St. Alphonsus Liguori and Immorality in the 21st Century

Miley (ugh!) Cyrus

I have to say that I was actually somewhat heartened by the response to the vulgar, obscene display by Miley Cyrus at the Video Music Awards a couple of weeks ago. Most people were revolted by it. But that doesn't change the fact that promiscuity and immorality are accepted and even encouraged in our modern world.

Sexual immorality has become so rampant and such an integral part of our culture and of our entire world that we hardly give it a second thought anymore.  We are now so deadened to immorality that the word "scandal" is on its way to becoming archaic.  If someone gets out of high school without having lost their virginity, they are considered "weird."  A man and woman living together without benefit of marriage and even having children together hardly gets a raised eyebrow.  Having sex on a first or second date without even a hint of commitment is considered normal.  Some relationships consist totally of sex without even friendship being a part of it, which is known as "hooking up".  A few weeks ago there was an article in the New York Times entitled, "She Can Play That Game, Too".  As the article says, "The guys on college campuses want to have casual sex, and the girls want romance, right?  Increasingly, however, women are the ones looking to hook up."   If you want, you can read this article here.  Following are the opening paragraphs to the article:

At 11 on a weeknight earlier this year, her work finished, a slim, pretty junior at the University of Pennsylvania did what she often does when she has a little free time. She texted her regular hookup — the guy she is sleeping with but not dating. What was he up to? He texted back: Come over. So she did. They watched a little TV, had sex and went to sleep.

Their relationship, she noted, is not about the meeting of two souls.

“We don’t really like each other in person, sober,” she said, adding that “we literally can’t sit down and have coffee.”

Homosexual couple featured in the New York Times

And, of course, homosexuality, once described by Oscar Wilde as "the love that dares not speak its name", is now considered, in some circles, more normal than heterosexuality. Any who speak against it are considered bigots and intolerant. Again, the New York Times had an article just this past weekend about two homosexual lovers who have been together for 58 years. This one was entitled, "Two Men, 58 Years and Counting. A Love Story." The article starts out with their "fond remembrances":

In the last apartment they are likely ever to live in together, Kenneth Leedom and Peter Cott were talking about eros and the public life of New York — which is to say, sex on a moving subway train. Mr. Leedom is 88; Mr. Cott is 89.

Mr. Cott, seated beside an upright piano in the couple’s sunny yellow living room, listened intently, then spoke as if delivering his lines from a stage.

“We all gravitated to the connection between the two trains,” he said, recalling a time from half a century ago. “And that was sexville.”

Mr. Leedom shook his head at the memories.

“Unbelievable,” he said. “And the toilets in the subways — in those days if you traveled, say, 14th Street to 59th Street, you had to make at least three stops on the way, to check out every toilet.

“And there was always gay activity going on in the toilets. And I think it cost a nickel to get in in those days.”

The Catholic Church condemns sexual immorality and declares it a mortal sin. One mortal sin, unrepented of and unconfessed, is enough to shut us out of heaven for eternity. Yet, our world seems to be awash in mortal sin and even, as seen in these two articles from the New York Times, revels in it.

Many people complain that our priests generally don't address these issues from the pulpit. When was the last time that you heard a good sermon about mortal sin and the consequences thereof? Well, our Lord never leaves us without an excuse. We may not hear of these things from the pulpit, but such sermons and talks can easily be found. I downloaded a book from Amazon entitled, "Sermons For All the Sundays In the Year."  This book is completely filled with hard hitting, to-the-point sermons that pull no punches.  This is a collection of sermons by St. Alphonsus of Liguori, who lived from 1696 to 1787.  As Wikipedia tells us, St. Alphonsus of Liguori "was an Italian Catholic bishop, spiritual writer, scholastic philosopher and theologian, and founder of the Redemptorists, an influential religious congregation. He was canonized in 1839 by Pope Gregory XVI. Pope Pius IX proclaimed him a Doctor of the Church in 1871." This book of his sermons was put together in 1882, so obviously it is following what we now call the calendar of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. Back then, of course, it was the only calendar. The book from Amazon cost 99 cents, and if you're interested (I highly recommend it), it can be found here.  It could be the best 99 cents you'll spend.

