Sermon about the Mission of the Magisterium

Introduction

In today’s Gospel, the Church makes us read the story of the first miraculous fishing, the one before the Resurrection. As nothing has been written by chance in the Holy Scriptures, let us consider the spiritual meaning of that story and let us try to get some spiritual lessons for us. Today’s Gospel tells us about the Magisterium of the Church and its mission.

1.      The analogy of the Church with a boat

In the Book of Genesis, we read the story of Noah: how God told him to build a huge boat, the ark, then to enter into it with the people who would accept to do so in order to be saved from the Flood which would cover the earth and kill all people as a punishment for their many serious sins. A story of water, storm and a boat.

In the book of Jonas, we read how Jonas was on a boat with other sailors when a huge storm caused by God struck them and threatened to drown everybody. The sailors could calm down the storm, survive and go back home safely only by sacrificing Jonas, abandoning him in the ocean. This is another story of water and storm and a boat.

In the Gospels, we cannot miss noticing the insistent mention of St Peter’s boat: Our Lord Jesus used it frequently to travel from one place to another, He preached to people while sitting in it, He slept in it, He performed miracles on it: to calm down the storm, to walk on the waters to join His Apostles who were struggling rowing against the wind, to command two miraculous fishing. In short, when we read the Gospel, we cannot not notice the repetitive mention of Jesus crossing the lake of Generaseth, escaping its storms, using St Peter’s boat. Again stories of waters, storms and a boat.

God is infinitely wise and He did not have these things written in the Bible by chance, but in order to instruct us as said St Paul: “For what things soever were written for our learning” (Rom 15;4). What is the meaning of this recurrent analogy of waters, storms and a boat on board of which board people can survive? The Fathers of the Church tell us that the ocean always moving, agitated by winds and storms is an image of our life on earth always agitated by cares, worries, temptations, dangers and insecurity. On the contrary, the land which is stable, solid and secure is an image of the eternal life and rest, an image of Heaven. As in order to cross the ocean safely and reach the land we need to be on a boat, so to go across this life on earth and reach the eternal life, we need to be on a spiritual boat. What is this boat? It is the Church founded by Our Lord Jesus. Noah building the ark to save people was an figure of Our Lord Jesus Christ instituting a Church for the salvation of people; Jonas sacrificing himself and by this means calming down the storm and securing the sustainability of the boat and the survival of the sailors was an image of Our Lord Jesus sacrificing Himself on the cross and by this means securing the indefectibility of His Church and the eternal salvation of its members. Our Lord Jesus using the St Peter’s boat during His public life completed the meaning of these figures: His Church was the One to be governed by St Peter and his successors the Roman Pontiffs. This meaning was explicitly given by Our Lord Jesus when He told St Peter: “You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church” (Mt 16:18), and elsewhere “He that heareth you heareth me, and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me” (Lc 10;16), and elsewhere “Feed my lambs, feed my sheep” (Jn 21;15).

2.      Mission of the Magisterium

To be saved, we need to be members of the Church of Christ. Now to become a member of that Church, we must have Faith, that is to say to believe in all the Revelation of God and we need to be baptized: Our Lord said: “He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned” (Mk. 16:16) and St. Paul teaches: “But without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11:6). Eternal salvation therefore is not automatic: God wants us to an act of Faith which implies humility, acknowledgment of God’s transcendence, self-denial and love of God more than ourselves. As St Augustine said: “God who created you without you, will not save you without you”. Recently in France a famous comedian passed away. He had been publicly against the Catholic Faith during his life, however his burial was conducted in a catholic church and the priest said that this comedian had told God “You are not my buddy”, but God has told him “You are my buddy”: meaning God gives eternal life and happiness to everybody, even those who reject Him. This is obviously false because “Without faith it is impossible to please God”.

But St Paul said also: “Faith comes by hearing; and hearing by the word of Christ” (Rom 10;17). For people to know God, to believe His Revelation and be baptized, they need first to be taught, to caught in the net of the proper reasonings and argumentations showing how reasonable it is to believe in God and obey Him. Our Lord Jesus Himself, the Son of God who could convert the heart and mind of people immediately and from inside, did not do so: He spent time and energy going across Palestine, teaching people and bringing them to make a proper act of Faith.

