Homily Notes, 09-27-20 - Unity

 September 27th, 2020

"One Lord, one Faith, one baptism."

The world is seeking peace.  It started with Adam and Eve, right after the Fall they were looking for peace, for a certain unity of their goal and end.  The world's means of achieving peace comes by arguments and wars with the goal of forcing everyone to agree and have the same opinion.  The problem is that it's not possible on a natural level.  Without God, you cannot have peace.  Peace can only come from the supernatural.  Peace is right order.  You have to have the right order before you can have peace, and you have to have unity before you can have order.

Peace by equality? That's not possible because not everyone can be equal.

Unity comes from oneness in mind and heart: when we all have the same goal, the same end. If we don't have this oneness of mind, there will be no order and no peace.  We cannot have peace and order without unity, and we cannot have unity without virtue.  This is why the Church alone can bring true peace; because it teaches the virtues, and provides the means for practicing virtue.

The Church provides the means of unity which will lead to peace.  The Church is unified, the Church is one.  It is the most essential mark of the Church.

How is the Church "one"?  What does that mean?  Not that is is one race, or that it is in one place.  The Catholic Church is one because all of its members, according to the will of Christ, profess the same faith and have One Head.  The same faith, the same belief, for all time.  Truth does not change. God does not change.  God is the source of all truth.  The faith doesn't change because truth doesn't change.

Unity of worship: Same Mass, same Sacraments.  They were established by God Himself and cannot be changed.

Unity of head: visible head, the pope.  The pope is over the bishops, the bishops are over the priests, the priest are over the people.  This is a hierarchy that God established.

The world has various opinions, constant changes, many religions, and nothing is objective because everyone has different goals and ends.

"The Bible alone" - how do they know what the Bible is?  How do they know what the Bible means?  How do they know which books are in the Bible?  It's all based on their own judgment, which can change based on their interpretation.  Yet truth can't change.  If your faith changes with your feelings, each individual will worship however they want.  This is opposed to the purpose and goal of worship.  Worship is rendering to God what is Gods and giving him first and foremost all honor and glory.  It is a duty.  Our feelings about it don't matter.  Whether we like it or not, we have a duty to worship.

There is no unity outside the Catholic Church because ultimately the world rejects what Christ established.  His religion, His order, His governing authority.  The Protestants reject all of this.  If you have your own faith with your own ideas and your own worship, then you have your own goal and your own end.

Christ put Peter in charge; one pope, not a group of bishops.  A cardinal of bishops together does not have the authority that the pope, the one head, has.

Even the unity of the Church is being destroyed today.  If you destroy the unity, then you destroy everything. That is why the enemies of the Church try to destroy the unity of the Church.  All the other marks; Holy, Catholic, Apostolic; fall apart if you destroy the unity.

Vatican II has damaged the Church's unity and the errors have continued ever since.

Ecumenism: we cannot respect different religions, we can only desire to bring them into unity with the One Faith, the Catholic Church.  God cannot desire us to worship Him in different ways and believe different things about Him depending on which religion we are part of.

Evolution of doctrine says that doctrine can "evolve" over time in our modern day.  This can't be true because truth doesn't change, because truth is based on God, Who doesn't change.

Novus Ordo Mass: destroys unity and destroys faith.  The big problem is it's implications of denying certain doctrines.  (1) It downplays the sacrifice of the Mass and focuses instead on the praise and worship.  We need the sacrificial part.  (2) It promotes a lack of belief in the Real Presence when disrespect is shown to the Blessed Sacrament.  (3) It changes the priesthood: the priest is supposed to be set apart, he is different from the faithful.  It's a Protestant idea that the priest is 'one with the people.'  It demonstrates a breakdown in the governing order of the Church.  All of these changes in worship stem from a change in doctrine.

Unity is the most essential mark because without unity the Church cannot be holy.  The faith teaches us what we need to know to be holy, the Sacraments give us the means of holiness, the pope directs us toward holiness.  If the Church is not unified then it is not really universal.  If there is no unity, then the Church cannot be apostolic.  Apostolic means the we have the same faith handed down to us from the apostles.  If they break from the past, then it is no longer apostolic.

If unity is destroyed, how can we bring it back?  St. Paul gives us the remedy: by virtues.

Humility: any one of us could not be here, could not be Catholic, could give up the faith, could be out spreading errors in the world... it is only bu the grace of God that we are in God's Church.

Patience and Perseverance: It won't change overnight.  We need to be patient and willing to continue through suffering, to work for unity and persevere in the faith.

Charity: Love God above all things, love Him above ALL things on ALL the days of week, in ALL of our actions.  If you truly put that into practice, then there would be no worries about saving your soul.

Pray for unity: Pray first for yourself, you cannot give to the world what you do not have yourself.  Spread to others by example.

Christ is the same today, tomorrow, and forever.  We can hopefully, by the practice of virtue, restore unity to the Church, and through our prayers and sacrifice.

To restore peace to the world, restore unity to the Church.

My Our Lady come and reign in this world, and may her Immaculate Heart triumph.