Below is a sermon from this past Sunday, which was the 16th Sunday After Pentecost.  It's amazing how some things never change.  This sermon, written over 200 years ago, gives penetrating insight into what is happening to our world today in the 21st Century.

Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost: Impurity
by St. Alphonsus De Liguori

"Homo quidam hydropicus erat ante illum."
"And behold, there was a certain man before him, who had the dropsy."--Luke, xiv. 2

The man who indulges in impurity is like a person laboring under the dropsy. [Today "dropsy" is better known as "edema" or "congestive heart failure", when there is an excessive accumulation of fluid in the body.] The latter is so much tormented by thirst, that the more he drinks the more thirsty he becomes. Such, too, is the nature of the accursed vice of impurity; it is never satiated. "As," says St. Thomas of Villanova, "the more the dropsical man abounds in moisture, the more he thirsts; so, too, is it with the waves of carnal pleasures." I will speak today of the vice of impurity, and will show, in the first point, the delusion of those who say that this vice is but a small evil: and, in the second, the delusion of those who say that God takes pity on this sin, and that he does not punish it. 

1. Delusion of those who say that sins against purity are not a great evil.

The unchaste, then, say that sins contrary to purity are but a small evil. Like the sow wallowing in the mire, they are immersed in their own filth, so that they do not see the malice of their actions; and therefore they neither feel nor abhor the stench of their impurities, which excite disgust and horror in all others. Can you, who say that the vice of impurity is but a small evil--can you, I ask, deny that it is a mortal sin? If you deny it, you are a heretic; for as St. Paul says: Do not err. Neither fornicators, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, etc., shall possess the kingdom of God. It is a mortal sin; it cannot be a small evil. It is more sinful than theft, or detraction, or the violation of the fast. How then can you say that it is not a great evil? Perhaps mortal sin appears to you to be a small evil? Is it a small evil to despise the grace of God, to turn your back upon Him, and to lose His friendship, for a transitory, beastly pleasure? 

Credit:  www.evangelicaloutreach.org

St. Thomas teaches, that mortal sin, because it is an insult offered to an infinite God, contains a certain infinitude of malice. "A sin committed against God has a certain infinitude, on account of the infinitude of the Divine Majesty." Is mortal sin a small evil? It is so great an evil, that if all the angels and all the saints, the apostles, martyrs, and even the Mother of God, offered all their merits to atone for a single mortal sin, the oblation would not be sufficient. No; for that atonement or satisfaction would be finite; but the debt contracted by mortal sin is infinite, on account of the infinite Majesty of God which has been offended. The hatred which God bears to sins against purity is great beyond measure. If a lady find her plate soiled she is disgusted, and cannot eat. [Would you eat from a plate that had just a "little" sewage on it?]  Now, with what disgust and indignation must God, who is purity itself, behold the filthy impurities by which his law is violated: He loves purity with an infinite love; and consequently he has an infinite hatred for the sensuality which the lewd, voluptuous man calls a small evil. Even the devils who held a high rank in heaven before their fall disdain to tempt men to sins of the flesh.  

St. Thomas says that Lucifer, who is supposed to have been the devil that tempted Jesus Christ in the desert, tempted him to commit other sins, but scorned to tempt Him to offend against chastity. Is this sin a small evil? Is it, then, a small evil to see a man endowed with a rational soul, and enriched with so many divine graces, bring himself by the sin of impurity to the level of a brute?" "Fornication and pleasure," says St. Jerome, "pervert the understanding, and change men into beasts." In the voluptuous and unchaste are literally verified the words of David: And man, when he was in honor, did not understand: he is compared to senseless beasts, and is become like to them. St. Jerome says, that there is nothing more vile or degrading than to allow one's self to be conquered by the flesh. Is it a small evil to forget God, and to banish him from the soul, for the sake of giving the body a vile satisfaction, of which, when it is over, you feel ashamed? Of this the Lord complains by the Prophet Ezechiel: Thus saith the Lord God: Because thou hast forgotten Me, and hast cast Me off behind thy back (Ezech. xxiii. 35). St. Thomas says, that by every vice, but particularly by the vice of impurity, men are removed far from God. 

