Transcription
[Music] [Music] In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Direct all, Lord, all our actions by Thy holy inspirations and carry them on by Thy gracious assistance, so that every prayer and work of ours may begin from Thee and by Thee be happily through Christ Our Lord. Amen.
Virgin most prudent, pray for us.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
So we begin the major penitential season, Lent. And Lent, of course, is one of those things that it goes on for 40 days. Usually, you're in two weeks into it, you're like, "We're only two weeks in." But I do want to talk about Penance in the context of common things that a lot of people, Catholics especially, fall into that are not being paid too much attention to. Because if we're going to do real Penance for our sins, but also for our defects, because Penance isn't there to punish us. We don't do Penance to to flatter ourselves. We actually do Penance in order to correct ourselves, to to amend our life. And by that, we mean to straighten out the things that we're doing and to stop doing things that we should not be doing.
And so for the next two nights, I'm going to go through a series of things that I think that a lot of Catholics are actually falling into on a regular basis without even seeing the fact that they're even doing it. But before we get to that, I want to talk a little bit about confession. Because many of these things, hopefully, this will create lines of confession when we're done. But this is one of those things where the the confession is, this is as we've, as time goes on, except for in a few places, the confessions are getting sloppier and sloppier. You're seeing people when they come into the confessional, they're not very well prepared. Which you need to prepare for it. You should spend a little bit of time, if you're doing an examination of conscience every single night before you go to bed, which is what the church had always recommended as a practice. Then what will happen is, is that when it comes time to do your confession, it's all going to be clear, it's going to be on your mind. So doing an examination of conscience and even a confiteor or an act of contrition before you go to bed each night is a good, solid practice.
But when you go to confession, they used to say that you want to confess species, number, and circumstances. What's the species? Well, the Council of Trent says it has to be the lowest species. What do we even mean by that? The species is the nature of what you did. And so one of the common experiences of priests is that people will come into the confessional. And the Council of Trent puts a series of requirements on the priest about what he has to make sure he gets out of the penitent to make sure that their confessions are even valid. And so this is, he has to watch for these particular things. And so the species, when we say the lowest species, you have to be specific about what you've done. Doesn't mean details, it means specific.
So a very common one that you'll see, there's people will come into the confessional and they'll say, "I was impure." What does that even mean? Is that fornication? Is that adultery? Is that pornography? Is that, you can go down the whole litany of all the different forms. It's too broad. And a lot of times people are trying to hide the shame that they have for these particular sins behind kind of a generality or vagueness. And so very often, you have to tell people, the Council of Trent requires us to be specific when it comes to mortal sins. Specifically confess venial sins. You can confess generically, but mortal sins have to be confessed specifically.
Why? Well, what most people don't realize is that the confessional is technically speaking, a tribunal. It's a court. You are going to court. Literally, the judge, which is the priest, sits on the bench. This is why even civil judges actually wear what looks like a castle. That's where it came from. And so they sit in, they sit in a throne, which is an indicator that it's their place to judge. You come in and you, uh, there's an accuser. You, uh, there's a prosecutor. That's you. You accuse yourself of specific crimes against God that you've committed. And then, uh, the pre, the the judge has to take a look at this. Did this guy really ante up everything that he actually, all the crimes that he actually committed? Did he do it accurately? You know, or is he just hiding? Or is he lying to me? Because sometimes people will even come into the confessional and they don't want to tell the full truth, but they still want the absolution. Which means they're not going to get the abs, the absolution is not going to be valid.
So then the judge has to judge two things. Because people say, "Oh, you know, we, it's not our place to judge." That's actually not true. It's not our place to judge the interior state of somebody because in order to judge somebody, you have to have knowledge and authority over them. This is the whole problem with sedevacantism. People are passing judgment about the Holy Father's uh doctrinal statements and about his interior state regarding them, not the statements themselves, because we do have an obligation to take a look at those. But when we're talking about the actual interior state, they don't have the authority over this man to be passing judgment like this. And that's what declaration of heresy actually is. It's a passing of judgment on the obstinacy, which is an interior state of of the individual.
So he has to judge, but the the the priest has to judge, uh, that the person has confessed ingly, which means that you confess everything you're supposed to confess. And that means the church teaches us that we have to confess all our mortal sins to the, to the degree that we can remember. Our venial sins, then we can confess those. Uh, we're not required to confess them, but it's very salutary, which I'll talk about here in a minute. And then we can also even confess our defects, which we'll see again here why in a minute. But the confession, he has to judge that you've confessed properly. And then the second thing he has to do is judge that you are actually sorry for your sins. And how does he do that? By your demeanor, how you come in, how you confess. And then that's why he'll ask you, make an act of contrition.
But the species, he's got to make sure that you've confessed it properly. And then he's got to get the number. Because somebody could come into the confessional and say, "Oh yeah, I, you know, I committed fornication." Or I committed adultery. Well, committing adultery once is not nearly as bad. I mean, it's bad, but it's not nearly as bad as 20 times. And again, people will hide behind the vagueness so that they don't actually have to take the shame of actually what they did when they need to confess the precise number in relationship to mortal sins. If they can't remember, then they estimate. The church says in relationship to venial sins, it's also good to give a good number. If for no other reason for you to remember this.
