Septuagesima Sunday
Today, my dear Friends, with the Roman liturgy we enter the Easter cycle, by this Sunday called Septuagesima, being roughly the 70th day before Easter. A number of significant things change today: we leave aside the celebratory green in favour of the penitential violet vestments; we abandon the chant of the paschal alleluia, which will not be heard again till it is solemnly intoned at the Easter vigil. On this day, we begin our march towards the greatest of all feasts, that is theLord’s resurrection. In order to prove ourselves worthy of the graces that are held in store for us then, we must prepare ourselves well. The forty days of Lent are there for that purpose. Septuagesima helps us be ready for Lent.
The Roman liturgy for this day presents us with a truly awesome selection of Scriptural readings, all designed to lead our minds and hearts to a deeper appreciation for what God has done for us in creating us, redeeming us, and giving us the Church to share with us the fruits of the redemption. That is why this morning at Matins the Church read the account of creation at the beginning of Genesis, and during the week we will read the story of the Fall of our first parents. Next week, Noah and the flood will be brought before our eyes, as a type of baptism and the Church. Then on the Sunday that immediately precedes Ash Wednesday, the patriarch Abraham will inspire us with his generous sacrifice of his son Isaac, the prototype of the immaculate lamb of God our Lord Jesus Christ.
This is all presented to us against the background of the two readings of today’s Mass, which both teach the same lesson, and which are pivotal, clearly denoting the change of season and tone, and crucial for our understanding of the faith in general. In the epistle, St Paul admonishes the Corinthians by using the example of a man who runs in a race. If you do not run to win, you won’t win. To prove his point, he recalls that even though all the Jews ate the first passover, and they all left Egypt and were, as it were, baptised in the Red Sea, only two of them would see the promised land, most of them would leave their bones to dry in the desert. Why? Because they failed to remain faithful to the Lord and confident in His grace. The Gospel parable of the workers of the vineyard insists upon the reality that we must put effort into our salvation, and heed the Lord’s call, who comes out at the various hours of the day to hire labourers, but at the end of the parable, we are given the stern warning: Many are called, but few are chosen.
The conjunction of all these readings has made Septuagesima Sunday the principle moment in the liturgical year when priests are exhorted to address the question of the urgency of salvation. The truth is simple, but it is not a pleasant one for fallen man, and it is this: God wants all men to be saved, and He provides them abundant means to do so, but sadly, due to the lack of response on behalf of most men, relatively few of them are actually saved. A number of considerations support this view. The first are the unequivocal words of our Blessed Lord Himself who tells us that the call goes out to many, but few actually enter life; the gate is narrow, and few find it. The unambiguous nature of these words led all the Fathers and Doctors of the Church to teach without hesitation that the number of the saved is inferior to the number of the damned.
Now, why do you think Our blessed Lord revealed this to us? Was it to scare us out of our wits? He certainly wanted to wake us up and impress upon our minds and hearts and wills and flesh that life is serious, and if we do not make serious efforts to embrace the salvation offered to us by living in God’s grace, we will certainly not attain it. If we let ourselves drift, we will quite simply drift into Hell.
All this was so obvious for former generations of Catholics that it was never debated. Everyone knew that we were put on this planet to go to God and that God had pushed His love so far that He actually came Himself to show us the path to that blessed eternity. They also knew that what God is offering is so far beyond our natural expectations, that no one in his right mind would ever have considered Heaven to be some sort of due, as if God were bound to send to Heaven all the souls He created in spite of their merits. It wasn’t until the advent of our proud and arrogant age that this was called into question, starting essentially in the 19th century when preachers began to suggest that maybe, just maybe the proportion might be different. Perhaps it’s the greater number that is saved and the lesser lost. Little by little, it came to be taught that the chances of being lost are so slim that you really have to do something awful – such as build concentration camps or torture and murder children – for that to happen. Until finally the most common – and the most devastating – heresy of our day, which is that everyone dies and goes to Heaven. Just like that.
Thankfully, not everyone has taken the fatal bait. If you saw the excellent film Nefarious, you may recall this discourse that the demon Nefarious speaks through the serial killer named Edward Wayne Brady: “Bottom line is you’re done. It’s over, that’s it. And we did it all right to your face, James, and now there’s evil everywhere and no one even cares…. We achieved our goal slowly with your movies, your TV and your media. We desensitised you, redirected your world view to the point that you can’t even recognise evil when it’s right in front of your face. More to the point, James, you can’t even feel it when you’re doing it. And as for winners and losers, well well well, that gets decided at the time of death. The actual numbers are a closely guarded secret, but there are more of you ending up in my master’s house than with the enemy. A lot more, Jimmy”.
