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okay damaged the name of the father and son holy god
good evening uh we'll consider [Music] uh the mass this evening but first we'll
look at our saint at least one more time uh saint
philomena this morning when i was studying about her life
a um kind of a universal point about her came out which was um
that she's known for being very uh childlike and a little bit uh playful
and that's saint philomena as of the 19th century when she started to do her
miracles and when she started to make her
kind of her comeback or her return after 1500 years of being in the catacombs
so you have stories of uh saint philomena

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working out cures for people and they'll hear her voice kind of
laughing in the distance or helping someone
uh get through a forest completely lost some young girl of 13 years of age shows
up and says well just follow me and they follow her until they get to a
clearing or something like that and then she disappears and they hear her
laughing in the distance but they don't see anyone anymore
so there's something childlike and playful about her
and what's beautiful about that is that if you were to take away her
virginity or her purity and also her martyrdom
then all of this playfulness would have no purpose anymore
let me explain that it's because she was such a warrior for the virtue of purity
to stay innocent and it's because she was so
persevering in that virtue all the way to her death

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that what you have in heaven is not just a person who
arrived there after being battered and just going through a hard time in this
life but you have a person in heaven who has never left their state of childhood
and i don't mean that in a juvenile way you know there's also the
the vice of being childish infantile juvenile etc what i do mean is that
in a sense is a virtue that you have to be a warrior to preserve
and she did and so she has this great victory in heaven
she kind of has a win-win situation she gets to be
a a warrior in heaven someone who really won the battle for our lord for his
divinity because the practice of virtue is always a profession
of the divinity of our lord in our own souls so she is a warrior in heaven

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but she gets to be a child at the same time she's 13 years old but
she's 13 years old and she has all the virtues of being a child
but she also has all the virtues and all the merit of being a warrior
so that's it i repeat the point if it weren't for her
virginity and her martyrdom all of this playfulness and childlike
behavior which is really quite refreshing would be pointless
you might know this in the spanish-speaking countries
i would guess also in the philippines they don't have what we call an april
fool's day you know we usually play little jokes on
people on the first day of april and it's all sort of justified in good
fun because that's the first it's around the first day of spring or
something like that i know they don't do that they have um
in in the spanish-speaking countries they have the day of

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day of the holy innocents the innocent children the 28th day of december
in honor on all those thousands of children that were martyred that were put to
death in the place of our divine lord they went to heaven like warriors also
for the divinity of our lord jesus christ with all of their innocence as well
so when you think of child child-like behavior and in a sense these children
are the ones we celebrate on the 28th of july
20th of july 20th of december and uh they give a lot of glory to god in
heaven and that's why in the spanish-speaking countries
anyway the um that's a day for playing little games on your friends or
tricks on your friend etc so that's a point that stands out kind
of a encompassing point of saint philomena is that her virginity
and her martyrdom are her claim to having this sort of

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childlike refreshing behavior with other other souls
i'm going to tell one serious story which is a lead into telling another story
which has something to do with this childlike behavior saint philomena
so you might remember that the priest from muniano
who went to rome to get a known martyr for his parish was don francesco
de lucio and so he came back to munyano with saint philomena her relics and then
the miracle started happening and he became her main
archivist the main the one who mainly recorded her history and uh he wrote books
he wrote a book i should say about you know her history the finding of her

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relics bringing her relics to muniano etc and he had about 200 books made
not exactly right it's more like 45 times 4 or whatever that number is i
think it's about 180 if i'm not mistaken had about 180 books made
and he had them in his office in stacks of 45.
you see and he left three of those stacks covered with
a um kind of a drop cloth or a blanket or something like that
to keep the dust off of them and he left one of them uncovered
and from that uh stack he would give people this book
so they could have it you see and i don't know if he's just a single
bachelor and all the rest of it but he was giving out books for months
without really thinking about it but that stack of books was really not
depleting that much let alone the three other stacks that were not uncovered
so finally he had one of his assistants study the situation for him and
that assistant calculated and figured out that

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he had given out 500 books and this first stack of 45 had only depleted by
about 10 books something like that so saint philimina is doing this
miracle of multiplying books such that our dear
sorry absent-minded priest is not even noticing this
all right so that's the serious story what about the one that has a little
child-like behavior in it there was an event
where a large pilgrim of pilgrimage of people came to visit munyano
either from far away in italy or from france but they came a long way
and there were hundreds of them and they all wanted a book
and he knew that he had at the most 180 books
and there were at least 200 people there to give a book to
so it was a pilgrimage and the visit lasted several days
and he made his prayer to saint phil i mean somehow please

