is the Elites or the Common people, both are suffering the toll of that loss of a religious and moral vision concerning Man’s place in this world, his history and the struggle with evil for which only the God of Jesus Christ fully comprehends and gives the answer. As long as both Elites and the Common people seek merely political, social or economic solutions without Christ then they will always underestimate the power of evil in the world, in human hearts and especially in their own hearts. Thus, the solutions offered by the Left or by the Right have now manifestedly failed and are making things much much worse today. It is why Catholics today must rise up and find their voice and find their valour in proposing to these dark times the Social Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

We need to start by praying, fasting and making reparations for peace, justice and right reason both in the civil and international order as there has been for sometime (and it is now growing a pace ) the rise of a spirit of belligerence between nations and within nations. A belligerence that has been accelerated in hearts growing cold to God, Morality and Charity as the true Religion of these islands has been eclipsed by secular and materialist forces which has even given us a counterfeit church that dances to the tune of the many coloured pied piper who is the zeitgeist or the spirit of the age!

Next we need to start building the Social Kingship of Christ by establishing the life of Tradition both Sacred and Human in our families, our fellowships and in our local communities: think global but act local; think traditional and act like a steward! Tradition is the vehicle of history that continues the memory in space and time of Christ the King from whom we were given two principles: ‘Do this in memorial of me’ and ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go make disciples of all nations, baptising them In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit...’ Let us pray and sing out for a new Catholic vision: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihJAJA4ibEs

Maybe we could also play the following tracks in our streets where tread the weary feet of the Common people:

‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ by ELP - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2zurZig4L8;

‘The Lunatics have taken over the Asylum’ by Fun Boy Three - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWLdZFCMx8Y ;

‘Trees’ by Rush - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnC88xBPkkc

The motto that dominated our General Election ‘Time for a Change’ begins to feel more sinister today. We have begun to notice that the coming changes are more like a psyop using the apparatus of the State to provoke unrest. So that this change is going to be justified, imposed, and built upon crushing the provoked reactions, by the State, of the common people.

Like ancient times of old in this country when we had the hammering down on the Peasants and the cutting off the heads of leaders like Watt Tyler, we find history now is rhyming in our present time.

The beat of hammer and sickle is being felt by the common folk at the hands of instruments of the State. Thus, today England feels more like Orwell’s description of a dystopian future in ‘1984’.

With the rise of mass surveillance, there will come mass control which will be forged today in a mass brutalisation of the common folk by the agents of the State, all of which ends in a tyranny described in ‘1984’:

“If you want to picture the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.”

In these times we need to remember Thomas Jefferson’s words:

"When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."

So politicians, police and media pundits need to read the poem by G K Chesterton called ‘The Secret People’, and they need to remember the opening and closing lines of that poem:

‘Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget,
For we are the people of England, that never has spoken yet…

But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.’

I pray that we here in Old Blighty, and in my home country of Erin go Bragh, will not hear the wail of hunger in the face of the wolf of famine captured in these lines [Give Me Three Grains of Corn, Mother by Amanda M. Edmond (1824–1862)]:

It has gnawed like a wolf, at my heart, mother,—  

A wolf that is fierce for blood;        

All the livelong day, and the night beside,  

Gnawing for lack of food.

Yes, the seasons are awry for there is something rotten in the power-halls of the West. We have a number of dark clouds standing on the horizon seemingly waiting there, for a dark wind to blow them in. But there are also a number of other dark clouds that seem to be heading our way like flocks of black crows for “Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather..”[Matt 24:28]. All around us we find the protagonists of fear, doom and war! Protagonists, not Harbingers, but protagonists who like the wolf and bear, the crow and vulture bring both death and feed off the carcasses of death; it is as if we are living in the days of Apocalypse 6!

Be it a Bear market or a Bull market, the poor will be robbed. Be it a virtual pestilence or a man-made pestilence the common man will be herded and injected with poison fangs. Be it the gods of the copybook headings or Medusa’s media the venom of fear, hate and lies will distort the vision of the plebiscite and win weathy rogues the pillage and riches of new wars. And yet it has ever been thus, for here we find the children of Cain working the world to hallow their names as they reject God, Religion and the Common folk and impose their new, foreign, inhumane and irreligious laws. It is as G K Chesterton wrote when he called the common folk of England ‘The Secret People’:

We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,
Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.
It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,
Our wrath come after Russia's wrath and our wrath be the worst.
It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest
God's scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.
But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.

But out of the blue skies and sheep like white clouds comes a voice, a voice from on high, a pure, virgin and motherly voice that calls the common folk back to her who once was on the lips of peasant, poor and mystic [Ballad of the White Horse]:

And a voice came human but high up,
Like a cottage climbed among
The clouds; or a serf of hut and croft
That sits by his hovel fire as oft,
But hears on his old bare roof aloft
A belfry burst in song.
 
"The gates of heaven are lightly locked,
We do not guard our gain,
The heaviest hind may easily
Come silently and suddenly
Upon me in a lane.
 
"And any little maid that walks
In good thoughts apart,
May break the guard of the Three Kings
And see the dear and dreadful things
I hid within my heart…..

In such times as these when our leaders are weak, feeble and corrupt, when our institutions are captured by corruption and when the wealthy and powerful look at the Common man as a tired man looks at flies than our resistance to all of this must start with a renewal of the Spirit, a supernatural and Holy Spirit, through acts of faith, hope and charity. We must step up our resistance to all of this as Knights, Warriors and Defenders of the image of God in men, women and children with Our Lady of Chivalry, Worship and Holy Life watching over us, inspiring us and guiding us through the fields of blood on to the fields of the everlasting hills of Heaven. For no one gets off this planet alive!

G K Chesterton in the Ballad of the White Horse gives us a poem to inspire us in these times when he puts on Our Lady’s lips winged words that put fire in the bellies of the Common Folk of both our old Religion and our real Country:

"The wise men know what wicked things
Are written on the sky,
They trim sad lamps, they touch sad strings,
Hearing the heavy purple wings,
Where the forgotten seraph kings
Still plot how God shall die.
 
"The wise men know all evil things
Under the twisted trees,
Where the perverse in pleasure pine
And men are weary of green wine
And sick of crimson seas.
 
"But you and all the kind of Christ
Are ignorant and brave,
And you have wars you hardly win
And souls you hardly save.
 
"I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.
 
"Night shall be thrice night over you,
And heaven an iron cope.
Do you have joy without a cause,
Yea, faith without a hope?"

Our Lady has appeared to us and with her mystical children have continued the work of prophecy. In these times when we seem to have entered chapter 6 of the Apocalypse, Our Lady has sought to gather the Church, saints and sinners and the nations of the common people into the refuge of that peace that God’s Kingdom alone can bring. At her apparitions at Quito in Ecuador [1594-1634], at La Salette in France [1846], at Fatima in Portugal [1917] and at Garabandal in northern Spain [1961 to 1965] and with her Mystical children such as St. Vincent Ferrer [1350-1419], Marie Julie Jahenny [1850-1941] and Luisa Piccarreta [1865-1947], we find the call to repentance, the warnings and the promise of grace, illumination and her victory over all the forces arraigned against the True God, the True Religion and Poor humanity.

Let us, in these dark times when the cope of winter has thrice laid itself over us all, take for our marching orders the words of St Pope John Paul II: “Be witnesses of Hope”; in such dark times we need to draw life and hope from the roots of our history, encapsulated in these words of Pope Benedict XVI: “SPE SALVI facti sumus”— ‘in hope we were saved’; so that our own encounters with the Lord Jesus may fill our hearts with what Pope Francis calls the joy of the Gospel. Thus it is this hope and this joy that alone lay the grounds for a transfiguration of hearts and minds when we have a zeal to show the source of this Joy and hope to others! Others, who have been trapped in a lifelessness that is that living in the machine, in the metropolis, in the matrix of inhuman, secular and global planning!

Watch video ‘METROPOLIS - IN THE YEAR 2525’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-xfeXfQqts&ab_channel=ZURNMUSIC2.0

Watch video on the recent document on apparitions by the Vatican with Xavier Ayral on the podcast Elijah’s cloak: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhBsWwcWJM&ab_channel=ElijahsCloak

However the diversity of life happened, the entire course of evolution depends on God for its beginning, its continuance and for every activity along the way, on to its final end. Science studies the secondary, observable causes in the physical realm [the horizontal], but we believe those causes are guided by the invisible hand of God who is the primary cause for anything to exist at all [the vertical]. But even evolution can be iconic to something more. Thus, Christians can say that the next step of evolution is the move from being just creatures, fallen creatures, broken creatures to becoming healed, whole, holy and perfect but adopted sons and daughters of God. We are to take and give our natural but fallen selves to Christ, so that we may be transfigured into a Christ-like person through being formed in the fiery furnace of the Holy Spirit which is that grace under pressure which can re-make us as fire and pressure makes a lump of coal into a diamond!

