00:00 holy ghost good evening last friday we studied the the transfer or the moving of the relics of saint philomena from naples to muniano with all the events attached to that so that would have been in the year 1805. let's jump forward about to the year 1830 something the beginning of the beginning of the 1830s thereabouts there's a very holy woman who lives in france and her name is 00:01 pauline jerichot who's now blessed pauline jerichot and she was a friend of the curie of ours and as you know the curie of ours saint john vienne was one of the first very well well-known devotees of saint philomena and he was making her devotion known already as soon as pope um pius you know greg great about her i'll say piezo no pope pius vii gave permission to build altars in honor of saint um saint philomena so this woman pauline jerichot she had a very good idea she wanted to she was very dedicated to all the work of the catholic church in the missions and so she wanted to [Music] set up a special devotion to help all the missionary work throughout the world she began in her own area in france 00:02 where she lived in lyon and she asked the textile workers in various factories if they would give one penny a week to support the foreign missions and they consented to that all the workers would give her one penny a week from their earnings to give to the foreign missions and this was amazing because after a few years she was saving so much money and giving all those funds to rome that rome actually created a commission just for that purpose which is known to this day with which actually has a lot of power so something we call the propaganda fide the propagation of the faith that started with this woman pauline jerichot the good friend of the curie of ours so when she got to be 35 years old she became gravely ill with a heart disease she consulted the curie of ours and he said uh your cure or your 00:03 the solution to your problem a lot of times it's not the cure of the body it's just a great commitment of the soul to god which gives them a better better death but he said go to the tomb of saint philomena she wasn't known as saint philomena yet she was just filling me up but go to philomena he said go to her tomb now remember that's the cure of ours he lives in france so to get to where philomena is you have to have to get into italy and then go all the way south uh to get to muniano which is more south than rome and more south than naples so she made the trip even though she was very very ill on the way she met the pope gregory the 16th she met him on her way to naples and munano the pope knew she was coming should be passing through rome and he had a great kind of a debt to her he had great respect for her because she had started this commission of rome called the propaganda 00:04 and a lot of funds were coming into rome thanks to her and going out to the missions so he made it a point to see her and to meet her it seems like they already knew her knew each other from before from correspondence so he met her and he could see that she was very very ill and he said when you get to munyano uh please greet philomena for me and also when you get to the next life i ask you for your prayers from paradise said the pope to pauline jerichot and she said holy father if i go to muniano and return would you please canonize philomena and he answered well of course i'll do that because that would be a first-class miracle meaning you're almost dead already if you go to munyano and return return because philomena cured you there'd be no doubt that she's a saint 00:05 i'll canonize her and at that moment the pope turned to his aides his helpers and he said she's never going to come back very good so pauline left rome on the 8th of august here we have these dates coming up again last time it was because what was it philomena did not want to arrive at munyano before her feast day so about five days passed in delays of journey between naples and munyano that made it possible for her her to arrive on the 10th of august and she did now we have something similar similar happening uh pauline arrived in munyano on the 8th of august she looked more like a corpse than a human being the people of munyano had heard that she was on her way 00:06 she was well known the pope was making her story well known perhaps the cure of ours was making her story well known in any case the people of munyano knew that this very important person was on her way to see saint philomena expecting a cure so when she arrived pauline arrived to munyano they knew of her and they assured her that she would be cured when she arrived she arrived on saturday which was the eighth of august nothing happened same thing happened on sunday night the 9th of august all kinds of ceremonies high mass etc nothing happened by monday the people of the town were indignant with a holy enthusiasm in the very italian style and they started to bang on the grave of saint philomena 00:07 so she has a crystal urn above an altar in the church and these people are flocking up to the altar kind of banging on the grave saint philomena you've got to cure this person if not we won't pray to you anymore if you don't cure her you won't be important for us anymore saint filamento you must cure pauline at that moment and this was the uh this was monday morning the 10th of august pauline collapsed to the floor as if she had died they started benediction in the church and she instantly felt a huge surge of energy going through her body and she recovered completely she recovered completely her health on the morning of august the 10th the feast day of saint philomena so there were huge processions in thanksgiving which followed this