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help the situation and um he was in his dining room with some of
the priests and they were talking and eating and all the rest of it and he
heard a bunch he heard a bunch of noise up in his room or coming from his room
that sounded like someone banging around up there you know moving furniture and
joking around up there like a little kid uh raising a bunch of um ruckus so
he went up to his room and he found still three stacks of books of 45
most of the stack of books of the other 45 and the floor just sort of
littered with books all over the place and the chairs and the bookshelves and
just everything sort of thrown around in there and um
well what was happening same philomena had paid him a visit
she had multiplied the books uh and she did in such a way that she was kind of a

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nuisance to him with a good kind of nuisance and the situation was resolved so
um that's saint philomena and i repeat the point
if it had not been for her virginity her war for her virginity and her war
for professing the divinity of our lord jesus christ all the way to the death
she would not have had this right to share her glorious child-likeness with us
and those are just some of her stories in that way
you know how it is um when a person gets to a certain age
and unfortunately not always but many times they lose innocence
they may still laugh they must have a good time
they might even be able to tell good jokes all the rest of it
but their presence is not as refreshing as it used to be

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there's some sort of a compromise they have made with the world
or with the devil unfortunately that has um
taken away the gleam out of their eyes uh taking away the profundity of their
humor you know some children can be funny and they're not even making jokes
uh they can be funny and maybe you're laughing at them and they don't even feel
the least bit offended they're just sort of sharing with you their innocence
and that's what you like as an adult and they can do that because and it's
refreshing to us because they have not forfeited sacrificed uh given up
that part of their innocence which saint philomena fought so hard to preserve
so here we are we're adults now we may have innocence think blessed be
god or some may not have innocence but when you have contact with

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a saint like her that innocence is put back over and over into your soul
so um that's what i would like to especially stress this evening about saint
philomena i'll tell a couple of other stories here
since i told a multiplication story about the books this is another
multiplication story you may remember that um when
father ordon francesco traveled to rome to get the body of a known martyr
he traveled with a bishop actually he was still a priest from
potenza and was going to rome especially to be made into a bishop
and also to um consult with the holy father
so that was bishop de cesare the two of them bishop to chaser and father

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francesco de lucio returned together to naples and then to munyano in naples
uh bishop de chesary had some of the remains
of saint philomena but not the major part the major part went on to
muniano which is not that far away and from naples bishop de cesare started
to distribute relics not from let's see it's from the bone or from the bones
of saint philomena but just dust that was sort of lying in the
box where he had some of the bones just dust that was there and he would
send a reliquary with a few a little bit of dust to one person a
little bit of dust to another person and that was going on for quite some
time for a few years and he noticed that after a while he
wasn't as absent-minded as the first one he noticed that uh even though he kept
taking dust from this little box it seemed like there was the same amount of

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dust in there and um eventually he reported it to the vatican
that seems unusual i keep uh distributing relics but the source of
the relics never depletes so the vatican and the congregation of
rights they came to naples to investigate the situation and
they said well we'll try an experiment we have arrived with the relics of
another saint here so we would like you to send continue sending your dust
of saint philomena out to the different devotees of her but also uh send dust of
this other saint you don't have to lie to the people and
say this is the same philomena you can say it's saint whoever it is
i don't remember the name but uh you know do it equally if you send dust
a saint filament out to one person send dust from this other relic out
relic out to another person and uh we'll check with you again in about um a year

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uh well after one year the people from the congregation of rights of the vatican
returned to naples to check with uh bishop de cesare how was the progress
and he said well the dust of the unknown saint is just about gone
and the bone also and the dust from saint philomena is exactly how it was
one year ago and the bone also is here so i think we have a miracle san
philomena's rallies continue to be distributed and they never deplete that's
uh another one of the stories of multiplication from saint philomena
and then i wanted to tell you maybe just one or two of these we'll see
uh about some um accounts of different people that have been blessed by saint
philomena or have had some sort of um encounter
with her or some sort of intercession by her