Moreover, sins of impurity on account of their great number, are an immense evil. A blasphemer does not always blaspheme, but only when he is drunk or provoked to anger. The assassin, whose trade is to murder others, does not, at the most, commit more than eight or ten homicides. But the unchaste are guilty of an unceasing torrent of sins, by thoughts, by words, by looks, by complacencies, and by touches; so that when they go to confession they find it impossible to tell the number of the sins they have committed against purity. Even in their sleep the devil represents to them obscene objects, that, on awakening, they may take delight in them; and because they are made the slaves of the enemy, they obey and consent to his suggestions; for it is easy to contract a habit of this sin. To other sins, such as blasphemy, detraction, and murder, men are not prone; but to this vice nature inclines them. Hence St. Thomas says, that there is no sinner so ready to offend God as the votary of lust is, on every occasion that occurs to him. The sin of impurity brings in its train the sins of defamation, of theft, hatred, and of boasting of its own filthy abominations. Besides, it ordinarily involves the malice of scandal. Other sins, such as blasphemy, perjury, and murder, excite horror in those who witness them; but this sin excites and draws others, who are flesh, to commit, it, or, at least, to commit it with less horror. 

St. Cyprian says that the devil through impurity triumphs over the whole of man. By lust the evil triumphs over the entire man, over his body and over his soul; over his memory, filling it with the remembrance of unchaste delights, in order to make him take complacency in them; over his intellect, to make him desire occasions of committing sin; over the will, by making it love its impurities as his last end, and as if there were no God. I made, said Job, a covenant with my eyes, that I would not so much as think upon a virgin. For what part should God from above have in me (Job, xxxi.)? Job was afraid to look at a virgin, because he knew that if he consented to a bad thought God should have no part in him. According to St. Gregory, from impurity arises blindness of understanding, destruction, hatred of God, and despair of eternal life." St. Augustine says, though the unchaste may grow old, the vice of impurity does not grow old in them. Hence St. Thomas says, that there is no sin in which the devil delights so much as in this sin; because there is no other sin to which nature clings with so much tenacity. To the vice of impurity it adheres so firmly, that the appetite for carnal pleasures becomes insatiable. Go now, and say that the sin of impurity is but a small evil. At the hour of death you shall not say so; every sin of that kind shall then appear to you a monster of hell. Much less shall you say so before the judgment-seat of Jesus Christ, who will tell you what the Apostle has already told you: No fornicator, or unclean, hath inheritance in the kingdom of Christ, and God? The man who has lived like a brute does not deserve to sit with the angels. 

Most beloved brethren, let us continue to pray to God to deliver us from this vice; if we do not, we shall lose our souls. The sin of impurity brings with it blindness and obstinacy. Every vice produces darkness of understanding; but impurity produces it in a greater decree than all other sins. Fornication, and wine, and drunkenness take away the understanding (Os iv. II). Wine deprives us of understanding and reason; so does impurity. Hence St. Thomas says, that the man who indulges in unchaste pleasures, does not live according to reason. Now, if the unchaste are deprived of light, and no longer see the evil which they do, how can they abhor it and amend their lives? The Prophet Osee says, that blinded by their own mire, they do not even think of returning to God; because their impurities take away from them all knowledge of God. They will not set their thought to return to their God: for the spirit of fornication is in the midst of them, and they have not known the Lord (Os. v. 4)." Hence St. Laurence Justinian writes, that this sin makes men forget God. "Delights of the flesh induced forgetfulness of God." And St. John Damascene teaches that "the carnal man cannot look at the light of truth." Thus, the lewd and voluptuous no longer understand what is meant by the grace of God, by judgment, hell, and eternity. Fire hath fallen upon them, and they shall not see the sun! Some of these blind miscreants go so far as to say, that fornication is not in itself sinful. They say, that it was not forbidden in the Old Law; and in support of this execrable doctrine they adduce the words of the Lord to Osee: "Go, take thee a wife of fornication, and have of her children of fornication (Os. i. 2)." In answer I say, that God did not permit Osee to commit fornication; but wished him to take for his wife a woman who had been guilty of fornication: and the children of this marriage were called children of fornication, because the mother had been guilty of that crime. This is, according to St. Jerome, the meaning of the words of the Lord to Osee. "Therefore," says the holy Doctor, "they are to be called children of fornication, because born of a harlot." But fornication was always forbidden, under pain of mortal sin, in the Old, as well as in the New Law. St. Paul says: No fornicator or unclean hath inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God (Ephes. v. 5). Behold the impiety to which the blindness of such sinners carry them! From this blindness it arises, that though they go to the sacraments, their confessions are null for want of true contrition; for how is it possible for them to have true sorrow, when they neither know nor abhor their sins? 

