′′ Soon we will have priests reduced to the role of social worker and message of faith reduced to political vision Everything will seem lost, but at the right time, at the most dramatic stage of crisis, the Church will be reborn. It will be smaller, poorer, almost catacumbal, but also more holy. For it will no longer be the Church of those who seek to please the world, but the Church of the faithful to God and His eternal law The rebirth will be the work of a small, seemingly insignificant yet indomitable break, past a purification process. Because this is how God works. Against evil, a small pack resists."
- BXVI
Okay, so Pope Francis feels that Cardinal Burke is his “enemy”. Kinda weird position for a Christian, Catholic and priest, to take about another priest and Cardinal who, presumably is a friend of Christ. I have never seen or heard anything that might in the least call into question Cardinal Burke’s love for, or loyalty to, Christ as Lord and Savior.
I don’t know any normal, respectable priests who label people like that. Not my style, but his feelings are legitimate and his own to describe. But this leaves questions. If Christ’s friend is my enemy, who is my friend? If Christ's friend is my enemy, is Christ my friend?
Then, there’s this:
“Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you.” - Jesus Christ
And so, yet another scandal:
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Francis is reportedly working to evict Cardinal Raymond Burke from his apartment in Rome and remove his salary, according to Vatican sources cited in a new report.
Published in three languages on November 27, the New Daily Compass (NDC) reported that Pope Francis had announced his intention to evict the prominent American cardinal from his lodgings in Rome
By his own words we have been led to believe Francis has moved beyond the Old Testament, imperfect image of God. From today’s readings in the Breviarium Romanum:
“The Lord is a jealous God, and a revenger: the Lord is a revenger, and hath wrath: the Lord taketh vengeance on his adversaries, and he is angry with his enemies. The Lord is patient, and great in power, and will not cleanse and acquit the guilty. The Lord's ways are in a tempest, and a whirlwind, and clouds are the dust of his feet. He rebuketh the sea, and drieth it up: and bringeth all the rivers to be a desert.” (Lesson from the book of Nahum Nah 1:1-4)
Actions speak louder than words. Hypocrites speak of the love, mercy and gentleness of the Lord while exhibiting the opposite behavior toward their brothers.
“Forgive is our trespasses as we forgive those who red pass against us.”
And then there is the legal matter that Cardinal Burke earned his pension and housing, promised to him by the pope when he was made a Cardinal. This is yet more lawlessness from a sinfully proud egomaniac.
Perhaps this public shaming of Cardinal Burke is also for the purpose of reducing his chances as “papabile” in the next conclave. I believe as of now that what is said and done at the top echelon is mostly about ensuring the election of a Francis II.
I pray that this is not an early sign of the sad end of a priest who falls away from God’s love and grace after failing to offer Mass daily, as reports indicate has now happened.
In supernatural charity let us pray for both Pope Francis and Cardinal Burke.
Nationalist firebrand Geert Wilders won a landslide in the Dutch election
AfD won by its biggest margin ever in last month’s Hesse election
Irish citizens march in the streets against mass immigration after a stabbing attack
French citizens protest against the open border after a stabbing attack
Finland just elected the most right-wing government in its history
Swedish government forced to cut a deal for stricter immigration laws
2 right-wing populist parties entered the government for the first time ever
An anti-immigration and anti-woke party won the Swiss election in October
Nationalist PM Viktor Orban won his 4th consecutive term last year
Meloni elected as Prime Minister on the promise of halting illegals
Hundreds of thousands are marching in Spain against the socialist coup
Marine Le Pen surging in France
Cardinal Muller celebrating the Traditional Latin Mass yesterday at the Institute of the Good Shepherd, Casa San Clemente.
The religion that forgives is Christianity. Full stop.
Christianity is the religion of peace.
Stop the lies.
Ireland today:
Your neighborhood tomorrow?
Also Dublin:
Jesus Christ is King. Of justice, love and peace.
