Sermons in Times of Crisis

Twelve Homilies to Stir Your Soul

Paul D. Scalia

• Publisher: TAN Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781505108798
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

The Catholic Church today finds itself in the midst of a crisis. The flock is scattering, and while some shepherds bravely set off in search of those lost and wandering sheep, others drive them, and many more, further from the fold.

But the Church has seen and weathered numerous crises in its two millennia, and always one or more of its priests and bishops stood up and rallied the faithful: whether to rebuke an Emperor or oppose a policy, encourage the faithful or defend the faith, bishops and priests ascended the pulpit and delivered sermons that met the pressing needs of their own times, sermons which should be read and remembered by Catholics of all times. You will find comfort within these pages as you read the words of these heroic pastors of souls including: St Ambrose of Milan, St Augustine, St John Chrysostom, St Edmund Campion, Pope St John Paul II, ... and seven others.

Enter into the minds and thoughts of some of the bravest, most eloquent, homilists the Church has produced. More than one was killed for the words they uttered which you will find in these pages. But they counted not the cost.

Guided by Rev. Paul D. Scalia's introduction and commentaries, you will come to see that the Church has faced crises and survived, even thrived, before. In fact, it is one of the marks of her authenticity, as it has often been said, that no mere human institution could have survived the persecutions and scandals that the Catholic Church has withstood over 2000 years.

If you are a priest or bishop, just maybe reading these words of men not unlike yourself, will inspire you to stand and be counted and preach God's word from the pulpit without counting the cost.

Saint Augustine of Hippo

AGAINST THE PAGANS

It makes a difference what you believe,
what you hope for, what you love.

BECAUSE HIS CHRISTIAN example looms so large in history and overshadows almost everything else from his culture, we might forget that Saint Augustine of Hippo lived and ministered in a world still largely pagan. Living side by side with those who worshipped false gods, Christians experienced the temptation to compromise their faith so as to fit in with the dominant culture. Recognizing the danger, Augustine labored to confirm his people in their identity as children of God, distinct from the pagans around them. On the calends of January in 404, he preached a long sermon to his people while celebrations for the new year raged outside. As in our own culture, calends (New Year’s) was a time of widespread indulgence and immorality. But in Augustine’s day, this immorality was explicitly combined with pagan worship. In this excerpt from the much longer work, Augustine describes what it means to be, in Saint Paul’s words, “children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation” (Phil 2:15).

DISCOURSE AGAINST THE PAGANS

I WOULD URGE your graces, since I observe that you have come together here today as if it were a feast, and have gathered for this particular day in greater numbers than usual, to fix most firmly in your memories what you sang just now. Don’t let it be a case of noisy tongues and dumb minds; rather, what your voices have been shouting in one another’s ears, let your feelings cry out in the ears of God. This, after all, is what you were singing: Save us, Lord our God, and gather us from among the nations, that we may confess your holy name (Ps 106:47).³

And now, if the festival of the nations which is taking place today in the joys of the world and the flesh, with the din of silly and disgraceful songs, with the celebration of this false feast day—if the things the Gentiles are doing today do not meet with your approval, you will be gathered from among the nations.

You were certainly singing—and the sound of the divine song must still be echoing in your ears—Save us, Lord our God, and gather us from among the nations. Can you be gathered from among the nations without being saved, made safe and sound? So those who mix with the nations are not safe and sound, while those who are gathered from among the nations are made safe with the soundness of faith, a spiritual soundness, the soundness of the promises of God, the soundness of a good hope, the soundness of the most genuine charity.

So if you believe, hope, and love, it doesn’t mean that you are immediately to be declared safe and sound and saved. It makes a difference, you see, what you believe, what you hope for, what you love. Nobody in fact can live any style of life without those three sentiments of the soul, of believing, hoping, loving. If you don’t believe what the nations believe, and don’t hope for what the nations hope for, and don’t love what the nations love, then you are gathered from among the nations. And don’t let your being physically mixed up with them alarm you, when there is such a wide separation of minds. What after all could be so widely separated as that they believe demons are gods, you on the other hand believe in the God who is the true God? That they hope for the vanities of this age, you hope for eternal life? That they love the world, you love the world’s architect?