The last two Sundays of Lent of Year B have given us three words which we can use to bring ‘evolution’ into view: repent, transfigure and self. The word ‘Meta’ means to go beyond so that metanoia is the Greek word for repentance that means to go beyond the mind by turning the mind back to its creator; in other words, to go beyond a this-world mindset. Metamorphe is the Greek word for transfigure or transform and means going beyond this world to a new world that is the Kingdom of heaven; one that shines through the humanity of Christ. If auton is the self, then Meta-auton is a going beyond a self that derives its life from fallen nature to becoming a person who derives his life from grace. In other words, we are to go beyond an old mindset to a new one, we are to go beyond this world to a new world and we are to go beyond the old self to a new self called personhood. Jesus reveals that what takes us beyond a this-worldly mindset, a this-worldly view of life and beyond a self that lives just for this world is the arrow of a higher love that pulls us further in and higher up to the really real of the Kingdom of Heaven.

In the Gospel for the 3rd Sunday in Lent, Jesus does something drastic which is like shock therapy. It is an act of divine love which outrages the worldly mindset about religion that uses God or religion as a means for success and power in this life and for this world. By cleansing the temple, Jesus overturns the new and worldly practice of religion and replaces it with the original foundation for religion, namely, Divine Love. The Love that gave us creation, the creation of man and woman, creation of man and woman in the image of God, male and female he created them and this divine love is embodied in Christ himself. He is love, a love that will mean a new priesthood, a new sacrifice and a new temple because he is the New Adam and Mary is the new Eve! So he comes to cleanse our inner temples, our inner sanctuaries and our interior life that is the spiritual form of the human heart so that we may seek and love what is true, what is good, what is ordered and what is beautiful [the transcendentals of Being: Verum, Bonum, Unum and Pulchrum].

Our Lord Jesus goes beyond the worldly mindset of both the Jewish leaders and the Jewish people of his time! He is also calling not just the Jews but also all mankind to worship in Spirit and truth. It is a worship founded on the grace of the Holy Spirit poured into the human heart [Rom 5:4] and as such it fires outwards like an arrow going beyond the this-worldly mind-sets, beyond thethis-worldly ideologies and beyond the this-worldly-self to a transcendental love of God, others and our true, hidden, real and spiritual selves. But why were they so blind to who Jesus is and what he was about?

The reasons for their blindness are the same as those that keep millions of the neo-pagans of today from accepting and living the Christian faith. These, like the priests and Pharisees of Jerusalem in the year 28AD, are so immersed in the affairs of this world that they give no thought to their own eternal future. Their eyes are so fixed on earthly objectives they have set for themselves that they can see nothing else.  They are like the ox chained to the millstone and grinding out wheat for today; they never look up or look out but keep their heads down for the next false promise that worldly powers offer them. They choose to be slaves to fear and slaves of today’s Caesars and Pharaohs!

[See You Tube video track from Rush from their album ‘Grace under pressure’ called ‘Enemy from within’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wziJqdq4LcA&list=OLAK5uy_kV4aoLdWbaONKNhQG-so_hd0haUQTyi18&index=4&ab_channel=RushVEVO ]

The priests and Pharisees wanted more than just political freedom from Rome. They had hoped that their Messiah would give them a great world empire, with wealth and power without limit. We live in the 21st Century where again the power brokers and the new pharaohs of our time want to also have a new kind of empire built on a new feudalism where once again the few grab from the many their means of life: food, energy, freedom of movement, rights of life and liberty! Their land grabs, their food grabs, their energy grabs, their health grabs and their power grabs are to be established on the corpses of billions. In the words of Our Lord: “Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather” [Matt 24:28].

Yet, sadly, it is a time when even the centre of the human side of the Catholic Church seems to have been infiltrated by an old ideology from the 20th Century. An ideology that has been re-cooked, re-hashed and re-presented as something new in the ovens of Davos: The  Woke ideology. Like its previous avatars in Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and Maoist China it is trying again to use the young people to promote its green-zero options of gulag-cities and peasant bicycles, its anti-bovine menus and its insect diets, its genetic altering therapy serums, its alphabet-gender soups and its eugenic vision of a bionic or hybrid asexual hominids in sync with either animal or machine constructs to promote what Pope John Paul II prophetically called the culture of death. But this time with the rise of synodos-sanhedrins the Church has been co-opted to be a light bearer to this vision and so we can truly say that the Rhine, the Yangtze and the Volga now ideologically flow into the Tiber!

Check out this reflection on the times in which we find ourselves:

https://remnant-tv.com/video/1076/-eat-less-beef-out-of-touch-pope-faces-mass-apostasy-in-europe?channelName=RemnantTV

Moses promised the people of Israel that God will raise up prophets like him:

The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet [Deut 18:15].

Yet, though prophets did arise after Moses who were ‘like’ him, as in similar to him, John Bergsma says that none were equal to him which is the other meaning of the phrase ‘like’ him [cf his excellent commentary on Year B Sunday readings called ‘The Word of the Lord’ p.216]. The promises made by God, enunciated through the prophets, made to his people in the Old Testament have been fulfilled in the coming of Jesus in his life, death and resurrection. So since Our Lord Jesus’s coming, no new public revelation is to be expected, for the Lord God has revealed everything in sending His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ [Heb 1:1-4]:

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

The call to prophesy has not ceased with the coming of Christ, though it has changed. Since Our Lord prophesied in his Eschatological discourse the End Times (Mark 13, Matthew 24, Luke 21), is followed by St Paul’s prophecy about the rise of the Lawless Man [2 Thess 2:3-10] and is echoed in St John’s warning of the coming of the Anti-Christ [1 John 2:18-23] and presented in more detail in the Book of the Apocalypse, thus in the light of these texts we have a very Christian form of Prophecy.

Down through the centuries of the history of the Church prophecy, as a gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church, has continued in a mode that is Christocentric but also Marian and Ecclesial. The gift of prophecy is Ecclesial because it occurs within the Church which is the Body of Christ in and through her members whose mission is to call all of humanity to salvation through the call to repentance; it also warns of a coming judgment [Krisis]; it does indeed prophesy chastisements for unrepented sins; and it is a call that prepares us all for the 2nd Coming of the Lord.

Indeed there is not only a Christocentric and Ecclesial dimension to prophecy since Pentecost Sunday but there is also Our Lady’s role and mission. As the Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ, she is also the Mother of all his beloved disciples beginning with the beloved disciple at the foot of the Cross in the Gospel of John [John 19:25-27] and thus she has had an extension of her vocation at the incarnation to one that follows after both her Domition and her Assumption.

Our Lady has shown that she is not just Queen of Apostles but also Queen of Prophets as her vocation after both her Dormition and her Assumption has been one of intervention, prophetically, in the life of the Church. In the history of the Church Our Lady has been calling her members, calling her children, as their spiritual Mother, to repent of their sins, follow her Son, obey the Will of the Father and make reparations for their dreadful sins and the dreadful sins of all humanity. Indeed she gives warnings and prophesies of chastisements to bring her children to return to God and become more faithful to her Son;

be those the apparitions at Ecuador [1594–1634] [https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2017/06/07/the-400-year-old-marian-apparition-that-is-particularly-relevant-today/ ];

at La Salette [1846], [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1wiuuDvBqo&t=1488s&ab_channel=Mother%26RefugeoftheEndTimes ]

at Fatima [1917], [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27POkfyTj30&ab_channel=DrTaylorMarshall ]

at Garabandal [1961-1965], [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs-kNZYsYlQ&ab_channel=QueenofPeaceMedia ]

at Akita [1973], to name a few! [WATCH video: https://www.youtube.com/watchv=p1wiuuDvBqo&ab_channel=Mother%26RefugeoftheEndTimes];

There also the form of prophecy that derives from the mode of being a mystic within the life of the Church as in such figures like:

St Francis of Assisi [1181-1226];

St John Bosco [1815-1888] - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlz7a7mdnm7RcbgKSoWWq-vV0tCf3cngB;

Breton Stigmatist Marie-Julie Jahenny [1850-1941] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5xTOOxwszo&ab_channel=ReturnToTradition );

St Faustina Kowalska [1905-1938].

So the gift or charism of prophecy is evident in the life of the Church. But there are also a new form of it arising from the Charismatic Renewal and here is a contemporary example which for instance, Ralph Martin of Renewal Ministries, posted in what he called an “amazing prophecy” given by Fr. Michael Scanlan in 1976—a year after the Prophesy in Rome [https://www.countdowntothekingdom.com/dr-ralph-martin-darkness-to-glory/]:

Son of man, do you see that city going bankrupt? Are you willing to see all your cities going bankrupt? Are you willing to see the bankruptcy of the whole economic system you rely on now so that all money is worthless and cannot support you?

