Divine Eucharistic Renewal

This is a computer-generated transcription that has been included to make the homily searchable.  It has not been verified by the author. 

“This is the blood of the covenant, which will be shared for many.” On this feast of Corpus Christi, I want to share with you a passage which those of you who have made the Encounter will be very familiar with. It’s something that happened at Fatima. In 1917, our Blessed Mother appeared to the three children. But before she appeared, there were several apparitions of an angel to the children. And so one of the apparitions, the angel had taught them to pray, giving them a prayer and even showing them how to pray. That is to pray, prostrate, kneeling down with their forehead on the ground. It’s a position where we’re accustomed now to associate with the Muslims, we see the photos of Muslims praying that way, but this is an ancient prayer posture. And so at one point, the children were, after some time after one of those apparitions, the children were attending their flock out in the field, a bit out there in the field, in the middle of the field, they were praying as the angel taught them with the prayer the angel had given them, and prostrate, prostrate right there in the field. And so this is the account that Lucia, who was very young at that point recounts, she says, “They were prostrate, praying as the angel had chosen, and all of a sudden an extraordinary light shone upon us, we sprang up to see what was happening and beheld the angel.” Again, the angel, they said the angel looked like an adolescent, but all of light, a beautiful, beautiful angel, leaving, “he was holding a chalice in his left hand, with the host suspended above it, from which some drops of blood fell into the chalice,” blood coming from the host. “Leaving the chalice suspended in the air, the angel knelt down beside us, and made us repeat three times, Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore thee profoundly. And I offer thee, the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles throughout the world, in reparation for the outrageous, sacrileges and indifferences with which He Himself is offended. And through the infinite merits of His most Sacred Heart, and those of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.” And as Mother Magdalene said, we have those two great feasts coming up this week. “I beg of thee the conversion of poor sinners. Then rising, the angel took the chalice and host in his hands, he gave the sacred host to me, and shared the blood from the chalice between Jacinta and Francisco.” That was their first Holy Communion. “Saying, as he did so, to us, take,” so the angels saying this to them, but I think also saying it to us, “take and drink the body and blood of Jesus Christ, horribly outraged by ungrateful men, make reparation for their crimes, and console your God.” So I wanted to share this with you today, because there’s a danger of reducing, a big danger today of reducing the Mass to just a human celebration. And what we see in this, in this apparition of the angel is the angel filled with divine light, how much reverence and we could even say, like fear of the Lord, in adoration, the gravity, the angel has concerning the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of our Lord. This year, the American bishops have asked that this year be dedicated in a special way to a Eucharistic renewal. And I think that’s a very, extremely important thing, a Eucharistic renewal, very needed. And so today, I wanted to focus on three points, first of all, the crisis that we’re in, but especially how to understand, that’s the second point, how to understand what is happening, and thirdly, what we should do about it. So the crisis, how to understand it, and what we should do about it. So the crisis I think, to a lot of you are already rather familiar. But this apparition of the angel at Fatima sheds a lot of light, when the angel is especially focused on, of course this apparition is especially focused on the Holy Eucharist, the angel says, “I offer thee the most precious body Blood, Soul and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles throughout the world.”  So the angel is focusing them on the Blessed Sacrament. But what does the angel say in this prayer, this prayer, this prayer that the angel is teaching them, “in reparation,” in reparation for what? – “the outrages, sacrileges and indifferences with which He Himself is offended.” So there’s a need for reparation for many things. But the angel here is asking him to pray, especially for reparation for offenses against the Blessed Sacrament, outrages, sacrileges, and the indifferences. And then a little bit later, the angel says, “Take and drink the body and blood of Jesus Christ, horribly outraged by ungrateful men,” to make it very clear, horribly outraged by ungrateful men. And the angel’s whole attitude, expresses adoration, and reparation, kneeling prostrate on the ground, before the Blessed Sacrament. And the angel asked these children, these little children, he says make reparation for their crimes, and console your God. And so that’s what I think that’s a call for us today as we celebrate this Holy Eucharist on this feast of Corpus Christi, to make reparation. In fact, we can even you know, our air conditioning, as you know, doesn’t work very well, here in this chapel, it gets very muggy. That’s a joke right about the air conditioning. And especially, there’ll be some who will be listening to this. It will be listening to this; you haven’t been to this chapel. So I want them to know that we don’t have air conditioning. And for them to know it’s very muggy out here. But that can be part of our reparation. And so again, the attitude the angel teaches the children kneeling with their foreheads, prostrate in adoration, make reparation, and console your God. So that’s what we’re here to do to make reparation. But above all, to console our Lord for these offenses. And so that’s a sign of the crisis. That was in 1917. Already, the angel was speaking about how grave