So why do we confess venial sins and even defects? Because sometimes priests will say, "Well, I don't need to hear those." Actually, he does need to hear them. Nothing irritates me more when some priest, you know, he says, "That's not a sin." "That's not a..." "Yes, it is." All right. So, and this is the, this is the whole point. His job is to judge based upon what the church says, not what he thinks. Okay?
So the reason we actually should confess it is because every single sacrament has sacramental graces. There's specific graces given to the individual once they receive that sacrament to fulfill the obligations of that sacrament. So in relationship to baptism, the sacramental graces are to live our baptismal vows. In relationship to marriage, it's in order so that the married couple can actually, uh, have a, have a, be able to live in common, right? And also be able to actually, uh, to take care of the children and to educate the children and do it well, and to deal with each other as foibles. But it's in the case of confession, what you confess determines the actual graces you're going to receive from that confession in order to continue to not do those things in the future. This is one of the reasons why people will say, "Well, I don't, you know, I don't want to give Father a the laundry list." Give me the laundry list. Because if you don't give me the laundry list and you don't confess these things, God's not going to be giving you those graces necessarily for that. And then it's going to become even harder later.
And this is the whole point about defects. You can, you can confess temptations and defects. Because in that process, you still have to have sin in order to be validly absolved. But you can confess those defects because then, as a result, you will get the grace to stay out of those defects, like whether it's anger or impatience or something like that. And then we have to indicate, but we have to indicate the number. How often are you doing it? And then there's, of course, the circumstances. Have circumstances made it worse? You know, torturing somebody is a lot, you know, by using water torture is a lot worse. There's not, maybe it may not be worse than say some other form of torture, but the fact is is that the circumstances can sometimes, how we do things and when we do things, etc., can sometimes make make it worse. But these circum, the the species, number, and circumstances, just keep that in mind. When I go in, I need to give species, number, and circumstances.
Then, of course, you have to have contrition. You have to be sorry for what you've done. And by sorry, we mean two things. One is that there is actual sorrow in your will for what you have actually done. And by sorrow, St. Thomas defines as the, the presence of evil to an appetitive faculty. That means when you reflect upon your sins, you're actually sorry for it. Not because you got caught, like a certain politician in relationship to a certain woman named, uh, Monica Lewinsky. And not because, you know, you're you feel ashamed of it, but because of the fact that you're actually sorry that you offended God, then you actually, so because of how good he actually is. And this then, but part of that is also amendment of life. I'm going to change what I do.
Let me ask you a couple of questions. This will get to the heart of whether you really honestly believe that you've actually start. Do you actually have true contrition and that you're actually serious about rooting these things out of your life? In the last year, what have you done to root out any of your sins? Are you still doing the same things you did a year ago? There's a problem. Are you con, uh, are you controlling your anger, for example, better than you did last year? How about the road rage? I always tell people that when you're driving in a car, you have to make a conscious recognition of the fact that you've, as soon as you turn on the ignition, you have stepped into a sphere of idiots, and you're one of the idiots. Okay? And that's just, that's just the nature of it. Okay? But my point is, is are you, have you made any, uh, progress in that? What concrete steps do you take when you walk out of the confessional? I mean, concrete, not just like, "I don't want to fall into this sin anymore." But what, what plan do you actually have to root out your predominant sin in your life? What plan do you actually have? Do you have something concrete that you're going to start putting into practice right now? From now on, I'm not going to do this. When this happens, this is what I'm going to do. You have to take concrete steps. You can't just go in and confess and then fall into it. Go in, confess, and fall into it. Go in, confess, and fall into it, because that's basically recidivism. You're not really serious about a purpose of amendment. You have to be willing and desirous to put an end to every single one of your defects.
Why? Well, there's two reasons. One is we have a natural desire to be perfect. When people see that we're not perfect, and we know that they see that we're not perfect, and they see some defect of ours, it bothers us. And it even bothers us to see our own defects because we have a natural inclination to perfection. But we can't become perfect, unfortunately or fortunately, depending how you look on it, except by grace. God has to do it. We're not perfect. We can't render ourselves perfect. Only God, who is perfect, can do that. But he, it's also a precept of Divine Law because God said, "Be per," Christ said, "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." You have an obligation to render your soul in the state of perfection before you stand before God for your final judgment. You have that obligation. It's not just enough to keep going to confession and not really addressing it. You got to start taking concrete means.
Teresa V used to just recommend, just take just one of those and start working on it and rooting it out. And then each time you get rid of that, then go to the next one. She said, in a few years, you'll pretty much have cleaned everything out. Most people have this idea that stop sinning is what you reach when you've reached perfection in the spiritual life. Every spiritual writer will tell you that stopping sin is the beginning of the spiritual life and the climb to perfection. It's the beginning. Is it obtainable? Technically, it is. It's called grace. God can do it, but you have to be willing to really root it out.