The vice of impurity also brings with it obstinacy. To conquer temptations, particularly against chastity, continual prayer is necessary. Watch ye, and pray, that ye enter not into temptation (Mark, xiv. 38). But how will the unchaste, who are always seeking to be tempted, pray to God to deliver them from temptation? They sometimes, as St. Augustine confessed of himself, even abstain from prayer, through fear of being heard and cured of the disease, which they wish to continue. "I feared," said the saint, "that Thou wouldst soon hear and heal the disease of concupiscence, which I wished to be satiated, rather than extinguished." St. Peter calls this vice an unceasing sin. Having eyes full of adultery and sin that ceasest not. Impurity is called an unceasing sin on account of the obstinacy which it induces. 

Some person addicted to this vice says: I always confess the sin. So much the worse; for since you always relapse into sin, these confessions serve to make you persevere in the sin. The fear of punishment is diminished by saying: I always confess the sin. If you felt that this sin certainly merits hell, you would scarcely say: I will not give it up; I do not care if I am damned. But the devil deceives you. Commit this sin, he says: for you afterwards confess it. But, to make a good confession of your sins, you must have true sorrow of the heart, and a firm purpose to sin no more. Where are this sorrow and this firm purpose of amendment, when you always return to the vomit? If you had had these dispositions, and had received sanctifying grace at your confessions, you should not have relapsed, or at least you should have abstained for a considerable time from relapsing. You have always fallen back into sin in eight or ten days, and perhaps in a shorter time, after confession. What sign is this? It is a sign that you were always at enmity with God. If a sick man instantly vomits the medicine which he takes, it is a sign that his disease is incurable. 

St. Jerome says that the vice of impurity, when habitual, will cease when the unhappy man who indulges in it is cast into the lire of hell. "O infernal fire, lust, whose fuel is gluttony, whose sparks are brief conversations, whose end is hell." The unchaste become like the vulture that waits to be killed by the fowler, rather than abandon the rottenness of the dead bodies on which it feeds. This is what happened to a young woman, who, after having lived in the habit of sin with a young man, fell sick, and appeared to be converted. At the hour of death she asked leave of her confessor to send for the young man, in order to exhort him to change his life at the sight of her death. The confessor very imprudently gave the permission, and taught her what she should say to her accomplice in sin. But listen to what happened. As soon as she saw him, she forgot her promise to the confessor and the exhortation she was to give to the young man. And what did she do? She raised herself up, sat in bed, stretched her arms to him, and said: Friend, I have always loved you, and even now, at the end of my life, I love you: I see that, on your account, I shall go to hell: but I do not care: I am willing, for the love of you, to be damned. After these words she fell back on the bed and expired. These facts are related by Father Segneri. Oh! how difficult is it for a person who has contracted a habit of this vice, to amend his life and return sincerely to God! how difficult is it for him not to terminate this habit in hell, like the unfortunate young woman of whom I have just spoken. 