event 00:08 and pauline returned to rome where the pope had said she'll never come back she returned to rome and she walked right well after getting permission etc she walked right into the chambers of the pope gregory xvi he could not believe it he said is it really you or are you some kind of apparition he bid her ordered her to run through the vatican chambers and hallways to prove that she was it was her that she was alive and she had plenty of health which she did kind of odd to run through the chambers of rome but she the vatican but she didn't he insisted that she stay in rome for a year to make sure that it was truly a miracle and that someone wasn't playing a trick on her and that this really was pauline jerichot and not someone imitating her identity so she stayed for a year in rome with frequent meetings of the pope he was convinced of the miracle and he canonized saint philomena 00:09 in january of 1837 and this is very important very important he canonized her solely on her power of miracles that's so important there was no historical study they didn't have any historical evidence they had the relics they had a name they had a test what he called the symbols of her martyrdom scourges anchor and arrows and they had no history there's a book right there in front of regina which is called the martyrology which we read every morning that has every martyr that you can possibly imagine up until about the year 1960 uh mentioned in there and philomena is not in there but you can't deny that those that grave was truly there with those relics truly there and all these miracles started happening as a result of those relics 00:10 and um so he canonized her without any doubt that was your 1837. so wouldn't you believe it in the year 1960s so one century and about 20 years pass when there's all kinds of humanism in the church and what do they do they call doubt upon these relics whether they really belong to such a person if there really is a person named same philomena and since there's nothing historical about her they took her off the universal calendar of the church without saying she's not a saint anymore but just making it um just about impossible to continue with public veneration to her without any disapproval from some authority of the church so that was unfortunate and maybe we'll undo that someday but she was canonized solely on the power of her miracles by a pope so i don't know why it would happen in the 1960s that someone else and it wasn't necessarily the pope which is the pope said 00:11 didn't say anything against it different theologians and priests got together to say that she's not truly a saint because we have we have no historical evidence well if a pope canonized her without any historical evidence how can you un-canonize her so to speak uh because you have no historical evidence that seems like we have um you know a contradiction going on in rome in any case soon after a mass and an office of the breviary were established just for her which is very special because that's unusual that someone who has no historical evidence in the church gets a mass in their honor usually they would say well just follow the mass of a virgin martyr the common of a virgin martyr but in her case there was a mass made especially for her it was placed actually on the date of august the 11th because you may know that the day august 10th is already dedicated to saint lawrence 00:12 and and also an office in the breviary was dedicated to her so that's pauline jerichot and she did the right thing by um following the order of saint curie of ours saint john vienne to go to the tomb of saint philomena very good last week speaking about the holy mass we were in the third purpose of prayer which is the begging of pardon for sins there were the two others adoration and thanksgiving which applied to god and now we were on the two last purposes which was the propitiation and the petition or begging for the things we need for our salvation and these two are uh i don't know if you say dedicated to man but let's say for man's benefit uh propitiation is the most outstanding of the purposes of the holy mass because we can we can adore god in other ways 00:13 but the mass of the best we can thank god in other ways but the master the best but to beg pardon for sins we cannot make an efficacious or a adequate reparation for our own sins so we are completely dependent on the holy mass the holy sacrifice of the mass to make an adequate and in what they say efficacious um reparation for our sins that comes from the holy mass uh and then the last one is going to be the begging for the graces that we need so i left off with this point about if you have mortal sins uh mortal sins check the more abundant flow of graces which god would otherwise give to a soul so just a moment yeah yeah uh we need the holy mass 00:14 first of all we need one needs to get himself out of mortal sin does the mass take care of that directly no but the mass gives the atmosphere so that a person in mortal sin will feel the impetus the urge to beg pardon for his sin to go to confession to reconcile himself with god and that will come from the mass believe it or not when a person is in mortal sin they don't have the strength on their own to say i'm going to go to confession and get this all worked out if they do go to confession and get it all worked out it's because someone is praying for them or they themselves are saying prayers or they are assisting at mass and that all comes together as a grace of reconciliation but if it weren't for the mass they wouldn't get to confession uh very good and then 00:15 it's necessary that the mass be said repeatedly for one same person i know we