From Father's Homilies

I thought I would share Father’s homilies from yesterday and today since we haven’t actually blogged for a couple of weeks.

Yesterday at our Extraordinary Form Mass, taking the scriptures we heard (James 1v22-27), Father noted that many of us are “hearers of the word” who do not practice it; that while most of us are surely like St Paul, not doing what we desire to do but doing what we would rather not do, that some folk deliberately refuse to live by God’s word, choosing the ways of the world instead. The justification for such a conscious choice is that “the world has moved from biblical times and anyway, it can’t be wrong if everyone is doing it”. Father made the point that though many folk are great at social justice issues and do indeed care for the poor, the widow and the orphan, they do not keep themselves unspotted from the world but align themselves with it; they take on board that it is Ok to self-abuse, co-habit,  fornicate and enter homosexual activity. None of this is consistent with the Gospel and the teaching of Christ’s Church.  We are then, at a time when we have to choose between the world and the Church; God or the devil, and not everyone is making the right choice.

At this morning’s Ordinary Form Mass Father noted that many Christians are being killed for their Faith; that there are bombings of Churches and Christian homes in many places around the world, done, as our Lord foretold in today’s Gospel passage, as “a holy thing for God” (John 16v2). We don’t, as yet, have to come to Mass at the risk of our lives; we don’t suffer that kind of persecution. Our persecution is more subtle, and it’s dangerous: it’s the persecution of truth by the dictatorship of relativism by which today’s so-called ‘tolerant’ society will not tolerate our free speech on issues such as contraception, abortion and homosexual activity. As we noted yesterday, many of these things are justified not only by an appeal to oneself, but to the fact that “the world has moved on and everyone thinks it’s OK these days”. We have to pray that the Spirit of Truth will touch the hearts of those who perpetrate violence and of those who promote relativism, and not only for our good, but for their salvation.

I thought these words were worth sharing.