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you might have heard of a holy woman from italy named anna maria taiji
her life is from 1769 until 1837. she's she has a book out someone made a
book about her called wife mother and mystic
she was in so much contact with saints from heaven and our lord our blessed
mother that popes came to her to seek her advice
and this is an interesting part of her popes came to her to seek her advice
but she would say to them sometimes just a moment holy father would you mind
sitting here in the living room i'm cooking for my
family right now as soon as i'm finished with that i'll come and speak to you
holy father can you imagine putting the pope on hold on your telephone
well that's what she was doing in the uh whatever the 18th century version of

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that at one point the niece a niece of anna maria taiji was injured she had
scraped her eye she wanted to think i have the
account somehow she had scratched her eye while playing
and it scratched the pupil of the eye so that she had no vision out of that eye
anymore she could not see uh blessed anna maria taiji
applied saint philomena oil to the eye and it was instantly cured
so that's from the saint philomena oil and i was talking about that last week
it originates in the um sanctuary lamp type of sanctuary lamp
like this that burns next to her urn in munyano
and ever since that time anna maria taiji entrusted her sons

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to the auspices of saint philomena at her death she did that so that's anna
maria taiji who's a source of authority on other points as well
uh very good some other cures there was this saint marie christine of savoy
1812-1836 that's quite young shortly after she's a noble woman
she's a noble woman shortly after a pilgrimage to munyano with her husband
ferdinand ii the queen conceived a royal heir to the throne
they had been years without a conception in fact she had never conceived a child
and she attributed this this miraculous pregnancy to the intercession of saint
philomena numerous miracles occurred soon after
and the queen was canonized by pope francis in the year 2014.

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i might be wrong on the dates of her life because it seems so short
it doesn't seem quite enough time to get married and have a long time
waiting for a conception of a child that saint marie christine of savoy
saint peter luis marie chanel 1803-1841 he was a missionary and martyr
of oceania he caught word of saint philomena from
saint john vienne and became a fervent devotee
of her he often carried a picture of our lady
saint joseph and saint philomena in his pocket breviary
in all of his missionary journeys and one more i'll give you for this
evening there are others to talk about later on
is saint peter julian aymard he is a very important saint he's known as
at least one of the saints of the blessed sacrament uh he was seriously ill
sorry he lived from 1811 to 1868. he was

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seriously ill he went to visit the curie cure saint john vienne in ours
and he explained his situation to saint gianconvienne that he was very ill
and saint john vianney who as you might remember was a bit
exhausted embarrassed i don't know exactly the term
he was a little bit embarrassed about getting so much fame about people being
cured at his church and he would often say well it's not me
that's doing it it's our blessed mother who's doing it or it's saint filamento
who's doing it he was up to 14 cures a week
you may remember so what did saint john vienna say to this holy man who became
eventually became a canonized saint as well saint peter julian
he said go back to your home and when you get home recite a novena to
saint philomena uh within even towards the end of the novena
like the seventh day saint peter julian was

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cured of his illness and of course he rejoiced over it
he made a trip to saint john vienna to say thank you he might have made a trip
to munyano to say thank you to saint philomena i'm not sure
but you can you can be sure that he became a devotee
of saint philomena as well saint peter julian aymard the priest of the blessed
sacrament all right so we'll go on to a class about
the holy mass it's useful to consider the life of a saint
uh we priests were just um having a conference today
that you can do over the computer so all the priests of the uh
this district of asia were in contact with each other and father walia walier
gave us a conference today and he said that it's very good to keep studying the
lives of the saints with the faithful because if you can't get a point of the
gospel if you can't get a point of theology etc you can always click

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in to the life of a saint and your imagination can go with that and this is
all true so uh that's one of the reasons i like to do the
the study the study the life of a saint before we begin our
conference about the holy mass so there are a few questions from last class i'll
answer some of them uh first of all i guess i owe you all an apology
uh i left some of you disappointed by not telling you that judas is also in hell
right we're not sure of how how many people are in hell
i told you it was just kane and martin luther and i forgot to leave
judas out he's in hell all right i'll repeat it a hundred times for me if you
want for you if you want me to it's true judas is in hell
i know that's not very popular these days i think i've even heard some
far out thing that we have to be how this sounds disgusting
we have to be thankful to judas because if it weren't for him the crucifixion
wouldn't have happened and i think our divine lord would found

