Sunday Sermon

Inside St. Peter's Basilica, Rome. Prayed for you all at St. Peter's tomb!

St. Peter's

Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, Rome, where St. Catherine of Sienna is buried. Prayed at her tomb this past week.

Ceiling of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva.

Dear Friends and Family,

Thank you for your prayers during my study and meetings this past week in Italy, which went very well. Glad though to be back out in the countryside again!

I thought I'd try in today's blog sharing with you this morning's sermon, as a way of giving you a glimpse into Sunday life here. Today after Mass I blessed a 20-year old young man, who then hopped on a plane to fly to the Island of Papa Stronsay to begin a time of discernment with the Transalpine Redemptorists. Hence the sermon. A disclaimer: though I have been writing out my sermons they act more as "sermon notes" than an actual sermon. I often adapt them in the giving.

I prayed for you all last week at St. Peter's tomb. Hope you had a blessed week!

In Cordibus Iesu et Mariae,
Fr. Tony Pillari

Sermon:

Eph 6:10-17

Brethren: Be strengthened in the Lord and in the might of His power. Put on the armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the Principalities and the Powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness on high. Therefore, take up the armor of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and stand in all things perfect. Stand, therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breast-plate of justice, and having your feet shod with the readiness of the Gospel of peace, in all things taking up the shield of faith, with which you may be able to quench all the fiery darts of the most wicked one. And take unto you the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, that is, the word of God.

            On this 21^st Sunday after Pentecost there are a few announcements. First, thank you very much for your prayers for my studies this past week in Italy. It was an intense time but a lot was accomplished. I must say that even though Rome and Florence are beautiful cities, and I was with some very good people, there is no place I’d rather be than Lanherne, and sensed quite strongly on this trip that the work of God here in the monastery and also in your families is at the very heart of what is needed today in the Church. So it is very good to be back.

I did return a bit sick and so may be a bit slower than usual these next few days.

I plan to begin 2 – 3 weeks from now the cycle of Sunday sermons presenting the great truths of our Faith according to the traditional Catechism. So if you know of those who might benefit from that preaching please feel free to invite them to attend.

Lastly John Buscombe, as you know, will be leaving today to begin a time of discernment with the Transalpine Redemptorists on the island of Papa Stronsay. So at the end of Mass, just a few minutes after Mass ends, I will be offering him a particular blessing as he begins this journey.

What is it that John is about to do? What does it mean to try to discern God’s will for your life? Each soul is created by God to burn with love for Him and for the salvation of souls. Yet if every soul is called to burn with this divine charity, not every soul is called to so in the same way. Some souls are called to burn with divine charity as priestly souls, others as monks, others as nuns, others as fathers and mothers of families, others to devote themselves to the service of the Church in the world by remaining single. The goal of discernment is to discover what an individual soul is made for—how is this soul called to give itself completely to the love of God?

But how does one go about discovering that? When John arrives in Papa Stronsay tomorrow will he be handed a thick manual and told that if he studies it’s contents very carefully, and learns all the rules and principles contained therein, using them to analyze his own life, that his mind will then be able see clearly just what his vocation is? No. Rather, the priority for John will be to open his soul more and more each day, indeed each hour of each day, to the work of Divine grace in his soul. He will be called each day to grow in charity and in humility, to allow God’s grace to penetrate everything in him, including the painful work of allowing God’s grace to penetrate the areas of one’s heart and soul (and each of us has them), that need a good deal of correcting and changing. He will be called each day to cooperate in the often painful work of conversion so that he might “die to himself,” and learn with time to live more and more for God.

It is only with time and perseverance, by striving day after day to cooperate in this work of divine grace—by allowing the fire of God’s love for him to penetrate his soul and to burn up everything in it; and by trying to make, as the Lord said to St. Margaret Mary, “some small return” to His love, that those things which are not of God can be burned up in a soul, so that the true nature of the soul—that is this particular soul’s true nature in the sense of what God created it to be—will be revealed.

So in the work of discernment it is not primarily study or intellectual understanding that are key, though those can have a certain role to play. Rather it is the daily efforts to grow in humility and in charity, and above all the daily efforts to open one’s soul to the working of divine grace, that is the key. John, as of tomorrow evening, will be choosing to live, at least for a time, a way of life that the Church proposes to all young men and women as “objectively superior.” What does that mean?