2. Illusion of those who say that God takes pity on this sin.

The votaries of lust [this is a play on words, a votary being a person bound by vows to live a life of religious worship or service] say that God takes pity on this sin; but such is not the language of St. Thomas of Villanova. He says, that in the sacred Scriptures we do not read of any sin so severely chastised as the sin of impurity. We find in the Scriptures, that in punishment of this sin a deluge of fire descended from heaven on four cities, and in an instant, consumed not only the inhabitants, but even the very stones. "And the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And He destroyed these cities, and all things that spring from the earth (Gen. xix. 24)." St. Peter Damian relates, that a man and a woman who had sinned against purity were found burnt and black as a cinder.

Salvian writes that it was in punishment of the sin of impurity that God sent on the earth the universal deluge, which was caused by continued rain for forty days and forty nights. In this deluge the waters rose fifteen cubits above the tops of the highest mountains; and only eight persons along with Noah were saved in the ark. The rest of the inhabitants of the earth, who were more numerous then that at present, were punished with death in chastisement of the vice of impurity. Mark the words of the Lord in speaking of this chastisement which he inflicted on that sin: My spirit shall not remain in man forever: because he is flesh (Gen. vi. 3). "That is," says Liranus, "too deeply involved in carnal sins." The Lord added: For it repenteth Me that I made man" The indignation of God is not like ours, which clouds the mind, and drives us into excesses: his wrath is a judgment perfectly just and tranquil, by which God punishes and repairs the disorder of sin. But to make us understand the intensity of his hatred for the sin of impurity, he represents himself as if sorry for having created man, who offended him so grievously by this vice. We, at the present day, see more severe temporal punishment inflicted on this than on any other sin. 

Go into the hospitals, and listen to the shrieks of so many young men, who, in punishment of their impurities, are obliged to submit to the severest treatment and to the most painful operations, and who, if they escape death, are, according to the divine threat, feeble, and subject to the most excruciating pain for the remainder of their lives. [This is long before AIDS.]  Thou hast cast Me off behind thy back; bear thou also thy wickedness and thy fornications (Ezech. xxiii. 35).

St. Remigius writes that, if children be excepted, the number of adults that are saved is few on account of the sins of the flesh. In conformity with this doctrine, it was revealed to a holy soul that as pride has filled hell with devils, so impurity fills it with men. St. Isidore assigns the reason. He says that there is no vice which so much enslaves men to the devil as impurity. Hence St. Augustine says that with regard to this sin, "the combat is common and the victory rare." Hence it is that on account of this sin hell is filled with souls. 

All that I have said on this subject has been said, not that any one present, who has been addicted to the vice of impurity, may be driven to despair, but that such persons may be cured. Let us, then, come to the remedies. These are two great remedies-- prayer, and the flight of dangerous occasions. 

1. Prayer, says St. Gregory of Nyssa, is the safeguard of chastity. And before him, Solomon, speaking of himself, said the same. And as I knew that I could not otherwise be continent, except God gave, it . . . I went to the Lord, and besought Him (Wisd. viii. 21). Thus it is impossible for us to conquer this vice without God's assistance. Hence as soon as temptation against chastity presents itself, the remedy is to turn instantly to God for help, and to repeat several times the most holy names of Jesus and Mary, which have a special virtue to banish bad thoughts of that kind. I have said immediately, without listening to, or beginning to argue with, the temptation. When a bad thought occurs to the mind, it is necessary to shake it off instantly, as you would a spark that flies from the fire, and instantly to invoke aid from Jesus and Mary. 

2. As to the flight of dangerous occasions, St. Philip Neri used to say that cowards that is, they who fly from the occasions gain the victory. Hence you must, in the first place, keep a restraint on the eyes, and must abstain from looking at young women. Otherwise, says St. Thomas, you can scarcely avoid the sin. Hence Job said: I made a covenant with my eves that I would not so much as think upon a virgin (Job, xxxi. I). He was afraid to look at a virgin; because from looks it is easy to pass to desires, and from desires to acts. St. Francis de Sales used to say that to look at a woman does not do so much evil as to repeatedly look at her a second time. If the devil has not gained a victory the first, he will gain the second time. And if it be necessary to abstain from looking at women, it is much more necessary to avoid conversation with them. Tarry not among women. We should be persuaded that, in avoiding occasions of this sin, no caution can be too great. Hence we must be always fearful, and fly from them. A wise man feareth and declineth from, evil; a fool is confident? A wise man is timid, and flies away: a fool is confident, and falls. 

