Ascension

Dom Alcuin Reid warns against possible SSPX excommunications in a homily for the Sunday after the Ascension, saying Catholics attached to the older liturgical rites have faced exclusion and “ecclesiastical displacement” since Traditionis custodes In these days after the Ascension, as the Paschal candle stands extinguished and we wait in expectation and hope for the consoling fire of Pentecost, the Sacred Liturgy of our Holy Mother the Church gives us a somewhat stark warning about living as faithful witnesses to Christ. “They will put you out of the synagogues; indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. And they will do this because they have not known the Father, nor me,” we are informed by the words of Our Lord Himself in this morning’s Gospel. Historically, these words apply to the expulsion of early Christians from the Jewish synagogues as it became clear that Christian faith and life was a substantial development of Jewish belief that the authorities of the time deemed unacceptable. Christianity rightly boasts of and venerates its roots in the Old Covenant, but it remains a fact that the New Covenant fulfils the Old and surpasses it. The Old Covenant no longer suffices. Because of this reality, Christians were expelled from Jewish synagogues and, as we see clearly in the martyrdom of St Stephen (cf. Acts 7), were indeed killed out of a supposedly godly zeal. But what are we to make of this prophecy today? We hear it proclaimed only days after the Holy See has threatened to excommunicate those who plan to consecrate new bishops for the Society of St Pius X, and the new bishops themselves, at the beginning of July. (In spite of much sensational reporting, there is no question of the excommunication of their faithful.) The parallel is not exact: there are many issues involved, and they are complex. But the echo of Our Lord’s prophecy at this time is unnerving, particularly given the zeal with which those who wish to celebrate according to the older liturgical rites of the Church have been excluded from their churches and chapels since the liturgical, historical and pastoral travesty that is the Motu Proprio Traditionis custodes of 2021, which has brought about further disunity and division whilst purportedly seeking unity through the imposition of a ritual uniformity never before known, or required, in the life of the Church. Many are the good and loyal Catholics who have experienced expulsion from their places of worship and the killing off of the sources of grace and pastoral care for themselves and their families at the hands of prelates who, seemingly, “do this because they have not known the Father, nor me.” We ourselves have had to step outside of the system, as it were, in order simply to survive: something no one wishes to do, but which, in extraordinary times, may become truly necessary in conscience. Necessity is the key, as the Society of St Pius X often says. For the older liturgical rites are not a matter of mere aesthetic preference: they are the integral source and summit of our Christian life and mission and guarantee a ritual and doctrinal integrity that is, at best, “watered down” in their successors and which, if we examine the increasingly poisonous fruits of the virus of synodalism that has been unleashed in the Church, is at times utterly compromised, if not downright rejected, by those who would proscribe that which, of its very nature, “remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.” (Benedict XVI, Letter, 7 July 2007.) Maintaining the rites of the usus antiquior, including the Divine Office, the sacraments and sacramentals, is not a personal “choice”: it is the conviction that, at this time in the history of the Church, they are necessary to guarantee a continuity of faith and life with the Church founded by Christ on the Apostles, at a time when other means do so less effectively or are at times hijacked for ends utterly inimical to the Deposit of Faith. This is not to malign the good will of many of those in authority, or of clergy, religious and laity who have struggled for decades, and who continue to struggle, to be faithful, often in the face of much opposition and, at times, from bishops and other ecclesiastical superiors. Nor is it to question the validity of the newer rites when celebrated correctly. This is, however, to underline the pastoral necessity, that is, the necessity for the salvation of souls, of free access to the Church’s unadulterated rites and teaching: something that the fruits produced by communities who celebrate them make abundantly evident. Sadly, this is a reality which still seems to be ignored. What, then, can we do when the choice seems to be between disobedience and dissolution? This is no small question, and we do well to consult St Thomas Aquinas and other sound theologians on its implications. In doing so, we find that material disobedience to positive law, as distinct from Divine law, can, extraordinarily, be tolerated for a truly necessary good: a father must feed and protect his family. There is no virtue in allowing them to starve to death or to be destroyed by danger. At certain times we must act outside the norm. And, as the fourth century martyrs of Abitene teach us so eloquently, sacramental starvation is not tolerable: sine dominico, non possumus (without the Sunday Eucharist, without the liturgy and the sacraments, we simply cannot live). But first and foremost, we must pray. In the context in which we find ourselves, the counsel of this morning’s Epistle is particularly pertinent: “Keep sane and sober for your prayers,” St