Sermons of Fr Paul Robinson SSPX

Why does the Church have us read about the patriarch Joseph on the feast of St. Joseph?

What is real and what is not real? There are many things that we know through direct observation. But reality is much greater than what we can observe directly.
For instance, for centuries, mankind was not aware of the microscopic world. There were some who speculated about it but could not prove that it existed. Regardless of what human beings thought about it, though, that microscopic world was existing.
Through the invention of microscopes, we are now able to directly observe microbes, cells, DNA and, to some extent, even atoms. Now, no one questions that they exist because we are able to see them directly. We know now that a single drop of water contains 20 million microbes and a single teaspoon of soil contains up to one billion microbes. Teeming with life!
But there are still many aspects of reality that we are not able to see directly. God wants it to be this way. He wants there to be hidden aspects of reality that we are not able to know by observation.
Some of those things that we cannot observe directly, He wants to tell us about and ask us to believe that they exist on the basis of faith in His word. This is the case for the truths of our faith. We are not able to observe directly any of the things that we believe in our Catholic Faith. We do not believe in them because we are able to observe them; we believe in them—we consider them to be real—because God, Who is the Master of all reality, tells us that they exist.
One of the things we are all able to observe directly, as being part of reality, is death. One of the things that we are not able to observe directly, but we believe on faith, is resurrection
We have all experienced people dying during our life. But none of us has experienced someone coming back to life. We believe that we will rise from the dead because Our Lord told us about it and because He Himself rose from the dead.
And just like the other aspects of reality that we are not able to observe, some people believe in the resurrection and some people do not.
The resurrection was something that both Jewish and pagan peoples, in the time of Our Lord, had a hard time to accept.

During the second half of Lent, the Church does something remarkable in the traditional liturgy: she has us read almost exclusively from the Gospel of St. John. From day 21 until the last day of Lent, there are only two Gospels that are not from St. John, outside the readings of the Passion. During that time, we read about 43% of the Gospel of St. John.
It is clear that the Church wants us to focus on this Gospel in order to learn about the Passion.
We know that this Gospel is unique: it was written long after the other three Gospels; it contains more words of Our Lord than any of the other Gospels; it seeks to complete what is missing in the other Gospels; it focuses especially on Our Lord’s claim to be God and His conflicts with the leaders of the Jewish religion.
I thought it might be helpful for us, on this Passion Sunday, to consider three things regarding all of these passages of St. John that the Church gives us in the second half of Lent:What is Our Lord doing and what are His claims about what He is doing?
What is the reaction of those who witness His actions and hear His claims?
What does this mean for us today?

When we read the epistles of St. Paul, we are mainly reading letters written by an Apostle to former pagans. These were people who had grown up in the world of the Roman Empire. It was a world of great military power and of amazing engineering feats, but also one of great decadence.
These people were not just used to leading immoral lives; leading such lives was a way of life. In other words, it was considered normal behavior to be immoral. By this, I mean getting drunk, committing fornication, seeking after riches, and so on.
Then, this Jewish man named Paul came into their lives, explaining to them that God Himself came down upon this earth and that He taught what we are made for, He redeemed us from our sins, and He showed us how we must live our lives in order to get to Heaven.
Many of these pagans converted and, when they did, they completely changed their lives. They stopped living as pagans in the Roman Empire and started living as Catholics.
At the same time, they still had to struggle greatly against their old habits, particularly the habit of impurity. It is striking that, in today’s epistle and in last Sunday’s epistle, the Church wants us to read St. Paul exhorting these former pagans to fight against impurity.
We are Catholics living 2,000 years later, we are in the middle of the penitential season of Lent, and the Church wants us to hear these words of the Apostle Paul to help us make that same fight against sins of the flesh that the first Catholics were doing.
Today, I would like us to hear some words of these two epistles about impurity, to understand what they mean, and also to understand why it is so important to fight impurity.

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There are two times during Lent when the Church tries to give us a boost and encourage us to persevere in our Lenten practices. One time, of course, is Laetare Sunday, which occurs just after the halfway point of Lent. The other time is today, when we are a quarter of the way through Lent.
The fact that the Church tries to encourage us today indicates to us that we should already be feeling a bit worn out by our Lenten resolutions. We should be needing a second wind.
If we have not yet made any resolutions for Lent, we must be sure to do so today. If we are finding our resolutions easy, perhaps we should add something to them that is more difficult.
For those of us who are worn out, the Church gives us encouragement in the same way that Our Lord chose to encourage the Apostles right before His crucifixion. He did it by becoming transfigured before them.
The Church shows us that she really wants to reflect carefully on this episode in Our Lord’s life by giving us the same Gospel two days in a row, for Ember Saturday and today. She only does this one other time, Ember Saturday in Advent and the Fourth Sunday of Advent.
This transfiguration is encouraging for us because it shows the glory that will come at the end of our struggles. If we persevere in the Catholic life, if we continue carrying our Cross and being faithful, one day we will enter heavenly glory.
Our garments will be as white as snow because of the radiance of our body. Our body will shine brighter than the sun.
Just as when there is a contest, the contestants are shown the prize that will be awarded to the winner before they start the contest. Seeing the prize encourages those who are competing. When they are in the midst of the competition, they think about what they will earn if they win and they continue in their efforts.
So, too, for us, a quarter of the way through Lent and a certain percentage of the way through our life. We might be weary of our duty of state and the daily grind. We might be weary fighting against the world, the flesh, and the devil. Then, we remind ourselves: if I persevere, I will win an eternal crown. I will be happy forever. I will receive a glorified body that will never suffer.
This vision of Our Lord’s glory had a huge impact on St. Peter. He mentions it as definitive proof of Our Lord’s divinity in his second epistle, “We were not following fictitious tales when we made known to you the power and coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his grandeur. For he received from God the Father honor and glory, when from out the majestic glory a voice came down to him. And this voice we ourselves heard borne from heaven when we were with him on the holy mount” (2 Pet. 1:16-18)
This vision of Our Lord’s glory really happened. And it is a real proof of the glory we will have.