• Thursday after the First Sunday of Lent

  It was fitting that Christ should be Crucified with the Thieves

  Christ was crucified between the thieves because such was the will of the Jews, and also because this was part of God’s design. But the reasons why this was appointed were not the same in each of these cases. 1. As far as the Jews were concerned Our Lord was crucified with the thieves on either side to encourage the suspicion that he too was a criminal. But it fell out otherwise. The thieves themselves have left not a trace in the remembrance of man, while His cross is everywhere held in honour. Kings laying aside their crowns have broidered the cross on their royal robes. They have placed it on their crowns; on their arms. It has its place on the very altars. Everywhere, throughout the world, we behold the splendour of the cross. In God’s plan Christ was crucified with the thieves in order that, as for our sakes he became accursed of the cross, so, for our salvation, He is crucified like an evil thing among evil things. 2. The Pope, St. Leo the Great, says that the thieves were crucified, one on either side of Him, so that in the very appearance of the scene of His suffering there might be set forth that distinction which should be made in the judgment of each one of us. St. Augustine has the same thought. “The cross itself,” he says, ” was a tribunal. In the centre was the judge. To the one side a man who believed and was set free, to the other side a scoffer and he was condemned.” Already there was made clear the final fate of the living and the dead, the one class placed at His right, the other on His left. 3. According to St. Hilary the two thieves, placed to right and to left, typify that the whole of mankind is called to the mystery of Our Lord’s Passion. And since division of things according to right and left is made with reference to believers and those who will not believe, one of the two, placed on the right, is saved by justifying faith. 4. As St. Bede says, the thieves who were crucified with Our Lord, represent those who for the faith and to confess Christ undergo the agony of martyrdom or the severe discipline of a more perfect life. Those who do this for the sake of eternal glory are typified by the thief on the right hand. Those whose motive is the admiration of whoever beholds them imitate the spirit and the act of the thief on the left-hand side. As Christ owed no debt in payment for which a man must die, but submitted to death of His own will, in order to overcome death, so also He had not done anything on account of which He deserved to be put with the thieves. But of His own will He chose to be reckoned among the wicked, that by His power He might destroy wickedness itself. Which is why St. John Chrysostom says that to convert the thief on the cross and to turn him to Paradise was as great a miracle as the earthquake.

Saint for the Day

• February 26 – St. Porphyry, Bishop

  

  AT the age of twenty-five, Porphyry, a rich citizen of Thessalonica, left the world for one of the great religious houses in the desert of Sceté. Here he remained five years, and then, finding himself drawn to a more solitary life, passed into Palestine, where he spent a similar period in the severest penance, till ill health obliged him to moderate his austerities. He then made his home in Jerusalem, and in spite of his ailments visited the Holy Places every day; thinking, says his biographer, so little of his sickness that he seemed to be afflicted in another body, and not his own. About this time God put it into his heart to sell all he had and give to the poor, and then in reward of the sacrifice restored him by a miracle to perfect health. In 393 he was ordained priest and entrusted with the care of the relics of the true cross; three years later, in spite of all the resistance his humility could make, he was consecrated Bishop of Gaza. That city was a hotbed of paganism, and Porphyry found in it an ample scope for his apostolic zeal. His labors and the miracles which attended them effected the conversion of many; and an imperial edict for the destruction of the pagan temples, obtained through the influence of St. John Chrysostom, greatly strengthened his hands. When St. Porphyry first went to Gaza, he found there one temple more splendid than the rest, in honor of the chief god. When the edict went forth to destroy all traces of heathen worship, St. Porphyry determined to put Satan to special shame where he had received special honor. A Christian church was built upon the site, and its approach was paved with the marbles of the heathen temple. Thus every worshipper of Jesus Christ trod the relics of idolatry and superstition underfoot each time he went to assist at the holy Mass. He lived to see his diocese for the most part clear of idolatry, and died in 420. Reflection.—All superstitious searching into secret things is forbidden by the First Commandment equally with the worship of any false god. Let us ask St. Porphyry for a great zeal in keeping this commandment, lest we be led away, as so many are, by a curious and prying mind.

Sunday Sermon

• First Sunday of Lent ~ The Relapsing Sinner

  

  “That every one of you know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor.” —  Thess. iv. 4

  When we see a man given up to a life of some base, health and soul-destroying sin, and who perseveres in it in spite of all warnings and remonstrances of priest and dear friends, the remark will be heard from someone who knows him, How astonishing! and from another, How sad! But there is something more astonishing and more sad, and that is to see a man who, having been converted from such a deplorable state, who has made extraordinary efforts of his own, and has received extraordinary graces from God to help him to re form, suddenly gives himself up again to the very sins he has so lately abandoned. Just as if you had seen a man whose clothes were all besmeared with filth, mud, and mire from lying like a beast in a gutter every night for a month, and having re solved to live more like a man and a Christian, had taken a whole week to wash himself clean, be ginning long before daylight and scrubbing away all day until long after sundown, until he was a sight of cleanliness, order, and neatness most agree able to look upon ; now, in a moment, lies down in the gutter again, and wallows there like a pig until he is, if possible, more dirty, more repulsive than he was before.

  That is the man that took such pains to get up early in the harsh, cold weather, and come to the church then, and again late at night, and worked hard during the whole week of the Mission to purify his soul and make himself fit for man and God to look upon with pleasure ; and yet — oh, how astonishing and how sad! — is soon back again into his old sinful ways, committing every sin he so solemnly swore to abandon for the love of God and with the help of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

  If you ask him: Friend, how did you come to do this ? Was not the friendship and love of God and the hope of heaven worth keeping ? Why did you fall into sin again ? he has but one answer, “I was tempted.” Like Eve, he repeats the old excuse : ‘ ‘ The devil beguiled me and I did eat of the forbidden fruit.” Or like Adam, he says : “It was the woman’s fault ; she offered the fruit to me, and I ate it.”

  I cannot help having some compassion for Adam and Eve, for it was their first sin.

  They had not been just rescued by a crucified God and Saviour from a state of hell and misery, and now again promised all the old lost love of God and hope of heaven. They had not been prodigal children, lately in rags and feeding upon husks with swine, and now received back with joy and feasting to the father’s house and the father’s embrace.

  But what shall I think of you, O relapsing sinner! of whom all I have just said is so true ? Tempted ! Have you not just now heard the Gospel of the temptation of Christ ? Did He give way to the extraordinary temptations set Him by the devil? But you say, “I am not Christ.” I tell you you are. You are a Christian, and that means another Christ, or it means nothing. Though it does not mean that you are a God, as He was, yet it does mean that His divine humanity is yours. You are one of His divinely exalted human race just as much as you are one of Adam’s fallen human race. And there is no grace which Christ’s human nature had to keep Him from giving up to the temptation of the devil, that God would not also give you if you prayed for it. You are conceived and born of the Holy Ghost, a Christian son of the Church your mother, as Christ was conceived and born of His Mother Mary by the same Holy Ghost. Therefore, our Lord in His prayer to His heavenly Father said : “I in them, and Thou, Father, in Me. Thou hast loved them even as Thou hast loved Me.”

  If the heavenly Father loves us the same He will strengthen us the same against temptations. Stop! turn back quickly and repair your fault, your own fault, your own most grievous fault. Or, at the Day of Judgment Adam and Eve will scorn to look upon you as a man, and Christ will say to you, ” Depart from Me; I know you not!” If you fear such a horrible end may come upon you, pray, in temptation and out of temptation, and the devil shall have no power over you.

  

  Five Minute Sermons for Low Masses on All Sundays of the Year  Volume 2

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