Son of man, do you see the crime and lawlessness in your city streets, and towns, and institutions? Are you willing to see no law, no order, no protection for you except that which I myself will give you?

Son of man, do you see the country which you love and which you are now celebrating—a country’s history that you look back on with nostalgia? Are you willing to see no country—no country to call your own except those I give you as my body? Will you let me bring you life in my body and only there?

Son of man, do you see those churches which you can go to so easily now? Are you ready to see them with bars across their doors, with doors nailed shut? Are you ready to base your life only on me and not on any particular structure? Are you ready to depend only on me and not on all the institutions of schools and parishes that you are working so hard to foster?

Son of man, I call you to be ready for that. That is what I am telling you about. The structures are falling and changing—it is not for you to know the details now—but do not rely on them as you have been. I want you to make a deeper commitment to one another. I want you to trust one another, to build an interdependence that is based on my Spirit. It is an interdependence that is no luxury. It is an absolute necessity for those who will base their lives on me and not the structures from a pagan world. I have spoken and it will take place. My word will go forth to my people. They may hear and they may not—and I will respond accordingly—but this is my word.

Look about you, son of man. When you see it all shut down, when you see everything removed which has been taken for granted, and when you are prepared to live without these things, then you will know what I am making ready (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XnxThW3wq0&t=442s&ab_channel=RenewalMinistries ).

Now we also speak of the Church being called to be prophetic against unjust or evil powers and institutions in the world. Especially in a time when she must critique and counter the zeitgest of a given era. So we find what can be called a prophetic witness which is unafraid to speak out at a time when there is pressure to be silent. Such are the examples of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Pope Pius XII against the Nazis and Pope John Paul II against the Communist regime of the USSR in Poland.

Within the Church we also have prophetic witnesses. As found in say the prophetic witness of:

a Lay Catholic who tackles the contemporary issue of UFOs that seem to be hogging MSM, Internet podcasts and some Catholic bloggers [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbI7t7zNLMs&t=25s&ab_channel=DanielO%27Connor ];

or a Lay Catholic who bravely tackles the issue of the crisis in the Catholic Priesthood in Ireland [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naZauBwqJPE&ab_channel=DecreviDeterminedtobeCatholic%40thecatholicman ];

or the Lay Catholic who tackles an issue within the Church, namely, how to receive Holy Communion in a Post-Covid Church [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV60cvgt_rM&t=579s&ab_channel=DecreviDeterminedtobeCatholic%40thecatholicman ].

So from the above we find that Prophecy is still very much alive and kicking in the Catholic church despite the mess, the chaos, the disorder and divisions that besets the Church and it is the prophetic mode that makes us witnesses to hope and at the same time at a mystical or spiritual level it carries us through the way of purification, the way of illumination and the way of union with God!

What could this dangerous reality be? Could it be a deep global winter brought on by a mega volcano going off in the United States? Could it be an EMP bomb or a Solar wind that fries all our electrics and electronics in our homes, planes, cars and computers? Could it be a global financial meltdown that renders money useless and so that many take to the streets to find food, water, fuel and protection? Could it be a new world war which brings a nuclear winter to our fields, towns and cities? Could it be a new world order, a great Reset, that arises to save the planet by taking from the many and giving to the few with the clarion call of this new feudalism ‘You won’t own anything, but you will be happy’? [watch video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q9hBO-cQKA&t=731s&ab_channel=NeilOliver].

No, it is something much more powerful than all of these. It is a new reality proclaimed by St Paul in 1 Cor 7:29-31, namely, that the times in which we live are running out and coming to an end.

I tell you, brothers and sisters, the time is running out.
From now on, let those having wives act as not having them,
those weeping as not weeping,
those rejoicing as not rejoicing,
those buying as not owning,
those using the world as not using it fully.
For the world in its present form is passing away.

Something new is now breaking through the very fabric of space and time such that all that this world had to offer as home is rendered empty, useless and without a future, if it is not brought under the reign of Christ. It is this reality that Christ ushers in when he says:

“The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” [Mark 1:15]

How does the Kingdom of God break through the fabric of this space-time continuum? It breaks through by Christ’s presence in the Mass, the Sacraments and the Word of God for he gathers a new creation out of the old creation. The King of this kingdom gathers out of the peoples of the earth the new people of God, who choose to share the life of the first born of this new creation, Jesus Christ, who has risen from the dead! A people who Christ prepares by the gift of the Holy Spirit to go through the portal of death with Faith, Hope and Charity by which they overcome the fear of death that underpins the powers and structures of this world. The power of God’s grace is revealed in and though his Son’s death and resurrection which is made visible by the other-worldly and supernatural ‘technology’ called the Sacraments. To such a people the world as we know it is passing away and they no longer live for this passing world but live for the new heavens and the new earth that Christ has revealed in the resurrection. A world where he is King! A new world that he declares is the Kingdom of God! A Kingdom that he makes sacramentally visible in our space-time continuum!

The outposts, the portals, the star-gates and the cosmic ships of this Kingdom are parishes that have become Schools of Prayer, Places for the dispensation of Wisdom, Vineyards of the Lord and Eucharistic communities. In such Eucharistic communities there is formation, service and mission wherein the fishers of men serve and labour to bring people out of a dead world into a living world, out of a wasteland into heaven, out of pointless living that wastes and drifts in time into one where time is given directionality that leads to the eternal fullness of time; out of physical, moral and spiritual death into physical, moral and spiritual resurrection. In short, to take fallen creatures of this lost and dying world and make them into sons and daughters of God fit for a new world, the Kingdom of heaven!

Simply put, we have a serious and profound choice to make: either we sow our lives in this old dying world or we sow our lives in the new and eternal world. Either we say to God ‘my Kingdom come’ or we say ‘thy Kingdom come!’ Either, it is my kingdom, my power and my glory that I serve or it is God’s kingdom, God’s power and God’s glory that I serve. We cannot have it both ways! It is one or the other! Our Lord comes to make visible this eternal choice around which our lives will turn. That is why he says: “Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

It is also why when we come to Mass on Sunday we should not expect words of worldly wisdom that makes us feel nice, warm and cosy – let the TV and radio do that for us - but rather we should expect eternal truths to be spoken which are given to shake us, awaken us and galvanise us from sleep, worldliness and false visions about life on this earth! After all, it is our eternal destination that is at stake!

A Priest must straddle this world and the next, as Jesus is back from the dead and back from the future, so the priest can only be like his master. He too must teach like a Prophet, sanctify like the high priest and govern like his King! And of course like prophets of old, a priest will not be thanked for it by worldly souls whose hearts live for this world and yet come to Mass as a form of insurance, just in case it’s all true! Our Lord speaks of such lukewarm souls in the Book of the Apocalypse when he says: So because thou art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spew thee out of my mouth [3:16].

However, for those who whole heartedly seek the Kingdom of God and wish to have Christ reign as King of their hearts there is a deep joy and a deep hope that all will be well. If a Priest leads as a King then he will be an icon for Fathers to be kings in their homes and mothers to be Queens in their homes and their children will be knights and ladies in the court of family life; for they will discover a royal chivalry of heavenly grace which will give them a right order of life wherein the Kingdom of God reigns. They will be generous with their time to God because they have discovered the secret of time: that when you give your time first to God and the things of God you are given all the time you need to do what is necessary in your life. Whereas misers of time never have enough time!

When a person says to a priest be they young or old, youth or adults, they have no time for prayer, for Sunday Mass, for youth fellowship, for parish formation and service, the priest knows that they are living for this world, for the Kingdom of God is not in their hearts. The greatest gift we can give to anyone is our time but when we have no time for God, for prayer, for Mass, for service or for fellowship we have lost our time to the world, a world that will hungrily gobble up all the time we have left! We will be like the passengers in Stephen King’s novella and film: ‘The Langoliers’. They were trapped in a time-lock at an airport where time stood still and the future did not arrive but the past was fast coming up behind them, eating up all the time they had left.

So pay attention to those words of the Lord that the time is fulfilled for it is fulfilled by him and no other! If you want more time you will have it in abundance if and only if you give your time in prayer, worship, service and mission as it is Jesus who is the Lord of time. Just as Jesus warns us about life when he says ‘those who seek to save their lives will lose it’ so too is it true about the time we have been given:

‘those who seek to save their time will lose it but those who lose their time for my sake and for the kingdom of God will have time in abundance.’

Now, if God comes he comes because he knows why he must come, he knows when is the right time to come, he knows where the right place is for him to come, and he knows to whom and by whom he must come; for they must be the right kind of people to whom he must come. The right kind of people because they already know something about God; the right kind of people because they have been waiting for the Christ to come from God; the right kind of people because they know why the Christ must come; and the right kind of people because they know that God himself has chosen them to prepare for the coming of his Christ; and the right kind of woman from whom he would be born. Christmas is about the preannounced one who a whole people have been waiting to come, namely the Christ.

