We are pleased to bring our readers two sermons from His Excellency Bishop Athanasius Schneider, auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, and titular bishop of Celerina. Bishop Schneider was in the United States this past weekend for events and priestly ordinations for the Canons of New Jerusalem. Please see below for the texts of these two powerful and timely sermons.
The Family - Domestic Church, Front Royal, Virginia
My dear brothers and
sisters in Christ! We live in a time in which one of the most beautiful
creations of God, namely marriage
and family, are under general attack on the side of the new atheist,
neo-Communist world ideological dictatorship which gained almost universal
political and media power. However, it is enigmatic that we can discover in our
days collaborators with this general attack on marriage and family even in the
ranks of the clergy. The Christian family is facing a kind of a new Goliath.
But right now we are
called to be faithful to the unchangeable truth of our Catholic and Apostolic
Faith, which our fathers and forefathers had transmitted to us. We have a
chance to be courageous witnesses of the Divine truth and of the beauty of
marriage and family. To this end we received the gifts of the Holy Spirit
especially in the sacrament of confirmation, This virtue has bestowed the
faithful during two thousand years with the ability to prefer death rather than
to betray the baptismal vows, to die rather than to sin, to die rather than to
betray the wedding vows, to die rather than to betray the priestly or religious
vows.
In his Encyclical on
Marriage and Family, Pope Leo XIII spoke already in 1880: "The law of the
Church was sometimes so divergent from the civil law that Ignatius the Martyr,
(Polyc., 5), Justin (Apol., 1, 15), Athenagoras (Legat., 32, 33) and Tertullian
(Coron, 13) publicly denounced as unjust and adulterous certain marriages which
had been sanctioned by imperial law" (Arcanum Divinae, n. 21).
The family and the
entire human society will flourish only on the condition when the Divine truth
on Marriage and Family will be observed, as taught Pope Leo XIII: "From
the beginning of the world, indeed, it was divinely ordained that things instituted
by God and by nature should be proved by us to be the more profitable and
salutary the more they remain unchanged in their full integrity. … If the
rashness or the wickedness of human agency venture to change or disturb that
order of things which has been constituted with fullest foresight, then the
designs of infinite wisdom and usefulness begin either to be hurtful or cease
to be profitable, partly because through the change undergone they have lost
their power of benefiting, and partly because God chooses to inflict punishment
on the pride and audacity of man. Now, those who deny that marriage is holy,
and who relegate it, stripped of all holiness, among the class of common
secular things, uproot thereby the foundations of nature, not only resisting
the designs of Providence, but, so far as they can, destroying the order that
God has ordained. No one, therefore, should wonder if from such insane and
impious attempts there spring up a crop of evils pernicious in the highest
degree both to the salvation of souls and to the safety of the
commonwealth" (Arcanum Divinae, 25).
"The Romans of old
are said to have shrunk with horror from the first example of divorce, but ere
long all sense of decency was blunted in their soul; the meager restraint of
passion died out, and the marriage vow was so often broken that what some
writers have affirmed would seem to be true-namely, women used to reckon years
not by the change of consuls, but of their husbands" (Arcanum Divinae,
30).
In order to remain
faithful to the Divine Commandments there are in our days families, young
people, priests and bishops who are for this reason often marginalized,
ridiculed and persecuted by the dictatorial power of the neo-Marxist World
gender ideology. There are however also families, young people, priests and
bishops who are marginalized and ridiculed even in some ecclesiastical
environments because of their fidelity to the integrity of the Catholic faith
and of the Divine Worship according the tradition of our forefathers.
In order to remain faithful
to their vocation the Catholic family must practice especially the daily common
prayer. Pope Pius XII spoke to Newly Married Couples: «We beseech you, take it
to heart to keep this beautiful tradition of Christian families: the common
prayer in the evening. The family gathers at the end of each day to implore the
Divine blessings and to honor the Immaculate Virgin through the praises of the
Rosary for all who sleep under the same roof. The hard and inexorable
exigencies of the modem life don't give you the leisure to dedicate some
blessed moments of gratitude towards God, nor read, according to an ancient
custom, a short biography of the Saint whom the Church proposes us as each day
as a model and as a special protector. Strive to sanctify this even short
moment dedicating it to God in order to praise Him and to present to Him your
desires, your needs, your sufferings and your occupations. The center of your
home must be the Crucified or the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus: May
Christ reigns over your home and gather you around Him every day» (Address to
Newly Married Couples, 12th February 1941).