were the offenses against the Blessed Sacrament. So this is not Father John Mary inventing this. The reason I emphasize this is because there’s a lot of things that we humans think of as normal, because that happens a lot. But the angel is saying this is not normal. This is a grave offence, and a horrible outrage against our Lord. And so we need that light of the angel again, that was 1917. And I ask, Has the situation gotten better since then? Have we taken care? Have we? Is there no longer those sacrileges, outrages and in differences? Or has it gotten much worse? And a critical point in that, where a critical turning point for the Church was in the 1960s, the 1960s was a turning point for a lot of what’s called the first world, like Europe and American and other more developed countries. But especially in the Church with the Vatican Council. It was I think everybody can recognize that it was a turning point. Whether that was favorable or negative, that’s another question, but it certainly was a turning point. But first, but it’s important to realize also the problems didn’t start with Vatican II. And what the angels making clear is that these problems are already very serious. Way back when angels was speaking in 1917, but did they get better in the 1960s that the outrages, sacrileges and indifferences against the Blessed Sacrament get better in the 1960s? Or did they get much worse? The statistics show clearly, you don’t have to take anybody’s word for it. It’s very clear in the statistics that the statistics show from the mid-60s onward, because in many ways in the United States, at least they were climbing until the mid-60s. But after 60s, all these critical statistics begin to decline, the number of people leaving the Church, and I cited the statistics, I think they say today, at least in our country, for every one person who’s joining the Church, six persons are leaving. That’s a clear sign of a terrible crisis. And many, we know that many of those who consider themselves Catholics, don’t go to Mass many Sundays. And I’m not criticizing them. I’m saying, though, that it’s a sign of this crisis. And many of those who do go to Mass, and statistics, again, show this, the majority of those who do go to Mass, don’t believe in the real presence, and in the Holy Sacrifice. So the statistics show that there’s like, clear and extreme crisis, things are not normal, we’re not in a normal situation, we can pretend that we just need to tweak a few things, to do a little bit of fine tuning. We’re in a grave crisis. Even a business; if a business says for every customer, we gain, we lose six customers. What do you think the board of directors is gonna say? Well, that’s pretty good and make a few little adjustments. But we’re pretty happy with the way things are going. And when I speak of the council, I think we also need to distinguish, I said this two weeks ago, what the council itself said, and the way, many interpreted and implemented it. Because those are two very different things. In some ways, the implementation that was done of the council, the way it was interpreted, in many ways, was actually in contradiction to what was actually said. But I don’t want to go into that. That’s a whole other topic. But many people were aware, at that time, that there was that this certain leaders were, were implementing what was like a radical break with tradition. And they said that openly, that this is a whole, like a whole new beginning, that the spirit of Vatican II they said was like a whole new beginning to put away all the old bad stuff and start with something very new, much more modern. And some people are discovering that today; discovering what was lost at that point and are scandalized by it. And so I won’t develop that too much, because a lot of you are already familiar with this crisis. But the important point is, and this is my second point, how do we understand this? How do we understand what is happening? And especially what is God’s designs in this? Because, you might think, Well, God’s not anywhere in this crisis. But He is. And that leads us to again, the second point of how to understand it. Remember, in the gospel, we just heard today, when is that gospel taking place? It’s taking place at the Last Supper. Jesus is just about to enter His passion. So Jesus does this, right, as He’s about to enter His passion. So there’s a word that used in the Gospel today, there’s a word that is used four times. You heard that word is that was used. You heard it four times in the gospel today. And that short Gospel we had, the word is Passover, Passover, the Passover or the passage, the Pascall mystery, the Pascall mystery, which is about this great passage, which begins with His passion. And in a few hours, He will be stripped of His garments, scourged, crowned with thorns, and they will put a garment of mockery to mark Him as a king. And so, how does this relate to this crisis that we’re talking about? It’s the first point Is that like the Passion of Jesus, there is something terrible that is happening. And if many are not aware of it, many of you and many others are aware that something terrible is happening. This is not good and normal. Again, if already the angel in 1917 was speaking of horribly outraged, and if the situation’s got much worse, that’s a sign that something terrible is happening. The Church is experiencing its passion. In this immense suffering and humiliation, it’s like the Church is having its beautiful, beautiful, liturgical and traditional garment, stripped off it, mocked, betrayed, scourged, humiliated with a crown of thorns and dirty, dirty soldier’s coat put on it. That’s I think what the Church is experiencing mystically today, this terrible destruction. The Psalms, some Psalms speak of the enemy entering into the temple and destroying the temple, profaning the temple. And I think we’re experiencing much of that already today in the attacks against faith, against reverence, against the Blessed Sacrament. Some people are and some of the shepherds of the Church, I think, are participating