Sexual sin and immorality are nothing new.  We have taken it to extremes never before seen, such as "marriage" between homosexuals, and with technology, the ability to engage in pornography anywhere at any time.  Just as our military weapons are more deadly than the world has ever seen, so are the weapons of immorality.  But the result is the same: lost souls.  We, as Christians, are obligated to pray continually for those who have been trapped by this evil.  We need to pray and offer up reparations.  It is not up to us to judge people (thank God!).  But we do need to judge actions and consequences and realize that it is truly only through the Grace of God that any of us can escape the immorality which has engulfed our world.

Meditation on the Eighth Station of the Cross: The Women of Jerusalem Weep Over Jesus

In the eighth station of the Cross, we see the women of Jerusalem weeping over the suffering of our Lord. Up to this point, only women have shown compassion for our Lord on the way to Calvary. First was Pontius Pilate's wife. She had many dreams about Jesus and begged her husband not to have anything to do with the crucifixion of this Holy Man. Then, of course, we saw the great sorrow of our Blessed Mother as she suffered along with her Son. This was followed by Veronica, running out among the crowd and the soldiers to wipe the Face of Jesus.

Luke 23:27-31 gives us the following narrative:

27 And following Him was a large crowd of the people, and of women who were mourning and lamenting Him. 28 But Jesus turning to them said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. 29 “For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’ 30 “Then they will begin TO SAY TO THE MOUNTAINS, ‘FALL ON US,’ AND TO THE HILLS, ‘COVER US.’ 31 “For if they do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?”

Unlike Jesus' reaction to Mary and Veronica, our Lord is almost rebuking these women who were showing compassion for His suffering. He tells them outright, "Don't weep for me, who am innocent." Our Lord was looking into the faces of these compassionate women, and in spite of all his pain and suffering, he was not thinking of himself but of the future of Jerusalem. He knew that these women and their children would suffer in just a couple of decades when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans. This would be a time when many would wish they never had children because it is so terrible to watch them suffer and die. People at that time were actually seeking death.

From bible-history.com:

The Jewish Wars began in 66 A.D. and they were a direct revolt by the Jews against Rome’s authority. Titus with his Roman legions arrived at the outermost northern Wall of Jerusalem, the Passover of 70 A.D. The Romans built embankments of earthenwork, they placed battering rams and the siege began.

The Roman army numbered 30,000; while the Jewish army numbered 24,000. According to Tacitus they were 600,000 visitors crowding the streets of Jerusalem for the Passover. After five months the walls were battered down, the great Temple was burned down, and the city was left ruined and desolate, except for Herod's three great towers at the northwest corner of the city. These served as a memorial of the massive strength of Jerusalem's fortifications which Titus of Rome had brought to rubble.

The legions of Rome brought the captives to Caesarea and after over one million Jews were killed, 95,000 captives were taken as prisoners, and among them was Josephus, the ancient Jewish historian. According to Eusebius, the Christians saw the might of the Roman army and through prophetic warning, fled to Pella.

Msgr. Charles Pope of the Archdiocese of Washington sees an "eerie and prophetic connection" to our time of Jesus' words to the weeping women. From his article on the Archdiocese of Washington website:

But what of us? How, does this text speak to us? It a word or three: Horribly, poignantly and prophetically.

It does not take a genius to see that the Lord’s words are true for us in ugly and sickening ways. Our bloodbath is far worse that 70 AD. 55 million are dead from abortion in America alone since 1973. And add to that the 100 Million + who were killed in the last century alone for ideological purposes in two world wars, a cold war, and the pogroms and systematic starvation of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and their successors.