And this is one of the reasons why I'll say this now because I can probably get away with it, although they probably will have to edit it so they don't put it on YouTube. But this is one of my concerns about people who have this idea. For example, if you read what even the church has said recently, there is a certain truth and which it is actually true. They said that in relationship to sexuality, as long as you don't act out on it, there's no sin involved in that. That's true as far as that statement goes. But homosexuality is a grave defect. Same-sex attraction is a grave defect. You may not be responsible for having caused it. You may not even give consent to it. That's not the issue. You just, like any one of us, if we have any kind of a defect, we have an obligation to start taking reasonable means to overcome it. Because if we don't, then we are complicit with with that thing being present to us, and then it's culpable. So this idea that somehow, you know, as long as I don't act out and I'm good, that's not, that's not necessarily the case. But you have to render yourself perfect before God.
So let's start taking a few, taking a look at a few of the Commandments. For the first Commandment, have you really improved your prayer life over the last year? St. Augustine says that you have to pray at least 15, 15 minutes a day just to fulfill the requirements of justice to God. Justice, you owe it to him to pray at least 15 minutes a day. But that's not even what charity would demand. If you really loved God, you would get to the point where every moment that you had free, you'd want to be go and talk to him, or at least be in his presence. And throughout the course of the day, you're not going to want to be away from him. You're going to want to be doing that. That's called recollection. Have you, you really improved your prayer life? For example, are you doing meditation every day? I mean, your average layman should really be doing 15 minutes of meditation a day at least. This is one of the reasons why Our Lady actually said at Fatima, and in a number of her apparitions, "Pray the Rosary." Why? Because it's 15 minutes. It meets, it fulfills the obligations of justice.
Another commandment in ref, first Commandment, "So thou shalt not have any gods before me." Is your attachment greater to your wife, your house, your money, than it is to God? Think about that. And how do you know that your attachment is greater to your wife or your husband than it is to God? Very simple. Do you ever lie to them to not hurt their feelings? Do you ever say things that you know, it's like, "I shouldn't have said that"? Because not necessarily that it's going to hurt their feelings, but because of the fact that you know you didn't want to have to tell the truth. Little white lies now and then. And the other thing of it is too, Christ even said that whoever, you know, loves his father, mother, house, his field, etc., more than me is not worthy of the kingdom of God.
How reverent are you in church? Do you know how to show God proper reverence when passing in front of the Blessed Sacrament? We're now living in a state where it's a, where it's monkey see, what monkey do. Who's the monkey? The priest. Who's the other monkey? The lay people. And why do I say that? I don't mean to be flippant. Well, maybe I do. But it boils down to this. A lot of priests who do not actually believe in the Real Presence got to the point where they stopped genuflecting when they would pass in front of the Blessed Sacrament, and they would just kind of bow or do whatever. That's not the proper reverence in front of the Blessed Sacrament. It says in scripture, "Before Christ, every knee shall bow." So if you're going to enact that properly, you need to be genuflecting in front of, well, actually, it says genuflect in the Latin in that p, uh, scriptural passage. You need to be genuflecting when you pass in front of it, and not just bowing.
Do you ever receive communion in the state of mortal sin? You know, most people don't realize this is one of the worst forms of sacrilege that you can possibly, it probably is the worst form of sacrilege you can possibly commit. The only other sin that is unforgivable that's actually worse is final impenitence. It's a sin against the Holy Spirit. But this one, the church used to say, is the worst sin that you can commit, is receiving Holy Communion in the state of mortal sin. The only time they said you could ever do it, it was in order to avert grave scandal.
Do you spend sufficient time learning your faith? The church tells us that we have an obligation to continue educating ourselves according to our state in life regarding the faith. Listening to conferences isn't enough. Listening to the sermons on Sunday isn't enough. You should be taking means to learning more about your faith. Which, by the way, many of you have probably heard me say this online over and over and over again. We do not live in a time where you can have a medial knowledge of your faith because if you do, you will get mopped up. The, for two reasons: one, the corrosive element of our culture is just too powerful unless you know your faith. Second, the heresy of modernism, which is the synthesis of all heresies, is so toxic, and it's so prevailing, and it's so in almost everything you see in the lives of the, in the church, except for in certain areas, that if you don't, don't know your faith well, you will fall into error. I'm not saying you're going to become a formal heretic, but you will end up falling into error. You see this across the board. You can see it even just online. People, some of the stuff they actually, you know, post on places like Twitter and stuff, they're, they're already succumbing to the errors of modernism.
For example, do you believe that the Catholic Church is the only divinely established means of salvation? Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the only one through whom grace flows and through the grace of salvation flows? Do you actually believe that it is contrary to Divine positive law and the natural law, which is what the church actually said, the propagation of the faith, the congregation with the propagation of the faith actually said, to engage in worship with non-Catholics? These are just a few things that you see. It's so toxic that it's gotten into that people don't even believe. And what we see this across the board, people just actually don't even believe. They're falling into moral heresies. "Oh, I don't think contraception is that bad." Or "I don't think this is that bad." Or what have you.