So Christmas is about the Coming and the birth of Christ but it is also about the Mass; that is why it's called Christmas! It's not about a Jolly fat man dressed in coca cola red, nor about elves, nor about fairies and magic; it's about the Nativity of the Christ. So, I want to present to you the Mystagogia of Christmas which reveals a constellation of mystical symbols that connect the Nativity with the Mass.

The Mass is why Jesus is born! The Nativity works as a Mystery in that it both unveils the Mass and is unveiled in the Mass. So, everything and everyone in the story of the Nativity serves literally and symbolically to unveil the mystery of the Mass for which reason we call the day of the 25th December, Christmas Day.

We begin with the manger, where food is fed to farm animals. The baby Jesus is put in a manger because he will be our food, our manna, the very Bread of Life. Indeed, he is born in the town called Bethlehem which means ‘house of bread’. Bethlehem and the manger point to the future when the new house of bread would be built and we will call them Catholic churches wherein one will find the supersubstantial bread of the Eucharist; a bread that is the the Body of Christ and is kept in a tabernacle after it has been transubstantiated on the altar by the Priests ordained by the Lord who utter those sacred words of the Lord, first uttered at the Last Supper.

Jesus is born in the humble dwelling of a stable and reborn in sinners who have humbled themselves in repentance as they admit the poverty of their souls. As they have come to know they are poor in spirit so they are disposed to become rich by grace. Indeed, the animal of humility we call a donkey symbolically points to the penitential rite of the Mass where we humble ourselves before the Lord confessing that we are sinners. The Ox which ploughs the fields and cultivates the soil so that wheat may be sown and vines may be grown pointing to the Offertory Rite of the Mass when bread and wine are brought to the altar. Both the Ox and the Donkey, as beasts of burden, also foreshadow how many human beings are yoked and burdened by slavery to sin. Our Lord will humbly carry the cross for all sinners and will invite them to join him as disciples to discover that in carrying his cross like the ox and the donkey the yoke is made easy and the burden is made light because of the gift of Grace received in Baptism and in the Mass.

Jesus is also wrapped in swaddling clothes which constrains him just as the nails will constrain him on the cross of sacrifice from which the supernatural power of the Sacrifice of the Mass derives and is re-presented on all Catholic altars! The shepherds tend the lambs around Bethlehem which are the same lambs that will be sacrificed in the temple of Jerusalem and so they point to how Jesus is to be the Lamb of God who takes away our sins. He can do this as he is the divine Priest, Altar and Victim of the New Covenant. The Shepherds foreshadow how Jesus is the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. The Sheep are gentle in sharp contrast to the wolves, lions and bears who are their predators. Here is the symbolism of how God comes to the aid of the poor, the widow and the orphan against the predatory powers of the rich, the powerful and the wicked. In other words, the sheep foreshadow how it will be the Meek, the priestly people of good will and reason, who will inherit the earth, not the wolves, the lions nor the bears - not the children of Cain, not the children of perfidy and not the children of rage.

Now, as there was no room at the Inn this too points to a fundamental truth, namely, that many will reject him, the many who will not make room for him in their homes, in their lives nor in the houses of their souls. But the Inn itself points us to those who will make room in the poverty of their souls for the God-made-man at Communion as they intone these words at Holy Mass: ‘“Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof.’

The Lord Jesus is born hidden from the sight of the powerful and rich but he is visible to servants like angels, shepherds and wise men. They point to the call to service not to status for the ‘Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.’ 

The baby Jesus seems harmless but kings and emperors tremble at his birth! God comes as the King of kings and to make a kingdom that overthrows all kings and emperors, all kingdoms and empires; and this Kingdom is made visible on earth in and through the Church. Thus, he comes into a world of danger where the Herods and Caesars of this world seek him, hunt him so as to kill him. Unbeknown to them, however, the powerful are but puppets of more terrible, dark and invisible powers that prey on human beings because they hate these images of God who dwell on earth. These dark powers are Satan’s legions. It is for this reason that the Host of Angels surround the baby Jesus. The Angels are described as Hosts because they are an angelic army who protect the Baby from the dark legions of Satan and reveal to us that we are in a Cosmic Spiritual War.  Christmas thus asks us two questions:

1. Whose army are you going to join?

2. Which king are you going to follow, Pharaoh, Caesar or Jesus?

Finally, we ask ‘Why does God come to us as a baby?’ Well we can reply by asking ‘what child doesn't love a baby?’ God desires us to become like little children who come to the nativity scenes displayed at all Christmas Masses and in all Christian homes. He wants us all to seek, to know, to love and to serve him like the little children. As Jesus himself said, ‘let the little children come unto me.’

Behold the mystagogical meaning of the feast of Christmas! A feast that blesses childhood, blesses homes, blesses souls and makes the world a place where hope overcomes despair, light overcomes darkness, love overcomes hate and meaning overcomes the nothingness of nihilism.  

Now consider this question: What would our childhoods have been like if there was no Christmas? Without Christmas winter would be long, cold and dark and without Christmas our childhoods would be very different indeed it would be a bleak mid winter for every child. But without the Mass, there would not be Christmas either!

For this is what St John Vianney said of the Mass:

‘the world would not survive without the Mass’; ‘Without the Holy Eucharist there would be no happiness in this world; life would be insupportable.’ It is the Mass that keeps at bay the forces of darkness. Where it disappears men become little better than beasts!

As Catholics we have an optic on the world which uses the lens of reason and the lens of faith that enables us to discern the supernatural dimension as the natural dimension unfolds in history. So it is that we are called by Our Lord to read the signs of the times, but how do we read the attempts by present day governments to portray anything that does not conform to their narrative as fake news, disinformation or misinformation? Sadly, so many people have hung up their critical faculties and have succumbed to this new form of, what George Orwell called, the Ministry of Truth! [cf his novel ‘1984’].

Indeed, we find that Orwell depicts a Country he calls Oceania ruling over it’s people through four ministries which are defined in a deliberately contradictory way as this is how a false Narrative of a Totalitarian state is propagated. It’s seemingly contradictory statements are designed to keep the people confused and so it is easy to exercise total control over them. Hence, he depicts these four ministries of Oceania as the Ministry of Peace which concerns itself with war; the Ministry of Truth which is concerned with lies; the Ministry of Love which is concerned with torture; and the Ministry of Plenty which is concerned with starvation [Part II, Chapter IX of ‘1984’]. Never has there been a time like today when the three slogans of the Ministry of Truth is being so clearly activated over and against the people, namely, "War is Peace," "Freedom is Slavery," and "Ignorance is Strength." If it is true to say that the first casualty of War is truth, and if all around us there are numerous lies propagated by this Government on the people, then we can only conclude that it is our own Government that is waging war on us, the people!

Just consider how the policy of Net Zero brings about the cutting down of all energy use by blowing up pipelines, switching of gas, coal and nuclear stations, reducing all food production [by raising prices of seed and fertilizer] and closing down farms in order to save the planet. But what this practically and existentially means is that the human populace are to freeze and starve in the winter, unless of course the good God gives us a mild winter! Activists who promote this Net Zero policy are ironically called Extinction Rebellion but they do not realise that it is their own extinction, and humanity’s, that they are bringing about. Furthermore, consider how many are told that they can be saved from a pestilence if they take a gene altering and an immunity reducing serum and in so doing crash their health; consider how many are asked to support and promote a proxy war in another country by giving away billions of pounds and in so doing crash the economy, crash the value of the pound and cause the meltdown of small to medium businesses, thus causing mass unemployment and poverty. The irony is that so many of the population are compliant and some are even cheering for all this…till it comes to their doors!

So there is this widespread Political, Health and Economic Deception. Given our double lens we can naturally read by way of Common sense that this Deception is really going on. But our supernatural lens discerns something more, namely, that this Political, Health and Economic Deception is preparing the way for what Sacred Scripture calls The Great Deception!

The coming of the lawless one by the activity of Satan will be with all power and with pretended signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are to perish, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends upon them a strong delusion, to make them believe what is false, so that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness [2 Thess 2:9-12].

There may be other forms of deception on the way that will prepare people for this Great Deception [see Apoc 13:11-18], but there is one that is now looming which Daniel O’Connor calls to our attention. He discusses it in a podcast with Fr Dan Raheel, and it is about Aliens and UFOs, of all things! [Imminent Alien & UFO Deception—Exorcist Fr. Dan Reehil & Daniel O'Connor—RESIST The Coming Lie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_sU7dsn9Fw&t=4s&ab_channel=DanielO%27Connor].

