The Sunday Sermon Archive

Dear Friends,

Jesus wept over Jerusalem, and He weeps over all who fall from the grace of Life into the death of sin. Pope St. Gregory says: "When He had recounted to them the evils that were to come, forthwith, He entered the temple, to cast out from it those who bought and sold there, showing us that the destruction of the people was in great part the fault of the priests."

Physical destruction is bad, but the destruction of souls is much worse. The two, however, are intimately united with each other. There is no life in our bodies without our souls. When the soul leaves the body, the body is only a corpse. The soul needs the body to do penance and to advance in doing good works and loving God. Once the soul leaves the body it can merit no greater reward or punishment.

The temple in Jerusalem is as the soul and the city of Jerusalem is as the body. The death and destruction of the city were due to the departing of the temple. Jesus wept over Jerusalem, but He became angry with the temple (or rather those ruling the temple). Jerusalem needed the temple to survive and the temple needed Jerusalem to continue. The temple fell when the curtain was torn upon the death of Our Lord. Jerusalem fell under siege from the Romans. The religion of the Old Testament has been fulfilled and thus ended. We are now in a time of greater faith and religion — one established directly by the Son of God. All that remains of Jerusalem is a corpse or dead body. The temple is gone as there are no longer any true Jewish priests, so there is no sacrifice and no means of increasing either punishment or reward for Jerusalem.

The priests of the temple have rejected Christ and, as such, they rejected the opportunity to develop from the Old Testament into the New Testament. The soul is gone from the temple of the Old Testament. They have rejected Jesus and now they have no true priesthood, no appeasing sacrifices to offer to God. The Jewish religion is dead and without a soul.

The Catholic Church, the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, has risen in its place. The sins of this generation are more grievous than those of former generations. We have the benefit of history, and the sacraments, and should know better.

When the priests, and bishops of the Catholic Church turned away from the true faith and began the pursuit of worldly gain they became worse than the priests in the temple of the Old Testament When Catholics with the benefit of the Sacraments and grace fall into the same sins as the Israelites did they are much worse than the Israelites. With humanism, materialism, and modernism consuming the majority of what was once the Catholic Church — even into the very bowels of the Vatican — we see advancing death and destruction. The Church will remain until the end of time — when Jesus returns, but how many or how big it will be is not promised to us.

When the clergy turned to the world, the faith was taken away. When they changed the rite of holy ordination to appease the world, the priesthood was taken away. Without the priesthood, the sacraments were taken away. Without the sacraments, the source of grace was removed. What remains is an empty shell devoid of any true life. Without spiritual life, the physical life of men is dead — a corpse. We think this is the root cause of our present-day social and material evils.

We should always strive for the conversion of souls to God and the true Church. Sometimes there is little that we can do but, weep with Jesus. Tears and sorrow are the final stages before death. If persuasion through conversation, doctrine, apologetics, good example and prayer fail, tears are the only thing left. However, before we weep over the Church or others, we should heed what Jesus said to the women of Jerusalem on His way to Calvary: "Weep not for Me but for yourselves and your children."

We should, this very moment, reflect upon our lives. We should look over them as Jesus looked over Jerusalem. If we are brought to tears, let us understand that it is because we have turned the temple of God (our souls) into dens of thieves. Let, us then enter into our souls and drive out the worldliness and sin as well as everything that does not belong in this sacred place. If we act in time and cooperate with the graces of God in doing penance and changing our lives, we may hope for eternal life. Even though not one stone will remain upon another in our physical life our souls will have attained peace and rest in Heaven.

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