In the words of Pius XII, “This doctrine of the excellence of virginity and of celibacy and of their superiority over the married state was, as We have already said, revealed by our Divine Redeemer and by the Apostle of the Gentiles; so too, it was solemnly defined as a dogma of divine faith by the holy council of Trent, (Sess. XXIV, can 10) and explained in the same way by all the holy Fathers and Doctors of the Church.” (Sacra Virginitas n. 32) Does this mean that each person who is a religious or a priest is holier than each person who is married? No. Indeed I have often had the experience as a priest of being quite humbled at witnessing the great charity and sacrifices the married couples make for the sake of the Lord, and of realizing how much I need to improve in those areas.

But as St. Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians, “I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; ³³ but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, ³⁴ and his interests are divided…” “… he who marries his betrothed does well; and he who refrains from marriage will do better.” (1 Cor 7:38).

To begin to understand what St. Paul, and what the Church, teaches on this matter, reflect for a moment on the situation of a man who is engaged to a young woman, and who one day says to her, “Susan I love you with my whole heart, and want to always love you with my whole heart. I’ve also decided that—in addition to marrying you, I’d like to marry at the same time Sarah. But don’t worry, the fact that I’ll also be married to her won’t diminish the love, attention, and affection that you will always have from me.” How do you think Susan would respond? No doubt she would indignantly respond that this is impossible! That it is only possible to have one spouse. That a man’s capacity to love, to serve, to be attentive to his spouse, can only be given to one person in this life.

So also it is with a priest’s, (or a brother’s, or a nun’s), love for his Lord, and for the Church. Priestly celibacy frees a priest to offer the love, attention, and service that would otherwise be given to an earthly spouse, to God alone.

Celibacy touches above all on the first and greatest commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Celibacy is a tremendous help for the priest’s own love and adoration of God. And the more that the priest turns his own attention to God, offering Him the love and adoration that are due to Him alone, the more that God responds by pouring out His graces into the soul of the priest. “Amen I say to you, there is no man who hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or children, or lands, for My sake and for the Gospel, Who shall not receive a hundredfold, now in this time… …and in the world to come life everlasting.”

Celibacy facilitates above all God’s own action in the priest’s soul, so that he might, by God’s grace, be more deeply conformed to Jesus Christ Himself, so that there might be on the earth many who are truly “alter Christus,” who are as “another Christ.” The devil is tremendously afraid of this reality—he is tremendously afraid of young men embracing the gift of celibacy and of the hundredfold of God’s grace that will be poured out into a man’s soul who embraces it, and so he does everything he can to discourage young men from pursuing this path.

John will be, at least during this time of discernment, embracing this great means of growing in authentic charity. For charity is fundamentally, as St. Thomas Aquinas teaches, a “friendship with God.” The Lord said to His apostles, “I no longer call you servants… but friends.” (Jn 15:15) Saint Thomas explains that the key to a true friendship is willing the good of one’s friend. In the friendship with God, God certainly wills our good and in so many ways works for our good. As for us, we see in the saints over and over again that they strove to respond to God’s great and mysterious desire for love. As the Lord said to St. Margarite Mary, “I thirst, but with a burning thirst to be loved in the Blessed Sacrament by men. And this thirst consumes Me, and I find no one who tries, according to My desire, to give me to drink, by making some small return to My Love.”

            To try to make “some small return” to His love, or as the Lord has expressed it to other saints, to “console His Sacred Heart,” to “please Him”—this will be the daily work of John during this time of discernment. For that reason so many other things are stripped away: material goods, the freedom to decide how he uses his time, what he eats, who he talks to, even whether he can serve at the altar or not, and so on—indeed if done well this time will strip everything away so that he is forced to confront day after day the choice, which can only be made in the obscurity of faith, of choosing to offer Jesus Christ my love, my work, everything that I have, so that His Sacred Heart might be consoled, so that He might be pleased, and might receive from me at least “some small return to His love.”

            If John, and any young man who embarks on this journey of discernment, which really every young man should embark on—in one way or another—gives himself wholeheartedly to this work of growing in authentic humility and charity then in time the work of divine grace in his soul will reveal what his soul is made for: whether that be the priesthood, life as a brother, married life, or single life. A time of discernment is judged to be successful or not, not by the fact that a young man becomes a priest or not, but by whether or not he discovers the will of God for him—the particular way that his own soul is called to burn with charity for God. As St. Paul says, “…each has his own special gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.” ^[1] The goal of discernment is to find and embrace that gift.

            As we enter now into the heart of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass I would invite you to keep John in a particular way in your prayers, so that, through the motherly intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, he might embrace wholeheartedly the daily work that lies ahead for him in this discernment—the daily work of humility, charity, and conversion, so that he might truly lay down his life for his Lord and Savior.

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^[1] Catholic Biblical Association (Great Britain). (1994). The Holy Bible: Revised Standard Version, Catholic edition (1 Co 7:7). New York: National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA.