Clothed in Virtue

 January 31st, 2021 Septuagesima Sunday The Extraordinary Form follows the 1962 calendar which includes a Pre-Lent season called Septuagesima. The word Septuagesima is Latin for “seventieth.” It is both the name of the liturgical season and the name of the Sunday. Septuagesima Sunday marks the beginning of the shortest liturgical season. This season is seventeen days long, and includes the three Sundays before Ash Wednesday.  The Septuagesima season was to help the faithful prepare for Lent. Saint Catherine of Siena Choosing a Crown of Thorns over a Crown of Gold by Alessandro Franchi "So run that you may obtain." Today we have St. Paul reminding us that life is like a race, a race whose goal is heaven.  And as any other racer would do, we have to prepare to attain the goal.  We can't attain it by doing whatever we want.  A runner trains so that they can win the prize. St. Paul reminds us that these people who are trying to win an earthly crown do more...

December 25th, 2020 "The Widow's Mite" by João Zeferino da Costa, 1876 Spiritual Poverty is not something that follows the world's view of poverty.  The spirit of poverty means a detachment from created things of the world, and an attachment to the things of God.  Spiritual poverty isn't only that we don't make creatures our end, but that we are willing to set aside created things if it is what God wants us to do. It is that we can give up natural, good things, if it is God's will for us to give them up. The widow's mite: She has given more than the others because she is giving something that she needs to support herself.  She gives it to God. Jesus was born into this world with nothing in order to give us everything. Advent penance is meant to help us detach from our own will so that we can do God's will. Keep the virtues you gained through penance during Advent. What gift can we give Christ? He wants our heart and our soul; our whole being. Hold ...

 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....

 September 20th, 2020 The Calling of Saint Matthew by Caravaggio What is the role of these feast days in our lives?  Why does the Church present them to us? Look at the universal whole: an array of beautiful feast days varying in degrees of importance.  Like the night sky full of stars, some shine more brightly than others, but all add the luster of their beauty to the heavens.  The Church is trying to show us these feasts.  Don't let them pass by without giving them any importance.   How many can identify the principle feast of the month of September?  Is it the Nativity of Our Lady?  The Exaltation of the Cross?  The Sorrows of Our Lady?  It's a tragedy if they pass us by, unaware.  Are you more aware of the secular feasts?  The world celebrates them "religiously" -- and there is nothing really wrong with that -- except that these feasts are disconnected by anything higher than the natural world. On a basic level, the fe...

 September 13th, 2020 "I say to thee, arise." The mother is weeping over her dead son.  This was a great act of mercy of Our Lord when he brought him back to life.  It is also a reminder that we will rise to a new life; not an earthly life, but a new heavenly life.  Our body will be reunited at the end of time.  Our Lord foretold many times that there would be a resurrection: to life for the good, and to judgment for the evil.  Our Lord promised this resurrection.  He died on the cross to save mankind; to save the entire man, the whole man, the body and the soul. Because of Adam's sin, all men die.  Because of Christ, the new Adam, all will live. Our Lord wants to stress this point by giving us different types of this nature of death and new life.  (1) Spring is a new life every season after the death of winter.  (2) A seed falls from the plant and comes to life to produce a new plant.  (3) We go to sleep each night with a new risin...

 August 16th, 2020 What is sin? ⦁ Sin is contrary to God's will; forbidden by God's laws. ⦁ Sin takes away sanctifying grace ⦁ Sin makes us enemies of God ⦁ Sin is a disordered existence ⦁ Sin deprives us of Heaven ⦁ Sin entails punishment (Hell) ⦁ Sin takes away our merits: we cannot gain anything when our soul is dead in mortal sin. ⦁ Sin takes away our rights to graces: it removes sanctifying grace but also takes away our rights to actual graces. ⦁ Sin has negative physical effects ⦁ Sin dulls our senses ⦁ When Jesus healed people in the Gospel, it was symbolic of removal of sin.  He would restore sight, restore hearing.  It is symbolic that we need our sins removed in order to restore health. ⦁ Every actual sin we commit has an effect on the world, not only on ourselves but on those around us and in the world at large. ⦁ Why do innocent people suffer seemingly unjustly?  Because of our actual sins. What is the remedy? -Christ died for ou...

  “A Meditation on Detachment" written by St. Thomas More while imprisoned in the Tower of London, 1534. Give me Thy Grace, Good Lord, To set all the world at nought; To set my mind fast upon Thee, And not to hang upon the blast of men's mouths; To be content to be solitary, Not to long for worldly company; Little by little utterly to cast off the world, And rid my mind of all the business thereof; Not to long to hear of any worldly things, But that the hearing of worldly fantasies may be to me unpleasant; Gladly to be thinking of God, Piteously to call for His help; To lean unto to the comfort of God, Busily to labor to love Him; To know my own vileness and wretchedness, To humble and meeken myself under the mighty Hand of God; To bewail my sins passed; For the purging of them, patiently to suffer adversity; Gladly to bear my purgatory here; To be joyful of tribulations; To walk the narrow way that leads to life, To bear the cross with Christ; To have the last thing in rememb...