in that with evil intent. But many I think are misguided, just following orders, believing that they’re obeying, and following what is the spirit of the Church today. So that’s the crisis, the crisis, the Church is living its passion, following Jesus in a path of its passion. But remember, that the Pascall mystery is not just the passion and death, the Pascall mystery is leading to the resurrection and the triumph of the Lord. And this is the key point that I want to make today. That God has mysterious plans, in this passion that the Church is living, in this crisis that the Church is living, to lead this to a greater good. And just as many people seeing the crucifixion of Jesus could not imagine that anything good could come out of this. Maybe no human could bring something good out of it, but God could. And so in this terrible passion that the Church is living right now, so many people are sensing that there’s no human solution, that the only solution has to be a divine intervention, like the resurrection. But God’s plans are always greater than man’s plans, and satan’s plans. Evil appears like it did during the crucifixion of Jesus. Evil appears now to be winning. But God’s plans are infinitely greater. As I think God can even swallow up the evil of satan in the greatness of His plans, His plans for a renewal of the face of the earth, a renewal of the Church, a great reconquest. But these plans are mysterious. They’re hidden from us. Already at Mass, we said, we celebrate the sacred mysteries. And there’s so much in what is happening now, that is mysterious, hidden from us. But it’s important to realize that God is in control, He gives satan power. He gives also humans the freedom to use for good or evil. But ultimately, He triumphs. And so that’s the key point, that faith in that hope, in this crisis, that what we need is a divine intervention. But that’s what Christianity is all about. Our faith is in a God who does act, who can take the very worst thing, the greatest sin and evil of humanity at every experience and bring from it the greatest good. And the Church is called to follow that passion. So that leads me to the third point, which is what should we do? What should we do? So again, we need to find guidance. In a message that the Lord gave us just recently that we published just recently. Our Blessed Mother was saying, silence before God. Shut up, shut up is another way of saying shut up and listen to God. Your human ideas are just human, be quiet and listen to God. Listen to God, our human ideas are not going to get us out of this, are not going to get the Church out of this. We need to be quiet and humbly listen to God. So, the apostles show us what not to do. The Apostle show us what not to do, but they’re very much our human responses, our human instincts of fight or flight. The apostles we know at the garden, they pull out a sword, they’re going to fix this situation humanly. So they try, that doesn’t work very well. And Jesus says, That’s not the way to do it. It’s not God’s plan. And so then what do they do, Fight or flight? Okay, so they run away. That’s a very human response, fight or flight. But what should the apostles have done? What did our Blessed Mother do? What did John eventually do? They accompanied Him. They remain faithful to Jesus in His passion, with faith in Him, with hope, and with love, trying to be faithful to God’s will in that situation. So what should we do? We should follow Jesus in this passion. And so in particular, for our little Mission of Divine Mercy. You know, I think the thing that’s maybe somewhat distinctive about our little Mission of Divine Mercy is the special way that God has been speaking to us, not just for seven years, but already before the mission began over 30 years ago it began. Because God’s wanted us to be open to His guidance, the guidance He’s giving today, not just to the Mission of Divine Mercy, but in many different ways throughout the Church today. But the Encounter with Jesus, you know, our Encounter with Jesus, many of you have made our Encounter with Jesus. And their encounter with Jesus is focused on two things, being quiet to listen to God, and adoring Him in the Blessed Sacrament. And where did that come from? You know, I’ll give you this little secret, the encounter with Jesus, the talks, the whole structure, the Encounter with Jesus came from revelations that we were given, messages that we were given, we didn’t cook that up ourselves, it was the Lord who gave that to us. And so that’s been you know, so as we talked about Eucharistic renewal, that’s what the Encounters are all about, a Eucharistic renewal. Now, we’re, you know, that we’re in a new situation, a very difficult situation. In the last couple of months since we began publishing the messages. And of course, there’s been a response from the authorities, and so this is a new situation. In this new situation, a lot of people have requested that we start celebrating the traditional Latin Mass, that TLN. And I know a lot of you would like that. And so we’re open to that. If the Lord wants us to do that, we’re very open. If the Lord asked us to do that, we’ll be glad to do that. But what we were trying to do is to discern His will, it was very difficult to do that, up till now, because of a certain circumstances, what we’re trying to do now, above, the only thing we want to do, is to do God’s will. That’s the whole basis for the Mission of Divine Mercy. Because the crisis in the Church has been going on for a while. And the Mission of Divine Mercy was all about trying to listen to God, trying to shut up and listen to God, be silent and know that I am God. And so that’s what the Mission of Divine Mercy is trying to do in this confusing, mysterious time, is listen to God, what God is asking us, I don’t know what God is asking others. My role, our role is to discern what He is asking us and that is often mysterious. So that’s what we’ve been trying to do for 30 years and what we’re still trying to do as circumstances change, is to discern His will. I think, one thing I