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some way to make it happen we'd only be thanking the the wicked
malefactors for these sort of things and even our lord was trying to get a
repentance out of him or you know turn what he called it retraction out of
him before it finally happened the the betrayal
i suppose i mentioned kane and martin luther because those are kind of two
extremes that were given to us extreme ends uh they were give that was
given to us in theology class but yes even our lord said of judas it would
have been better for him if this man had never been born
so uh you can bet he's in hell um all right so someone asked the question
uh how does one know when he gets an indulgence
and the answer is with the plenary indulgence like i was saying last week
uh you know you have to get the confession within one week you have to get

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holy communion pray for the pope and not have any uh um
connection any uh any sort of connection to sin
mortal sin or venial sin there's another work i'm looking for
another word i'm looking for which is not connection but something like that
without any kind of connection to sin and so you do your best
to fulfill all that and still the last um call is in the hand of god
and he will judge whether we have any uh connection adhesion to sin so we're
never quite sure if we've ever gained a plenary indulgence
but all the other indulgences which are the partial indulgences
and there are many of them uh those are much easier to get because you don't
have to do the confession with on within one week you
don't have to do the prayer for the pope you don't have to do the communion
and you might have some sort of uh connection with vino sin but you still
get the partial indulgence indulgence to find out about partial indulgences

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please have a have a look at the book called the reculta
which is the classic book for all the prayers
that have indulgences attached to them another question is there a limit to the
number of times a person gets an indulgence i would say the limit equals your
lifetime so as long as you live you can get an indulgence and um speaking of
getting the plenary indulgence because you've gone to confession within one
week before or after does that mean that we should go to confession
every week or once a week as a pastor i advise to souls
to try to get to confession once a month and it's even better if you get if you

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can get the confession once every two weeks uh
so that's that's what i would call good maintenance of the soul
once a month for confession but if you can get to confession once every two
weeks that's even better main purpose of confession is to
make you receive as much grace as possible
from receiving holy communion but also because by staying with a very regular
practice of confession and communion you're making your soul as disposed as
possible to respond to the graces that our lord is sending you
and if we respond if you respond well to one grace
he'll give you an opportunity to respond to another grace
which is even bigger and then as saint paul says
grace um after grace grace keeps building building on grace

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but if you want to be stingy if someone wants to be stingy about the sacraments
and go to confession just what is it during the easter time or something like
that no sorry go to confession once a year and communion during the easter time
the bear bear absolute minimum of receiving the sacraments
well then you'll be very lethargic slow and um
stingy you know not generous at all to respond to grace
and so grace instead of building up like this in your soul
will just sort of stay you know static maybe it doesn't dip down below but it
stays static that's the some of the answers to some questions there
and now um we'll get back into where we are with the holy mass last
week we covered for whom the sacrifice of the mass

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may be offered this week we'll consider uh the holy sacrifice and the of the
mass in the organization of the church and that'll be how the mass
shows up in the liturgy and how everything which is part of the
mysteries of our lord jesus christ is in the mass
so our lord carries out the work of redemption in his church
in his church chiefly by the unbloody sacrifice of the altar
he carries out the work of redemption chiefly by the sacrifice at the altar
not all of us can live during the life of our divine lord
in fact that's been so long ago that just 12 apostles 120 disciples
were part of the life of our divine lord during his time
saint paul does say that last of all before the ascension

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our lord was seen by 500 of his disciples so maybe there were more than 120 but
really that compared to the rest of time that's passed since then is very small
so how do we get to know the chief mysteries of the redemption of our
lord it's by being present at the holy mass at the holy mass
we learn at the beginning the prayers of the foot of the altar our lord's great
desire to be united to the tabernacle of god that means his great desire
to be living in the courts with his father in heaven with his father
at the holy mass we have what's called the um mass of the catechumens or the
instructional part of the mass where we're learning from the epistle
we're learning from the gospel we're learning from the psalms we're
learning from the prayers the church has to offer and all of that comes from

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the divine life of our lord you know archbishop lefebvre was very very
insistent on learning the divine life of our lord through the holy mass
every time that a priest puts on vestments every time that a priest uh bows
at the altar or geniflex or even walks to the cedilla you know the place where
the priest sits for the glory or whatever all of his moves all of his actions
are showing us in one way or another the divine life of our lord and it's
being acted out or presented again i should say saint augustine is famous
for the remark uh what was present see uh what happened is more than what
happened but let's say what was present in the life of our lord
has been made present again through the mysteries