Though we like to think ourselves civilized in comparison to previous centuries, our blood bath is far deeper than any age before. True, we murder our millions in less publicly brutal ways. We do not experience hoards of warriors descending from day to day on unsuspecting cities. Our brutality takes place in more hidden ways, out of sight if you will, in concentration camps, abortion “clinics”, killing fields, and remote locations away from cameras.

Yes, our murder seems more abstract, but it is not. The death toll is almost unimaginable. And meanwhile we go on considering ourselves civilized.

And the Lord Jesus, looking beyond 70 AD must have seen our times and had them in mind when he said to those women of old that they would see an enemy (Satan): dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls.

Yes, Satan has deceived us with deceptions of power, distortions of freedom, and crushing lies of “choice.” 55 million dead in American alone since 1973, our children dashed to the ground.

The Lord goes on to say, the days are coming when people will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed.’  Yes, and those days are here, days when people celebrate barrenness, have themselves surgically sterilized, and celebrate contraception. The days are here when the greatest danger seems to be the “terrible and fearsome proposition” of getting pregnant, of having “too many children.”

Yes, the days are here when most people cry out: blessed is barrenness, blessed are small families. Life it would seem, is a terrible burden to be contracepted and aborted away and some awful threat. It is an age that cries out “Blessed the career women who has not stymied her life and progress by the terrible and terrifying prospect of children.”

Yes, said the Lord to those ancient women, in effect, “You think this is bad? The days are actually coming when things will be so bad and so dark that people will celebrate NOT having children, will celebrate barrenness.”

But the Lord does not stop there. He goes on to describe quite well the culture of death so literally lived out in our times: people will say to the mountains, ‘Fall upon us!’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us!’ 

Anyone with a tender heart would have been moved to tears at the sight of our Lord's suffering.  The fact that so few were touched by Jesus' suffering shows the coldness and hard-heartedness of the people of that time.  But as Msgr. Pope shows us in his article, we live in a time that is far more evil than Jerusalem at the time of Christ.  When we look at Christ's suffering, He wants us to think of not how he suffered as much as why and the real cause of his suffering, which is our sins.  He wants us to mourn not for him, but for those who refuse to turn away from the sin that put our dear Savior on the Cross.

Christ's suffering had cosmic meaning and purpose:  He suffered to save mankind from sin and death.  The result of his great passion was to pull us literally from hell.  But the suffering of those in Jerusalem  in 70 A.D. and in our evil time will lead only to final damnation.

St. Francis' Way of the Cross:

These devoted women, moved by compassion, weep over the suffering Savior. But He turns to them, saying: "Weep not for Me, Who am innocent, but weep for yourselves and for your children." Weep thou also, for there is nothing more pleasing to Our Lord and nothing more profitable for thyself, than tears shed from contrition for thy sins.

Yes, we need to weep and mourn when we see the suffering of Jesus, but what should really move us is the cause of His suffering, which is the sin and evil in this world, and our own sin.

Credit:  reclaimingourchildren.typepad.com 

From Msgr. Pope:

Of times like 70AD and times like these Jesus says, “Weep.”

Yes, Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. (Matt 5:4). And who are those who mourn? They are those who see the awful state of God’s people, that God is not know to them, that they do not glorify God or even know why they were made, they are confused, deceived, and misled. And some, seeing this are mourning and weeping, they are led to prayer and action, to speaking out, and pointing once again to the light, from the dark places of times like these.

Mourn with Jesus, and pray for a miraculous conversion for times like these, times which seem eerily consistent with the dreadful things Jesus prophesied. 

This Saturday is Holy Saturday.  It has been my experience that Holy Saturday is one of the busiest days at abortion clinics.  It seems that the Adversary really stirs women to kill their babies in that time between the observance of Good Friday, the most solemn holy day of the year, and the great celebration of Easter, when our Lord rose in victory over sin and death.  I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that the tabernacles in all the churches around the world are empty and Holy Saturday is the one day the Church does not celebrate Mass.  Does this somehow gives Satan a false feeling of freedom that he does not have the rest of the year?