Do you think you're special? That God loves everybody but you? Now, this might sound like a strange question, but a lot of times you'll get Catholics, especially if they've done something that wounds them, that they've committed some type of sin that really bothers them interiorly, they will actually get to the point where they feel like God can't forgive them. He can forgive everybody else, but he can't forgive you. That's just sheer pride. You're not that special. And this is something, and it's the same thing, you know, when I tell people, you know, at the final judgment, at the final judgment, every single individual, both angelic and human, gets drug up in front of Jesus Christ, who is the judge. "All power on earth has been given to me." He is the judge. Is drug up one at a time, and every single good thing and every single bad thing, whether confessed or not, is revealed to everybody. This is something that we have to keep in mind. There is no such thing as private sin. It's not private because he, everyone's going to know eventually. That, in fact, it even says in scripture, "All things will be revealed. All things."
And people say, "Well, God forgives and forgets." That's just bad theology. God can't change. There's an actual line in scripture in the Psalms, "His mercy endures forever." Why does it endure forever? Because God sees the totality of time before him at a glance, always. And that means the minute you commit a sin, for all eternity, he's got to look at this thing. He's looking at it, but he has mercy on it if you subsequently do those things. And so his mercy literally endures forever. He doesn't hold it against us, even though he legitimately could. But the point being is, is that you need to make sure that A, everyone's going to know. But B, your sin also isn't private because of the fact that every time you commit a sin, two things happen. You detract from the grace. This is a topic which I'm going to talk about here in just a second. You subtract the amount of grace, actual grace, is coming into the world because if you had done the right thing, you'd be holier, and then you'd be able to merit more for other people. And the action that you actually did might have been an opportunity of grace for other people, but you didn't. So now there's a retraction of grace. And then to top it off, every time we commit a sin, we empower the diabolic in the in our lives. And that means we invite them into this world, and they become more powerful. Nothing you do is private. Nothing. It's true. So some people, most people might not see it. Doesn't mean God doesn't see it. Doesn't mean the angels don't see it.
Do you neglect going to confession on a regular basis? Do you presume on God's mercy by committing mortal sin, thinking, "Well, I'll just get to confession later"? Neglecting to get into confession regularly. They used to say that if you're not committing mortal sin, you should be getting to confession at least, or on average, of once a month. And then if you're committing mortal sin, you should be getting to there more frequently because you need those sacramental graces, which I mentioned, to try and stay out of the actual sin. But a lot of people don't get to confession with any kind of real regularity. There should be a regularity about it.
One of the things I would recommend, although the priest here might not appreciate me telling you this, is that it's a, a really good idea for lay people once every five years or so to do a general confession. That's where you sit down with a thorough examination of conscience, you go through every sin that you've ever committed in your entire life, and you confess it in that one confession. And it's good to do it every once every five years too, one, because Leo, Pope Leo the 10th, stated that whenever we re-confess a sin, we actually make reparation for the sin. Second, we'll get the graces to stay out of those things in the future. And third, it gives us a deep sense of God's grace in our life and where we're at in our spiritual lives. How much progress have we really made?
Do you tell God you love him on a regular basis? Do you make regular acts of charity? Do you tell him, "I love you"? Do you do this regularly? You should be doing it regularly. If you really loved God, if you're any kind of a Christian, you should be working on loving him to such a degree that it has this ardor, this burning. It's called zeal, that arises out of it.
Do you worship God, or do you pray for purely selfish reasons? You know, one of the things that we do when people come to us because they think that they have diabolic influence in their life, is the first thing that we do is we establish, uh, kind of a discipline that they have to actually follow. And in that process, we strip them of all the devotions that they were actually doing, doing, and say, "This is what you're going to do right here." And there's a reason for that. I'm not suggesting the devotions are bad. Quite the contrary, they're very good. But most people in their spiritual life, in their prayer life, pray or do those things because they get consolation out of it. When was the last time that you actually adopted a spiritual practice that was painful or that you didn't get any consolation out of, but you knew was actually going to be good for you? Most people are pretty spiritually mediocre.
Do you omit good works out of human respect? In other words, when you're sitting in, when you're sitting in a, uh, restaurant, do you make the sign of the cross and actually say the prayer to bless your food, or do you hide it? When you're at work and your co-workers, something comes up in relationship to Christianity or some even point of morality, but you keep your mouth shut because you don't want the embarrassment or the shame of it? These are just a few things to consider in relationship to the first Commandment.
