Homily for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

+ Almighty God has, by His Incarnation, made us worthy to be partakers of the saints in light, so long as we follow His holy will. A will which we must join with the Apostle in unceasingly praying for a true knowledge of, in order that we may ever act in such a manner as to profit us to eternity. Our Lord, moreover, makes abundantly clear the brevity of our time in which to fulfill His will, for we know not the time nor the hour in which we shall be summoned to the judgement seat of God. Certainly, fulfilment of the God’s will does include the furthering of our capacity to occupy ourselves with matters of greater importance, but we must ever be ready to leave what is at hand without pausing to collect our coat.
 
For the abomination of desolation is not far away: the end of the sacrifice in the Temple, the sacrilege against which no other can compare. Unlike Daniel, we must talk of the New Temple, for our very bodies are made into the Temple of the Holy Ghost—a reality most sublimely exemplified by Our Lady, upon whom the Holy Ghost came in the act of conceiving God made man.
 
How close we are to her in this particular privilege, for we sacramentally bear our Lord in our bodies through the act of communicating at Holy Mass. Similarly, in Confirmation the Holy Ghost has overshadowed us that He may dwell within us.
 
But by every mortal sin the abomination of desolation becomes a reality through the very sin which throws the Holy Ghost out, worshiping an idol put in His place.
 
We who have been brought out of “the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in Whom we have redemption through His blood, the remission of sins” must ever be especially on our guard against such a sacrilege. We must ever beg God in prayer to protect us from the weakness of our fallen nature, and to give us the grace to act according to the strength of grace that we may keep a safe distance from anything bearing temptation.
 
Daniel, in prophesying the abomination of desolation, recalls that it is but the curse, the result of repudiating the oath of Moses, which all Israel pledged before entering the Holy Land, come down upon Israel. In this pledge the tenderness of God, alongside the rightful awareness that vengeance belongs to the Lord, stand side by side in unremitting clarity. It is precisely the tenderness, the loving mercy of God, which results in His vengeance on His enemies, those who refuse to listen to His voice—a refusal that is so grievous.
 
How much the more apparent is this reality when we have not only the liberation from Egypt to recall, but also the Incarnation. God became man, in poverty, and died the most cursed of all deaths that we might be restored to Him. That we should be His children by adoption, ever after we refused His fatherhood by creation.
 
Even after everything, God gives us time to convert, patiently awaiting our repentance from our sins. But that time is short. The Church in her wisdom brings before us as the year ends the reality that our time to turn away from our sin, likewise, is coming towards an end. The prayers of the saints, as exemplified by the epistle of this Mass, hold back the wrath of God that is due for each and every turning away from Him. But the justice of God must be exacted on those who reject His mercy; on those who mock His mercy. Never can we miss an opportunity to return to Him, to glorify Him, to develop our love for Him.
 
Let us, then, confess our sins, and be filled with a perfect hatred for all that offends God, especially those acts we have personally committed. Let us allow Him to fill us with His healing gifts, that the brokenness of our fallen nature may be cleansed by the grace of the Sacraments by which He gives Himself to us. Whilst they communicate to us the reality the Sacraments signify, let us use the signs themselves as an aide to recollection that the glory of God may every be a close consideration for every decision we make—and not just in the decisions, but in daily living--for forgetfulness of God is an abomination in His sight.
 
Being filled with a holy fear of God we shall then be able to hear the trumpet call of the angels at the coming of the Son of Man calling all the elect to Himself. He shall then take us to the New Jerusalem wherein the Sacrificial Lamb shall be given all praise and glory and honour for all eternity. His saving act will be made complete, and our fallen weakness will no longer afflict us with temptation to turn away from God. Nor will there be suffering.
 
Let us hasten then to the sacraments that they may fill us with the life-giving sacrifice of Christ on Calvary. Let us beg God with urgency that they may fill us with His healing gifts, that the One efficacious sacrifice for the remission of sin may truly enliven us.
 
How attentively we must listen to His Paternal voice calling us, especially through the rites of this Holy Mass, that we may never lose sight of Him in all our acts. May we ever renew the zeal, the love, with which we turn to Him, in His Substance as in the Sacraments. For He alone can draw us out of our sin. We must continuously ask of Him the grace of both forgiveness and preservation from all faults. And how much the more does He give us! In His grace we can even act unto good which lasts for all eternity! +

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