From St. Francis Way of the Cross:

O Jesus, Who shall give to my eyes a torrent of tears, that day and night I may weep for my sins? I beseech Thee, through Thy bitter and bloody tears, to move my heart by Thy divine grace, so that from my eyes tears may flow abundantly, and that I may weep all my days over Thy sufferings, and still more over their cause, my sins.

Cry and mourn not for the suffering Savior, who is actually in his most triumphant moment, but for yourself and those around you, who are being destroyed by our own sins.

Lord Jesus Crucified, Have Mercy On Us.

The Seventh Station of the Cross: Jesus Falls the Second Time

Our Lord continues on the Way of the Cross. After experiencing unspeakable cruelties and humiliations, we have just seen an act of loving compassion in the kindness of Veronica, who ran out with no regard for her physical safety to wipe the blood, sweat and spittle from Jesus' face. But this act of kindness has no effect on the Roman soldiers, who continue to force Jesus beyond his human ability. He is suffering from severe blood loss and dehydration. There is no part of his body that has not been wounded or bruised in some way. Although Veronica has wiped his face, the blood from his head wounds continues to pour into his eyes, and he can barely see.  Notwithstanding the help of Simon of Cyrene who was taking the major load of carrying the Cross, Jesus' physical strength gives out and once more Our Precious Lord falls to the ground.

The Roman soldiers show no mercy and continue to beat him and yell for him to get up. Once again, in their cruelty the Roman soldiers are actually helping our Lord continue on to Calvary where He will save the world.

We know that Jesus was walking this cruel road to Calvary completely on his own human strength, or lack thereof.  Yet He is the same one who cured the lame, blind and deaf and even brought the dead back to life.  How could one who had the power of the universe and more at his fingertips be in such a powerless position and subject to such unspeakable cruelty?

As Jesus said in the Garden of Gethesame when he was arrested, (Matthew 26:53-54):

Or do you think that I cannot appeal to My Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of angels?  How then will the Scriptures be fulfilled, which say that it must happen this way?”

The soldiers  like Pontius Pilate, may have thought they were in charge.  Here was a man so weak that a tiny child could have overpowered him.  He had no physical strength left and was very close to death.

But the soldiers were wrong.  Jesus was in complete control of everything that was happening to him.  At one point Pontius Pilate said to Jesus, "Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?"  Jesus answered him:

You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above.

Likewise, the soldiers had power to inflict cruelty on Jesus only because this power was given to them from above.

Why would the great Creator God allow himself to be so humiliated and apparently powerless in the face of his enemies?  One very strong message that our Lord was sending us is that without the Grace of God, we have less strength and means to resist our Adversary than Jesus had physical strength to carry His Cross at this point.  And we will surely fall if we try to use our own strength to resist sin just as we see our Lord physically fall.

St. Francis said in the Way of the Cross that it was not the weight of the cross or even the cruelty of the soldiers that caused Jesus' fall, but our sins:

The suffering Jesus, under the weight of His cross, again falls to the ground; but the cruel executioners do not permit Him to rest a moment. Pushing and striking Him, they urge Him onward. It is the frequent repetition of our sins which oppress Jesus. Witnessing this, how can I continue to sin?

The physical torture did not cause Jesus any where near the pain he felt as when he took on our sins. The weight of the Cross - far more than his weakened body could handle - was as light as air when compared to the weight of our sins. The actual cause of Jesus' fall, as St. Francis tells us, was our sins. When we see Jesus laying on the ground and physically spent, we must realize that it was our sins which put him there.

When we look at the physically torn and weakened body of Jesus, we are looking at the result of our sins.

St. Francis offers this prayer:

O Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me! Offer me Thy helping hand, and aid me, that I may not fall again into my former sins. From this very moment, I will earnestly strive to reform: nevermore will I sin! Thou, O sole support of the weak, by Thy grace, without which I can do nothing, strengthen me to carry out faithfully this my resolution.

Lord Jesus, crucified, have mercy on us!