Homily at the Patronal Sung Mass – June 26, 2022

“He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it.”   Matthew 10: 39

 

As we contemplate the hundreds of Christians martyred around the world monthly, who better exemplifies the faithful response to this difficult saying of the Gospel than St. Thomas More, our parish patron saint?  We thank God for him today as we ask his prayers along with those of his great friend and fellow martyr, St. John Fisher. 

St. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester

Like them, today we face a direct challenge to living the Christian faith in Canada in the 21^st century when churches are vandalized and desecrated and lies are spread about the the Catholic Church. The secular juggernaut: an alliance of atheist, secular and narcissistic social attitudes is challenging the Church and her norms with a creed of relativism, proclaiming the culture of death as they march.

 

Thomas More made his choice for the culture of life based upon his unshakeable belief that in the Church and her sacraments Jesus Christ truly dwells, calling us to penitence, to conversion and to sanctification. For him it came down to the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony. Did the Sacraments convey what the Church had always said?  Did Holy Matrimony unite one man and one woman for life whether they were king or queen, nobility or commoner? 

Thomas More famously refused to take an oath denying that King Henry (VIII) Tudor was sacramentally married to Queen Katherine of Aragon.

 

In conscience, Thomas could not deny Christ and the Sacrament that binds man and woman in an unbreakable bond. He would not swear the oath and so had to give his mortal life in order to retain his soul. What could be simpler? What could be more difficult?  

 

In our day, people insist that truth is relative. You know the language: You have your truth and I have mine. Today we see the “progressive” collusion of governments with legislatures and social engineers forwarding the grab for power by those who serve the dictatorship of relativism. The "Woke" are gradually raising the pressure on and "cancelling" those who hold to the sacramentality of the Church and the sanctity of life as the way in which we are in communion with Christ and his sacrifice for us.

 

This campaign to change the once universal customs and morality embedded in laws governing marriage between one man and one woman seems relentless. It goes hand in hand with efforts to make the Mass little more than a communal gathering with no sense of the transcendent. These entrapments are all part of a grand design to put an egotistic humanity at the centre while denying the transcendence of God and the moral order that has been at the heart of human flourishing from time immemorial.

St. Thomas More stood, in his day, for the faith once delivered to the saints. We pray for the grace to stand in our day for the same faith. May his prayers along with those of our Lady, St. John Fisher and all the saints guide us in our journey of faith which has been paved for us by the feet of the martyrs. 

STM Patronal

Patronal Sung Mass 

of St. Thomas More

Sunday, June 26 at 12:30 noon

263 Roncesvalles Avenue,  Toronto

Sacred Music with SATB choir

Refreshments to follow.

NOVENA FOR LIFE

Please join millions in this prayer for the gift of life.   The link to the novena is below.

 NINE DAYS FOR LIFE NOVENA    

Mystagogy X

                  JANUARY 19 to 27, 2022

DIVINE MICRO-CLIMATES

The following is a response to an article by Dr. Ephraim Radner in FIRST THINGS - JANUARY 2022 -- THE BACK PAGE

 

In his meditation on climate, culture, language and catechesis, Ephraim Radner offers an insightful look at the directions open to society in this century. He concludes with a clarion call for catechesis in the Church, a call to which many will sound a great Amen.

 

There are two points to add to Dr. Radner’s pastoral call for biblical focus.  The first is in response to his lament: “The Book of Common Prayer (BCP) was suffused with a penitential spirit. It is no longer so.”

 

This is true. Myriad additions, subtractions and “woke” amendments to Anglican orders of service around the globe cover everything from Evensong to LGBTQ (add your letter) inclusivity rites and transgender “affirmations”. What is left of the BCP in the Anglican Communion (I use the term loosely) is a mess of potage, detritus on a sea of change blown by every wind of doctrine.

 

Fortunately, under the aegis of Pope Benedict’s farsighted Dogmatic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus (AC), there is a safe harbour for English (Anglican/Episcopalian) liturgy and patrimony.  The recently published English breviary for the Ordinariates: Divine Worship: Daily Office (CTS, 2021) is mandated by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) for English-speaking clergy and people worldwide.  This book is a rich compilation of Anglican daily offices and other rites shaped in conformity with universal Catholic liturgical principles and approved by the CDF.

 

The Breviary retains the poetic English of the BCP tradition while offering all seven of the daily offices for religious communities and individuals. The breviary serves as a text and work book for grounded and ongoing catechesis.

 

This English form of The Liturgy of the Hours joins the previously published Divine Worship: The Missal (CTS, 2015) and Divine Worship: Occasional Services (CTS, 2014). These traditional texts provide contours for the second element we may add to Dr. Radner’s appeal – mystagogy, the learning through liturgy. Mercifully, these English prayer books have a home now in the Universal Church. 

12:30 Sunday Mass

 Sung Mass continues at STM, Toronto 

12:30 noon on Sundays. 

263 Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto, ON

All are welcome as we continue to 

observe provincial regulations 

re. Covid.  

In the large church building that we share with St. Vincent's parish this means that we can easily accommodate everyone. 

Thoughts on Church Architecture

Have a look at this insightful article from THE CATHOLIC THING.

the catholic thing 2021/09/21

Mystagogy continues -- Our Lady

Mary, Mother of God 

January 1,  2022 STM, TORONTO

 

The Apostles together with the Blessed Virgin Mary, formed the Church, an indissoluble group surrounding the human life of Jesus. 

Mary’s fiat, her “yes” to God, is the foundation, the undergirding and the sustaining grace of the Church which emanates from Jesus Christ, her Son. The Church finds her personal centre in Mary. Her faith response to the Divine Bridegroom complements the masculine principle and together they bear the fruit of Christ’s love for the world. 

 

Knowing that all people are envisaged in God's plan, the Church can humbly know herself as the chosen representative of mankind before God in faith, prayer, and sacrifice, in hope for all and, still more, in love for all.

 

The highest priority of the Church belongs to our readiness to serve the divine love. Our “Yes” has no other purpose.  Yet, this response to God appears senseless in a world caught up in what is thought to be urgent, reasonable and individualistic. This is a society in thrall to the dictatorship of relativism, the plague of self-referential gender fluidity and the mania for unlimited choice. Society slouches towards Sodom.   

 

St. Thomas Aquinas, in discussing Mary's fiat, saw that it was necessary to show the spiritual marriage between the Son of God and human nature.  Mary's "yes" stands for all God's people; making it possible for every person to pronounce their own personal fiat – Yes to God’s love.

 

Mary’s Immaculate Conception locates her personal existence between Heaven and human life in its fallen state. This is because her Immaculate Conception has freed her from any influence of sin. 

Yet, Blessed Mary lived her human existence in this broken world of sin. Her personal life is situated at the passageway between the Old Covenant of Law and Sin and the New Covenant of Grace and Spirit.

 

Blessed Mary stands in direct continuity with the generations who descend from Abraham. As Virgin Mother, who became pregnant by her consent to the overshadowing Spirit; she signifies a new beginning. 

 

Finally, her existence lies in the tension between time and eternity. Although she herself has regained Paradise in her Assumption, as Mother of all the living, she gives birth to the Messiah in the birth-pangs of the Cross.

 

Mary's dramatic role emerges both from her centre – as Jesus’ Mother, the Mother of God and from the whole range of her being, which embraces fallen and redeemed humanity. Her role is universal.

 

Two thousand years of Christian tradition bear witness to the abiding presence of the Mother of God at the heart and centre of the Church.    

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.