My dear brothers and
sisters, the Catholic family has a vocation which is in our days sometimes
forgotten. It is the vocation to be the first priestly seminary (cf. II Vatican
Council, Optatam totius, n. 2). Pope Pius XII admonished Catholic parents with
these words: "If some day God grants you the great honor of calling one of
your children for this service, recognize the value and privilege entailed in
so many graces that this call involves. ... You place the flower and fruit of
your marriage on the altar, to live consecrated to the Lord and to souls. … Do
not be afraid of the gift of the holy vocation that has come down from heaven
to rest upon your children. If you believe, and if love has raised you to a new
level, is it not a comfort and joy to see your own son at the altar clothed
with the priestly vestments, offering the sacrifice of the Mass and praying for
his mother and father? Is it not a great consolation, that makes a mother's
heart beat with love for her daughter, to see her consecrated to Christ,
serving him and loving him with all her being?" (Letter to Married
Couples, March 25, 1942).
Dear fathers, dear
mothers, dear grandfathers and grandmothers may you say: «0 Lord, if you want,
call one of my sons, one of my grandsons to the priesthood». Young men and
young women, you who are feeling in your soul the vocation the marriage and to
found a domestic Church, you may also say: «0 Lord, if you want, call one of my
future sons to the priesthood» And you boys and young men, some of you could
say, perhaps today: «0 Lord, I am ready to follow you, if you want to call me
to the priesthood».
What a beautiful
vocation to be a true Catholic! What a beautiful vocation to fight for the
integrity of the Faith and the Divine Commandments! What a beautiful vocation
to be a Catholic family, a domestic Church! What a beautiful vocation to be a
chaste young man and a chaste young woman! What a beautiful vocation to be a
seminarian and a priest with a pure and ardent heart!
Don't be afraid of the
Goliath of our days, which is the new anti-Christian World dictatorship. The
gift of the fortitude of the Holy Spirit will make us capable to win the
Goliath of our days with the five stones of the sling of David.
0 Holy Spirit let again
flourish many domestic Churches, which will provide us with the five stones of
David to win Goliath, that means: good fathers and mothers of family, pure
children, pure young people, pure priests and intrepid bishops. Christus
vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat!
Priestly ordination,
17th October 2015, Charles Town
Dear candidates for the
priesthood, dear brothers and sisters in Christ!
Our Lord Jesus Christ
granted us today the great grace to celebrate the sacrament of the holy
priestly ordination. In this sacrament occurs a miracle of the Divine
omnipotence and of the Divine love. Through the imposition of the hands of the
bishop, the Holy Spirit descends in the souls of the candidates and impresses
therein a power and a dignity, which surpasses all powers of this world and all
human honors. This power and this dignity is the priesthood of Christ.
Jesus Christ, the
incarnated God, is the unique and sole mediator between God and men. There is
no other way of salvation. Through His sacrifice on the Cross, Jesus offered
once an act of adoration, of thanksgiving, of expiation, of propitiation for
the sins and of impetration with infinite value. There does not exist in the
whole universe, in the whole history and even in the whole eternity an act
which could more please and which could more honor the Triune God than the
sacrifice of the Cross, And this act of the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross is
the true and the unique priestly act in the full sense of the word.
The priesthood of
Christ and His sacrifice on the Cross are so great that they will never cease.
Jesus, the eternal High Priest, is always alive (cf. Hebr. 7, 25), and
therefore His redeeming sacrifice is always alive, always present in all
moments, in all generations, in all places: "The Lamb stands and is alive,
yet immolated" (Apoc. 5, 6), The priesthood of Christ will never cease,
it remains for all eternity, so great it is, for it belongs to a Person who is
the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity.
