THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH Her Doctrine and Morals The Feast of Jesus Christ The King 27 October 2013

The Sunday Sermon

Dear Friends,

Jesus Christ is King not only of hearts and souls, but of families, societies, peoples and nations; and of all things. The social reign of Jesus Christ is opposed to the error of secularism. Secularism would have us live and act as if there were no God. It attempts to see everything in a natural light and to give a natural interpretation to everything. 

Once we deny God (or ignore Him) we find that we can no longer act in a natural manner. Our nature is made in the image and likeness of God, our natural destiny is to be with God in Heaven. Granted we need supernatural grace to reach and obtain these things, but they are an ingrained part of our very nature. We are creatures of both body and soul. We, therefore, cannot truly reach a state of “natural” happiness unless we pursue a supernatural happiness. 

Our nature seeks the Divine, it desires the perfect. It is an obvious part of our makeup that is truly undeniable. If we ignore and cut God out of our lives we necessarily must cut away our very souls. In ignoring and denying our souls we reduce our existence beneath the irrational beasts. What the irrational animals do because of a natural instinct (placed there by God) for survival and the propagation of their species, the secularist seeks to pervert and use in a manner that corrupts the very purpose of the instinct in animals. 

The irrational beasts seek food to sustain their lives, and in the wild will seldom over-indulge to the detriment of their health. Man, on the other hand, once he ignores the higher principles of his soul and of God will seek to eat only for the pleasure. He does not eat to sustain his life but rather to gratify his palate. The perversity of man has found all manner of ways to indulge this appetite, and when he is over-gorged he has developed means to alleviate this discomfort and make room for even more. His perversity makes him ill, and yet he continues in his perversity none-the-less. It is for this reason that we say the secularist has sunk lower than the brute beasts. 

The same can be said of the animal instinct for reproduction. Man has sought all manner of ways to satisfy his sexual pleasure while at the same time frustrating its natural purpose. And so it is also with every instinct we see God gave to the irrational animal; secular men pervert this appetite so that he may indulge inordinately in it and simultaneously frustrate its natural purpose for existing in the first place. 

This secularist attack has undermined us as individuals, and also our families, and society as a whole. With the fall of the individual man, the foundation of the family is undermined; with the fall of the family, the foundation of society itself is undermined. Little, by little we see the entire edifice of our very existence collapsing in front of our eyes.

We must work to put God back into society and into all our social realms, but the place to truly begin is with each of us as individuals. We must enthrone Jesus Christ in our hearts and souls first. We must begin by giving Him the first place. It is time that we actually begin to live what we learned as mere children from our Catechism. Our soul reason for being is a supernatural one: to be eternally happy with God in Heaven. God has created us to: 1) show forth His goodness and 2) to share with us His everlasting happiness in Heaven. To gain this everlasting happiness of Heaven, we must know, love, and serve God in this world. We must love Him with our entire being. He must be the center and pinnacle of all that we do. 

We must frequently remind ourselves that God has thought of us from all of eternity, He has brought us into existence, He gave His life to redeem us, and He gives us countless blessings every day. We are continually in the heart and mind of God, so it must be that He should always be in our hearts and minds. We must pray without ceasing by keeping God in mind in all that we say and do. 

If we can succeed in making Jesus Christ the true King of our lives as individuals, we will have a solid foundation upon which to build our families; once we have solid families we will be able to build solid societies (governments and nations). History has shown us what the saints have been able to do because they lived for God. Our world today has shown us what we can expect when we accept the demonic secularism and ignore or deny God. There is no fixing our nation, state, town, or even our family, until we first fix ourselves by placing ourselves willingly and humbly in the service of Jesus Christ our King. May we all this very moment renew our baptismal oath of fidelity and strive to serve our King better than we have in the past.