Peter insists. So too he urges us: “Above all hold unfailing your love for one another, since charity covers a multitude of sins. Practice hospitality ungrudgingly to one another. As each has received a gift, employ it for one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.” Prayer, charity, hospitality and mutual service are most certainly necessary at all levels of the Church in our times, and persevering in each of them will bring many graces, particularly for those who are persecuted or who, as it were, find themselves “ecclesiastically displaced”. In these days when we await the coming of the Counsellor whom Our Lord promises to send us from the Father, we can, then, each redouble our prayers that the Spirit of Truth shall truly inhabit those in authority and, as we shall sing in the Sequence of Pentecost, flecte quod est rigidum, fove quod est frigidum, rege quod est devium. (Bend what is inflexible, warm what is chilled, correct what has gone astray.) Not only should we beg Almighty God to send the Holy Spirit to melt the hearts that govern the Church, we should also implore Him in particular to fill the Holy Father with His sevenfold gifts of wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord in the exercise of his unenviable but utterly crucial duty to protect the integrity of the Deposit of Faith and the unity of the Church under it, of which the Sacred Liturgy is the living source and sacramental. The Holy Father needs our prayers at this time! Let us begin praying earnestly that, through the inspiration and gifts of God the Holy Spirit, charity and Truth will prevail on all sides and all talk of excommunication shall cease; that true hospitality will be shown; and that those who have been given the gift of the episcopacy and papacy will employ them, as good stewards, in the service of all their flock after the example of the Good Shepherd Himself (cf. Jn 10). With the help of our prayers, through the power of God the Holy Spirit, this can yet come to pass. Dom Alcuin Reid is the Prior of the Monastère Saint-Benoît in Brignoles, France, www.monasterebrignoles.org

In this sermon for the Feast of the Ascension, St Leo the Great reflects on Christ’s triumph over death, the transformation of the Apostles after the Ascension, and the call for Christians to lift their hearts above earthly things and towards eternity The mystery of our salvation, dearly beloved, which the Creator of the universe valued at the price of His blood, has now been carried out under conditions of humiliation from the day of His bodily birth to the end of His Passion. And although even in the form of a slave many signs of Divinity have beamed out, yet the events of all that period served particularly to show the reality of His assumed Manhood. But after the Passion, when the chains of death were broken, which had exposed its own strength by attacking Him, Who was ignorant of sin, weakness was turned into power, mortality into eternity, contumely into glory, which the Lord Jesus Christ showed by many clear proofs in the sight of many, until He carried even into heaven the triumphant victory which He had won over the dead. As therefore at the Easter commemoration, the Lord’s Resurrection was the cause of our rejoicing, so the subject of our present gladness is His Ascension, as we commemorate and duly venerate that day on which the Nature of our humility in Christ was raised above all the host of heaven, over all the ranks of angels, beyond the height of all powers, to sit with God the Father. On which Providential order of events we are founded and built up, that God’s Grace might become more wondrous, when, notwithstanding the removal from men’s sight of what was rightly felt to command their awe, faith did not fail, hope did not waver, love did not grow cold. For it is the strength of great minds and the light of firmly faithful souls unhesitatingly to believe what is not seen with the bodily sight, and there to fix one’s affections whither you cannot direct your gaze. And whence should this Godliness spring up in our hearts, or how should a man be justified by faith, if our salvation rested on those things only which lie beneath our eyes? Hence our Lord said to him who seemed to doubt Christ’s Resurrection until he had tested by sight and touch the traces of His Passion in His very Flesh: “Because you have seen Me, you have believed: blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29). In order, therefore, dearly beloved, that we may be capable of this blessedness, when all things were fulfilled which concerned the Gospel preaching and the mysteries of the New Testament, our Lord Jesus Christ, on the fortieth day after the Resurrection in the presence of the disciples, was raised into heaven, and terminated His presence with us in the body, to abide on the Father’s right hand until the times Divinely foreordained for multiplying the sons of the Church are accomplished, and He comes to judge the living and the dead in the same flesh in which He ascended. And so that which till then was visible of our Redeemer was changed into a sacramental presence, and that faith might be more excellent and stronger, sight gave way to doctrine, the authority of which was to be accepted by believing hearts enlightened with rays from above. This Faith, increased by the Lord’s Ascension and established by the gift of the Holy Ghost, was not terrified by bonds, imprisonments, banishments, hunger, fire, attacks by wild beasts, or refined torments of cruel persecutors. For this Faith throughout the world not only men, but even women, not only beardless