Here is a mystery and an icon that reveals to us the beauty and the chivalry of grace that flows between a pure spirit - Gabriel - and a pure embodied spirit -Mary! It echoes that first encounter between an angel and a woman but one that did not go so well, namely , when the fallen angel Lucifer met the Original woman, Eve and the Original man, Adam. Yet Adam and Eve because they died friends of God, and not enemies, they became saints when Our Lord died on the cross for our sins, sins that go back to Adam and Eve, but on his Descent among the dead, Our Lord Jesus lifted Adam and Eve out of Hades and up to heaven; hence why 24th December was a feast day in the Old Calendar when Catholics celebrated the Feast of St Adam and St Eve! But today we are reminded that it is Our Lady who is the new Eve because her Son is the New Adam and the God-Man and by her fiat, her obedience, we have all entered a new and better beginning than that of Adam and Eve’s!

Without the fiat, or Yes, of Our Lady there would have been no Christmas and so the world and winter would have been a dark place and a long, cold, dark season; indeed history would have had no heavenly and maternal guide down through the ages. A maternal and womanly inspiration that inspired chivalry between men and women; music, symphonies and chant; the colours, paintings and designs of buildings, be they cathedrals, monasteries, grottos and shrines; nor would there have been any stories of when children met Our Lady to bring about repentance, mercy and hope through miracles, healings and holy wells that litter our countries and their countrysides!

Now Advent is also a season where we find that the end of history matters. Indeed that salvation comes through history as it is built on the promises of God as revealed by the prophets promises that point to the truth that something good this way comes. The good that comes is Jesus our Saviour and our Liberator.

The history of salvation, that Jesus fully reveals and accomplishes, has to be appropriated in our own lives, in our own history and must thus direct our own personal stories as to who we are, where we come from and where we are going. Thus, the 1st Sunday of Advent called us to stay awake and keep watch for God’s grace and not fall asleep and become a prey to our ultimate predator, Satan; the 2nd Sunday called us to a fundamental choice of either following the banner of victory that is Jesus our Saviour or follower the banner of Satan; and the 3rd Sunday called us out of that deep sleep - that is the state of a lukewarm or tepid soul that succumbs to the false joys of this world and so enters an everlasting winter – into the state of being a fired up soul that enjoys the new spring of eternal youth. In other words, we can either grow old in sin or grow young in grace!

The Old Testament points to the coming of God’s Son who will be the Son of David as we find in our first reading from 2 Samuel the great promise and covenant God made with David:

And when your time comes and you rest with your ancestors,
I will raise up your heir after you, sprung from your loins,
and I will make his kingdom firm.
I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me.

Well, in her we see how we can grow young in grace. In the words of Damian Lundy’s famous hymn ‘Sing of a girl in the ripening wheat’ we find words that call us to grow young in grace:

Sing of a girl who will never grow old,
joy in her eyes and gold in her hair.

The role of Mary as the mother of the Messiah and Queen is found in the Old Testament all the way back to Genesis as promised by God himself when God tells the serpent who has tempted the woman: "I will make you enemies of each other; you and the woman, your offspring and her offspring. It will crush your head and you will strike its heel" (Gen 3:15). Mary is to be the new Eve and our new Queen, the highest honour of our race. Yet, it is true that though her role in the birth of Jesus is prominent,  her role in his ministry is in the background. However, we find these words of St Louis de Montfort that speak of this contrast:

"Mary scarcely appeared in the first coming of Christ... But in the second coming of Jesus Christ, Mary must be known and openly revealed by the Holy Spirit so that Jesus may be known, loved and served through her.”

St Louis de Montfort was a priest and confessor in the years 1673-1716 and wrote the classic work on Mary ‘True Devotion to Mary’ where he has an number of important things to say to us today. As we went through Advent of 2023 we found that both the world and the Church were coming into a winter. Yet, it is our deepest hope that the Church will eventually come into her spring for St Louis goes on to say this:

"....towards the end of the world, ....Almighty God and His holy Mother are to raise up saints who will surpass in holiness most other saints as much as the cedars of Lebanon tower above little shrubs."

"These great souls filled with grace and zeal will be chosen to oppose the enemies of God who are raging on all sides. They will be exceptionally devoted to the Blessed Virgin. Illumined by her light, strengthened by her spirit, supported by her arms, sheltered under her protection, they will fight with one hand and build with the other. With one hand they will give battle, overthrowing and crushing heretics and their heresies, schismatics and their schisms, idolaters and their idolatries, sinners and their wickedness. With the other hand they will build the temple of the true Solomon and the mystical city of God, namely, the Blessed Virgin... "

We live in times where there is Christ and the anti-Christ, the Church and the anti-church, the follower and the compromiser both in the world and yes even in the Church, among the hierarchy and among the clergy, and even in our parishes. But it is here that I implore you to cling to Our Lady who on this 4th Sunday of Advent calls us into a child-like simplicity of entrusting our lives, our homes, our families and our hearts to her maternal protection and grace for she knows how to help us to become true adopted sons and daughters of God the Father as only the Mother of the Son can. Our hearts must enter Our Lady’s immaculate heart so that we maybe transfigured by the Sacred heart of Jesus. If we enter their hearts we will become young at heart and in soul and be true apostles of the Gospel. St Louis de Montfort says the following about such apostles:

"They will be like thunderclouds flying through the air at the slightest breath of the Holy Spirit. Attached to nothing, surprised at nothing, they will shower down the rain of God's word and of eternal life. They will thunder against sin; they will storm against the world; they will strike down the devil and his followers and for life and for death, they will pierce through and through with the two-edged sword of God's word all those against whom they are sent by Almighty God."

"They will be true apostles of the latter times to whom the Lord of Hosts will give eloquence and strength to work wonders and carry off glorious spoils from His enemies. They will sleep without gold or silver and, more important still, without concern in the midst of other priests, ecclesiastics and clerics... Wherever they preach, they will leave behind them nothing but the gold of love, which is the fulfilment of the whole law."

As you can see there is nothing PC about this way of Life. But St Louis calls us to five things this final Advent Sunday:

1.  a deep and total Faith in Jesus and his Sacraments,

2.  love of scripture,

3.  praying the rosary,

4.  total conversion to Christ in monthly confession

5.  and fasting. 

Let his final words sink into our souls in these Advent times in which we now find ourselves:

"They will have the two-edged sword of the Word of God in their mouths and the bloodstained standard of the Cross on their shoulders. They will carry the Crucifix in their right hand and the rosary in their left, and the holy names of Jesus and Mary on their heart.”

The antidote to this deadly virus is to force human beings to become free of carbon and carbon generating food, take a constant stream of serums, eat bugs, have cold showers, get rid of cars and planes for the common people, make all the common people get on bikes connected to the Grid to save the Grid and send the elderly to hospitals and care homes for end of life care to save the hospitals. In the words of Scrooge and in the spirit of the super-rich, this will reduce the surplus population…and save the planet! Save it for whom, we ask?

It has an urgency overlaid with apocalyptic overtones and decorated with threatening undertones. But to raise questions and seek out the data for all these claims is to invite the charge of heresy and so be accused of being a climate denier, a planet killer! Yes, it’s yet more crazy stuff from the crazies!

Crazy stuff that seems to occupy the corridors of power, the channels of Mass Media and now it is permitted to block our motorways, highways and spill out even on to our buy-ways - upmarket supermarkets, where the passive, compliant and well-to-do frequent. Clearly the pampered, protesting, young defenders of the planet have the common sense to avoid supermarkets that are frequented by the ordinary working families who are struggling to heat and feed themselves; men and women who, like the people of Essex, would not stand idly by when milk is poured out and spilt over the floors of supermarkets!

Those who have succumbed to the new green apocalyptic religion seem to have this idea running through them, indeed shouting through them:

YOU DON’T HAVE TIME TO THINK ABOUT OR DISCUSS THESE PROBLEMS! WE ALL NEED TO ACT NOW! YOU NEED TO ACCEPT OUR SOLUTIONS OR YOU WILL DESTROY THE PLANET!

However, the word ‘apocalyptic’ does not mean end of world scenarios. It actually means ‘the unveiling’; the unveiling brought about by the truth of our real state before the ultimate truth, God himself. But if people keep demanding the truth about things but constantly suppress debate, discussion, reasoning and the search for truth then the truth will come searching for them and fall upon them like fire and brimstone. If people and leaders keep demanding the death of farming, the starving of millions, the freezing of homes to save the planet when the planet does not need humans to save it then the doom so proclaimed will come upon them for the hubris of this Big Lie. For as the ancients said about human beings who challenged them ‘those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad!’ And madness abounds among the many leaders of the Western world whose countries are now being torn apart by a green dictatorship that passes oppressive laws against dissent and protest as we see in Germany, UK, France, New Zealand and the US and seems to be running in joy towards economic collapse of money, jobs, house prices, food production, fuel and energy supplies.