Our Lord Jesus was not to stay on earth until the end of the world, and so He associated to Himself St Peter and the Apostles to continue His work on earth. He gave them an authority to teach people about the Faith, what to believe and what to do to go to Heaven, an authority to make laws, to condemn errors and to punish those who endanger deliberately the Faith. That authority was given not only to St Peter and the Apostles, but also to their successors the Popes and the Bishops, since Our Lord invites all peoples of all times in Heaven. This authority given by Our Lord Jesus is what we call the Magisterium. And it was given for the implementation of a certain mission: to go to the depths, to catch as many fishes as possible in the nets and to drag them the seashore, that is to say to reach up to the farthest regions of the world, to teach the Faith to as many men as possible and to bring them to the eternal life. Hence the long History of the Catholic Church sending missionaries all over the world for centuries.

3.      The Magisterium in the Vatican II crisis

If throughout the centuries the Popes and the Bishops have been more or less faithful to their mission, at the occasion of Vatican II Council and afterwards, a drastic change happened. Generally speaking, the Popes and most of the Bishops have stopped denouncing and condemning errors: Pope John XXIII declared that there was no need from now to condemn errors because “fallacious teaching, opinions, and dangerous concepts are so obviously in contrast with the right norm of honesty, and have produced such lethal fruits that by now it would seem that men of themselves are inclined to condemn them”: in other words, no need to condemn anything because people are grown-ups and choose naturally by themselves what is true. This is pure eirenism, a dream disconnected from the reality; this is to deny in practice the consequences of Original Sin and our propension to error and malice; it is the same than to say: no need to weed your vegetable garden because your good seeds growing by themselves will choke the weed around. Well, just try and let me know the results…

Also, we notice that the Popes, the bishops holding the Magisterium are no longer teaching the Faith properly to the Catholic faithful: so many times we heard faithful complaining that their children were learning nothing or almost nothing in their “Sunday school”, that they themselves were learning nothing or so little through the Sunday sermons. And indeed, if you have the occasion to talk to regular Catholics in our days, you will be surprised at discovering how ignorant they are of basic truths of the Faith. But not only the Popes and the Bishops in general don’t teach and guide people, but even they do the contrary: they follow their desires and fancies. Why? Because they follow this modernist doctrine that God reveals Himself directly in the conscience of people and therefore what the majority of people feel is indeed the expression of God’s will.

Also, those holding the Magisterium, having the mission and the authority to bring as many people as possible to the knowledge of Christ and the practice of His law, have stopped their missionary work and they encourage those erring from the true Faith to carry on in their errors. For example, they say that Jews need not to convert to Christianity; by the agreement of Balamand in 1993 they have renounced officially to do any proselytism among the Orthodox schismatics. Pope John Paul II kissed the Coran as a sacred book, making people believe the Coran contains God’s revelation; Pope Francis said not long time ago that proselytism is a sin. Why these these attitudes? Because they believe the new doctrine of Vatican II saying that the Holy Ghost uses all religions as means of salvation.

Those holding the Magisterium believe also that because Christ died for all people, all people will be actually saved; the work of evangelization is no longer to teach people the true Faith, it is to announce to people “Good news! We are all going to Heaven, Alleluia!”

We cannot not see the contradiction between the Gospel and the attitude of the Popes and most of the Bishops since Vatican II: these latter are betraying their mission and therefore misusing their authority.

Conclusion: Our duty

It does not belong to us to solve this problem, but to Our Lord Jesus who is still today the Head of the Church and in control of everything. We know that He allows this crisis to happen because out of it He will give a greater glory to God, to Himself and to His Church.

Meanwhile, our first duty is to preserve our Faith and to secure our eternal salvation by remaining faithful to what the Popes and the Bishops have constantly taught throughout centuries, to what we call the Catholic Tradition, and by implementing it in our daily life.

But our second duty is to do what we can to bring other people to the knowledge of the true Faith. We are not the Magisterium of the Church, we are not in charge officially of teaching people, but out of charity we must try our best to do so. And we must not make the same mistake than Pope John XXIII believing that just showing the truth will be enough to convince people: Catholic Tradition will not grow by itself simply by mentioning the existence of our traditional chapel, by saying that the liturgy of the Traditional Mass is more beautiful, and by teaching the Catholic traditional doctrine in our chapel. All of this is good but not enough: we need also to “go to the depths” that is to say to reach people where they are, to catch them in the nets of our argumentations, to make them realize how Vatican II endangers our Catholic Faith. All of that means work, efforts, time, patience and perseverance. But if we don’t do that ourselves, who will do it?

So, today let us renew our fidelity to our authentic Catholic Faith and let us excite in our hearts a true desire and zeal for the salvation of souls. May Our Lady Star of the Sea guide us all to the port of the eternity. Amen.