Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Today the holy Gospel takes us to the little town of Naim. Our Lord approaches with His disciples, and as He does so, a funeral cortege is processing out in direction of the graveyard. The dead man was young, the only son of his widowed mother. The details are important, because they reveal to us the plight of this woman who now finds herself without any support and probably condemned to poverty. Our Lord is moved. His heart is never insensitive to true needs, and even when in His divine wisdom He does not intervene in order to teach us a much needed lesson in patience, His loving support and closeness is never lacking. In this case He does step in, and He does so dramatically. In what would seem at first sight an incredible lack of respect, He touches the bier on which the man is being carried, and when He does so, the cortege stops dead in its tracks. With a word He calls the dead man back to life and gives him back to his mother. It is the third of the resurrections the Gospels tell us that Jesus performed in His public life, wonderful signs of the divinity of His mission.
The story however has another dimension. The dead man symbolises the sinner, who is lost and on his way to eternal damnation. Our Lord steps in, touches him through the sacraments of the Church, pulls him back from the abyss, and saves him. St Ambrose, commenting the scene, tells us that the pallbearers symbolise the passions that lead us headlong into sin and eternal separation from God. It’s a powerful image: carried along by lust, envy, avarice, anger, sloth, gluttony and vain glory, so many souls simply put up no resistance, and are swept away by their own vices. It is the broad and apparently easy way to eternal perdition which, according to Our Lord Himself, is taken by many, many souls (cf. Mt 7:13-14).
We all have the seven capital sins in us, and their roots never die out completely until we are dead. Because of this, in this life it is not possible to avoid the temptations that are caused by these vices, but it is possible to not consent to what they offer. A passion can be compared to a match, which when lit catches fire instantly and, if not put out, can be the cause of the conflagration of the edifice of our immortal soul. If however, we do not pour fuel onto the fire, the match goes out, the fire is gone and peace returns. So, whenever we feel those unwholesome urges to pleasure, to gossip, to wrath, to laziness, etc. let us immediately turn to prayer and let the match go out. If we do so, the house of our interior life will remain in peace, and we will continue our journey on the way to a blessed eternity.
There is still another dimension to today’s Gospel. The mother is the Church weeping over her dead son, the sinner. In certain periods of her history, however, the Church herself seems to be the one being carried to the grave. Historians, journalists, and statisticians all tell us that the Church, at least in most western countries, is dying. If the present trends continue, in less than 50 years there will be hardly anyone going to church anymore. What are the causes of this demise of the Church? Who are the pallbearers carrying the Church to her grave? There are many, but today let’s concentrate on just four of the most murderous culprits.
First of all, there is doctrinal relativism. According to this error, there are no objective truths; our understanding of reality evolves with each generation, and so the teachings of the Church too must evolve with the present day mindset. Such a mentality empties the Catholic creed of its substance, leaving the faithful in the midst of a lethally confusing scenario, in which one can no longer be firmly attached to the rock solid tenets of the faith, for they are no longer taught with the clarity of conviction proper to them. Our feet tremble and we fall, because the ground under them has been shaken to its very foundations.
Secondly, there is moral license. According to this, morality is a personal affair. You have your values and I have mine, and as long as we don’t hurt and kill each other, then live and let live. This mentality has led most in the Church to be silent even on some of the most fundamental precepts of the decalogue. Catholic politicians openly and with impunity support the murder of the unborn and the elderly, Catholic couples contracept like everybody else, Catholic women adopt the immodest fashions that reign supreme in society, and Catholic men fail to practice custody of the eyes, all of this leading to a pagan and wanton lifestyle that dissolves whatever is left of traditional morals. The result is that the Church is no longer a bastion of morality, and thereby loses all moral influence in the world.
Thirdly, there is liturgical fantasy. Since doctrine and morals evolve with time, liturgical practice too should be open to constant experimentation. We no longer reverently receive and devoutly celebrate the rites handed down by Tradition, but we let ourselves slide faster and faster down a slope that ultimately leads to the abolition of all authentic worship of God, for the shift of a God-centred world to a man-centred world eventually turns liturgy into a celebration of man, the worst form of idolatry, that substitutes the creature for the Creator.
Finally, there is the heresy of universalism by which is meant that hell is and will remain empty because God is so good that in the end everyone is saved, regardless of how they lived. The logic of the Gospel, we are told, is that no one can possibly be lost, and in saying this, we essentially close the gate of salvation, for if we are all going to Heaven anyway, why make the effort to enter the narrow and straight gate that demands self-denial, humility, chastity and all the other virtues?
These pallbearers are strong and sturdy and show no signs of weakening their hold on us. And so it is that our dear Church is being carried to the grave. Of course, these somber forecasts do not take into consideration that the Lord can intervene by raising up great saints, and these can turn the situation around, as has happened before in history. Our duty is to remain faithful, to avoid the ambient heresies, to pray much, to practice self-denial, to fight to the end, even unto martyrdom, for Catholic truth, Catholic morality and the authentic Catholic liturgy. Our Blessed Lord foretold it all: because iniquity hath abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold (Mt 24:12). And again, When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth? (Lk 18:8). Let’s make sure He finds it in our hearts.