Today, we are led by Mad Elites whose arrogance and hubris rises to the heavens as they overthrow real science, the moral law and human nature itself - that order of creation that has creatures made in God’s image at it’s centre. It is a hubris of the world’s powerful elites (and the useful idiots who serve them) that is now poking, taunting and provoking the true ruler of this planet, the Creator, to let fall a raining down of, what the ancients called, the wrath of the Lord! For ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’, if these elites continue with this madness [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zwBHd4kll0&ab_channel=BryanFerry]. The catechetical tradition warns such powers that there are “sins that cry to heaven” - read Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraph 1867 - and these elites are committing them.

However, in this month of November there is unveiled the truth that we will all die and we will all come before the Judgment seat of God to give an account of our lives. But many try to avoid thinking about such certainties as death and judgment. Instead, they want to think about the death of the planet.

The reason why the scriptures are chosen from the eschatological chapters of Our Lord’s teaching is that the Church wants us all to do a bit of spiritual stock-taking. To help us to be honest with ourselves in our stock-taking we are reminded by Luke 21:5-19 that this world will come to an end one day. We do not know when or how, but that end will come. The end of the world will follow the Second Coming of Christ who will come in power and glory to judge the living and the dead. It will be the General Judgment when every human being will be raised up from the dead and stand before the Judgment seat of God and receive in their resurrected bodies either the blessedness of Heaven or the damnation of Hell. Each one will receive the sentence he merited while on earth. The Blessed will enter with Him into eternal glory and share the beatific vision of seeing God face to face. The Damned will go to Hell where there will be eternal loss and sorrow, weeping and nashing of teeth, and where the worm does not die.

Yet, long before that day comes, each of us here today will already have faced his or her own Particular Judgment. It is this judgment which will seal our eternal fate. It is on this judgment that we should try to concentrate on during this month of November. It is to help and encourage us to do just this that the church brings the thought of the end of the world before our minds. The end of this world will come for each one of us when we draw our last breath. How will we stand in God's sight when that moment comes? An eternity of happiness or grief will depend on our spiritual state at that moment - did we die in a state of grace or did we die in a state of unrepented mortal sin? Did we die a friend of God or an enemy of God?

The thought of death is a frightening thought for most of us. We would rather put it far from our minds, but of all the other things that can possibly happen to us on this earth, death is the one and only certainty. It would be utter folly then to try to ignore it or forget it. It is not the moment or the circumstances or the fact itself of death that matters. The vast majority, even of those dying of a slow illness, do not know that they are on the point of death. What matters is the judgment which follows death. How will we fare in that judgment?

Each one of us can put the following simple question to ourselves this very moment. How would I fare if I were called before the judgment seat of God today? The best of us would certainly prefer to be better prepared. There is so much good I have left undone, so many faults for which I have not atoned properly, so many uncharitable thoughts about my friends and neighbours in my mind, so many acts of charity I kept postponing, so many acts of thanksgiving and praise I have not made to my loving God.

What of those who have even more serious sins on their consciences? Over two hundred thousand people will leave this world between now and midnight. If we were called, and we have no guarantee that we will not be called today, could we dare to face our judgment in our present state? "Today, if you hear God's voice harden not your heart" the scripture warns us.

Now, you have heard Him speak to you. He has reminded you that your end is coming, that you should put your spiritual house and put your accounts in order. This is an act of God's mercy. God does not need you, it is you who need Him. Your eternal future will depend on whether you listen to His call today, as tomorrow may be too late. You can put your accounts straight this very day. Why take a risk with your own eternal welfare?

The Christian who wants to die in the state of grace, that is, in the friendship of God (and can there be any real Christian who would not want to?) has but one way of making sure of this. He is to repent of his sins and try to live always in God's friendship, especially aided by the Sacraments which requires it all to begin with the necessity of Baptism, the strengthening of the Sacrament of Confirmation, the medicine of mercy that is the Sacrament of Confession and the Food of eternal life that is the Holy Eucharist, given in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

For Our Lord has said to each and every one of us:

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel” [Mark 1:15] - Repentance;

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” [John 3:5] - Baptism;

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you [John 6:53] - the Eucharist in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

The man who does this by living his Christian life daily, need not fear death. It may be a sudden death, but it will never be an unprovided for death. For that purpose may be the Bona Mors [Litany for a happy death] may help us not to fear death, not to be controlled by the fear of death, not be controlled by those weilding the fear of death but instead to hope and to pray to have a good and holy death.

Bona Mors - Litany for a Happy Death

Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy
Christ, have mercy. Christ, have mercy
Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy

Holy Mary, Pray for us (him or her) *
All ye holy Angels and Archangels, *
All ye choirs of the Just, *
Holy Abel, *
Holy Abraham, *
Saint John Baptist, *
Saint Joseph, *
All ye holy Patriarchs and Prophets, *
Saint Peter, *
Saint Paul, *
Saint Andrew, *
Saint John, *
Saint Jude, *
All ye holy Apostles and Evangelists, *
All ye holy Disciples of Our Lord, *
All ye holy Innocents, *
Saint Stephen, *
Saint Lawrence, *
All ye holy Martyrs, *
Saint Sylvester, *
Saint Gregory, *
Saint Augustine, *
Saint Basil, *
Saint Ambrose, *
Saint Francis of Sales, *
Saint Bonaventure, *
All ye holy Bishops and Confessors, *
Saint Benedict, *
Saint Francis of Assisi, *
Saint Dominic, *
Saint Ignatius, *
Saint Philip Neri, *
Saint Camillus de Lellis, *
Saint John of God, *
All ye holy Monks and Hermits, *
All ye holy founders of Religious Orders, *
Saint Mary Magdalene, *
Saint Lucy, *
Saint Scholastica, *
Saint Teresa, *
Saint Clare, *
Saint Angela Merici, *
Saint Jane Frances de Chantal, *
All ye holy Virgins and Widows, *

All ye men and women, Saints of God; Intercede for us (him or her).

Be merciful: Spare us (him or her), O Lord.

Be merciful: Graciously hear us, O Lord.

From Thy wrath, Deliver us (him or her), O Lord. **
From the peril of death, **
From an evil death, **
From the pains of hell, **
From all evil, **

From the power of the devil, O Lord, deliver him (or her). ***
Through Thy Nativity, ***
Through Thy Cross and Passion, ***
Through Thy Death and Burial, ***
Through Thy glorious Resurrection, ***
Through Thine admirable Ascension, ***
Through the graces of the Holy Ghost the Paraclete, ***
In the day of Judgment, ***

We sinners: Beseech Thee to hear us.
That Thou spare us (him or her) : We beseech Thee, hear us.

Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy

Christ, have mercy. Christ, have mercy

Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy

Let us pray:
We beseech Thy clemency, O Lord, that Thou wouldst vouchsafe so to strengthen Thy servants in Thy grace, that, at the hour of death, the enemy may not prevail over them, and that they may deserve to pass with Thy angels into everlasting life. Amen.

Not surprisingly Our Lord calls us to recognise this broken condition that characterizes our lives. He wants us to begin with our poverty that is the lack, the lack of grace, and only from this recognition of our true state can we come to God to plead with him to have that lack filled. It is why the first beatitude links the call to a profound and existential humility with an equally profound perception of our ontolological poverty, when Our Lord proclaims: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

So the virtue or good habit of humility means a knowing both our weaknesses and our strengths which makes us live a life of thanksgiving to God for we owe God absolutely everything. Indeed humility is a habitual process of emptying ourselves so that we can be filled with God. The contrary view is that of a worldly habit that is full of self but empty of God; a worshipping of the selfish trinity of me, myself and I before whom all others must bow, adore and venerate with full attention!

But ‘Pride goes before a Fall’ and such a fall it is for those who love and worship only themselves! Every footballer knows this. For who has not seen the prima Donna on the football pitch hogging the ball, failing to pass and costing the team the match? If not a match loser still sooner or later the prima Donna will find his ego will trip him up as he trips over the ball and becomes not the hero but the fool on the pitch!

So even on a natural basis we see Pride makes us curve in ourselves and so trip over ourselves, whereas, humility makes us forget ourselves and focus on what is good for the other. Pride makes us play in the field of subjectivity against other fragile egos like ourselves so that it becomes a clash of egos, whereas, humility makes us play in the field of objectivity where reality forges us in to a realism in thought, word and deed that treats and gives to others their true worth! Humility is the virtue for making us realists, whereas Pride is the vice for making us into phantasists of self-deception.

Modesty flows from humility and is both an interior attitude and an external comportment to the good, the true and the beautiful. It is a modus operandi as well as a modus intentionis. Simply put Modesty helps us to avoid the excesses of passion, appetite and desire, after all too much of a good thing can kill you be it drink, sex or food.

