THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH

Her Doctrine and Morals

Third Sunday of Advent

15 December 2024

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The Sunday

Sermon

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Dear Friends in Christ,

Each of us has a "voice crying in the wilderness" within us. And far from causing us to be sad or dismayed, we should rejoice and be glad.

Today, we see St. John the Baptist answering those who desire to know who he is. St. John tells the truth; he is not Christ, Elias, or a prophet. He says of himself that he is a voice crying in the wilderness. A voice that cries out, but very few hear and listen. This same function is performed for each one of us by our conscience. Our conscience is the voice of truth, the voice of God, within our souls that cries out to us to make straight the way of the Lord. It guides us on which way we should go, how we should act, and what we should say. If we fail to heed its cry, we hear its condemnation for our evil rebellion.

Just as St. John did not hesitate or fail to condemn the evil that he saw, even when it was in the ruler (Herod), so does our conscience reliably condemn the evil it sees within us.

We are made in the image and likeness of God, and it is in our conscience that we most resemble God who is truth itself. We cannot hide our evil from our own conscience, just as we can hide nothing from God. Even if no one else in the world knows of our evil deeds, God knows, and our conscience knows.

And in this capacity, our conscience performs the work of God. It eats away at us, warning us that we have done wrong and must straighten things out.

Men often become physically ill because of a guilty conscience. They do not need anyone else to condemn them or torment them; their conscience condemns them more loudly than any human voice can, and it is relentless, allowing the soul no rest or peace.

In preparing to receive Christ this Christmas season, we must repeat history within our souls. Just as the people went out into the wilderness to hear St. John preach penance and baptism, so must we enter into our souls to listen to our conscience point out to us the evil within us and admonish us to penance. Only in this way will we be prepared when Christ comes to us.

We must not only hear the voice of our conscience, but we must act upon it. If we choose to ignore the truth from our conscience, we will end up as Herod. The evil that we love more than the truth will bring us to the drastic state of killing our conscience, just as Herod killed St. John. The consequences of such actions are dire, leading us further away from the path of righteousness.

Once our violent and evil wills silence the conscience, we are damned even while we still walk this earth. There can be no state more malevolent than that of someone with a dead conscience who no longer speaks or that he can no longer hear. When we ignore our conscience repeatedly, it becomes 'silent' and 'dead' in the sense that it no longer guides us towards what is right. Such a soul has no means of discerning right from wrong. The only voice they now hear is their passions, which freely lead them on from one vice to another, each worse than before. And this continues until they enter the gates of Hell.

It is said that: "conscience makes cowards of us all." And we can see how true this is. If we are attuned to the voice of our conscience, we see clearly not only our sins and transgressions but also our profound weakness and misery. This profound awareness of our complete weakness and our awful sinfulness brought upon us through our conscience leads us to the profoundest of humility. This humility, born from our conscience, is not a sign of weakness, but a testament to our strength in acknowledging our flaws and striving for betterment.

The tragic mistake of most of humanity is that they do not listen to their conscience in comparing their lives to Christ, but rather, they listen to their passions, which compare their lives to those around them. And their passions clearly tell them that they are not so bad. Others are much worse than they are, and so they can comfortably lull themselves to sleep in their sins. They cannot see another's conscience, so their judgment of the person's life is, at best, a guess. The guilt they see may not be there in the eyes of God, so perhaps they are not even as good as they would like to believe, and their comparison is a lie. In following their lie, they live under the illusion that they are better than the rest of men when, in reality, they are worse than the rest of men.

Let us bring forth the voice of our conscience and attune ourselves to hear it no matter how painful it may be to us. And in this state, let us become profoundly humble and straighten out our souls' rough and crooked ways so that we may truly receive the grace of Our Lord and Savior on Christmas day. I urge you, my dear friends, to take some time today to reflect on your conscience and the ways in which you can align your life with the truth it reveals.

May the Immaculate Heart of Mary inspire, guide, and protect us!