My dear People of God, we are invited today to give thanks
to God for the gift of the Faith with which we have been blessed; to
thank Our Blessed Lord for establishing His Church on the foundation Rock of
His Good News proclaimed by Peter and Paul, and the Apostolic College; and
finally to express our gratitude for the personal witness given by both
Peter and Paul in Rome.
In the infant Church there were certain people who claimed
to have knowledge of some teachings of Jesus hidden from the general body of
disciples, teachings which only those could learn who had been specially
initiated by rituals of a secret nature.
For such people, the faith of the simple Christian was only the
beginning; the first step indeed, but not, of itself, enough for a deeper
understanding of, and closer union with, God.
All who contested the very idea of such secret doctrines
did so stating that:
The authentic Christian teaching
is for all Christians, and can be
found by all, in the Scriptures as understood and proclaimed by Mother Church.
The faith taught publicly today by
Mother Church is guaranteed by the fact that it is based on, and in conformity
with, the traditional Church teaching originating with the Apostles themselves and
handed down through the unbroken line of their successors.
In that way it was made clear that the fullness of the
authentic teaching of Jesus is open and available to all disciples, in His Holy
Christian and Catholic Church.
You must remember that in the early centuries of the Church
there were no printed books; what books there were had to be copied by hand and
were very expensive to buy. Moreover,
there were few roads, and the best of them could only facilitate transport by
horse and wheeled carriage; transport by sea was very slow and open to attack
by robbers or pirates. All this meant
that the church in each city or town generally preached what it had received at
the beginning of its establishment from the wandering teachers who first came –at
great personal difficulty and danger, indeed,
even despite public persecution -- to proclaim Christ to them and baptise them
in His name. Those itinerant teachers were well known and accepted as authentic
disciples of Jesus; but those with the greatest authority were, of course, the
twelve Apostles themselves. Those Churches founded personally by an Apostle,
or those where an Apostle had been active, were specially respected; above all, however, those churches whose Apostle
had not only worked among them but was buried in their midst, were shown the
greatest respect, and their tradition of faith was recognized as being most
sure. Examples of these could be found,
for example, at Antioch in Syria, at Philippi, Ephesus, Corinth,
Thessalonica. Nevertheless, even among
these “super” churches with “surer” faith because of the founding and/or originating
apostolic presence and witness, even among these, there was one which stood
head and shoulders above all others, and that was the Church at Rome, where
both Peter -- the Rock on which Jesus had said He would build His Church -- and
Paul, the apostle of the Gentiles P/personally chosen by the glorified Jesus,
had both worked and, indeed, suffered martyrdom for their unflinching witness
to the truth of Jesus. If any Church
could remain free from heresy, if any Church could preserve the teaching of
Jesus in its purest integrity, it had to be the Church at Rome. Moreover, all wanting to know the fulness
of Jesus’ authentic teaching would find it proclaimed more fully and surely in
the apostolic churches, and above all, again, in the Church of Rome, the
treasurer and custodian of the unique legacies of both Peter and Paul. That true faith in Jesus and His teaching was
known as the Christian Faith, and that Faith was intended by Jesus to be
proclaimed to all peoples and churches throughout the known world, spearheaded
by the Apostles, and Paul the specially designated ‘Doctor of the Nations’. That is why the ‘Christian Faith’ also came
to be called the ‘Catholic – which means ‘universal’ – Faith’, because all Christian
churches were called, and aspired to teach the doctrine of the apostolic
churches, above all the doctrine proclaimed by Peter and Paul – Christian and
Catholic -- at Rome.
Dear friends in Christ, many former Catholics and Christians now rejoicing
in a faithless secular society, claim to be creating a better and more
fulfilling world-experience for people. They
seek to do this by borrowing from the French Revolution ‘Liberty, Equality and
Fraternity’ luminaries … proclaiming a likeness to what a modern biographer of
Robespierre has termed his ‘Fatal Purity’, a purity uniquely able to separate
and destroy even the closest of former friends and associates. That ‘fatal purity’ of such modern
doctrines concerns the nature and development of humanity; and their effect on its
social nature is being manifested again in our days. Modern lapsed Catholics and Christians, and others
rejecting Christianity out of hand, borrow heavily from Jesus’ teaching, which they
adapt to their own agenda, and as a result we have ever-increasing
gender obfuscations, abortions, suicides, and mercy-killings, along with ever
more distressing occurrences of children’s mental-health difficulties; all of
which arise from modern ideas about and practice of, that sublime Christian
virtue of LOVE!!
Our modern secular evangelists like to sound, appear, and show
themselves, as good and compassionate people.
And, to cover-up their ignorance of the depths and beauty of human
nature as God made it, they use of words well-known from Jesus’ teaching and
abuse them to sell the central aspect of their doctrine which is, that no one
is excluded from the ‘good things’ they offer, because there is no such
thing as sin. And the apparent closeness of their
aspirations with Jesus’ teaching is a sham because they themselves are
absolutely against any God -- even so lovable a God-become-man as Jesus --
having any authority over them in their own personal and private lives and
decisions.
Dear
Catholics and Christians, in our present world of change and uncertainty, where
the Faith is openly denied and Tradition derided, we should be both grateful
for, and proud of, the blessings we have received: the supreme blessing and gift being that of
the one, true, Faith guaranteed by Peter and proclaimed by Paul; the inviolate Faith
-- Christian and Catholic -- preserved in and revealed by the one true Church of Christ through the
power of the indwelling Spirit of Holiness and Truth bequeathed to her by her
Lord and Saviour.
Here,
however, we should take care lest we inadvertently cause the reformation cry of
‘Popery’ to revive; for, although we most wholeheartedly respect, revere, and honour,
the Pope, and obey authentic Papal teaching; nevertheless, we do not
serve the Pope. We serve only
Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour, and we should take care lest enthusiasm for,
or after a meeting with, any particular Pope should lead one – and even episcopal
conferences are not be excused in this respect -- to splash around servile
words of praise, as if they were right expressions of their authors’ Catholic
devotion.
Dear Catholic and Christian friends, give great and heartfelt thanks today for the blessings brought us by SS. Peter and Paul and consigned in Mother Church’s treasury of worship, grace, prayer and praise. Deo Gratias! Alleluia!!