So if you believe something different from them, hope for something different, love something different, you should prove it by your life, demonstrate it by your actions. Are you going to join today in the celebration of good luck presents with a pagan, going to play at dice with a pagan, going to get drunk with a pagan? How in that case are you really believing something different, hoping for something different, loving something different? How can you keep your countenance as you sing Save us, Lord our God, and gather us from among the nations. You’re segregated from the nations, after all, when you mix physically with the nations, but differ in your style of life. And you can see how wide apart this segregation sets you, if only you act accordingly to prove it.

It’s like this: our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became man for us, has already paid the price for us. And so if he has already paid the price, the reason he paid it was to redeem us, to gather us from among the nations. But if you get mixed up with the nations, it means you don’t want to follow the one who redeemed you. Instead, you are mixing with them in lifestyle, actions, mind and heart by hoping for such things, believing such things, loving such things. You are being ungrateful to your Redeemer, you are not acknowledging the price paid for you, the blood of the Lamb without blemish. So in order to follow your Redeemer, who redeemed you with his blood, don’t mix with the nations by the same kind of morals and actions. They give good luck presents; see to it that you give alms (Lk 11:41).

You see, I’m not telling you, brothers and sisters, “They give, don’t you go giving”; on the contrary, give more than they do, but like people who believe something different, hope for something different, love something different. Because I’m not telling you, “They believe, don’t you believe; they hope, don’t you hope; they love, don’t you love.” Rather I’m telling you, “They believe that; as for you, believe this. They hope for that; as for you, hope for this. They love that; as for you, love this. They give that sort of thing, or to that sort of person; as for you, give this sort of thing or to this sort of person.” So then, they give good luck presents; as for you, give alms. They entertain themselves with lascivious songs; as for you, entertain yourselves with the words of the scriptures. They run off to the theater, you people to church; they are getting drunk; you see to it that you fast. If you do all this, you have genuinely sung Save us, Lord our God, and gather us from among the nations.

At this moment, of course, those who are happy to hear what I have been saying are standing all together with those who are not so happy to hear it; and yet the former have already been gathered from among the nations, the latter are still mixed in with the nations. I am now speaking to real Christians; if you believe what the nations, the Gentiles, believe, if you hope for what the Gentiles hope for, if you love what the Gentiles love, then by all means live as the Gentiles live. But if you believe something else, hope for something else, love something else, then live in another kind of way, and prove how vastly different your faith and hope and charity are by the vast difference of your morals.

So if you have all come to life again with the heat of the charity of Christ, let your desire for him burn so brightly in your hearts, that no blast from those who would dissuade you from it can extinguish it. You see, I know perfectly well what you are going to have to endure when you leave here—and thank heaven that you have come together here at all. Because of course that you should assemble here during these days in greater numbers than usual doesn’t displease me; on the contrary, it even gives me great pleasure. It means, after all, that because those who don’t share your style of life are all hurrying off to occupy themselves with a variety of empty pleasures, and so are presenting you with time off and a holiday, you have found a way of bringing about in you what is said in the psalm: Save us, Lord our God, and gather us from among the nations (Ps 106:47).

So you have been gathered together right now; even if you go out and mix with them in general social intercourse, without however consenting to their bad and worthless ways, you will remain gathered from among the Gentiles, wherever you may actually be. And if only it were just in the streets that you have to put up with such shameless opposition, and not also, it may be, in your own homes! The father would like to fast, the son wouldn’t, or the son would like to, the father wouldn’t; or the husband wants to, the wife doesn’t, or she does and he doesn’t. So any who don’t want to fast, and don’t want to precisely because they regard this as a feast day, are a contrary head wind. The others, though, should burn so brightly that not only can they not be blown out themselves, but the opposition can also catch fire from them.