What about the second Commandment? Do you use God's name in vain? You know, a lot of people say, "No, I don't." And then you listen to it. Every five minutes, they're using the word, our Lord's name in vain. There's a distinction between profanity and vulgarity and blasphemy. Vulgarity is using terms that refer to created things that are base and lowly. This is why it actually says in the Old Testament, "Swear neither by the Lord, nor by the earth, which is his footstool, by the heavens, or by the earth, because the earth is its footstool." So we're not even supposed to be using derogatory or negative terms, not negative terms, sorry, vulgar terms, except under very strict circumstances when necessary. Outside that context, we should not be doing that. But most people, I don't know if you've ever had a chance to just walk through your average airport in the last 15 years or 10 years, even or 5 years, there's a gradation. It's getting worse and worse. People are getting more vulgar and more vile in their behavior and in their speech. If you actually, and by the way, in my estimation, it's the women that have gotten far worse than they used to be. Vulgarity is something that is actually contrary to the virtue of modesty. And women by nature have a natural inclination to develop modesty more perfectly than men. But that's all collapsed within our culture, and now they're just vulgar and craft.
But then that's vulgarity. But then there's profanity. That's when you use our Lord's name or some other sacred thing in a way that's either not demonstrative or in worship or in prayer. And so if you're just using our Lord's name by flipping it out there, then that's actually a form of profanity, which is venially sinful. St. Thomas says it becomes blasphemy when you intend to denigrate his name. Once you intend to denigrate his name, then it becomes blasphemy, and it's mortally sinful.
Do you knowingly watch movies that take our Lord's name in vain or use vulgarities or have other immoralities in them? Do you intend, do you turn that on? Every time you turn that on, people say, "Oh, it's okay because it, you know, I'll just, you know, I'll skip over that part. I'll do this or do that." Maybe if you skip over it, it's one thing. But people will say, "Well, I'll just do one of the, um, Divine Praises when that kind of comes up." Here's the problem is the fact that every single time those things are used vulgarly, not just coming out of someone's mouth, but coming out of even a box, there's an offense that God takes in relationship to it. How do we know that we're not any different? If a husband had had a little recording about his wife that was hilarious, but it really was denigrating or offensive to his wife, right? And the first time he said it, right, she didn't take it kindly. But he recorded it because he thought it was so funny. And then he kept playing it over and over and over again. And he says, "Well, you shouldn't take offense because I'm not saying it." Yeah, I don't think so. Every single time she hears him playing, pressing that button, she's going to, going to take offense by it, and rightly so. And it's the same thing in relationship to God.
Do you talk during Mass or in church? Most people are unaware of the fact that every time you talk in church without necessity, there are five sins that are committed in the process. The first is immodesty in relationship to decorum. This is not the time or the place to be talking. One time, this one priest recounted to me that he was actually right in the middle of the Canon of Mass, and all of a sudden, all the way in the back, this guy in his 80s, his phone rings. And so the guy just stands up in the middle of the church. He's like, "Hello? No, I can't talk to you now. I'm at Mass." Right? It gives you an idea of where we're at. But the point being, and you know, by the way, it happens more often than you would think. Okay? But the point I'm driving out in this is that this is not the time or the place. When you come into the church, either leave your cell phone in your car, or turn it off, or at least put it on vibrate at the very, at the very minimum. It also draws undue attention to yourself. It's called admir, the sin of admira, or admiration. It's not admiration like we have in English where you look at you and you have, you actually think highly of somebody. Rather, what it is, is it's a way of drawing attention to ourselves unduly. It's also in circumspect. You're not keeping track of your circumstances. What are you doing talking in this place? And then it also is unjust to God and to others, because you're detracting from others' ability to focus on him, and you're detracting from your attention to him, which you have an obligation to give. And then, of course, it's the vice of like, it's also the sin of loquaciousness. Five sins every time you talk in church unnecessarily. And yet, you go into some places, and it's just rife. You know, people think that once Mass is over, it's time to talk. That's not the, this isn't a play. This isn't going to some symphony. You're actually going to attend Mass.
The third Commandment. Not getting to Mass on Sundays and Holy Days. So the third Commandment is, uh, basically, we have obligations that we have to render back to God. And so he says, "Thou shalt keep holy the Sabbath." What does that actually mean? It means that God designated that one day out of the week, we are to stop doing everything else we're doing. We are to refresh and recoup and recreate ourselves. But the primary focus of that day is to be him. And so this is an important thing. And I'll tell you why. During the late 1600s, Christ appeared to a young lady and said, "I want the King of France to consecrate France to my Sacred Heart." And he wanted it done for reparation for doing unnecessary servile work on Sundays. Now, let's unpack what happened in the process. The nature of it is that when our Lord or Lady appears and said, "X, Y, or Z," is to do X, Y, or Z. If they fail to do X, Y, or Z, the one who pays the price is X, Y, and Z. This is why we even read it in Fatima. When he said the Pope is to consecrate the, uh, Russia to the Immaculate Heart, later he says, "He will suffer much." He doesn't do it in time. In 1929, Christ actually appeared to Sister Lucia and said that the Pope will do it, but by that time, it will be too late to avert what was supposed to avert. We'll return to that in just a minute.
