UPDATED:
On this Feast of the Assumption, a fitting tribute to Our Lady, Hammer of Heretics. And more on recent pronouncements that some Catholics could be modern-day Pelagians.
Click here to listen to a quick, powerful sermon for today's feast, brought to you through our partnership with Audio Sancto.
Below, we now provide close written transcript to the audio version of the sermon:
Below, we now provide close written transcript to the audio version of the sermon:
“The Lord hath blessed thee by
His power, because by thee He hath brought our enemies to nought.”
1. Our Lady is often called the Hammer of
Heretics. In fact, the Traditional Roman Breviary has this antiphon for Matins
of the Assumption: “Rejoice, Virgin Mary: you alone have crushed all heresies
in the whole world.” Note the universals! You alone… All heresies… whole world.
2. In his
Apostolic Constitution defining the Immaculate Conception, Bd. Pope Pius IX
writes: “We have a very certain hope and complete confidence that the most
Blessed Virgin will ensure by her most powerful patronage that all difficulties be removed and all errors dissipated, so
that our Holy Mother the Catholic Church may flourish daily more and more
throughout all the nations and countries, and may reign ‘from sea to sea and
from the river to the ends of the earth,’ and may enjoy genuine peace,
tranquility and liberty. We are firm in our confidence that she will obtain
pardon for the sinner, health for the sick, strength of heart for the weak,
consolation for the afflicted, help for those in danger; that she will
remove spiritual blindness from all
who are in error, so that they may return to the path of truth and justice,
and that there may be one flock and one shepherd.” For those who have ears to
hear… this is a prophecy of the Age of Peace, the Age of Mary, the Triumph of
Mary’s Immaculate Heart (this was also fulfilled in a little way at Lourdes
with many healings and conversions). Once again, note the universals… ALL
difficulties… ALL errors… ALL who are in error.
3. Let test this truth of Our Lady’s role
of Hammer of Heretics by considering a heretic that has been recently mentioned
a number of times, namely the early 5th Century monk Pelagius (418).
According to him there is no Original Sin that is passed on from Adam to his
children… and death would be natural for Adam and all his children even if he
had never sinned. Our Lady smashes these two errors, because she is the only
human person conceived without Original Sin. Adam and Eve were not conceived
but made directly by God… Adam from the slime of the earth and Eve from Adam’s
side. Listen to a creed composed for the profession of our Catholic Faith by
Pope Pelagius I (c. 560): “For I confess that all men are from Adam, even to
the consummation of the world, having been born and having died with Adam
himself and his wife, who were not born of other parents, but were created,
the one from the earth, the other, however, from the rib of the man...” (Dz
228a). Adam sinned in the Garden and this was the cause of death for all men.
Listen to St. Paul: “Wherefore as by one man sin entered into this world,
and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned”
(5:12).
4. We have all
sinned in Adam save one only, Our Lady. She was conceived without Adam’s sin. Listen to Pius IX in his Apostolic
Constitution defining the Immaculate Conception: “the Church made it clear indeed
that the conception of Mary is to be venerated as something extraordinary,
wonderful, eminently holy, and different from the conception of all other
human beings.” To St. Bernadette at Lourdes in 1858… not long before Darwin
published his book on the Origin of Species, Our Lady said “I AM the Immaculate Conception”…note the
definite article. There is only one. Pelagius was wrong. Darwin was wrong. All
men come from Adam… All men share his sin, except one. Our Lady (Christ was a
Divine Person with a human nature). The exception proves the rule. This heresy
is given a hammer blow!
5. The same can be
argued about the death of man. Adam’s sin brought death into the world as St.
Paul explains in Romans but there is one human person who did not have to
die…and that is Our Lady. This is why in defining the dogma of Our Lady’s
Assumption into heaven, Pope Pius XII carefully spoke thus… “by the authority
of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our
own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed
dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having
completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into
heavenly glory” (no. 45).
6. Notice how the
Pope did not mention Blessed Mary’s death in the definition. Again, this is the
exception that proves the rule. Not having Original Sin, she did not have to
die. Again, Pelagianism is dealt a deadly hammer blow!
7. As it turns
out, however, she voluntarily chose to die. She laid down her life for her
children as Jesus laid His down. From the lesson … “thou has not spared thy
life.” That is the long standing tradition in the West and in parts of the
East. Pope Pius XII provided numerous quotes of doctors and saints of both East
and West that held she did, in fact, die. But the main point is she did not
have to and that was represented in the definition of the dogma. This shows
Pelagius was wrong.
8. Another very
important point that comes out in Pope Pius XII’s Apostolic Constitution is how
the glorious beginning of the Virgin in her Immaculate Conception must have its
complimentary glorious ending in her Assumption into heaven (cf. no. 40).
Keeping this in mind, let us also recall that Blessed Mary is also the perfect
type of the Church. She is, as it were, the Alpha and Omega of what it means to
be the Church. She embodies the Church in herself…in everyway. So, just as She
had an pure and holy beginning, so the Church began in perfection. Her original
members, Adam and Eve were created perfect and placed in a Creation that had
not fallen until they had sinned. Furthermore, just as she had a glorious
Assumption into heaven, so will the Church have a glorious end and all that was
lost will be restored and greatly augmented by the superabundant graces of His
Majesty, Our Lord Jesus Christ. No evolution of species in Mary…in the Church.
All started in perfection! Evolution is false science…erroneous. Hammer blow!!!
9. This point is
important in light of a recent series of claims and discussions that label
Traditional Catholics as “Pelagians” and “restorationists” seeking a “purely
disciplinary solution” to the modern problems “through the restoration of
outdated manners and forms which, even on the cultural level, are no longer
meaningful.” Is this true? Our Lady shows us that what was lost in the Garden
can be restored and recovered. She shows it in her own body, soul and whole
life. She is the New Eve. She is Eden! She gives us the way to restore all things
for us, the Church and the whole world!
10. But she also gives us ways to discipline ourselves to
make this possible. By this I mean she gave us the Rosary with a multitude of
promises for those who pray it. She came multiple times (e.g., Lourdes and
Fatima) and told us to pray it daily. She has given us the Brown Scapular, the
Miraculous Medal. The use of these things requires a sort of exacting
discipline. So many beads, prayers, formulas for holiness…given to us by Our
Lady with promises attached. Furthermore, she asked us to make the Five First
Saturdays. To fulfill her request, certain exacting or disciplinary things must
be done. Here is her request: “I promise to help at the hour of death, with
graces needed for salvation, whoever, on the first Saturday of 5 consecutive
months, shall confess and receive Holy Communion, recite 5 decades of the
Rosary, and keep me company for 15 minutes, while meditating on the mysteries
of the Rosary with the intention of making reparation to My Immaculate Heart.”
Is such devotion and adherence to a discipline a part of Pelagianism? Too
formulaic? An outdated form… no longer meaningful? The HAMMER falls…with the
ringing response of NO. This is erroneous. This is not Pelagianism but devotion
and piety. True devotion. Conformity to her will… these were given to us by
her… and the saints show us it works!
11. Oh, Most Clement, Most Sweet, Most Blessed Virgin
Mary, Hammer of all heresies, please come and remove all difficulties, all
spiritual blindness, dissipate all errors in the whole world… and usher in the
promised Triumph of Thine Immaculate Heart… the restoration of all things in
Christ.