covered this last week but it's worth while repeating uh you might say well if the mass is infinite how is it that one person needs several masses and the answer is yes the mass is infinite on the part of our lord he's giving an infinite sacrifice of adoration and thanksgiving to his father he's even given giving infinite propitiation to his father for our sins and also making him infinite petition for the graces that we need but as soon as you get into this prohibition sorry that's that's our lord sacrifice and then but then on the part of the church and the part of every soul of the church we start to see imperfections the church is holy in itself because the church is instituted by the lord jesus christ and has holy members but not all the members are holy so they're going to be some limits the mass is offered by our lord and the church 00:16 and we are members of the church so the mass is going to have limited effects on different people for whom it is set that will be based on just how well the members of the church are participating in the holy mass just how well the priest is disposed to offer mass when he says holy mass and just how disposed is the person whose intention is on the envelope you know when you give the the envelope to the priest have a mass said that person might be disposed to receiving grace or that person might be very closed you know i don't want to have anything to do with the church well some grace might still get in but not a whole ton of grace you see but if that person is well disposed maybe a little more grace will get in and a little more a little more etcetera that's why mass has said repeatedly for the same intention even though the mass is infinite what about people who are only in venial sin 00:17 the mass actually is sufficient to remove venial sins i think you should still keep going to confession all of us should keep going to confession because that's giving us grace all the time to respond to grace and also it's giving us grace not to commit the same venial sins and it's making us more disposed to receive holy communion but the mass actually by attending it is removing your venial sins i don't know if it's removing them all completely together but it's it is directly removing them and uh there happens to be when when you receive holy communion in the mass uh the priest says an absolution over you before you receive all the communion so that's removing venous sin also nevertheless we should all keep going to mass and as often as we should we could we can we should go to mass because by doing that we're 00:18 not only uniting ourselves the sacrifice of the mass which all of us should do anyway you probably all pray what's called a morning offering when you wake up in the morning there are different formulas for it but they usually say i unite myself to all the masses which are offered this day. and that way of all the millions of masses that go on every day you are receiving fruit from those mass those masses and beyond that if you also attend mass or a system mass you are even receiving more fruit so why do you want to go to mass often it's so that you can give god the best adoration in thanksgiving possible and also you can receive the best propitiation for your sins and also get the best help for your life your the life which sanctifies you as often as possible by going to holy mass so it does remove in your sins and it does make you very pleasing to god and it also gives you the opportunity to give the best 00:19 adoration of god so the holy sacrifice for those who have vino sin which is all of us supplies principally for the satisfaction which we would otherwise otherwise render to god and for the souls in purgatory the faithfully departed it actually the holy mass actually takes time away from their time in purgatory i repeat the mass is infinite but we are finite and limited so even the souls in purgatory for not having the best of intentions all the time they have a limited effect how much the mass is going to help them that's why we continue to offer masses for them you may know that in the world there are many natural disasters i used to live in the central america central america is 00:20 as you know between north america and south america and not that i'm an evolutionist but it's very possible that all of what is south america used to be joined to what's africa and it's separated i don't know how many years ago and how big a deal it was and how long it took but if you take south america it looks like it fits right into africa all right so if that thing moved that huge massive land moved from africa all the way over to the new world it would have started crunching into what's north america nowadays uh right around with central america now so that whole area is all volcanoes and seismic activity under the ground and above the ground uh it's beautiful for all those mountains i think guatemala alone had 27 volcanoes at least half of them were active and and it's beautiful and it's very fertile and it has great weather 00:21 but it's dangerous and people get used to mudslides just taking out hundreds of people and they get volcanoes erupting and lava taking out your houses and covering up people that's a place of many many disasters and there's nothing as far as nature is concerned there's nothing wrong about that that would happen if you run two planets and two land masses into each other and they have all this you'd have all this seismic activity well if you have millions of people living there now there's going to be a problem so it's normal that the earth behaves this way but we've got people living there now you've got to ask for god to spare his wrath so that people don't get killed so