Since, however, it’s never wise to believe the devil, let me confirm this with something a bit more solid. It’s not difficult. There are literally volumes of sermons and writings on this subject that I could quote for you, but I will limit myself to a few brief excerpts from a famous homily by St Leonard of Port Maurice, the 17th century Italian Franciscan who spent his life roaming around Italy preaching parish missions (it is he, by the way, who popularised the devotion to the Stations of the Cross). In a sermon on the Little Number of the Elect, he explains that there are two roads that lead to Heaven: innocence and repentance. If we have not kept our baptismal innocence, then we must take the road of repentance, there is no other option. So the question is: are we truly repentant for our sins? Do we make good and sincere and complete confessions, with true contrition for our sins and a firm purpose of not sinning again? Do we take care to avoid occasions of sin and to mortify ourselves? There are those who rely on making a good confession on their deathbed, but as St Leonard so pointedly says: “a dying person who has not confessed well when he was in good health will have an even harder time doing so when he is in bed with a heavy heart, an unsteady head, a muddled mind.”
Then, quoting St John Chrysostom, he does not hesitate to affirm that “most Christians are walking on the road to Hell throughout their life. Why, then, are you so surprised that the greater number goes to Hell? To come to a door, you must take the road that leads there.” To imagine one will arrive at a destination without taking the path that leads there is utter folly. It’s like having an appointment in Sydney, but boarding a plane to Melbourne because you like that particular plane and the people in it, and hope that at the gate you will actually be arriving in Sydney. If someone were to do that, you would rightly consider them to have lost their minds. So why do we persist in imagining the people who take the path to Hell will end up in Heaven?
“For mercy’s sake,” continues St Leonard, “stop and listen to me for a moment! Either you understand what it means to be saved and to be damned for all eternity, or you do not. If you understand and in spite of that, you do not decide to change your life today, make a good confession and trample upon the world, in a word, make your every effort to be counted among the littler number of those who are saved, I say that you do not have the faith. You are more excusable if you do not understand it, for then one must say that you are out of your mind. To be saved for all eternity, to be damned for all eternity, and to not make your every effort to avoid the one and make sure of the other, is something inconceivable”.
In conclusion, the saint puts this before the crowd of listeners. “Brothers, I want to send all of you away comforted today. So if you ask me my sentiment on the number of those who are saved, here it is: Whether there are many or few that are saved, I say that whoever wants to be saved, will be saved; and that no one can be damned if he does not want to be. And if it is true that few are saved, it is because there are few who live well. As for the rest, compare these two opinions: the first one states that the greater number of Catholics are condemned; the second one, on the contrary, pretends that the greater number of Catholics are saved. Imagine an Angel sent by God to confirm the first opinion, coming to tell you that not only are most Catholics damned, but that of all this assembly present here, one alone will be saved. If you obey the Commandments of God, if you detest the corruption of this world, if you embrace the Cross of Jesus Christ in a spirit of penance, you will be that one alone who is saved. Now imagine the same Angel returning to you and confirming the second opinion. He tells you that not only are the greater portion of Catholics saved, but that out of all this gathering, one alone will be damned and all the others saved. If after that, you continue your usuries, your vengeances, your criminal deeds, your impurities, then you will be that one alone who is damned.
When Saint Thomas Aquinas’s sister asked him what she must do to go to heaven, he said, ‘You will be saved if you want to be.’ I say the same thing to you, and here is proof of my declaration. No one is damned unless he commits mortal sin: that is of faith. And no one commits mortal sin unless he wants to: that is an undeniable theological proposition. Therefore, no one goes to hell unless he wants to; the consequence is obvious. Does that not suffice to comfort you? Weep over past sins, make a good confession, sin no more in the future, and you will all be saved. Why torment yourself so? For it is certain that you have to commit mortal sin to go to hell, and that to commit mortal sin you must want to, and that consequently no one goes to hell unless he wants to. That is not just an opinion, it is an undeniable and very comforting truth; may God give you to understand it, and may He bless you.”
In conclusion, my dear Friends, one very simple piece of advice: Every morning when you rise, say to yourself: this may be my very last day, and I want to live it in God’s grace as if it were. Every night when you go to bed, say to yourself that you will not see the morning, but will wake up before the judgement seat of God. If you do this consistently, you will live in God’s grace and you will be among the elect. So be it, for you and for me. Amen.
