From Father Bernard's sermon last Sunday-it bears repeating:

  If any man say, I love God, and hateth his brother; he is a liar. For he that loveth not his brother, whom he seeth, how can he love God, whom he seeth not?  1 John 4:20

TADDEO DI BARTOLO
(b. 1362/63, Siena, d. 1422, Siena)
The painting depicts the Virgin Mary, St. John the Baptist and St. Andrew

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Last Sunday after Pentecost: Bishop Bonaventure, OFM

Last Sunday after Pentecost: Bishop Giles, OFM

Last Sunday after Pentecost: Fr. Joseph, OFM

Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: Fr. Bernard, OFM 

St. John of the Cross  -  Spanish mystic, Carmelite friar and priest

Source: Wikipedia

Born in Spain in 1542, John learned the importance of self-sacrificing love from his parents. His father gave up wealth, status, and comfort when he married a weaver's daughter and was disowned by his noble family. After his father died, his mother kept the destitute family together as they wandered homeless in search of work. These were the examples of sacrifice that John followed with his own great love -- God. 

When the family finally found work, John still went hungry in the middle of the wealthiest city in Spain. At fourteen, John took a job caring for hospital patients who suffered from incurable diseases and madness. It was out of this poverty and suffering, that John learned to search for beauty and happiness not in the world, but in God. 

After John joined the Carmelite order, Saint Teresa of Avila asked him to help her reform movement. John supported her belief that the order should return to its life of prayer. But many Carmelites felt threatened by this reform, and some members of John's own order kidnapped him. He was locked in a cell six feet by ten feet and beaten three times a week by the monks. There was only one tiny window high up near the ceiling. Yet in that unbearable dark, cold, and desolation, his love and faith were like fire and light. He had nothing left but God -- and God brought John his greatest joys in that tiny cell. 

After nine months, John escaped by unscrewing the lock on his door and creeping past the guard. Taking only the mystical poetry he had written in his cell, he climbed out a window using a rope made of strips of blankets. With no idea where he was, he followed a dog to civilization. He hid from pursuers in a convent infirmary where he read his poetry to the nuns. From then on his life was devoted to sharing and explaining his experience of God's love.

His life of poverty and persecution could have produced a bitter cynic. Instead it gave birth to a compassionate mystic, who lived by the beliefs that "Who has ever seen people persuaded to love God by harshness?" and "Where there is no love, put love -- and you will find love." 

John left us many books of practical advice on spiritual growth and prayer that are just as relevant today as they were then. These books include: Ascent of Mount Carmel , Dark Night of the Soul and A Spiritual Canticle of the Soul and the Bridegroom Christ .

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH Her Doctrine and Morals Twenty-Sixth (Last) Sunday after Pentecost 25 November 2012

The Sunday Sermon

Dear Friends,

Today we consider our end. What is presented in today’s Gospel refers both to the destruction of Jerusalem that has already taken place and prophetically to the end of time. Let us today consider the prophetic side and how it applies to us. We may consider the end of this world or our own mortal end. In either case time will cease for us at that moment. Christ will come for us individually in the Particular Judgment or collectively in the General Judgment. 

When He comes we need not search Him out, He will appear without doubt. For the good, those who love Him, it will be a time of great joy; for the evil, those who have loved something else, it will be a time of great fear.

This prophetic side of the Gospel tells us how we should behave. Only a fool would see all the signs and then pretend that these are not the signs. We see such foolishness all around today in so many “traditionalists” that see the “abomination of desolation standing in the Holy Place,” (The Novus Ordo religion that has invaded and usurped the property and position of the Roman Catholic Church.) but still refuse to flee from this impostor who practices ecumenical harlotry with all the other false religions and “gods” in the world today. 

If we have left this house of evil, we must never turn back to retrieve anything from her. Whatever we have left there is lost to us. It matters not whether we are on the roof top or in the field, we must flee from this house unconcerned for anything that is left behind: loved ones, family, friends, pleasant experiences etc. Even if there are people as dear to us as an infant at the mother’s breast, we must not allow them to hold us back from racing forward to God. God will have it that we must not allow anyone or anything to be placed in between Him and us. Let us read St. Augustine’s admonition and take heed that we run faithfully and without hesitation: 

“Let us run in love and charity; forgetting the things of time. This way calls for the strong; it will not have the slothful. The robbers of temptation abound. At every turn the devil lies in wait; everywhere he tries to enter in and take possession; and whoever he possesses, he recalls from the way, or impedes him. He recalls him, and then ensures that he does not go forward; or that he turns aside from the way, caught in the snares of false beliefs or in the heresies of schism, or led into some form or other of superstition.” 

“He tempts him through fear or through desire. But first through desire; through promises and pledges or through the allure of pleasures. When he finds a man who despises these things, and has as it were closed the door to desire, he begins to tempt him through the door of fear. If you now wish to gain no more in this world, and so have closed the door; should you still fear to lose what you have, you have not closed the door to fear. So, be strong in faith. Take heed that no man seduce you to evil through some promise; and let no one force you into deception by any threat. Whatever the world may promise you, the kingdom of heaven is greater; whatever the world threatens, the punishment of Hell is worse. And so if you wish to rise above all human fears, fear the eternal punishments that God threatens. And do you wish to crush the impulses of concupiscence? Desire the eternal life that God promises us. By this you close the door to the devil; by this you open it to Christ.” 

“Turning then to the Lord our God, let us earnestly beseech Him that the power of His mercy may strengthen our hearts in His truth, that it may strengthen and give peace to our souls. May His grace abound in us, and may He have mercy on us, and remove all scandals from before us, and from before His Church, and from before all those we love and may He by His power and through the abundance of His mercy enable us to please Him forever; Through Jesus Christ His Son our Lord, Who with Him and with the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth forever and ever. Amen.”

 he said were souls in which he took the greatest delight!