that's just one example of central america i'm sure these kind of things happen all over the world which is it's normal that the earth destroys us 00:22 and we deserve it because of our sins but if we use the holy sacrifice of the mass if we use processions and rosary novenas and all kinds of things like that we're going to be staying or detaining the arm of wrath of our lord and it's really quite effective you know the earth needs to explode a little bit here and there that's called vulcanization it needs to happen but the holy mass can actually put a check on those things when the lord is appeased he withdraws his threatening hand the world is indebted to the propitiatory sacrifice of the holy mass the blood of jesus christ for pardon grace and mercy when the sacrifice is no longer celebrated there will be a dreadful judgment and those are not my words that's the the last part is the words of saint paul from hebrews 10 when this sacrifice is no longer 00:23 celebrated there will be a dreadful judgment and along those lines it seems the last 50 or 60 years of the church church men and priests and at least the human element of the church has gone a long way in getting away from the whole idea of sacrifice of the mass and that's why we have masses nowadays where they're not very serious there's very little reverence they even make a lot of effort at making the mass blasphemous and an object of ridicule it's really really a pity all right let's read those words again when the sacrifice is no longer celebrated there will be a dreadful judgment we live in a very bloody society i know things look nice and people live a long time and we have social security and insurance and all kinds of things like that that perhaps we didn't have 00:24 over 100 years ago but that's if you get to arrive into this world you know i guess i'm talking about the crime of abortion so many millions of people are eliminated by that thing so much blood is shed from that that crime it goes together with the blood of our lord not being shed on the altar no matter which way you go either we will have the mercy of our lord upon the altar which is the shedding of his blood or man becomes a monster and all those crimes of abortion that is monstrous that is the shedding of blood and i think and more than i think it's a reality that shedding of blood is happening as a result of not having not having the shedding of blood of our lord on the altar there's no way you can get away from it you think well all this blood crime blood sacrifice we don't need it just let's be good people we don't need blood either for worship or for crime when we're not criminals 00:25 we are if you take away penance and sacrifice we turn into monsters and it is our lord and his blood on the altar that keeps us from turning into monsters now he thought about that when he was dying for us you know this is very painful not just the physical part but especially the moral part all this abandonment there's like a thousand physical deaths of our lord was the abandonment he went through but i'm sure he thought nevertheless all of this is necessary so that men can live by my sacrifice they can live the life of grace by my sacrifice because without the sacrifice they're not going to be connected to my father they're not going to be reconciled to my father all depends on my sacrifice so remember that we keep coming back to this point our lord in heaven is a mediator he's constantly showing his wounds to his father that is his greatest adoration of his father in heaven and it's constantly 00:26 begging for pardon for our sins in heaven the wounds of our lord while on earth infinitely continually on earth on the altar our lord sacrifice is perpetuated what he did on the cross is made present every time on the altar begging the same pardon for sins from his father and making propitiation for us getting the grace we need so that we don't keep falling notice that we've just finished considering considering propitiation notice that it comes before the last purpose of prayer which is begging for the graces that we need to be sanctified what is perfishing you know two for god and two for men two for god were adoration thanksgiving purposes of prayer and two for man propitiation and petition uh why does propitiation come before petition because 00:27 propitiation is setting us right with god uh we need that first and then we can pray for the graces we need to be further sanctified but first we must we must be said right and that's propitiation finally the fourth end which is petition our lord said to his apostles his apostles shortly after his resurrection ask for anything in my name and it will be given to you until now you have not asked for anything in my name i know we keep coming back back to that theme a lot as well what our lord particularly meant is that before the crucifixion uh heaven was set at a distance from earth with the crucifixion or after the crucifixion of our lord the gates of heaven are thrown open 00:28 because of the sacrifice of our lord so when our lord says you've not asked for anything in my name up until now he's saying your prayers have not depended on my sacrifice in order to be heard by my father now your prayers are intimately connected with my sacrifice especially in the holy mass but the holy mass is the center of all grace now the holy mass is the source of all grace so by being connected to this mass which is my prayer to my father you are going to receive anything you ask for repeat because of the sacrifice of our lord on the cross our prayers are united to this sacrificer and through him we will receive whatever we ask for now keep in mind we may receive anything 00:29 but is