Modesty is needed also in the domain of self expression to curtail our tendency to act out in ways that spell a loss of self control through excess: a flaunting of our status through the ostentatious wearing of gold, jewels and expensive clothing, an excess in our apparel; a flamboyance in the company of others that can be only called an excess of personality!

So Modesty restrains us in speech, clothing and behaviour so that we have an objective view of our own value and the value of others, especially if there are people in the room who are more powerful, more gifted and more authoritative in the public sphere than us.

Most of all we can see it played out, or not, as the case may be, in the domain of God’s looking glass, the Sunday Mass! Before a King, a Prime minster or a Pope we would all seek to be modest and deferential as this is natural and proper before such persons. Yet in many a church we often find there is a lack of this modesty, deference and even reverence in both priests and laity! Why?

Primarily it’s due to both the culture of entertainment and the culture of celebrity plus the dominance of feelings over thought that have invaded our churches. How many times do we hear people and priests speak about ‘getting something out of the Mass’? Alongside this goes an emotional titillation that ranges from smiles to laughter, from chatter to voiced greetings, from rubbernecking to a wondering eye when people come into church or sit in church. All of which leads to the distractions and noise that brings about the death of silence in many of our churches.

Indeed it seems that priest and people want to offset reverence and awe because they don’t want to get too serious about the rites, the words, the gestures, the music and song that is supposed to initiate us into the divine presence. Many a priest and many a lay person seem to find it all quite embarrassing to take worship seriously. Indeed, the worship found in many churches today seems not about God but rather all about us! It seems that the word worship is replaced by celebration and thus captures very well that being in Church on a Sunday is really about getting out of the Mass those feelings that certify I am a person of religious faith because I have had religious feelings!

So I ask myself, is it the way Mass is celebrated that leads to such a lack of restraint and a kind of spiritual puerility in both priests and laity today? Clearly Modesty is needed when so many abuses of the Mass occurs in clergy and laity alike who seem to have that excess of personality, excess of flamboyance in personal expressions and dress, excess of sensuality in their mode of apparel, such that it draws people away from an attention to the Divine towards an attention to a host of distractions and noise for our entertainment.

With so much familiarity being expressed in churches today, maybe we have lost what the ancients called the Fear of the Lord! The fear of the Lord did check egotism and immodesty. But they seem now to have infiltrated many churches, that maybe we all need to step back and ask ourselves in whose presence do we stand? In whose presence have we have entered into when we come into a church? To quote an exorcist:

‘If the ritual begets modesty and restrains the action of the priest, the other decora, such as church appointments, vestments, and the like, will also manifest restraint for the priest will develop the virtue of modesty by the very ritual he offers. If the ritual does not demand modesty of the priest in all of its aspects, the decora will slowly slip into disorder as the lack of modesty in approaching God in the ritual makes its way outward into the priest, the faithful and finally in the monumental patrimony of the Church, i.e. in the physical things used in the worship of God.’ [Topics on Tradition by Fr Chad Ripperger, p.153 [2013, Sensus Traditionis Press]]

Here we need to rediscover the words of the Baptist before Our Lord when we prepare for and when we enter the church for Mass, weddings or funerals, namely: “I must decrease, He must increase.”

Watch video for bizarre performances of priests showing with their people little modestry, humility or fear of the Lord: https://bishoppatbuckley.blog/2022/08/21/why-do-some-priests-use-the-mass-to-give-crazy-personal-performances/

November is chosen for the month of the Poor Souls not just because of All Souls’ Day. The timing reflects the autumn season of the Northern Hemisphere; the harvests are in, growing season is ending, leaves changing colour and falling, animals preparing for winter and the days shorten. Autumn gives a feeling of end times and a reminder of our mortality. The Church year also is coming to an end. The readings in these last days of the Liturgical Year focus on the Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell.

Many, even Christians, fear death and try to keep the very thought of it far from their minds. This is very understandable for anyone who believes that death is the end. To a certain degree it is understandable in the case of the believer or the Christian, whose conscience is not at peace with God. The latter, however, has the means of removing his fears by removing his sins, and by putting himself right with the Lord.

The normal, pious Christian should see death as what it is, an end of his time of probation and the door to his eternal reward. It is not normal for a student to dread his graduation day. Death for the God-fearing, honest Christian is graduation day. Therefore, no Christian should be afraid of it. But, we forget that our bodies are mortal and before the approach of death the body itself has a sense of death, a fear, a trembling, what the Greeks called Phobos. It is this Phobos that brings about in our bodies a great trembling and the buckling of our limbs as death approaches. It is this Phobos that Spartans sought to overcome in training for battle as they were forged to be a band of brothers so that they would fight to save the brothers beside them whom they had grown to love and it is this love that alone could overcome phobos . It is this phobos that springs from our mortal bodies which traditional Catholics also sought to counter. They learnt from their forefathers and ancestors in the faith the chant that helped them to fight against this unmanning and final temptation to unbelief and despair that surrounds phobos, when they prayed these words on their death beds:

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I give you my heart and my soul;

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, assist me now and in my last agony;

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, may I bring forth my soul in peace with you. Amen.

These words are powerful and they are reminders of our last struggle in life, a struggle that will call on us to use of all our faith, hope and charity to turn, surrender and cling to the Lord as we leave this world and enter in eternity. Yet in these days the new generation needs something simpler and easier to remember as they did not have strong parents, strong uncles and aunts, even strong parishioners in the faith to teach the ancient and wise forms that had behind them centuries of fighting the phobos of death. So, we teach them here in our parish the words of the Divine Mercy, especially the words: ‘Jesus, I trust in you’ to fight the phobos of death. But we also teach them a simple act of contrition which we can whisper to the ears of the dying or say at least in our own hearts if we too lie dying on a street, on a battlefield, on a bed or are about to die because a nuclear strike is imminent! Here is a simple act of contrition:

O my God, because you are so good, I am truly sorry that I have sinned against you,

but with the help of your grace I will not sins again and I resolve to avoid the occasions of sin.

There are four steps that mark the life of a true Christian:

1. the impact of God’s love on a soul,

2. the consequent response of Repentance for sins committed,

3. the cleansing of our sins by Baptism or, if already baptised, then Confession of our sins and Absolution for our sins,

4. followed by the desire to do Penance; which for one who has been absolved in the Sacrament of Confession means to make amends or restitution for the damage done to the Holiness of God’s name, the Holiness of the Church and to those surrounding us whom we have harmed.

But making restitution for the temporal punishments for sin in this life is what the Holy Souls in purgatory did not sufficiently do on earth whilst they were alive in this world and so we here on earth are called to help them in this month of November to fulfil what was lacking in their lives on earth. For Yes, we are our brothers keeper, our sisters keeper and our Holy Souls keeper too. However, theHoly Souls cannot earn merit for themselves anymore but we can do penance in this life for them so that their stay in Purgatory maybe quickened. 

Remember, remember that you and I too, may need the prayers of those one earth, if we end up in Purgatory as one of the Holy Souls. If Holy Souls were helped by us to enter Heaven then they will remember our kindnesses towards them on earth when we enter Purgatory and they will become intercessors for us from heaven!

C S Lewis once spoke about the subject of Purgatory and he put it this way. Most of us, if we died now, probably would recognise that we don’t deserve to go straight into Heaven, but hopefully we would not think we deserve to go straight to Hell, so there must be a middling place. As Catholics we call this middling place, Purgatory and it is why we do not just remember the dead but we also pray for the dead. The Good news is that any soul in Purgatory will eventually, when perfectly purified [Matt 5:26], be brought into Heaven, for nothing impure can come into the presence of God [Apoc 21:27].

Each one of us can put the following simple question to ourselves this very moment. How would I fare if I were called before the judgment seat of God today? The best of us would certainly prefer to be better prepared. There is the good I have left undone, the faults for which I have not atoned properly, the uncharitable thoughts about my friends and neighbours in my mind unconfessed, the acts of charity I kept postponing and the acts of thanksgiving and praise I have not made to my loving God.

What of those who have even more serious sins on their consciences? Over two hundred thousand people will leave this world between now and midnight. If we were called, and we have no guarantee that we will not be called today, could we dare to face our judgment in our present state? "Today, if you hear God's voice harden not your heart" the scripture warns us. Today you have heard Him speak to you. He has reminded you that your end is coming, that you should put your spiritual accounts in order. This is an act of God's mercy. He does not need you, it is you who needs Him. Your eternal future depends on whether you listen to His call today, as tomorrow may be too late. You can put your accounts straight this very day. Why take a risk with your own eternal welfare?

The Christian who wants to die in the state of grace, that is, in the friendship of God (and can there be any real Christian who would not want to?) has but one way of making sure of this. He is to try to live always in God's friendship. The man who does this by living his Christian life daily need not fear death. It may be a sudden death, but it will never be an unprovided-for death.