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and what happened in the life of our lord is made present again
in the mysteries so when you attend holy mass you are in the mysteries
of our lord jesus christ and chiefly and principally at the transubstantiation
but before i get there uh an anecdote to tell you how seriously
the archbishop took the holy mass there was an event that happened on one
holy thursday night at the seminary of tradition in switzerland
icon i guess there was some seminarian who was
what i call a cut up that's a person's joking around all the time that's fine
joking is good and all the rest of it well they had the custom there and it's
still in our seminaries uh for the washing of the feet the washing of the
the apostles at holy thursday night they chose 12 seminarians
and usually they're from the first year the beginning year to show that humility

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of the priest bowing down before in front of this young person's foot to wash it
one of these seminarians had drawn a smiley face on his toe
something like that thought he would joke around a little a little and um no
uh there's a line that's drawn there where jokes don't work anymore
uh and the archbishop was to wash that person's foot
well guess what he didn't get his foot washed
and he was kicked out of the seminary that's the divinity of our lord that's
being made present again to that ceremony
what happened in the life of our lord is made present in the mysteries
so returning to different ways that we see the mysteries of our lord
during the mass after the instructional part of the mass or the

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mass of catechumens begins the offertory where
you see the sentiments of our lord in the garden of gethsemane three times
when our lord prayed to his father please remove this chalice from me what
chalice the chalice of suffering what's inside the chalice
my sins our lord has to drink the chalice of my sins
not just mine but billions of people's sins and at the offertory that's already
happening and that's the mystery being shown us
and not only that but there's a second side of that mystery at the offertory
which is and now you church you unite your sufferings to mine
and uh that's where all we present is a tiny little drop of water
in a chalice to mingle with a chalice which is more or less full of wine

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of our lord's contribution to the sacrifice
his sacrifice is like wine compared to our water and it's much more abundant
compared to our water it's the offertory
then the cannon of the mass begins where everything is focused around making our
lord present in his um sacrifice or the mystical
and violent shedding of his blood okay mystical
shedding of his blood but which was violent violently done
all of the blood separated from his body
that is made present in the that mystery is made
present in the transubstantiation and then the holy communion when our
lord shares that with us just as he shared the um holy communion
with his apostles on the night of holy thursday

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and finally we conclude with some prayers of the church
which are which usually have to do with uh dear lord by your sacrifice
please separate me from the selfish things of this world and unite me to the
celestial things of the next that's usually the content of the communion and
post-communion prayers in all this you have the life of our
lord may present in the mysteries and that's just talking about what's
ordinary in the mass well you also have the instructional part but
just the ordinary part of the mass is already preaching the mysteries of our
lord so as we attend mass or as we assist at mass those mysteries
that that life of christ is always becoming our life
in the holy mass christ is teacher christ is high priest and christ is king

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how is christ teacher in the mass he is he is
teacher in that he is announcing the truths of the faith
what are some principle truths that our lord announces
during the mass he announces that his father is almighty he announces that
he has come to preach the doctrine of his father
he announces that he has come to sacrifice his life
in order to complete the the will of his father
he announces that now the holy ghost is going to bring
all the benefit and the fruit of the sacrifice to your souls
those are all truths that we learn in the mass through christ who is our teacher
in the mass christ is high priest remember that by talking about our lord
as teacher and high priest and king we're showing out how

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all of the work of redemption is made present in the holy sacrifice of the mass
so part of that is christ is high priest what does the high priest do he offers
sacrifice in order to appease or placate god who deserves to execute or would um
carry out his wrath on us but thanks to this sacrifice
that doesn't happen our lord is high priest establishes peace between heaven and
earth this saucerdalto action holds the prominent place in the mass as we
studied last week and the week before the propitiatory the propitiation
the begging pardon for sins and calming down
a very irritated god is the principal work of the sacrifice
christ is high priest that word comes to us from the old