It was the same thing in France. People were beginning that process of doing unnecessary servile work on a Sunday. They were working on a Sunday when they shouldn't have been working. And so what was happening is, is what happens? Well, as I mentioned just before, they were committing this sin, and there was this retraction of grace. Once the retraction of grace happens, all grace comes into the world by means of the Catholic Church. If the Catholics are not meriting the grace for the rest of the world to receive the actual graces in order to act well, they stop acting well. We call it politics. We wonder why it's such an unmitigated mess in the politics. It's because we are not gaining enough grace for them to be acting the way they ought to be acting. And so he, Christ said he wants the King of France to do this. The King of France didn't do it. What did they do? A hundred years to the week, if I'm not mistaken, they started lopping off the heads of the royalty, and that's when the French Revolution set in. And from that point on, the history of humanity has never been the same, all because of the lack of following his Commandments and doing unnecessary servile work.
This is why you don't want to do it. You don't want to work. If, if it can be put off until tomor, you know, until Monday, you put it off until Monday. It also means you have to have foresight. You have to start looking at, "Hey, Sunday's coming up. Let's make sure we got everything we need to have on Sunday." It also means no unnecessary commerce on a Sunday. You know, it's not the type of thing that you get online and just start ordering stuff right and left. It also means you don't go to the store and just start buying stuff unless it's absolutely necessary. If it can be put off, you put it off. Now, the question that people always ask is, "Well, can you go out to eat?" And historically, in Catholic countries, they did allow it in order to give the wife a break from cooking. But the point being is, is that the, no unnecessary work or commerce on a Sunday. And it's servile work. It's not because you enjoy it. Doing gardening, heavy gardening, it's one thing. If you got to do stuff like just water the plants because you have to, but it's another matter if you're out there tilling the soil and planting and doing this, that, and everything. That is servile in nature. What's the definition of servile? Something that you would pay a servant to do. And that's what this is. So no unnecessary servile work on a Sunday. This is, uh, this is actually one, as I mentioned, this profanation of the Sundays, we're going to pay a price for this.
The fourth Commandment. This is where the rubber starts really meeting the road, if you haven't gathered that already. So, "Thou shalt honor thy parents." Okay. So dishonoring a parent. I'm going to give you an example of how people dishonor their parents and not even realize it. In our culture today, if you read question 154 of the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas, he says that the principal disorder of the sin of fornication is not in temperance, it's injustice against the father to protect the honor of his daughter. It's one of the principal ways that the fourth Commandment is being violated right and left, even though it falls under the sixth as well. Another way that this, the said, in addition to us honoring our parents, so children have to be obedient. Lack of reverence. Now, this becomes up very important because I'm going to talk about this in two parts. The first is that there is a virtue of piety. Now, the virtue of piety is the virtue in which we honor those who are above us, that is our parents, specifically. And so a lot of times guys will ask me, "Well, how do you know what kind of a wife she's going to be?" Very simple. See if she obeys her father. What's her relationship like with her father? Now, that's not an absolute, but it's a pretty good indicator. How does the son treat his mother? That's how he's going to treat his wife in the future. And so that honor is something. What is honor? It's praise for excellence. What's the excellence? They begot you, and they raised you, and they sacrificed for you. And so you have an obligation to honor them. And that's it's praise or recognition for excellence. We have an obligation to honor them.
But this also means that they have to, we that not only in relationship to the children. Let me back up just before I get to the second part. Once in a while, it's usually a woman in her mid-40s, married, will bring me a 10-year-old boy who's just out of control. He's out of control. And they'll, they'll say, "I think the kid's possessed." So then I'll say, "Do you ever spanked a kid?" "Oh, no, Father. I don't believe in that." Well, there's where the demon is. Because 90% of the time, it's just they just didn't discipline this kid right. But then I'll ask them, "What do you think is the next question I ask? Do you obey your husband?" This is divine positive law. "Women, be subject to your husbands." It's divine positive. It's a commandment from God. It's not a request. It's not based on the merit of your husband. We all know he's not as smart as you, or as holy as you, or as virtuous as you. That's not the issue. It's a matter of authority.
Now, why am I going into this? I'm going into this precisely because the perfection of the woman in the, in the married state, is going to be achieved when she actually has piety for the office of her husband as head of the household, reverence for his authority, not because of him, but because it comes from God. In the Old Testament, in the New Testament, Leo XIII was the last one to reiterate this. All authority comes from God. We'll see what the husband has to do here in a minute. So I just asked her, "Are you obedient to your husband?" 99% of the time, no. Well, that's okay. All your kid is learning is is that someone who's in, someone who's subject to someone else can just disobey whenever they please, or whenever they think that they should.
There's also obligations in relationship to children, the parents, under the fourth Commandment. For example, deferring baptism. This is becoming a huge problem. People are deferring baptism until much later in the child's life. The church has actually said it's even part of canon law, deal, that you should be baptizing the kid within the first few weeks, which is normally interpreted as two to two to four weeks after birth. You should be giving your child baptized. If you're going beyond that, the church considers it risking the child's salvation. If something is to happen to the child, and you'd be responsible for that. So there's problems with the baptism issues. Sometimes they're not even just getting, boing to get the kids baptized. The real be is when you hear people say, "Well, I don't want to baptize my kid. I want him to be able to make the choice for himself." Okay, let me get this straight. You're going to allow a 12-year-old or an early teenager to make a decision about something that determines their salvation for all eternity in the state of absolute and abject ignorance? That's just daft. Because 99% people are just going to go the way of all flesh. They're not going to become Catholic, because Catholics, it's hard to live a Catholic life.