What have the Saints and the Holy souls got in common? They both died in a state of grace. But what do they not have in common? The Saints have made full restitution for the temporal sins they committed in this life but the Holy Souls have yet to make full restitution. The Holy Souls cannot earn merit in purgatory but we can, both for ourselves and for the Holy Souls as our merits can be applied to them and we call this indulgences. But merit can only be obtained by those who are in the state of grace, the grace we received in baptism called sancifying grace. We lose this grace when we commit mortal sin. We regain this grace when we truly repent of our mortal sin, confess our mortal sin and be absolved of our mortal sin in Confession. For the Lord forgave sinners their sins and gave to the Apostles and their successors the power of the keys to forgive sins which Pope, Bishops and Priests alone have received down to this present day [Matt 9:5-6; 16:18-19; 18:19].

What have the Holy Souls got in common with the Souls in hell? They both suffer for their sins. But what have the Holy Souls not got in common with the Souls in hell? The Holy Souls sufferings will end but the suffering of the Souls in Hell will never end for the Holy Souls will eventually enter heaven, whereas, the Souls in Hell will never leave Hell to enter heaven. Do not be fooled by anyone about this reality, my people, as this is a truth that few want to hear about today, even some Catholics and some priests. How many avoid even considering it?

How many funerals try to bypass this truth and avoid even having a Requiem Mass for the dead or have Masses offered up for the soul of the deceased who now stand before the judgment seat of God [Heb 9:27], as must we all? Instead a funeral is reduced to a memorial service celebrating a deceased person's life and where a coffin has no Mass cards on it which the soul of the deceased has more need of then the array of flowers covering a coffin which are no use to the dead but are only of use for the living to signal their grief.

Yet praying for the dead and burying the dead with full Catholic rites is something which we are continually called to do as it is both a spiritual and corporal work of mercy. Praying for the dead is also found in every Eucharistic prayer of the Mass. Sadly, we see so many priests, parishioners and parishes not even keeping November as the month of Holy Souls.

November is a month when:

·        we should all be offering up prayers for the dead;

·        we should all be making sacrifices for the dead;

·        we should all be going out to the cemeteries to pray for the dead and point out to the priests their graves for him to bless

.        we should all be putting envelopes into the Holy Souls box so that our weekday Masses maybe offered for those Holy Souls that we once knew and loved.

Yet, how many will remember Halloween? Ghouls, ghosts, witches, dragons and demons make up the fantasy and horror production of this spooky entertainment industry and this is what the world wants you to remember. Ghosts yes, but Holy Souls, no! Halloween, yes; but Holy Souls in November, no. Let’s get real!

Are you one of those who do not remember that filial duty and that duty of friendship which requires of us to offer up prayers, sacrifices and Masses for parents, family, relatives and friends who have died? 

Yes, I am back on that watchtower again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqg4V4BmJj0&list=RDEM5NMdEHSHj-EZtFbw_QF4Ag&index=20&ab_channel=CitizenGatsby

A parish is a certain community of the Christian faithful stably constituted in a particular church, whose pastoral care is entrusted to a pastor (parochus) as its proper pastor (pastor) under the authority of the diocesan bishop [Can. 515 §1].

Some priests see a parish as a platform from which they can make forays into their special area of interest be it study or a career option. Others see it as a place that affords social contact, a social network and maybe a social life. Others see it as a place for proclaiming the Gospel, forming people in the Catholic Faith and drawing people back into the life of Christ: the lapsed, the lost and the stray.

Over the last few decades we have various Popes indicating their view of the nature of a parish, namely, it is a Eucharistic community [Pope John Paul II in his encyclical ‘Ecclesia de Eucharistia’], a school of prayer [John Paul II in ‘Novo Millennio Ineunte’] and a field hospital [Pope Francis in ‘America Magazine’ 9/19/13 ]. But what image can we draw from Our Lord’s teaching that could give us a rich description that answers our question, namely, what is a parish?

Over the last few weeks of September and October we have had Our Lord speaking to us about the vineyard of the Lord. The parables make very clear points.

It’s never too late to come back to the Lord or to be converted to the Lord and so even the workers who came at the 11th hour to work in the vineyard were rewarded [Matt 20:1-16a].

It’s never too late to reconsider one’s No to the Lord as long as your Yes leads to a belated obedience that does in fact work in the vineyard of the Lord [Matt 21:28-32]. Our Lord tells the parable of two sons who are asked to go and work in the vineyard. The first son says “No” but thinks better of it and goes in to work in the vineyard. The second son says “Yes” but does not go. Our Lord through this parable shows up the hypocrisy of the leaders of Jewish people who say yes to God but then do not do the will of God whereas sinners who said no to God are the ones who repent and do the will of God. But neither sons are perfect, but Our Lord is. Our Lord is the obedient Son who says Yes to his Father and he is the obedient Son who also does the will of his Father for he does go into the vineyard.

It’s always a mistake to confuse stewardship with ownership for there is nothing we have that has not been given to us, given to us by the Lord. If we forget that we are mere stewards of temporal goods then as everything has been given to us so everything can be taken away! [Matt 21: 33-43].

What is this vineyard and what is the work to be done? The important key for understanding the theme of the Vineyard of the Lord is Our Lord’s parable of the Vine and the branches [John 15:5-6]:

"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.

Here in this conjunction of Christ the Vine and we the branches is the image that captures the vital importance of being in the state of grace, sanctifying grace. If we are not in a state of grace, because we are in a state of unrepented mortal sin, then we are those branches that are cut of from the Vine and so we can do nothing but wither. If we remain in this state of gracelessness we will be thrown away as dead wood and the dead wood is burnt! Thus if we are not in the state of grace we are spiritually dead.

The two sacraments to take us out of this spiritual death are Baptism and Confession. If the reason that we are not in the state of grace is that we are not baptised then we need to get baptised for baptism is the doorway, the portal, the gate by which we enter into the state of grace. It is this state of grace which we call sanctifying grace that baptism bestows on us. Baptism also makes us members of the Church because we are grafted on to the vine of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by the necessary sacrament of Baptism that we can enter the Kingdom of God [John 3:5-6] and without it we cannot be in the Kingdom of God [Matt 22:11-13].

If however, we are baptised but have lost this grace, by committing mortal sin, then we need to go to the Sacrament of Confession. Mortal sin is when we freely and knowingly commit a grave sin and it is grave sin that is found summarised in the 10 Commandments [the first three concern love of God, and the other seven love of neighbor] but explained in depth in the Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC 2052-2550].

The Vineyard of the Lord is a symbol of the people of Israel, the people of God, who were brought into the promised land. But the land was covenanted land and this meant that the land was given by the Lord to the people of Israel on the condition that they will be God’s people if they made the Lord their God: “I will be your God and you will my people.” What this covenant looked like was spelt out in the in the Mosaic Law of the Ten Commandments ]Exodus 19-24] and the Holiness code [Lev 17-27]. Today, the Vineyard of the Lord is what every parish is called to be. When we learn the art of working in the vineyard of the Lord that flows from being in the state of grace then we can change the fields of our homes, our work and our cultural play into vineyards for the Lord to work.

Our Lord as the Obedient Son has come into the world and in obedience to his Father’s will he goes to work that is the salvation of the world by the pouring out of his precious blood; that giving and pouring out of his life on the cross, for the salvation of sinners. Thus it is so that where the Lord’s paschal mystery is recalled, celebrated, lived and handed on that is where the world is changed into the Vineyard of the Lord. But our parishes will only be vineyards of the Lord if we live and work in the state of grace. For the Lord said "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” In otherwords, we have to get into the state of grace, come back to the state of grace, struggle to stay in the state of grace so as to bear fruit and blossom in the state of grace. Where clergy and laity do not do this, their parishes wither and die and become a place of desolation as they cannot bear fruit for without sanctifying grace faith, hope and charity are dead.

It is here that we find the true meaning and the true essence of what a parish is. And what a sacred place it is! For every parish is called to be the cutting edge of where God saves human beings from their pride, their sins and their enslavement to the way of death. The only thing that can prevent us from being saved is ourselves for we have been given free will to say Yes to God or to say No to God. But God is patient, very patient, very patient with us all for he does not desire the death of sinners. He will wait for us and wait for us and wait for us to say Yes to him, even unto to the eleventh hour…but not so when the bell strikes for the twelfth hour!

For while there is breath of life there is always hope that a human soul will repent, change and turn to God because with life we have that time and space for free will to be exercised and so we can be changed. So Hope is there right unto the eleventh hour till time runs out in this world - and then we find ourselves standing on the judgment ground of eternity and there we hear the bells intone the 12th hour…the hour for the reckoning of my life and the final destination of my soul! To paraphrase the words of Cardinal Sarah, People go to a parish to seek God, not to save the planet; a priest is there and a parish is there for the salvation of souls!