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testament where the high priest of the people of god only entered the
temple i should say the holy of holies of the temple once a year and always
sprinkling blood of the lamb so that he could enter in god's presence
without being struck down dead himself always with the spirit of begging pardon
for sins that's what the sprinkling of blood inside of the holy of holies meant
and finally christ is kings a teacher and high priest and king
how is christ king he has a supernatural kingdom of truth grace and love
as we study this past sunday christ the king sunday
the words which really caught the attention of pontius pilate
from our lord is when he said but my kingdom is not of this world

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you may think that i've come here to take away your power or win it by force
or do some sort of insurrection against you forget it
that's that's not what i'm about but i will tell you what i am about is a
dominion over men that you have no idea of because it's based on truth for that
reason have i come to bear witness to the truth
of our lord by being this king of truth and the king that wins our heart by
dying on the cross for us completely dominates us and that's in the mass
he has the supernatural kingdom of truth grace
and love he wins us by giving us the truth of his father
he wins us by giving us the supernatural life and he especially wins us
by offering up the sacrifice that none of us can turn a cold shoulder to
and say i don't want head i don't want to have anything to do with that

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or he understands nothing about the suffering i'm going through none of us
can say that honestly he is the king of hearts christ is king as a meek king
he takes possession of our hearts the dominion of grace and love is in our souls
therefore we can say that all of christ's life is contained in the in the
holy mass because the work of redemption is chiefly
made known in the sacrifice of the mass all of christ's life is contained in the
mass and this is how he will continue his life until the end of time
through the holy sacrifice of the mass i'd like to tell you an anecdote about
the value of the mass or value of one mass uh we just
heard this story a couple of weeks ago father summers and i when we made our
retreat listening to the recordings of father

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couture there was once a very poor woman
who had nothing left in her house to eat so she went and visited the butcher and
asked for a few slices of meat and the butcher and his helper who were
more or less godless still had some sort of compassion for
the dear old lady and said sure we'll we'll get something for you
do you have anything to offer me as payment and the woman said
i have nothing and the butchers uh kind of patronizingly center that's
all right dear lady um what what can you offer us and she said
i'm about to go to mass right now and i'll remember you at the altar i remember
while i'm at the holy mass and that'll be my payment
and they say well you go ahead and take care of the mass and come to see us
after that they didn't give her anything yet so the woman

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went to mass and she came back and um she said well um i went to mass for you
all i don't have any money to offer you but here's a slip of paper
it says i offered one mess for you and the butchers were kind of giggling
about the whole thing [Music] not taking her very seriously and they
weren't determined yet on whether they're going to give her
something to eat anyway so they had a scale there
and the old-fashioned kind where you weigh the meat against a few weights or
something like that and that's how you calculate
how heavy it is and they took the weights out of it and they put a slip of
paper there and they put some slices of meat on the other side
thinking that that would make her slip a paper go flying up into the air
and they were kind of surprised that they put some meat on the scale and slip
a paper stayed right there meat was up in the air lighter than the
substance of this little note that says i offer

00:43
the mass for you so they sort of check the scale and what's the problem and all
the rest of it and they found no problem with the scale
and they finally had to admit after putting an
obvious amount of weight on that scale that it was not going to move
in comparison to that slip of paper i offered the mass for you
so they finally um figured out figured it out
that they were in the presence of a divine reality here
and they succumbed to the pressure and the presence of god gave
the woman her gift and they were quite converted themselves and they started to
attend holy mass also to give us the idea of the value of one
mass which contains all the mysteries and all the life of our lord jesus christ
without the holy sacrifice of the mass all other worship would fade
away as can be seen by non-catholic denominations

00:44
so we come to the holy sacrifice the mass
sometimes you might have a good preacher sometimes you might have a preacher
that's not so good sometimes you might have a priest who offers mass
in a beautiful way you know we've all heard that before father so and so
he says a beautiful mass or so father so and so well he's kind of a
matter of fact but about the way he celebrates the mass
uh et cetera et cetera you know you have the positives and the negatives
about uh what you see when you go to mass
but i think all of us will admit that no matter how the holy mass is offered
and no matter if there's a sermon or not and how well it's preached at or not
the holy sacrifice keeps drawing us back and drawing us back
it does not depend on the personality of the priest it does not even depend on

00:45
his gifts if you want to call it that um how
well he's able to sell celebrate the mass
or how well he's able to preach doesn't depend on that
it depends on the fact of is he saying the mass
validly yes the mass therefore is giving its grace to all of us and it's an
irreplaceable grace and when martin luther first started uh with his
i don't know how they call it the mass of the people or something like that in
the 16th century he wanted no attention on the holy communion
and he wanted the people to know that the whole idea of transubstantiation
was not true all right so they maybe were kind of receiving communion still