think, I can say for sure, is we want to be recovering the authentic roots of our tradition, which in many ways, have been, as I say, in crisis since the 1960s. So we certainly want to be re discovering, like strengthening the roots of the most authentic tradition of the Church. We don’t plan to make any drastic changes now. Because we know that the situation that we’re in is already so difficult. So confusing, that we don’t want to make it more difficult. But we probably will be discerning if there are some things we’re called to do, gradually to help restore faith, reverence and adoration for the Holy Eucharist, as the bishops this year are calling for in our country. But there are, I think, two changes that I think we discerned we should make now. And so we’re going to begin these changes next week. I want to announce them this week, so it can begin the next week. One is we’ll go back to what has been the more traditional practice in a Church for many centuries, of simply that the Holy Communion will be only in the form of the host. Except for those who have a special medical need, like celiac or gluten intolerance, and then we will continue to permit communion to the Precious Blood, but just for those who have that special need. The reason is particularly I mean, every time I take the chalice off the altar, I fear, because the danger of spilling the chalice. And so I think it’s worthwhile doing when there’s a real need. But I don’t want to put the precious blood of Jesus, which is often so horribly outraged. I don’t want to add any more danger than necessary. So that’s one change. The second change, concerns, Holy Communion on the tongue, or Holy Communion on the hand. The traditional teaching of the Church was recalled by Saint Pope Paul the sixth in 1969 in a document called “Memoriale domini”, in which he said that Holy Communion on the tongue in the Roman church was the normal and preferable way of doing it, was the normal and preferable way of doing it, as it had been done for many centuries, as and I quote from that document, he says, “It is based on a centuries old tradition in the Roman Catholic Church,” but he says, “but especially because it expresses and signifies the reverend respect of the faithful towards the Holy Eucharist.” It expresses and signifies the reverence, respect of the faithful towards the Holy Eucharist. That’s extremely important as we try to make reparation as the, these words of the Pope. And then he says, “and furthermore, it avoids the danger of profaning the Eucharistic species,” because many people receive it in the hand, very, like the one thing is, the particles can be lost because people often not very careful, and also because people with evil intention. So even members of satanic rites can come to try to get hosts for black masses and so forth. And it’s striking that the protestant reformers who did not believe in the Real Presence, most of them, and in the holy sacrifice, they instituted communion in the hand, because they wanted to express that it was not the body and blood of Jesus. But there’s a further reason for us, the Lord during COVID, because this was the big issue during COVID, in which, and I think very unjustly and even with very inaccurate, scientific or medical information, but everybody was trying to be forced to receive Holy Communion in the hand. And so this was a little message that we got during that time, I’ll just read you a little passage from it. Our Lord said, “I established that My Most Holy Sacrament be received in the mouth as a sign of respect.” And then this gives a further teaching, “and as a teaching,” and it relates to the Fatima account, “and as a teaching to become like little children who receive their food, their sustenance from the hands of their father. The little ones are fed directly in the mouth. In the same way, those who are too weak or sick, someone has to put food in their mouths. It is a teaching and practice in docility, and abandonment, and learning to be children with me.” Remember what Jesus says in the Gospel, “unless you become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of God.” He doesn’t say, it would be a good thing that you tried to be more simple. You know, it’s a nice thing to be more like children, He says, Unless you do that, you won’t enter heaven. That’s very strong language from the one who knows. And so He’s showing how Holy Communion receiving on the tongue also relates to that necessary condition for entering heaven. And so again, so we’ll begin this, not this week, but next week. So just to conclude, then, with our Blessed Mother, as we prepare to celebrate these sacred mysteries, remembering that the Holy Eucharist was established, as Jesus was beginning, His passion, His Pascall mystery. So and this was the key point, again, to understand our situation today, yes, to be realistic about the sacrileges, outrages, and indifferences. But above all, to remember that if the Church is living its passion, that means it’s preparing to celebrate also a resurrection, that this passage that we’re on, God will lead to His triumph, by His divine action, and we don’t know what He’s going to do, how He’s going to do it. It’s beyond our understanding. But He will lead us if we are silent, and listening, and believing and following Him. And so that’s what our little Mission of Divine Mercy wants to do. We know that God is leading us. And so we’re trying to be quiet and listen and faithfully respond to what God is saying. It’s striking to me that there’s people who believe that God is speaking to us, but they’re still telling us what we should do. And that’s okay. That’s okay. But we’re happy to listen to different ideas. But we’re trying above all to listen to God. And I think that God has given our poor little community a special gift and a special responsibility of listening to Him. And that’s what we’re trying to do in this critical time. To share as we celebrate this Mass in His passion, to share one day, in His glory.  Amen. 

KEYWORDS / PHRASES:
Mark 14:12-16, 22-26
Psalm 116:12-13, 15-16, 17-18