#catholic #sspx #sermon

• Doctors tell us that if we want our bodies to be healthy, we must exercise our bodies regularly. If our bodies are always at a state of rest, not moving, not straining, they will deteriorate over time.
• It is interesting to note that many exercises consist of pushing back against gravity. We have this force of gravity that is always being exercised upon us, which pulls us down. We find that, if we sometimes work against that force of gravity, if we strain our bodies against it, it is helpful for our bodies, rather than just letting gravity always pull us down.
• We can think about the exercises of pull ups, push ups, sit ups, and so on. There is a kettlebell exercise where you simply hold a weight above your head and walk with it.
• God has made our body in such a way that it needs periodic movement and strain in order for them to be in good health.
• Today, I want to speak to you about a spiritual exercise that is like the anti-gravity bodily exercises. It consists in pushing back against the weight of our fallen human nature that is always weighing down upon us.
• Our fallen nature works on our souls like the force of gravity works on our bodies. It is always pulling us down to earthly things. We can think of our souls as naturally being stooped over and always tending to look at ourselves, to want creature comforts, to be consumed with the things of this world.
• If we made a log of what we are always thinking about for one day, we might be surprised. We might find a lot of vanity, selfishness, and pride in our thoughts.
• Just as if we leave our bodies alone and do nothing with them, they fall apart, so too with our souls. If we let them live this way all the time, we will lose them. Our souls will be always consumed with the things of this earth and will end up falling into hell rather than rising up to Heaven.
• At the beginning of this season of Advent, we heard these words of Our Lord: “when these things begin to come to pass, look up, and lift up your heads, because your redemption is at hand.”
• We have to be continually be lifting our souls up to heavenly things. This is the spiritual exercise I would like to talk about. It consists in lifting our souls up to God throughout the day.
• Sometimes, you will hear this referred to as the “practice of the presence of God”. In other places, you will hear it referred to as the practice of recollection.

#catholic #sspx #ourlady

• The Immaculate Conception of Our Lady was a unique privilege given to her alone by God. Of all of the people born into this world after the sin of Adam and Eve, only one was prevented from contracting Original Sin by the intervention of God.
• This is implied by Pope Pius IX when he defined the dogma in 1854: “We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God” (Ineffabilis Deus)
• At the beginning of the same document, the Pope says, “Above all creatures did God so love her that truly in her was the Father well pleased with singular delight. Therefore, far above all the angels and all the saints so wondrously did God endow her with the abundance of all heavenly gifts poured from the treasury of his divinity”.
• Our Lady saw fit to make it clear that the Immaculate Conception is her unique privilege in an extraordinary way just four years later, in her apparitions to St. Bernadette in 1858.
  • St. Bernadette was given the mission by the parish priest to ask the lady who was appearing to her to say what her name was. It was uncertain that Our Lady was appearing.
  • The Lady asked St. Bernadette to come for fifteen days in a row. St. Bernadette kept asking her name but the Lady never gave it, and the fifteen days ended on March 3.
  • But St. Bernadette would sometimes get a strong urge to go to the grotto and this urge came to her on March 25. When Our Lady appeared to her, Bernadette was still quite focused on her mission. She asked the lady three times if she would not mind saying who she was and what was her name. Each time, the lady just smiled. She asked a fourth time and finally the lady became serious, lifted her eyes to heaven, and said those incredible words, “Lourdes: I AM the Immaculate Conception.”
  • Bernadette was a simple girl who could not read and hardly knew her catechism, even though she was fourteen years old. She had no idea whatsoever what was meant by “Immaculate Conception”. Plus, her memory was bad so she just kept repeating the phrase to herself so she could faithfully tell it to the priest.
• If Our Lady chose to speak of herself in such an extraordinary way, it was to communicate to us an important fact about her immaculate conception: God gave the privilege only to her.

#advent #catholic #sspx

• Advent is a holy season of waiting. We learn how to wait for God.
• Waiting well is an important spiritual skill, because God often moves slowly. When we look at the history of the world and of the human race, we see that God is never in a hurry.
• God is outside of time. All of time is like a single moment for Him. He sees all of human history from the highest perspective.
• When we interact with God, we have to be willing for Him to act slowly. We have to be willing to wait. “Show, O Lord, thy ways to me. Teach me thy paths”, we say in today’s Introit. His ways are slow.
• Abraham: God first appears to him when he is 75 years old, and promises that he will make a great nation of him. But his wife is not able to have any children. After 25 years, God appears to Abraham, when he is 100 years old, and promises that he will have a child by Sara, who is 90 years old. She has Isaac and the whole race of the Chosen People comes from him.
• Moses: the Israelites are being oppressed by the Pharaoh. He is telling the midwives to put their male children to death. Moses is saved from the water and raised by Pharaoh’s daughter in the Egyptian court. When he is 40 years old, he flees to the desert. Only after 40 years more does God appear to Moses and ask him to go back to Egypt to deliver the Israelite people. They had been in slavery for 80 years at that point.
• Coming of Our Lord: God waits a number of centuries after Adam. When Our Lord comes onto this earth, He is not rushed. Rather, He spends 30 years living a hidden and unknown life. Only then does He come out into the public.
• Bottom line: God often waits a long time before acting. (same will be true of end of world!)
• We find this characteristic of our God difficult because we are naturally impatient as human beings. We are willful and we want control. We want things to happen when we want them to happen. We find it humbling to be forced to wait.