Failing to properly instruct their children in the faith. You know, one of the biggest problems that we actually had is that the people who grew up in the 50s actually went to really good Catholic schools. A lot of them. And then when they got into the 60s and 70s, everything had collapsed. But they did what their parents did and sent their kids to Catholic schools. But they failed to be checking up with their kids to make sure that they were actually hearing what they should hear and not be being led into error. So failing to properly instruct children in their faith. Always tell people, look, your goal as a parent is not college. Your goal is to get your child to the age of 18 with spiritual, sufficient spiritual, moral, and physical formation to where they can actually assume the obligations of any adult in society. That's your new job. There's nothing in there that says anything about college. No, that doesn't mean you can't send him to college. I'm just saying.
So what about husbands? Well, with husbands, there's a few things that they end up committing. When Adam, when Eve handed the fruit to Adam, she was taking headship, which is the sin of usurpation. So anytime a woman rebels against the authority of her husband or takes authority in a particular situation, it's usurpation. It's a specific sin against justice. But when she handed it to him, what did he do? He capitulated his authority. So now you have this problem of husbands just give her what she wants so she'll be quiet, or I don't have to listen to her, or just let her deal with it so I don't have to deal with it. And that's just capitulating his authority. It's irresponsibility. Adam committed essentially two. There's actually at least eight sins, actually more, but that he committed in the fall. But two of them were, he was irresponsible. He shouldn't have capitulated his authority. In fact, the fathers say he should have admonished Eve, "Hey, you shouldn't have eaten that apple." And then the other one was effeminacy. Now, effeminacy is defined as an unwillingness to put aside our pleasure in order to pursue what is arduous. Let me unpack that a bit. It's where a guy becomes so focused on his pleasure and what he wants to in relationship to his pleasure that he's unwilling to do things that are hard and difficult. Well, maintaining headship in a family is hard and it's difficult and it's not pleasant. And so the fathers of the church actually say that Adam did not want to be separated from the pleasures of his wife. And from that point on, now men have a problem with irresponsibility and effeminacy. And then as a result of that, they capitulate their authority in the context of it, or they misuse their authority to their own ends.
Authority, according to the entire tradition of the church, is never given. It's never given to the, to anyone for the sake of the one who receives it. It's given for those, for those who are under the authority. The husband's authority is not for his benefit. It's for the benefit of his children and his wife. The church's authority, even the Holy Fathers, the bishops, the priests, it's for the benefit of those under them. It's not for them. But this area is one of the principal areas that I see failures consistently in marriage, consistently among Catholics.
Fulton Sheen, one time when he was first ordained, was put under this one pastor who was a bit old and crotchety, probably like me, some sort. And the pastor was preaching on Ephesians 5, which is the one about "Women, be subject to your husbands." And at a certain point, he said, "If there's any man that's the head of his household in this congregation, let him stand."
Up well, nobody stands up for a little while. Finally, some guy all the way in the back, hat and hand, stands up. And so the pastor leans over and says, "Oh, so you're the head of your household, huh?" He said, "No, my wife told me to stand up."
All right, I tell people, I tell married men especially, when they're about to get married, and I actually said this to a friend of mine one time, you never, let me stress this again, you never ever give your wife what she wants. Ever. You give her what's going to make her happy. Now, if she's virtuous, those are one and the same. But if there's any area of her life that isn't virtuous, and you give into it, you are going to make her miserable. And in the end, she's not going to be happy with you.
The next one, in relationship to, uh, married couples, says failure to render the marital debt. This basically means that if there's a reasonable request for the conjugal act on the side of one of the parties, as long as it's not unreasonable, the other person has to render it. When you get married, you are technically speaking, the priest only officiates, which basically means, what? He's the official that stands there to make sure you do it right. It's the two parties involved that are conferring the sacrament on each other. And when you enter into marriage, you're entering into a contract. That contract, the church calls it a covenant. But it's true. If you actually look up the traditional definition of covenant, it says solemn contract. It's a just matter of justice because when you enter into marriage, you're giving rights over your body to your spouse. This is why St. Paul says that it is no longer his body but hers, and it's no longer her body but his. Those rights mean that if you don't render the marital debt when there's a reasonable request, it's mortally sinful. That's what the church has always taught. Today, people say, and by the way, being romantic, well, it's not romantic. That's not good enough. And you know, I got a headache. That's not good enough either. On the other hand, I often tell this to men more than anybody, if she's not feeling well, don't be an idiot, right? So even though you can make a reasonable request, you know, be charitable and be concerned about her in relationship with that. And that actually brings up the other point is that the husbands have to love their wives. Why do they have to love their wives? Because if you love your wife, then you're willing to sacrifice for her. And this is built into feminine psychology. If her husband is sacrificial in relationship to her, never considers himself in the equation, but only is looking after what is best for her, I guarantee you she will be naturally inclined to want to submit. But if you are selfish and a pig, because most guys are pigs, uh, what's going to happen is she's going to find it very difficult. It's normal human psychology. She's going to find it very difficult to submit, and it's your own fault.