A final thought:
Virginity then, being a thing in itself so great and so much esteemed among many, lest any man having attained unto it, and kept it undefiled, should think that he hath done all, and so leave the rest undone, the Lord putteth forth this parable, in order to show that if virginity, though it have all else, lack mercy, its owner will but have his portion without among the fornicators, among whom Christ doth justly place the heartless and pitiless celibate. The fornicator is entangled in lust after bodies, the other in lust after money. The lust for bodies and the lust for money are two very different things, whereof the fleshly is by far the keener and the stubborner appetite.
They that strive with the weaker enemy are therefore much less excusable if they fall. Wherefore the Lord hath called such virgins foolish, for having first won the stern battle, and then been destroyed in the light one.
- S John Chrysostom
Thanks to all of you here today: for your prayers, your presence and your love in Christ.
Welcome to this holy sacrifice of the Mass which we offer for the repose of the soul of my mother, Mary.
So many more to thank, so many lives intertwined here and in many other ways through the gift of life. On behalf of my father and our family, please know of our sincere gratitude.
To die will be the most difficult thing that any of us will do. Death is both the last and the most important act of our lives in this vale of tears. Why is this so? As death approaches, with whatever awareness remains, we confront increasingly the total detachment the end of life here on earth entails. And at the same time we are in faith offered the possibility in grace of total adherence to God. It is the one act that determines our destiny for eternity. We must die a holy death, in loving communion with the Lord, in order to enter into the eternal dwelling place which He has prepared for each one of us.
Is it not for these reason that the Word of God teaches that we are truly blessed when faith means for us that we die to ourselves and to our own will daily so as to love the Lord and His holy will above all things? And so for Mary, in her call to holiness through her vocation as wife and mother, loving the Lord and others through worship and servanthood.
In comparison with eternity this very short life on earth pales in importance, to say the least. What would it profit a man, as Scripture says, if he were to gain even the whole world and yet suffer the loss his eternal soul? It is not possible to conceive of any greater tragedy or evil.
My mother has now passed through this final crucible, her life drawing to a close after the damages of Alzheimer's had ravaged her bright, intelligent mind and courageous will and thus, also, increasingly her body. But she also had the irreplaceable treasure of her Catholic Faith, and a lifetime of prayer and grace because of it, to prepare her for that greatest and final moment.
Our human nature is such that we often only gradually cooperate with grace, such that we fail even often to do God's will in love of Him and for His sake. We seek our own good or our own will apart from, or in opposition to, true love for the Lord and for others. Our obedience at times lags or completely disappears and we can fall into serious sin, and must then repent and return to the right path that leads to heaven.
Let us not forget that there is no neutral or middle ground between heaven and hell. “If you are lukewarm I will spew you out of My mouth,’ says the Lord. We either go to heaven after we die, perhaps passing through purgatory for a time, or we are cast body and soul into Gehenna, where the suffering due to our selfishness and sin is eternal and too horrible to describe. Satan began as an angel of light, and thus “Lucifer”. He still often appears in attractive guise to our weak and easily deceived humanity.
The child visionaries at Fatima were so shocked and frightened by the vision of hell which our Blessed Mother allowed them to see that in their pure and innocent love they would painfully dehydrate themselves in order to do penance for and to save unrepentant sinners. How many today live in complete ignorance of, or worse, rejection of Our Lord and His mercy, endangering their eternal happiness?
Not so for my parents, who were both formed and educated by faithful priests and religious women who played important roles in their lives along with their faithful parents in the context of what was then a yet intact Catholic Tradition.
The truth, goodness and beauty of the Catholic faith and tradition was readily available, presumed even, in every parish without fail. Rare was the place where leaders of the Church openly displayed disobedience and scorn for the holy Mass, the Sacraments, and the irreplaceable role of the sacred in our lives. All too common around us today are the results of the spiritually corrosive effect of the degradation of the sacred places and things which our Catholic tradition uses to hand on and build up our saving Faith.
Mary passed away peacefully, breathing her last with the grace of the Sacraments, on November 6 at 86 years of age. She went forth from us in the month of the Holy Souls and in the octave of All Saints. We take great consolation in the message God's timing sends us as our temporal life and death unfolds within the liturgical cycle. Our prayer and devotion always connects us to the Lord and the heavenly realities as we worship with the Church, drawing us more deeply into the mysteries of faith and the life of grace, the foretaste and promise of eternal life.