boys, but even tender maids, fought to the shedding of their blood. This Faith cast out spirits, drove off sicknesses, and raised the dead; and through it the blessed Apostles themselves also, who after being confirmed by so many miracles and instructed by so many discourses, had yet been panic-stricken by the horrors of the Lord’s Passion and had not accepted the truth of His Resurrection without hesitation, made such progress after the Lord’s Ascension that everything which had previously filled them with fear was turned into joy. For they had lifted the whole contemplation of their mind to the Godhead of Him that sat at the Father’s right hand, and were no longer hindered by the barrier of corporeal sight from directing their mind’s gaze to That Which had never quitted the Father’s side in descending to earth, and had not forsaken the disciples in ascending to heaven. The Son of Man and Son of God, therefore, dearly beloved, then attained a more excellent and holier fame, when He betook Himself back to the glory of the Father’s Majesty, and in an ineffable manner began to be nearer to the Father in respect of His Godhead, after having become farther away in respect of His manhood. A better instructed faith then began to draw closer to a conception of the Son’s equality with the Father without the necessity of handling the corporeal substance in Christ, whereby He is less than the Father, since, while the Nature of the glorified Body still remained, the faith of believers was called upon to touch not with the hand of flesh, but with the spiritual understanding the Only-begotten, Who was equal with the Father. Hence comes that which the Lord said after His Resurrection, when Mary Magdalene, representing the Church, hastened to approach and touch Him: “Touch Me not, for I have not yet ascended to My Father” (John 20:17): that is, I would not have you come to Me as to a human body, nor yet recognise Me by fleshly perceptions: I put you off for higher things, I prepare greater things for you. When I have ascended to My Father, then you shall handle Me more perfectly and truly, for you shall grasp what you cannot touch and believe what you cannot see. But when the disciples’ eyes followed the ascending Lord to heaven with upward gaze of earnest wonder, two angels stood by them in raiment shining with wondrous brightness, who also said: “You men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing into heaven? This Jesus Who was taken up from you into heaven shall so come as you saw Him going into heaven” (Acts 1:11). By which words all the sons of the Church were taught to believe that Jesus Christ will come visibly in the same Flesh wherewith He ascended, and not to doubt that all things are subjected to Him on Whom the ministry of angels had waited from the first beginning of His Birth. For, as an angel announced to the blessed Virgin that Christ should be conceived by the Holy Ghost, so the voice of heavenly beings sang of His being born of the Virgin also to the shepherds. As messengers from above were the first to attest His having risen from the dead, so the service of angels was employed to foretell His coming in very Flesh to judge the world, that we might understand what great powers will come with Him as Judge, when such great ones ministered to Him even in being judged. And so, dearly beloved, let us rejoice with spiritual joy, and let us with gladness pay God worthy thanks and raise our hearts’ eyes unimpeded to those heights where Christ is. Minds that have heard the call to be uplifted must not be pressed down by earthly affections; they that are foreordained to things eternal must not be taken up with the things that perish; they that have entered on the way of Truth must not be entangled in treacherous snares, and the faithful must so take their course through these temporal things as to remember that they are sojourning in the vale of this world, in which, even though they meet with some attractions, they must not sinfully embrace them, but bravely pass through them. For to this devotion the blessed Apostle Peter arouses us, and entreating us with that loving eagerness which he conceived for feeding Christ’s sheep by the threefold profession of love for the Lord, says: “Dearly beloved, I beseech you, as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul” (1 Peter 2:11). But for whom do fleshly pleasures wage war, if not for the devil, whose delight it is to fetter souls that strive after things above with the enticements of corruptible good things, and to draw them away from those abodes from which he himself has been banished? Against his plots every believer must keep careful watch that he may crush his foe on the side whence the attack is made. And there is no more powerful weapon, dearly beloved, against the devil’s wiles than kindly mercy and bounteous charity, by which every sin is either escaped or vanquished. But this lofty power is not attained until that which is opposed to it be overthrown. And what so hostile to mercy and works of charity as avarice, from the root of which spring all evils? And unless it be destroyed by lack of nourishment, there must needs grow in the ground of that heart in which this evil weed has taken root the thorns and briars of vices rather than any seed of true goodness. Let us then, dearly beloved, resist this pestilential evil and follow after charity, without which no virtue can flourish, that by this path of love whereby Christ came down to us, we too may mount up to Him, to Whom with God the Father and the Holy Spirit is honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.