Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
Today’s holy gospel brings before our eyes Our Lord’s prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem. His sadness at the fall of the cherished city erupts into tears. They are the tears of God who weeps over His chosen people who, after so many offers of grace, after centuries of prophecies announcing the coming of the Saviour, so many proofs of prevenient divine love, when He actually does come, reject Him. Christ weeps; what hurts is that this people He loves and of which He is part and has made every possible effort to save, rejects Him and thereby the possibility of the salvation He came to offer.
The destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70 AD was however not just a chastisement for so many sins and in particular for the rejection of the Messiah. It was also a sign that the covenant sanctioned by the blood of animals at the foot of Mount Sinai had come to an end. The new and eternal covenant has superseded that of the Mosaic covenant and the latter is henceforth no longer salvific. Henceforth the only covenant with God into which all souls are called and into which they must enter under pain of damnation is the eternal covenant in the blood of Jesus Christ. No one comes to the Father but through me, says our Blessed Lord (Jn 14:6). That includes those who, by race, are Jews. The Jewish religion as it exists today is no longer what it was when it was instituted. It has lost all salvific power because it has rejected the very purpose for which it was instituted, that is to prepare the way for the Messiah who was to be born of Israel.
This is the reason for which St Paul writes that circumcision is no longer of any value before God, but only faith in Christ Jesus: For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God (Galatians 6:15-16). The Israel of God is none other than the true Israelites, that is to say, those who put their faith in Jesus Christ. This is why in the Apocalypse, Our Lord refers to those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. (Apoc 2:9). They say they are Jews because they belong to the Jewish race, but they are not Jews by religion, because the real Jews, the true Israelites today are those who believe in Jesus Christ.
It is not permissible for a Catholic to think or to say that the Jewish covenant is still valid and salvific for them. This is nothing short of, I say not heresy, but apostasy, as it reduces to nothing the cross of Christ. Any Jew can be saved, but only through Christ, and it is to Him that every effort must be made to lead them. This is why the fashion prevalent today in too many circles of extending the expression “anti-Semite” to those who seek to convert the Jews to Christianity is, although more often than not inspired by political reasons, is, of its very essence an act of betrayal and apostasy, rejecting one of the most fundamental teachings of the New Testament, namely that one cannot be saved, except through Christ and His Church.
Now this by no means implies that all Christians are thereby sure of their salvation. This is the reason for today’s epistle, in which St Paul warns that we can fall into the same vices the Jews did. He recalls how, after having been delivered from the slavery of Egypt and receiving the Law at Mt Sinai, they fell so quickly into fornication and idolatry. Fornication and idolatry are intimately related, and that is why in the prophetic literature of the Old Testament God frequently reproaches His people for their fornication, meaning that they have left their true Spouse and run off after other lovers, that is, false gods.
What happened to them can happen to us if we are not careful to resist temptation in all its forms. God has called us to the eminent dignity of being His own adopted sons and daughters. After such astounding condescension, what a grievous sin it is to fall back into our former evil ways, handing ourselves over to sloth and the pleasures of the flesh. If we think we are strong, we must take heed, for we can fall and lose all the prerogatives of our baptism, in which case our plight would be as tragic – no, it would be much more tragic – than that of the Jews who rejected Christ, for once having received His grace, it is a grievous sin to go back, like the dog that returns to its vomit, the washed sow that returns to wallow in the mire.
Numerous examples in the history of the Church could be brought to prove this point and illustrate what happens when the chosen inheritance of Jesus Christ is abandoned to vice. One episode will suffice, inspired by today’s Gospel. I mean to speak of the Sack of Rome in the year 1527. Secular historians are fond of analysing this tragic event, laying out the various steps that led to it, in particular the political wars and alliances of the time, and the failure of the Emperor Charles V to pay his Lutheran mercenaries, thus exposing all of Italy to their looting. All that is of interest, but incomplete. We really cannot properly consider this event except in light of the fact that Rome is the centre of Christendom, and had been for decades in need of serious reform. Successive efforts had been made, but none had produced the fruit of a true reform of the Church especially in her visible head and hierarchy.
And so, on 6 May 1527, the Landsknecht mercenaries of the emperor, many of whom were Lutheran and had promised to God to murder all priests, opened breeches in the ancient walls of the holy city. Incited by months of warfare with little to no pay and thirsty for blood, they set out to loot, burn, rape and murder to such a degree that an eyewitness said that the Vandals, Goths and Turks were outdone. The cruelty was such that, as one said, even stones would have been moved to compassion; and another: Rome has been turned into hell.
Let’s repeat that the lack of pay does not suffice to explain the sheer cruelty and destruction. To loot the city and take whatever it had in gold, silver, precious jewels and supplies would have been understandable. But to slaughter defenceless citizens in the streets, to murder orphans in their asylum and the sick in hospitals, to beat elderly cardinals to death extorting money from them, to rape consecrated nuns in the sanctity of their own cloisters and then parade them naked through the streets and sell them in the markets, to feed their horses with consecrated hosts, to violate the tombs of the saints, using the skull of an apostle as a ball on the streets, to dress up a donkey in ecclesiastical robes and lead it to the altar and then to hack to pieces the priest who refused to give it Communion – all this denotes a Satanic fury let loose by God’s permission on a city that had been guilty of so many crimes. The Medici Pope, Clement VII, barely escaped with his life, taking refuge in the fortified and impregnable Castel Sant’Angelo, paying the price for all the scandals of Renaissance popes before him. It would be months before the pope could negotiate terms with the army leaders; finally the city was freed from the drunken slaughter and pillage, but by that time, Rome, the eternal city, the marvel of the whole world, was but a shadow of its former self. The population was decimated, corpses rotted in the streets, houses burnt to the ground.
