THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH Her Doctrine and Morals Second Sunday after Pentecost 26 June 2011

The Sunday Sermon

Dear Friends,

“He that loveth not, abideth in death.” (1 John 3:14)

There are many who imagine that they love but they really do not love. Self-love is not true love. If one truly loved himself he would seek only that which is best for his eternal welfare and would resist and fight off this disordered self-love.

Self-love is filled with pride and vanity and is therefore lacking the grace of God. In this we see that self-love is not the friend of one’s self but is actually an enemy. Self-love undermines true love and ck becomes an eternal enemy to ourselves.

We witness in today’s gospel how one person after another excused himself from attending the supper. Each one in his turn filled with self-love rather than true love found an excuse not to go when they should have gone. Their own disordered will and love of self became the obstacle to their own eventual peace and happiness.

They assumed that in following their own wills they would find happiness, but in the end they are denied ever being able to taste of the supper.

After indulging our own wills we are left disappointed and frustrated. The joys that our self-love promised us prove to be deceitful illusions. We usually only discover this after we have already been barred from the supper. It is then too late to return to the great supper. There is no turning back. The grace that was rejected by us will never return. In God’s mercy He may offer us another grace but the one that was rejected is forever gone. Instead of amassing treasure for heaven we have too often lost precious treasures and time by rejecting God’s graces, just as the men in today’s gospel rejected the invitations.

We have chosen to prefer passing and fleeting enjoyments of self-love in pride and vanity rather than embrace the truly good things offered to us by God. As often as these graces and opportunities (invitations) are repulsed by us the less likely are we to receive another. Eventually those who have rejected their allotted number of graces will receive no more. They will be forever barred from ever tasting of the heavenly supper.

Those on the other hand that accept the invitation and cooperate with the grace are given not just any supper but a great supper. They are filled with sumptuous delights without end, because of their cooperation with the graces that God has given them. They not only increase the current grace but have many others added to them. God again and again invites them until one day they are welcomed into the eternal feast of heaven.

Those who have rejected God’s graces and invitations the allotted number of times will ultimately be rejected for all of eternity and will never taste of the joys of heaven. Their self-love which is not true love at all caused them not to love and as we quoted from St. John above: He that does not love abides in death. These poor souls having chosen to pursue their own disordered self-love throughout life, rejecting over and over again God’s invitation to come to His supper, find nothing but disillusionment and frustration in this life, but even worse than this, they will never taste of any true happiness because they have forever barred themselves from heaven. They will die the second death and suffer for all of eternity for their folly. They will hate themselves forever because they will now see how easy it would have been for them to accept and correspond to the invitation.

Many times the invitation is rejected and the messenger feels the pain and the rejection as if it is he that has been rejected. Even though the messenger is often criticized and blamed, our Lord tells us that it is not the messenger who is being rejected but it is the one who sent the messenger (God) who is truly being rejected. Many criticize and condemn the Church and Her ministers but do not understand that in doing so they have not rejected the Church and her ministers, but they have rejected God who sent them. So as we find our wishes and desires for our fellow men constantly rejected and repulsed by them we should not take it as a personal insult; it is not we that have been slighted but, God. God’s desire for his servants is that they return over and over again to invite others until eventually His house will be filled.

Let us strive for and pray for those whom God has sent us to invite into His Kingdom, but if we find that they are rejecting the invitation and are choosing to abide in death rather than life, let us move on to find others who are more cooperative with the grace of God. Let us not continue to cast pearls before swine or to invite to a supper those who have chosen death and cannot eat.