00:46
during that time with this protestant perezi ark
and um that's a bad thing already because they don't believe in the truth
of transubstantiation they don't believe in the truth
of holy communion being the body and blood soul and divinity of our lord
and that's 500 years ago but just let that go and let that go
and what happens with the protestant after five centuries
i'll answer that question by telling another story
just recently not too long ago a friend of mine
let me know that and not too far from him
it wasn't here in singapore not too far from him was a church for sale that had
belonged to the protestants and they had moved on and i said well
i'm kind of sorry to hear that even for the protestants
because it usually means they've moved on because
they want a bigger place where there's more money and
that means they have to leave the other place behind for whoever can buy that

00:47
it was quite a nice building they're leaving behind
and he said well it's worse than that these protestants cannot fill their own
church anymore because they've lost their youth going to what's called these
mega churches maybe i've told you about this already here and sorry if i'm
repeating myself but a mega church that's all very much in quotation marks
it's not the church at all you could just as well have a
professional basketball game there and provide the same amount of entertainment
it's all about stages and electric guitars and drums and putting on a show
for the kids and that's what's become of in this 21st century
that's what that has become of protestant non-sacrificial worship
you know how long can go with a pastor they call him pastor
a minister and prayers and singing hymns before you look for something more

00:48
exciting and more exciting and more exciting
500 years of that well of course there they are they're in stadiums now
with um the musicians i don't know what putting out a show for them you take
that and put it next to the holy sacrifice the mass
and as father summers was telling you some months ago during the persecution
of the irish in the what the 16th century
and 17th century and 18th century by the english protestants
they didn't even see the face of the priest in order to keep his identity secret
so he wouldn't be persecuted when they were you know called a question about
who gave them the mass but the mass kept going and kept going
and kept going and never died uh that's because the mass gives us
the substance of the life of our lord and if you take away the mass the holy
sacrifice of the mass you don't have that substance anymore and as i said

00:49
all other worship would fade away as we can see with the non-catholic
denominations all means of grace draw their virtue and efficacy
from the eucharistic sacrifice what would those principle means of grace be
they would be the sacraments and also sacramentals
last week we studied sacramento's a little bit when i talked about
holy water and saint philomena oil those are sacramentals the sacraments as
you know are instituted by our lord uh together in a broad way
we can say that the sacraments and the sacramentals
have a special power to remove the curse
of sin sacraments by working directly on our soul
to increase the level of sanctifying grace or sacraments

00:50
to remove our stinginess with god which is our venial sin
sacrament of penance to remove our mortal sin
which has taken away completely the presence of god
it has a special power to remove the curse of sin
a priest blessing your house or your automobile your rosary
is removing the curse of sin all of that action
comes from the fact that the holy sacrifice of the mass is still being offered
if you take away the holy mass and the grace that it draws down from heaven
you know that that vision that nathaniel had
of our lord he said i saw a letter going up to heaven and i saw
angels descending and ascending upon it uh that's the holy sacrifice of the mass

00:51
angels ascending to heaven is the praise and adoration
going up to god and angels descending from heaven is the
propitiation and petition uh is that that forgiveness of man's sin and that
building up a sanctifying grace that comes from the mass
and the way of distributing those graces from the mass are the sacraments and
sacramentals it's the same as the holy the cross of our lord
is what wins earns the um fruits of redemption the merits of redemption
but it remains i don't mean to be disrespectful but
you remain somehow stagnant or somehow locked in time
without the holy sacrifice of the mass you remain stagnant there without a means
to distribute the fruits of that cruce of that cross
and that's the holy sacrifice of the mass it is what
makes present those fruits and merits of our lord on the cross

00:52
and from the mass it can be distributed through the sacraments and the
sacramentals that's how important the mass is and
that brings me to another point that we learned in our conference
from father walia today is that as priests we should be teaching about the holy
mass whether it's in sermons or conferences
but we should be teaching about the holy mass and he made this point which is
uh this once again this very very bare minimum of receiving holy communion is
uh once during the easter time which is somewhere between the beginning
of lent and trinity sunday about 100 days once and after that it's immortal sin
and what is our obligation to hear mass on every sunday of the year