anything which is useful in the order of grace and salvation we pray for the graces we pray for them because we have not merited to them our lord jesus christ has merit to the graces he can insist i want this i want the other i want so and so to have this grace i want the other person to have that grace he can do that he married to the graces he's the dispenser we did not marry the graces we receive of them so therefore we must pray for the grace since we have not merited it and uh you may notice that sometimes it seems we don't receive one thing or another and why is that first of all because it is better for us it will conduce to our salvation sometimes we may pray for one thing and our lord gives us something else he's answering our prayer but he's saying 00:30 that's not what your soul needs right now what your soul needs is this and i'll give it to you he has still answered her prayer or we make a prayer and we pray hard and do a novena all kinds of things like that uh and we don't get what we asked for at this time but god might give it a couple weeks later or a year later or he might give it at the end of our life he knows when to give us the gifts because he knows at what point of maturity is our soul you know if he gives us this gift it's like if you give an 18 year old a brand new car he's probably not going to respect it as much as a 30 year old would respect it you see or if a 30 year old 30 year old had to work for the automobile similar god will give us those gifts when we are 00:31 fit to receive them and we'll use them in the best possible way but in either case god is answering our prayer uh natural gifts are only granted relative to our eternal salvation all right so you can pray for whatever natural gift you want that's fine but understand that that will be granted only if it's somehow connected with your salvation everything we pray for must conclude with the words but thy will be done something like our lord's prayer in the garden of gethsemane he prayed three times one hour each uh please remove this chalice from me which was flattening him to the ground the chalice of salvation the chalice of suffering but every time he finishes prayer nevertheless not my will but thine be done we have to finish our prayer the same 00:32 way please give me this please give me this it's so necessary that i have this but nevertheless not my will but thing be done and anything that we pray for must be something that will somehow advance the kingdom of god that's the petition or the begging for grace part of the mass now i'd like to go over with you a difference that has come up in the no mass or the novus ordo mass um last week no we didn't have time two weeks ago i didn't get this far last week the week before i did we looked at how they still call in the nova sort of mass they say the mass is a meal and we haven't looked at that yet they still say it's a sacrifice which is interesting they still say it's thanksgiving which is good and they say it's a memorial but this is what we saw a couple weeks ago 00:33 they've played with that word memorial for a protestant they'll say that they don't call it mass but they'll say divine service or something like that is a memorial of christ all right what they mean is this is where we commemorate the life of christ but for the catholic he knows the mass is a memorial also but it is an active memorial where the blood of our lord jesus christ really is made present again the shedding of our blood in a violent way is mystically represented upon the altar and this violent shedding of blood is paying for sins it is an active memorial which is completely different than this protestant sense of memorial but you'll see in the novus ordo mass etc they'll use the word memorial 00:34 but only in the protestant way there we are and then the mass is sacrifice that's important um talking about the nova sort of mass 10 paragraphs mention or allude to the notion of sacrifice this obviously is the touchiest point for ecumenical eucharistic theology they don't like the word sacrifice sacrifice implies that somebody's guilty guilty how he committed a sin who man but man is perfect yeah free masonic perfect man no man is not perfect so that's what gets them away from the idea of sacrifice man cannot sin man does not need anyone to pay for his debts everything's fine whereas in tradition we insist that no we are sinners we are guilty we have offended thee and if it weren't for your mercy on the altar i would be damned 00:35 that's anti-free masonic thinking there's good in us we have our baptism we have the life of our lord jesus christ in us but we have bad tendencies and thanks to the life of grace and the sacraments of the mass we can somehow stay on top of those bad tendencies and even take our our tendency towards the evil practice penance and sacrifice and become saints out of it but we have to admit that we're we have an evil tendency i can't say we're f we're essentially evil that's not true we're baptized we're but we have an evil tendency however with the life of grace that can be controlled and we can even put ourselves on the cross with our lord by going through all the penance and sacrifice that requires so we insist on sacrifice they'll mention it they novus ordo they will mention it uh just to kind of change the meaning of sacrifice of the ten paragraphs that allude to the sacrificial aspect 00:36 six also employ terms relating to meal so as soon as they say sacrifice at least in six out of the ten cases as soon as they say sacrifice they also say and this is the time for banquet with our fellow men to sort of un to play down this idea of sacrifice the sacrificial terminology avoids explicit references