Sermon for the 4th Sunday after Pentecost, July 3rd, 2022

 

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.

 

My dearly beloved in Our Lord,

 

"O Roma felix..." – "Oh lucky Rome, which has been consecrated by the glorious blood of the two Princes." (Hymn for Matins and Vespers)

 

      (Brief review of the feasts celebrated after Pentecost)

Our holy Mother, the Church, never stops harvesting the fruits of the Redemption. She is doing it also in the liturgy, celebrating a number of major feasts all throughout the weeks after Pentecost:

° The feast of Corpus Christi brings back to our pious memory the institution of the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar – the Sacrament of Divine Love, the most ingenuous invention that God has made on our behalf so that He could feed us with His own divine flesh and blood…

° The feast of the Sacred Heart,celebrated on the Friday after the Octave of Corpus Christi and which we remember on the first Friday of every month teaches us the godly desires of love; of divine charity (caritas) by which we anticipate the heavenly life which our Lord has promised us: "caritas non deficit" – charity will be essentially the same in Heaven, as it is now in our Christian hearts! Here on earth it is imperfect, in Heaven it will be perfect. "Quis sic amantem non redamet?" - "Who would not love again the One who has so loved us?"

° The feast of St John the Baptist is the only birthday of a Saint – besides Our Lord and Our Blessed Lady – which is celebrated by the Church. (His beheading is celebrated on August 29.) This is because his life and mission are so intimately connected with the mission of Our Lord: he is the precursor, the forerunner of the Messiah.

° The feast of the Most Precious Blood (July 1^st) recalls the fact that "we have been bought back – redeemed – by a great prize" (1Petr; 1Cor) from the slavery of sin and the eternal punishment of Hell. The great heavenly treasure for our souls comes exclusively from the pierced side of Our dying Lord and the shedding of all of his blood.

° The feast of the Visitation of Our Lady with her cousin Elizabeth, the mother of St John the Baptist, celebrated on July 2^nd, is a great example of the love of the Mother of God, not only of God, but also of her neighbor. One slight hint by the Angel at the Annunciation was enough to make her undertake a long journey in order to comfort her relative in her needs.

 

      (The Church founded by Christ is Apostolic)

All these feasts are held together by the feast of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, the two princes of the Apostles (June 29^th). This is so because the Church is the body to which Christ has entrusted His revelation, the deposit of the Faith, and the keys to His heavenly kingdom! Therefore there is no salvation outside the Church founded by Our Lord, the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church.

Today we are beleaguered by people – so-called "theologians" – saying it is all about the "visibility" of the Church: They say that it is impossible that the hierarchy of bishops and the Pope be lacking to the Church because then the Church would not be "visible" anymore. - This is a tremendous aberration and an error full of consequences. The visibility of the Church consists precisely in her Oneness, Holiness, Apostolicity and Catholicity (and Romanity). This is how the Church founded by Christ can be and must be recognized by all men of good will. - In the Creed (Credo) we do not say: "I believe in the visible Church", but "I believe in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church"and “I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints”.

In today's crisis we have to look closely at the meaning of the words which people are using. Often enough they do not mean anything, they are without sense, they are misleading our understanding and the Faith...

The Church is, among all other characteristics, Apostolic.

She is founded on a solid ground, an everlasting foundation: that of the Apostles among whom Sts Peter and Paul are the "princes", i.e. the chiefs, the principal Apostles. Why? Because St Peter is the personal representative of Christ ("Tu es Petrus..."), and his successors as bishops of Rome have a universal primate and jurisdiction, they are the Vicars of Christ.

St Paul is the "Apostle of the Gentiles". He was chosen in a particular way, after the other Apostles, after Christ’s Ascension. And he had been a fervent Jew, a Pharisee, a disciple of Gamaliel, a doctor of the law; he had the particular vocation to make it very clear to everyone that not only the Jews were to receive the Redemption through Christ, but also all the other nations (the gentiles). This was very difficult to accept for the Jews, and it took all the tenacity of St Paul to convince them that this was indeed the will of God.

The Church is Apostolic. That also means that Our Lord has given to the world the entire deposit of the Faith and all the essential components of the life of the Church through the Apostles, and through them alone. They were to transmit the truth to their successors – which they faithfully did – and so forth, with the assistance of the Holy Ghost.

The Apostles all had universal jurisdiction: Each of them set up the Church wherever he went to preach. But only the successors of St Peter in Rome (St Peter has first been bishop in Antioch and then bishop of Rome) inherit this universal jurisdiction. The successors of the other Apostles only lead a certain portion of the Church in dependence from the bishop of Rome.

It is very clear that the four notes of the Church (that she is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic) are intimately connected with each other. The teaching authority which comes first ("Go and teach all nations...") must not be disconnected from the sanctifying and governing power ("... baptizing them [...] and teaching them to keep everything I told you").

What is a bishop? What is a Pope?

- They all are successors of the Apostles if they are validly consecrated bishops. (There is no sacramental "consecration" of the Pope or a Cardinal; sacramentally speaking the Pope is 'just' a bishop, the bishop of Rome.)

- They are the teachers who have to guarantee the integrity of the Faith, without which it is impossible to please God (cf. Hebr 6). This teaching of the Faith is the first prerogative of the Church, of her bishops. Without the teaching of the true Faith everything else is void; with it everything receives its sanctifying sense: The priestly power is then exercised fruitfully. (Someone who is validly baptized outside the true Church receives the baptismal character, but not the grace of the Sacrament...) The governing power (authority in the strict sense of the word) is then exercised lawfully, since the Church is dealing with men who are social creatures, and need to be governed and directed by superiors, who again have superiors.

But only in this theological order does it make sense.

Since today we live in a world that puts everything upside down, we must be careful to get our ideas straight, especially when the teaching of the Church and theology are concerned. And underlying to theology is philosophy, which is the love of wisdom, i.e. the manner of thinking according to the truth.

The Church was founded by Christ on the solid foundation of the Apostles. They received the deposit of the Faith in their brave, but still weak hearts. Once they had been strengthened by the coming of the Holy Ghost, who was to remind them all that Christ had taught them previously, they preached and defended the revealed Truth, the Word of God, unfailingly, and even gave their life in order to attest to the truth. They left the spiritual treasures to their successors, and thus we still can be worthy children of God in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. This possibility of salvation exists until the end of times, according to the promise made by Christ; it cannot cease or disappear.

Our devotion for the holy Apostles should grow every day to be as strong as it has always been in the hearts of Catholics. Through the Apostles we have received what we have; they, guided and strengthened by the Blessed Virgin Mary, have established the Church throughout the world.

Let us faithfully hold on to what they have transmitted us.

Pray for us, Holy Mother of God. - That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Queen of Apostles, pray for us.

 

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.

P. Arnold Trauner (paterarnold@hotmail.com), njemački i engleski.