A Spanish eye witness tells us: “I don’t know how else to compare this, other than to the destruction of Jerusalem. Now I recognise the justice of God, who does not forget even if he arrives late. In Rome all sins were committed quite openly: sodomy, simony, idolatry, hypocrisy, and deceit; thus we cannot believe that this all happened by chance, but by divine justice.” Indeed, 2 weeks before the sack, on Maundy Thursday a warning came as Clement VII blessed the crowd. A holy hermit appeared and shouted to the Pope: “Sodomite bastard, for your sins Rome will be destroyed. Confess and convert, for in fourteen days the wrath of God will fall upon you and the city”.
The Romans as all Catholics knew that the sack of Rome was a punishment from God. But it was also a grace, for only after it happened did things begin to change. The climate of moral relativism dissolved, austerity and penance returned, and the way was paved for the magnificent rebirth that would become the Catholic Counter-Reformation.
What lesson are we to draw from this horrific scene? Quite simply this: God is very, very patient; He wants the conversion of the sinner more than anything; but there comes a time when there is nothing left but the rod of punishment. For yes, God does chastise. And when the chastisement comes, it spares none, neither good nor bad. Those poor nuns who were raped were good nuns, those orphans who were slaughtered were innocent. The good fall with the evil, immersed in the universal chastisement.
Christ wept over Jerusalem. His divine tears fell to the ground. If only you knew what awaits you, my beloved city. Now you enjoy peace and prosperity, but all that is coming to an end, for you have failed. You have failed to know the time of God’s visit. God Himself has come to you, and you are so blind that you do not see. You are so full of yourself, so taken up with increasing your riches and your vain pleasures. God has come, and has been ignored. You have broken the heart of your God, my people, but your God has not forgotten you.
Christ weeps today, my dear Friends. He weeps as He casts His sacred eyes upon the world, upon the Church. What causes Jesus to weep today? He weeps at the slaughter of the innocent unborn; He weeps at the married beds that have been made intentionally barren; He weeps over the empty cribs; He weeps over our youth, corrupted in mind by the most crooked ideologies and broken in body by the wholesale distribution of contraceptives and puberty blockers; He weeps over the hypocrisy of so-called Catholic political leaders who approach the sacred altar with the blood of the innocent on their hands; He weeps over the political and economic pressure put on poor countries to open the door to disgusting vices; He weeps over the unending preparations of war and the ongoing slaughter of defenceless civilians.
And in the Church? He weeps over the intentional confusion that reigns in her teaching; He weeps over documents that are carefully worded to avoid overt heresy but clearly designed to undermine the faith of those who read them; He weeps over the lip-service paid to the sacred deposit of faith and moral teachings of the Church, while at the same time opening the door to every kind of vice; He weeps when priests bless sinful unions and approve sins that cry to Heaven for vengeance; He weeps over defrocked religious and empty seminaries; He weeps over sloppy liturgies, profaned consecrated Hosts, denuded altars, vestments and sacred vessels; He weeps over the ongoing efforts to silence from the earth the sacred liturgy bequeathed to us by Tradition, while deceitful lips speak of promoting a unity that they themselves make every effort to destroy; He weeps over the silencing and sidelining of valiant Catholic priests and bishops while sodomites are approved and promoted.
Yes, my dear friends, Jesus weeps today. But lets take care not to consider only how much He weeps over others. He weeps over each of us. Perhaps today He is is inviting us to consider how many times He has visited us with His grace, and we did not know, because we were too busy with ourselves. All the times He has urged us to true worship in spirit and truth, and we were immersed in self-worship. Jesus weeps when the sinner returns to sin; He weeps when lip-service is paid to Him while the heart is elsewhere; He weeps when a Christian approaches the Sacred Altar without being in a state of grace. Today the tears of Jesus fall in abundance.
The time is short, my dear Friends. The sack of Rome will happen again. Only I fear the next time, it will be far worse. When? We do not know. But unless there is a serious conversion in the Church, from top to bottom, we can certainly expect it to happen. And even if there is a serious conversion, a price will have to be paid.
I remember reading in a well-known history of the French Revolution by Pierre de la Gorce, magnificent pages on the execution of King Louis XVI. He was a good man, Louis XVI, weak yes, but good. But he it was who paid the price for all the evil his predecessors had been guilty of. In his person, it was the French monarchy itself that paid the price, a price it is still paying to this day.
Someone will have to pay the price for all the evil in our Church and our world. Perhaps we will have that honour. In any event, let us make every effort so that He may not have cause to weep over us anything but tears of joy, seeing that finally we wish to return to His Sacred Heart. And if that grace is given us, let us strive to dry the tears He sheds over others, over the Church, over our broken world. One soul at a time, let us strive to dry Jesus’ tears, and make Him smile. Amen.