Just consider, my brothers and sisters, and take note in sorrow. They [the pagans] have seen that they stand in need of purgation, in order that that light, which cannot be grasped by the mind’s feeble gaze, may eventually be grasped by the same gaze once it has been put into shape and strengthened. They have seen that there is a need of some medicine, and while they were looking around for such a medicine the devil immediately presented himself, because they were looking around in pride, preening themselves, as it were, on their own teachings; above all because they were able, if anyone has been, to attain such acuteness of wit and sharpness of mind, that transcending all created things, both bodily and spiritual, they came to understand that there is something which is both spiritual and unchangeable, and that from it come all these things that subsist in either a spiritual or a bodily mode. This, they realized, makes it a kind of medium in the middle, because God at the top is subject to motion neither in space nor in time, while the substance of bodies, that is, the part of creation at the bottom, is subject to motion both in space and in time. Hence that other substance is the medium in the middle, because it is not subject to motion in space, as God isn’t either, while it is subject to motion in time, like bodies.

So while they were seeing the need for purgation and searching for it, that proud being the devil stepped in and accosted them as they were proudly seeking and proudly preening themselves, and presented himself as a mediator, through whom it seemed to them that their souls could be purged.

But we have to ask what a mediator is. There is, you see, a false mediator, there is a true one. The false mediator, as I have often said, is the devil. He puts himself forward, by performing certain signs and wonders, to those who seek in a bad way and want something to pride themselves on.

But the true mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ, is one, and the humble men of old also acknowledged him through his revealing himself to them and wished to be purified through him. Before he was born of Mary he revealed himself to those who were worthy, so that they might be saved through faith in him who was going to be born and to suffer, just as we are saved through faith in him who has been born and has suffered. That indeed is why he came in such humble fashion, to show that he only purifies and saves the humble.

At that time, after all, before the Word had become flesh, it was not only among the Hebrew people to the holy patriarchs and prophets that he used to reveal himself; there are also in fact examples to be found in other nations, since the humble mediator never failed any people who sought him humbly, he the only one who reconciles to the Father, who alone could most truly say, “Nobody comes to the Father except through me” (Jn 14:6). He accommodated his humility to them, so that persevering in humility they might deserve to be purified through him, the humble mediator. Was Melchizedek, after all, of the people of Israel? And yet scripture commends him as priest of God Most High (Gn 14:18-19), as prefiguring the mediator himself. I mean, it is by him that even Abraham is blessed. Nobody, though, unless purified through the mediator, can come to that which cannot be obtained except by the most purified, even if it can be glimpsed in however small a degree by a certain intelligence of soul.

So then, even if some of them sought, as the apostle says, in such a way that they could descry the invisible things of God, understanding them through the things that were made (Rom 1:20), but in such a way too that they held onto the truth of God in a lie (Rom 1:18), that is, that they called themselves wise and were puffed up with pride, not worthily honoring him from whom they had received their understanding—to such as these, as I said, that proud mediator [the devil] presented himself as to the proud, just as the humble one [Christ] did to the humble, through certain matching suitabilities and through a certain inexpressible and wonderful justice, which abides in God’s inner sanctum, and which we should respect even if we cannot see it. That proud mediator, therefore, comes to meet the proud, the humble one to meet the humble; but the reason the humble one comes to the humble is to lead them to the heights of God; the reason the proud one comes to the proud is to bar the heights of God to those who are high and mighty in themselves.

Sins bar the way; but mortality does not, because mortality is the punishment of sin, coming from the judgment of God. What bars the way is the thing that deserved this punishment. What I’m saying is this: it is not what God has done to you that bars your way to God, but what you have done to yourself. The mortality of the body, you see, is what God has done to you, while sin is what you have done to yourself. And so that true and trustworthy mediator has shared with you what God has done to you by way of retribution, but he has not shared with you what you have done to yourself by way of sin. He has shared mortality with you, but not shared iniquity with you.

He was made subject to death, you see, in the flesh, not however made through sin a debtor owing a death. For he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being made in the likeness of men, and being found in condition as a man (Phil 2:7). This was not said in such a way that we should conclude he had been changed, but because he wished to be manifested in a humble and servile guise, while remaining secretly Lord and God with God, the Son equal to the Father, through whom all things were made (Jn 1:3). And so having taken on mortality and shared with us the infirmity of our punishment, he purifies us from sins and sets us free from that very mortality, the reason he was found worthy to slay death by dying being that he suffered death without deserving it. This is the true and trustworthy mediator, the humble and exalted mediator, leading us back to where we had fallen from.

