Third Sunday in Advent

December 14, 2008

Homily for the Anglican Usage Mass

of the

St. Thomas More Society

celebrated at

St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church , 1013 Wood Street

Scranton, PA

John 1:6-8, 19-28

            In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.  Amen

            This past Friday, December 12, we celebrated the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Patroness of the Americas, who appeared to St. Juan Diego in December 1531.  She came to the Mexican people to tell them she is their mother only twelve years after Hernan Cortez landed in Mexico, and only ten years after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire.

            That one decade saw an incredible transformation in the culture of the native Mexican peoples because of the Gospel light brought to North America by the Spanish missionaries who accompanied the conquistadors.  The Aztec empire had been built upon the murder by human sacrifice of countless victims from the tribes that neighbored the Aztec lands.  Not only did the Aztecs steal their neighbors’ food, women, and children, they also terrorized the entire region by sacrificing at times as many as 80,000 men in a single festival.  In fact, the Aztec priests were so adept at killing innocent human beings that they could show each victim his beating heart before he expired.  Cortez witnessed these barbarities and ending them became his primary motivation when he undertook finally to defeat Montezuma, the Aztec king, in battle.

            The missionaries and Our Blessed Mother told the Mexican people that God does not hate them, as the Aztec priests had proclaimed.  Moreover, God does not require our blood to be spilled before He will show us His favor.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  Far from hating us and desiring our death, God loves us so much that He was willing to die—He was willing to spill His blood—for us in order that we might have eternal life.  As you can imagine, this message was far more attractive to the Mexican people than was the religion of the murderers who called themselves the priests of the Aztec people.  Millions were baptized in a matter of decades.

            To whom do we give the credit for this amazing transformation?  Our Gospel today indicates the answer to this question, not only for the transformation of Mexico, but also for the transformation of nations and individuals in every age.

            In order for us to be faithful witnesses to Christ, we learn from John the Baptist that we must do three things, the first of which is confess that we aren’t Jesus.  This sounds so basic, but the temptation of people in every age is to set ourselves up as the authority in matters secular and in matters holy, so that people around us become confused about where true authority lies.  John the Baptist was unambiguous on this point:  he says quite explicitly in today’s Gospel, “I am not the Christ.”  In other words, people are not to look to him as the final authority.  Indeed, he points to where people are to find the fullness of the truth.

            This is the second thing John the Baptist teaches us about being faithful witnesses to Jesus.  To be faithful, we must bear witness to the Light.  Not only do we deny that we are the authority, we also must point to who is the authority.  So John the Baptist famously said, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).  For Catholics, this finds practical expression in pointing to the Church that Jesus founded as being the final authority in all maters of faith and morals.  Far from pointing to ourselves as the final authority on any matter, or asserting that we somehow know better than the Pope, we point to the Vicar of Christ, Jesus’ own representative on earth, if we are faithfully to witness to the light that Christ brings to the world.

            In St. John the Baptist’s announcement of Jesus’ coming, we find the third thing we do to be faithful.  He tells us to “make straight the way of the Lord.”  He means we are to reform our lives, and what applies to individuals applies, as well, to nations.  In order for us to be faithful witnesses to Jesus, we must not only understand that we are not Jesus and then point to Him and His Vicar on earth, Pope Benedict XVI, we also must reform our lives and our nation and encourage others to do the same.  In fact, the primary way that we point to Jesus is in the reformation of our lives and the witness of the sanctity in which we live.

            Thus, the answer to the question, “To whom do we give the credit for the transformation of Mexico that began after the arrival of Cortez?” is obvious:  we can only give credit to Jesus Christ.  Cortez, we know, was no saint.  Though married, he took a mistress while conquering Mexico.  He was not so morally deluded, however, that he could not recognize the greatest moral evil of his age.  He knew wickedness when he saw it, and in the name of Christ, under the protection of our Blessed Mother, and for the glory of Christ’s Church, Cortez laid waste one of the most evil empires the world has ever seen.  Though flawed, Cortez was an instrument of God’s grace, for he freed the Mexican people from terror and tyranny.  Indeed, he freed them from the purveyors of the culture of death.

            A parallel exits today.  Though our nation is not an evil empire, the great evil of the abortion holocaust is occurring within the United States and across the globe.  In fact, more children are aborted in Russia than are carried to term.  In the U.S. one in four pregnancies ends in abortion.  In order for us to prepare for our Lord’s appearing, in order for us to make straight the way of the Lord, if we hope to escape God’s judgment, we, as individuals and as a society, must confront the modern purveyors of the culture of death, who insist that the innocent must die in order for our nation, as well as other nations, to have life.  The orientation of the Aztec priests and of the abortion advocates in our own day is the same, for they both maintain that the slaughter of the innocent is necessary, and more than necessary, it is ultimately good!

            If our country and nations around the world are to be transformed, it will happen when we recognize that we are not Jesus, and we begin to point to Him by upholding the teaching of the Church and our Holy Father with regard to the truth about the sanctity of human life.  Christ’s Church is our hope.  Christ’s Church is the true agent of change, and we must pray that the Lord will raise up others along with us to be the instruments that Cortez was in Mexico almost 500 years ago.  We must become agents of God’s grace, to whom we give all the credit, as we lay waste the culture of death and bring an end to the senseless slaughter that we are witnessing with our own eyes.  Can we witness such things, do nothing to stop them, and still hope to escape the judgment that is coming?  The task is daunting, but we must not fear, for we do not work for justice by our own power, and we know that all things are possible for those who love God.  Moreover, like Cortez, who conquered the Aztecs with only a few hundred Spanish soldiers, we work under the protection of our Blessed Mother who never ceases to point the way to her Son, and who will win us the converts we need to win this battle against the forces of evil.

            Be true to the Church, point to Jesus, and unlike Cortez, do only what is morally licit.  And ask yourself, “Am I cooperating with Jesus to confront the culture of death?  Am I cooperating with Jesus to end the slaughter of the innocent?”