to the mass as a sacrifice of propitiation that is that it makes satisfaction to god for sin i just don't want to make sure i'm not passing on my footnotes here this teaching is sometimes called the great stumbling block of the reformation neither lutheran calvin or kramner liked the idea of sacrifice sacrificed in the eucharist through the offering of prayer praise self-giving and charity to the poor they did not like that and they would 00:37 never mention sacrifice of propitiation so those characters go back five centuries i keep talking about freemasonry and all the rest of it but hey this protestant theology pseudo-theology is where this idea already begins of man does not need a sacrifice thomas cranmer so he's the great reformer uh you know protestant reformer of england uh he said he believeth me by saying that i deny the sacrifice of the mass the controversy is not whether in the holy communion be made a sacrifice or not but whether it be a propitiatory sacrifice or not so kramer is already saying the mass is a sacrifice but is not paying for any sins i don't know that's like saying uh we have wine but there's no no alcohol in it 00:38 there's a sacrifice but it's not paying for any sins why have a sacrifice if it's not paying for sins sacrifice the shedding of blood why are you shedding blood i'm going to give up the most important thing we have life to pay for my offense against god ever since abel you know the son of adam that has been the mentality so thomas kramer said yes it's a sacrifice but it's not propitiation all right um jungman uh someone else explicitly mentions the dispute in his 1976 commentary he says even protestant theologians such as are not averse to getting along with catholics declare that the catholic doctrine of the mass as an expiatory sacrifice is the greatest single stumbling block it is considered variously the catholic 00:39 church's radical error or the doctrinal difference that divides churches that should be kind of a consoling point for us we see a lot of confusion a lot of various errors a lot of different people saying this is the truth and that is the truth and someone else of the truth but really only the catholic only the catholic can say we have the sacrifice of the mass the sacrifice of the mass is a propitiatory sacrifice which pays for our sins every single protestant group that you will meet with will not admit that there is a mass with a propitiatory sacrifice and they're all disagreed amongst themselves and they are but at the same time none of them will accept this idea that the mass pays for sin that it is a propitiatory sacrifice uh they say it's a stumbling block that's the one thing they cannot accept 00:40 of so we can be consoled in the catholic church the idea that we still have the holy sacrifice of the mass means that we're still connected to the truth everyone else all these other groups that have split away for the last 500 years and split amongst themselves and all the rest of it what causes this mentality of split and split and split and split it is simply getting away from the eternal sacrifice of our lord jesus christ you can take all the protestant groups uh you know methodists and presbyterians and episcopalians and seventh-day adventists they might be able to agree with each other upon one thing and the only thing they will agree upon between each other is that the catholic church is wrong and the other side here we are in the catholic church looking at them and we'll say there's one point 00:41 which is the source of all of their division and error and you know um instability etc that one point is they have no propitiatory sacrifice for the sins so you know we must pray for them that they come back to the truth uh father summers and i were just listening to a story last week while we were on retreat uh about a priest considering a priest back in 1940s or 50s just giving us the day by day experiences life of a priest and one of them was i've never thought too much about it before but perhaps i should start considering it he said up until now when i saw pastors that belonged to the protestant sects i've greeted them and thought poor fellow he's so far from the truth um i just hope he i just hope he doesn't have a bad effect on good on catholics uh and sort of and 00:42 then he would keep a distance from them which to a certain status correct because when we make too much friendship with them there might be the tendency to give up the truth but he said you know perhaps from now on i'll start considering this truth and he's right the catholic church considers herself the mother of all souls and a she's the mother of catholics baptized catholics but also the protestants they are heretics they have something of our lord jesus christ but they've gone into different errors they might even have valid baptisms and in that case the priest should think even of these protestants and their protestant minister says somehow christians that have fallen away from the fold but they can somehow come back in again if they come back to the truth so that priest made it a point in his life that he was going to remember to pray for the protestants and also the protestant ministers that they come back 00:43 and not just consider it sufficient it's to greet them in a friendly way but rather to also pray and do some sacrifice for them so that's what we should do also when we consider this error that the protestants have and also the modern catholics have that they they empty the propitiatory sacrifice of our lord jesus christ very good we'll say our prayer name the father and son holy ghost hail 00:44 mary full of grace the lord is women blessed is the truth jesus name the father you