The reason the proud are more readily led astray by the proud mediator is that the proud are offended more by mortality than by iniquity, and that is why they are quicker to abhor mortality in Christ’s humanity than iniquity in the devil’s pride. And so he leads them, bloated as they are with vain and false doctrines. He has the audacity to boast that he is stronger and mightier than Christ because he was not born of a woman in the flesh, not arrested, not scourged, not spattered with spittle, not crowned with thorns, not hung on a cross, not dead and buried.

These are all things that the proud deride, which the humble mediator underwent, not taking upon himself iniquity with men and women and taking upon himself humanity, in order to heal them of the tumor of pride and make them conquerors of that false mediator, when they have learned to confess their sins, and have been purified through the justice of Christ from their own injustice, and have come through lowly fellowship with his mortality to the sublime summit of immortality.

And so, brothers and sisters, let us spurn the malign mediator, the self-deceiving and deceitful mediator, the mediator who does not reconcile but separates more and more. Let no one promise you any kind of purification outside the Church, whether in temples or anywhere else, by means of sacrilegious sacred rites.

Let no one turn you away from God, no one from the Church; no one from God your Father, no one from the Church your mother. We had two parents who gave birth to us for mortality, we have two who give birth to us for immortality, God and the Church. Those gave birth to heirs to succeed them, these give birth to heirs to abide with them. Why else, after all, are we born of human parents, except in order to succeed them when they are dead? But we are brought forth by our Father, God, and our mother, the Church, in such a way as to live with our parents forever. Any who go off to sacrilegious rites or magical arts, or go consulting astrologers, augurs, diviners about their life or anything to do with this life, have cut themselves off from their Father, even if they do not leave the Church. If any, though, have cut themselves off from the Church by the division of schism, even though they may seem to themselves to be holding on to the Father, they are most perniciously forsaking their mother, while those who relinquish both Christian faith and mother Church are deserting both parents. Hold on to your Father, hold on to your mother. You are a little child; stick to your mother. You are a little child; suck your mother’s milk, and she will bring you, nourished on milk, to the table of the Father.

Your savior took flesh to himself, your mediator took flesh to himself, and by taking flesh he took the Church to himself. He was the first to make a libation, as coming from the head, of what he would offer to God, a high priest for ever (Heb 5:6), and the propitiation for our sins (1 Jn 2:2). The Word took human nature to himself, and the two became one, as it is written, “They shall be two in one flesh. This is a great sacrament, he says, but I mean in Christ and in the Church” (Eph 5:31–32). The bridal chamber of this marriage was the womb of the virgin. “And he, like a bridegroom coming forth from his chamber, exulted like a giant to run the way” (Ps 19:5). A giant because strong, overcoming weakness with weakness, annihilating death with death.

But he ran on the way; he did not stop on the way, in order not to become the man who was signified as having stopped on the way of sinners. For when the psalm says, “Blessed the one who has not turned aside in the counsel of the ungodly, and has not stopped on the way of sinners” (Ps 1:1), it signifies a particular man who did stop on the way of sinners. So the Lord Jesus Christ ran on the way of sinners, but Adam stopped on the way of sinners. And because he stopped, he was wounded by robbers, he fell and lay there. But the one who was traveling along this way, not stopping but running, saw him; he found him wounded, put him on his beast, and handed him over to the innkeeper, because he himself was running the way in order to fulfill what had been foretold about him: “He drinks...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Publisher’s Note
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Saint Ambrose of Milan: Against Auxentius
• Saint John Chrysostom: First Homily on Eutropius
• Saint Augustine of Hippo: Against the Pagans
• Pope Saint Leo the Great: On the Role of Peter
• Saint Charles Borromeo: To Superiors of Monasteries and Other Religious Priests
• Saint Edmund Campion: Challenge to the Privy Council (Campion’s Brag)
• Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet: On Preaching the Gospel
• Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman: The Second Spring
• Blessed Clemens Cardinal von Galen: Against Euthanasia
• Pope Saint John Paul II: Victory Square in Warsaw, Poland, June 2, 1979
• Blessed Jerzy Popiełuszko: Mass for the Homeland
• Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger: Mass for the Election of a Pope