00:53
and holy days of obligation so at least 52 times uh plus about four otherwise
mortal sin so the holy mass is a very important thing
and follow wali was even saying while he was even saying to the point of um
we can preach about the sacraments especially the holy eucharist but even
beyond that we have to insist on the holy mass
from which the holy eucharist comes and he also mentioned that there is a
tendency sometimes with the in the more modern church they will talk
about eucharist and eucharist and eucharist at the expense of saying the word
sacrifice of the mass and usually what they mean by that is the banquet
the banquet without thinking anything about the cross
you might have noticed at the modern mass if people do attend more than one mass
in a day it might happen once in a while they'll receive whole community holy

00:54
communion at both masses or three if there are three masses
because their mentality is i'm at a banquet and it's rude
to attend a banquet without eating somehow insulting to the host so
therefore if as long as i'm at this banquet i better receive the eucharist
uh well as you know from the traditional catholicism we only receive holy
communion once a day at the most that's our union with the
sacrifice of our lord on the altar and the idea the mind of the church in
not receiving the holy communion more than once a day is this
uh we are limited and finite creatures god can do wonderful things
and he can do wonderful things in us but we're sort of like a fuse box
or a circuit breaker box if you put too much grace in us all at once we kind

00:55
of explode we can't handle that big surge of the presence of christ in us
more than once a day in holy communion and therefore
a lot of respect for the sacrifice for what it really is
we don't exaggerate our competence uh our ability to assimilate
all of this greatness of god several times a day
you may see the priest receiving holy communion more than once a day
if he celebrates a second master or third mass but that's because it's
absolutely necessary the priest offering the mass and it may
sound a little strange to you he is immolating christ at the altar
not just by making christ present first the body then the blood somehow
mystically dead but he must consume every last particle
of hosts and consume every last drop of precious blood
if not he has not completely immolated christ
so as friendly as that looks with the priests you know cleaning out the

00:56
chalice purifying the chalice what he's principally doing is make sure
making sure that he's completely he's made a complete sacrifice of christ
on the altar that's why the priest must receive holy communion
at every mass so the sacraments and the sacramentals
all receive their power from the holy mass and to conclude on this point
it is correct to say that you know the sacraments and sacramentals which are
the curse of sin all right sorry which are the purging removing the curse of sin
they are the overflow of the super abundance of the mass

00:57
as catholics we worship the substance of the unbloody sacrifice of our lord
there's beautiful incense there are beautiful vestments
we're so fortunate to have such a stately i don't know
a beautiful altar here in this church i've outside of rome i've never seen an
altar that beautiful but it's the substance of the mass which draws us
and all of this all the rest the stately and correct
the dignified altar which we have and the vestments
and the vessels though the chalice and the ciborium and the incense etc
those are things we add to the mass because our lord deserves
all that dignity but what is really drawing us is that holy sacrifice

00:58
um i just saw a um vocational video from night the year 1959
it was really well done now you can tell it's kind of a dramatization and they
they uh they had actors doing it but in the because everything was so well
memorized etc but uh so you have about a 13 year old boy who goes to his first
kind of like a summer camp to be present in the seminary
to find out what priests are all about and so forth and eventually that
virgins into him um or blossoms into him going to the seminary one day and
becoming a franciscan priest after about like
13 years something like that uh but so he's in this church and the years 1959
and uh he's a young teenager and he says uh i had never seen an altar so
beautiful in all my life and he's a normal boy he likes football
and he likes ice cream and he likes goofing off and studying sometimes but

00:59
when he went on that visit to the seminar with all the other
young men he said i'd never seen an altar so beautiful
in my life and i saw the altar in the film too it actually didn't look that
great the year was already 1959 so some of
those traditional looks were starting to disappear already
but the point is that um he went to that visit to the seminary
because of what he had seen in priests already
and because of what he what he knew already
from us attending holy mass and when he saw that altar he was
even more uh impressed but his substance is
what drew him to that seminary to see the priests and so forth is
the influence of the holy mass which was constantly giving him the mysteries of
the life of our lord so we start with the substance of the
mass and everything else is a overflow of that and we live by the sacraments
because the mass is able to give us that grace which the sacraments have

01:00
very good we'll say a prayer jesus [Music] um