A Homily for the 24th Sunday after Pentecost

+ “When you see the desolating sacrilege spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains; let him who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house; and let him who is in the field not turn back to take his mantle.” Thus does Our Lord—and through her Sacred Liturgy, Our Holy Mother, the Church—instruct us in respect of encountering the cataclysmic happenings that will usher in the end of the world and the final and general judgment of all people.

There is more than a sense of urgency here. We are commanded to flee to the mountains without turning back or taking anything with us in a tone far more insistent than the gentil instructions about taking no personal belongings with us in the case of an evacuation that we are given before an aeroplane flight. Our Lord does not ask us calmly to evacuate. No, he orders us to flee immediately. There is real danger to escape. Now.

One might be forgiven for asking why this is necessary for His “elect”—that is, for those who have become sons and daughters of God through the Sacrament of Baptism and who thereby have the promise of eternal life implanted in their very being. From what do they (do we) need to flee?

The Gospel is instructive in telling us that for the sake of the elect, the final tribulations will be shortened, otherwise “no human being would be saved,” but this, of course, nevertheless implies the possibility of being lost. That is to say that the grace of Baptism is not something we can regard as a supernatural suit of protective armor that will ensure that no harm will touch us. As we know only too well, our baptismal dignity can be, and is, sullied by sin. The life of Faith, Hope and Charity that Baptism implants in our souls can be lost to our eternal perdition.

Here, if I may, I wish to venture to opine that when hearing the apocalyptic passages of Sacred Scripture we would do well not to concern ourselves too much with the cosmic end-times to which they refer, but to focus on the raging war between the forces of good and evil, the battle for our own souls that the devil wages at every opportunity he possible can. Obsession with the coming of the end of the world can be an insidious trick of the devil which can distract us from that with which we must deal here and now.

Yes, certainly, the Word of God teaches us that God and His Truth will ultimately triumph after the cosmic battle is over, but there is absolutely no guarantee that any one of us will be amongst those who are saved. To be saved we must persevere in the grace of Christ, in fidelity to the teaching of His Church, and—as we are taught this morning—we must know when and from what to flee for the sake of the safety of our own soul and salvation.

Our secondary patron, Blessed Ildephonse Schuster, put it this way:

“There are some kinds of evil spirits with whom it is too dangerous to engage directly in hand-to-hand combat, particularly the spirit of impurity, the spirit of scandal and the spirit of apostasy from the faith. The best means of obtaining victory over these temptations is always to flee the occasions that lead to them. When, therefore, the soul perceives this ‘abomination’ it must, following the advice given in the Gospel, flee for safety to the mountains—that is to say it must seek the high places of faith and of holiness, taking refuge in the wounded heart of Jesus.” (The Sacramentary, vol. III p. 192)

Blessed Schuster is teaching the classical adage that we must flee from the occasions of sin just as we must flee from sin itself. However, in line with the Gospel he notes that some kinds of evil are simply “too dangerous to engage directly in hand-to-hand combat.” We cannot achieve victory on our own. We need to flee to safety lest our souls be lost. We must flee to the mountains, those places that are nearer to God, as it were, to the “the high places of faith and of holiness”.

My brothers and sisters, whether or not the end of the world is nigh, the spiritual battle for our souls is real and ongoing. And it is waged in a world that is more and more dangerous for those who seek the life of Christ—a danger which is exacerbated at times by the obfuscation of His teaching even in the Church and by the weakening of the channels of His grace in which her Sacred Liturgy serves to immerse us. This is precisely why some of us take refuge in monasteries. This is precisely why so many today, particularly young people find, refuge, consolation and strength in the older forms of the liturgical rites. And this is why our monastery can never renounce those very conduits of life and grace handed on to us in Tradition that flow from the wounded heart of Christ.

Thus, no matter what abominations the devil succeeds in placing before us in the world or in the Church, no matter what tribulations the future holds, let us be confident that if we take refuge in Christ and seek the grace and healing that the sacraments of His Church provide, we shall be counted amongst the elect who shall be saved. +