In His ineffable wisdom
and in His immense merciful love Jesus wanted to share His unique and eternal
priesthood with weak men. And so He instituted during the Last Supper the
sacrament of the priestly ordination, when He as the true Melchisedek offered
in the sacramental manner to God Father His body and His blood under the
species of bread and wine (cf. Ps 109, 4). The whole life of a Catholic priest
has therefore its meaning and its finality in the celebration of the sacrifice
of Christ for the glorification of the Divine majesty and for the salvation of
the world and of all souls.
Each baptized
participates also in the priesthood of Christ, though in a general or common
manner. Such general or common priesthood realizes itself principally in
offering his own life, his own sufferings and petitions in spiritual union with
the sacrifice, which the ordained priest as an "other Christ" (alter
Christus) offers in the celebration of the Holy Mass. Even though they derive
from the unique priesthood of Christ, both realizations of the priesthood of
Christ differ from each 10). By the plan of God's wisdom, these two manners of
the priesthood are connected with each other. The common priesthood finds one
of its most noble realizations in the sacrament of marriage. The common
priesthood was created by God in order to found and live the Christian family,
the domestic Church (so spoke already Saint Augustine, cf. De Bono viduitatis
and the II Vatican Council, Lumen gentium, 11). The family as domestic church
is for its part the first Seminary, according to the teaching of the
Magisterium (cf. Vatican II, Optatam totius, 2).
One of the most
beautiful fruits, which a Christian family, a domestic church, can offer to
God, consists in giving to Him a son as a priest. We can say that in a certain
sense the common priesthood, the Christian family, was founded by God so that
there Will be always a continuation of the ordained priesthood, so that there
will be always in the Church and in the world true priests of Christ, so that
there will be always an "other Christ" (alter Christus) who would
daily offer the infinite redeeming sacrifice of Christ as a sweet smelling
savor before the eyes of the Divine majesty for the delight of the whole
heavenly court and for the salvation of the world.
Here we can recognize
the more profound reason why the Catholic priest should not be married, but be
virginal and celibate. The ordained and sacramental priesthood is celibate, it
is like a fragrant virginal flower, which sprouted from the garden of the
common priesthood, from the Christian family, and derived from the chaste
conjugal love of the Christian parents. It happened many years ago: In the
house of a deceased priest in Poland was found a little box with this inscription
"To be opened after my death". The box was opened and there was a
myrtle wreath with this note: "This is my mother's bridal wreath. I have
carried it with me to various countries in memory of that sacred moment when my
mother vowed not only fidelity but also uprightness at the altar of God. She
has kept this vow. She had the courage to have me after the ninth child. Next
to God, I owe her my life and my vocation to the priesthood. Place this wreath,
my mother's bridal wreath, into my grave." We know also the following
event from the life of pope Pius X: After his episcopal consecration the young
bishop Giuseppe Sarto visited his old mother and showed her his episcopal ring:
"Mother isn't this ring wonderful!". The mother held up the plain
golden band on her own finger and said: "If I hadn't worn faithfully this
my ring, you would never wear your ring".
Dear candidates to the
priesthood, never forget it: you will be priests in order to offer daily the
ineffable redeeming sacrifice of Christ, in order to be living instruments of
the Eternal High Priest, so that through your voice and through your hands the
redeeming graces of the sacrifice of Christ can flow upon this world, which is
so deeply mired in sins. The interior disposition of your soul, of your heart,
of your mind should more and more, day after day, correspond to the tremendous
and Divine words which you will pronounce: "This is My Body". You
belong totally and exclusively to Jesus the High Priest. You belong not more to
yourself, nor to any creature.
All your love must be
virginal, chaste, priestly, selfless, paternal; this means your love has to be
in an eminent way pastoral, and this means: to care for souls, to save souls.
For this purpose you have received the holy vocation, for this purpose you
receive today the indelible mark of the priesthood of Christ, for this purpose
your family offers you today to God as a beautiful flower of the garden of its
domestic church.
May Our Lady, the
Mother of the Eternal High Priest, guard you and your priesthood in Her
Immaculate Heart and implore for you the grace that through your priesthood the
Church may receive many new and saintly priestly vocations and many saintly
Catholic families. 0 Immaculate Heart Mary, be our refuge, be our salvation.
Amen.
[Kindly Provided by Mrs. Maike Hickson]
[Kindly Provided by Mrs. Maike Hickson]
