The Sunday Sermon Archive

Dear Friend,

St. Francis took to heart the words in today's Gospel. He realized as all the saints have done and as we must likewise do that: "My yoke is sweet, and My burden light."

We either do not trust God or we lack faith, because we fear and turn away from the yoke that God wishes to harness us with. We fear the heavy burden that is attached to the yoke. Why do we not believe and trust Christ Who tells us that the yoke is sweet and a joy and the burden is light?

As long as our pride, vanity, and selfishness lead us we find heavy and bitter burdens all around us. We constantly look for an easier path, or a lighter burden only to find that as long as we trust ourselves we always end up in a worse lot than we began in.

Such proud people can never know the Father or the Son. The Father cannot reveal the Son to them because they will not follow the Son or hear His words. And the Son cannot reveal the Father to them because they will not follow Him or hear His words.

There are few who know God because there are few who become humble enough to allow Him to reveal Himself to them.

There are many who pretend to know God because they find some sort of self illusion in pretending to be good and to love God. They may even succeed in deceiving the world around them but, they can never deceive God. And if we begin to look a little closer we often are able to unveil their thinly disguised deception.

How few there are who truly believe all that God has revealed to us, both directly and through Our Holy Mother the Church!

So many, who claim to know Christ or to have "accepted Him" refuse to believe in Him. They deny Him in the Sacred Host even though the very scriptures that they quote from, has Christ telling them without veil: "This is My Body, this is My Blood." Rejecting God in the Blessed Eucharist blocks the way for them to find or know either the Son or the Father, and much less the Holy Ghost.

The same applies to those who would deny the divinity of Christ. They do not know the Son so they will never know the Father. Likewise, all those who would deny the humanity of Christ, do not know the true Christ and therefore do not know God.

The Novus Ordo must tragically be numbered among these unbelievers, because while they sometimes acknowledge Christ's presence in the Eucharist with their lips, their constant actions say something quite different. The removal of the tabernacle, the altar, and Communion rail; the lay "Eucharistic ministers"; Communion in the hand; the sharing of a communal cup, all these show forth a gross disrespect and therefore, disbelief in Christ and His true presence upon the altar.

Many today also have come to accept a pantheistic or a panchristic view of God. So called Christians have begun to "see" God in everyone and in everything.

The pride and vanity of the majority in the world today has led them to a false Christ which causes them to reject the yoke of the true Christ. So the people today never know God, nor do they ever taste how sweet and light the yoke of Christ truly is. They imagine themselves to have found an easy path, but little do they realize that this "easy path" ends in destruction and eternal misery.

St. Francis rose up and renounced all the vanity and pretense of the world. He even set himself up to become the laughing stock of the people, to become a fool for Christ. This renouncing of worldly pride and vanity and espousal of holy humility, opened the door for St. Francis to know Christ and Christ was pleased likewise to reveal not only Himself but also the Father and Holy Ghost to him.

As St. Francis acted upon the Faith that was given him by taking up willingly the yoke and burden given him by God, more and more was revealed to him. This brought him into the most intimate union with Christ Himself. And far from finding this way of life a heavy or bitter burden, St. Francis declares to us by his words and actions that it was a joy and was most delicious to him.

We see him as the happiest of men, constantly singing the praises of God, even in the most trying of situations.

Let us pray to St. Francis to help us gain the necessary Faith, Hope, and Charity to take up the yoke God has sent us, so that we too can come to know Him and thus taste the sweetness that comes from serving God.

Franciscan Benefactor Seraph Subscription Vocations Have you remembered God?