Mary and Richard joined this parish in 1962. For almost 60 years Mary was active in organizing dances, dinners and fundraisers for both Saint Mary’s School and Saint Vincent Pallotti High School. She sang in the choir. But, more than that, Mary was a staunch supporter of the prolife movement, especially through the parish bus trip to DC for the annual March for Life.
As soon as the evil of Roe V. Wade was given the sanction of "law" Mary knew immediately a battle was ahead for all those who understand the truth handed down by the Church in Christ. The sacredness of every human life, a self-evident fact for establishing which religion is unnecessary, as she knew from her Catholic formation and nursing experience, demanded defending on the part of every member of the Body of Christ. And, she knew, just as the Body of Christ is one, so is the truth. Anyone who contemplates taking away or denying any truth compromises the entire edifice of faith.
The little lessons of virtue so essential for forming young souls were ours. One example: the Cusick family did not check the weather forecast to determine whether we would attend the annual March for Life or not. No matter the physical discomfort the weather might bring each year, our commitment to witness for the sacredness of human life everywhere, to include the mother’s womb, was not negotiable. Also, despite the fact that we were out on the sailboat every weekend in season we found our way to Mass for keeping the Lord’s Day holy. And this before cell phones and the internet. We were indeed blessed with holy and apostolic witness by our parents.
There were two kinds of suffering in Mary’s life.
The first type of suffering comes to all of us simply as a result of original sin through our mortal flesh: our human nature, prone to disease and death. We must choose to join our weakness to that of the Perfect God-Man on the Cross, that it may avail for our sanctification.
The second kind of suffering results from our free choice to live out in our actions the practical effects of the truth which we profess in our Catholic Faith. This is the witness of martyrdom, and there are many kinds of witness, as unique as each one of us here. Complete adherence to Christ suffering and risen, no matter the consequences in this life, is for the sake of the next life, eternal and blessed with the beatific vision. “We shall be like God, for we shall see Him as He is.” This is love for Love Himself.
Mary chose this witness for love of God and souls and suffered for it.
In the beatitudes Christ teaches, “Blessed are you when men curse you, and revile you and utter every kind of slander against you falsely, because of Me. Your reward in heaven will be great.” I pray, and ask you to join me, that the Lord’s promise to Mary and to each one of us will indeed be fulfilled inasmuch as we suffer like her for the sake of faithfulness to He Who is Truth in all things and in all circumstances.
We will all one day share with Mary the suffering and final corruption of our mortal flesh which Our Lord, the Person of the Word, took to the Cross. This flesh in the Person of the Word was united to His Divinity, that by means of His suffering and death He might offer Us eternal life in Himself.
May we follow Mary’s example, as we also choose to suffer for the sake of righteousness that, with her, we may look with confidence to eternal blessedness. And may we ever pray for Mary, for all the departed and also for ourselves, in particular joined to this perfect prayer of the holy Mass each Sunday as we together keep the Lord’s Day holy, wherever we are.
Our Lord will be present here today, in this as in every holy Mass, the Holy Eucharist as foretaste and promise of heaven. Food for our faith and salvation, His Presence as God and Man demands discernment of us. This means that if we are guilty of mortal sin or do not hold and believe all that the Church holds and believes, we cannot receive Him worthily and so must abstain. This is to avoid both undertaking a useless act and the further sinfulness of sacrilege. He first offers forgiveness of sin in Confession to prepare for Communion and the grace of repentance and conversion if we have fallen away from the Faith and its practice.
Why? As Pope Benedict explained, "death opens up to life, to eternal life, which is not an infinite duplicate of the present time, but something completely new". It this newness of eternal life in divine love which is the prize which we must seek through all our earthly strivings, for “he who perseveres to the end will be saved”.
May Mary's soul, and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen.
Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
(I delivered the above remarks as the homily at my mother’s funeral Mass on November 17th, 2023. In photo: manutergium with oils of priesthood ordination placed in the hands of a deceased mother of a priest.)