In relationship to employees, which is also under the Fourth Commandment. So in relationship to employees, do you actually spend the time? If you're working, especially if you're working by the hour, being paid by the hour, do you actually put in the time that is required of you when you check in and when you check back out? And it says eight hours, did you actually put eight hours in at the time? Or did you spend half your time scrolling on your phone, or talking on the phone, or working, looking on the computer, or looking at stuff that had nothing to do with your job? By the way, if you do that, you have restitution to make. If you spent an hour and a half during the day not even doing the work that your employee paid for you, you either have to go and cough up that other hour and a half's worth of pay, or you've got to put in the hour and a half of pay for free to pay it off. It's restitution because if you don't, it's theft. This is what most people don't realize. Scrolling during the or looking at your computer, if it's not connected to your work while at work, is a form of theft.
Fifth Commandment, Thou shalt not kill. Now, obviously, I'm not going to talk to this congregation about the requirements of not having abortion because if you need that talk, I'll be happy to have it with you because we've got bigger problems, actually. But this is also another thing that you're actually seeing in relationship to violations of the fifth commandment is IVF. I realize it's big and it's in vogue now, especially in the political scene, to support it. But in point of fact, aside from the fact that it separates the unit and the procreation of elements, as Paul VI points out in Humanae Vitae, in addition to it's separating those elements, John Paul II talks about in Donum Vitae, separates those elements, nevertheless, when they do it, they create a number of different embryos, then they do embryo selection, and they actually end up killing a large number of those. And so that's another thing that you see. Catholic, oh, the church is pro-life, isn't it? Yeah, it's pro-life in an orderly fashion. But then that also brings up the whole thing of contraception. The Heritage Foundation actually revealed because they found out, they did some research, and they found out when Bill Clinton was in office, he decided he wanted to see what percentage of Catholics were actually serious about their faith. What percentage of Catholics? And what he discovered when, so he actually had a study done, a government study, and what he found out is that 98% of Catholic couples are either currently on contraception or have used it. 98%. We're hardly any different than the general population. And yet, you rarely hear it confessed. Then, of course, I mentioned already anger and road rage. Those are against the fifth commandment. What about drunkenness or drinking to excess? Are you courteous to people when you're on the road? I'm not talking, by the way, I don't mean to connect the drunkenness and the courteousness by the way, necessarily. But in relationship with the fifth commandment, this is where anger comes in. It's a sin against the fifth commandment, and it has to be something that is mastered.
I'm going to end tonight with this. I had a case once where the attack, the exorcist will actually be attacked during various stages of the liberation process. These are six stages of liberation, and the attacks will really ramp up towards the end of stage five, which is right before liberation. And when they attack the exorcist internally, you start learning an awful lot about the demon and his nature and what he's inclining towards, etc. And so he was trying to jade my perception, he was trying to jade, I should say, really tried to jade my perceptions to make me irritated or angry at certain things. And so I started consecrating it to Our Lady, which kind of took the mmmph out of it. But during one of the sessions, I beat out of him, what, what's your angle on that? And he said, he said, he gets most people angry by getting them to be attached to their externals. And he said, basically, what I do is I get people to be attached to their perfection in their externals. And when the external isn't quite what they want, then I drive the anger in relationship to it. So what does this mean? It means a large percentage of your anger can be taken care of just by letting loose of those things that are external, being detached from it. Your externals don't have to be perfect. This is actually true in road rage. When you're driving, other people's driving isn't perfect. And if you're detached from it, it's not going to be an issue. So work on those particular things. Just start thinking about this. What areas of your life are you just kind of going through, that you're just rambling through, that you're not really taking a close look at? That you're not taking a look at, what area of my life do I need to shore up to make sure that I don't end up having to go to a long, spend a long time in purgatory? These are just some common things, but they're very common, in fact, that most people end up struggling with. So to that end, if some of this hasn't, you know, struck home with you, then start asking Our Lady of Sorrows, specifically under that title. I've talked about her here before, in fact. But ask Our Lady of Sorrows, what is the defect, what's the sin that A, your son wants me to work on the most, but B, what are the ones I'm not seeing or that I'm not really serious about straightening out? Because if you're mediocre in your spiritual life, if you're not a saint, you know, the beauty of it is, I can say nobody in this room is a saint. Because if you were a saint, you'd say, yes, that's true, Father, I'm not a saint. If you're not a saint, you should be saying, yes, Father, I'm not a saint. But if you're not a saint, that means there's some areas of your spiritual life that you're not showing up for, and you're not taking a good look at, and you're plateauing out, and you're not advancing because you're not working on those defects, you're not addressing these things that need to be addressed. And you need to take a hard look at it. If you'll kneel, I'll give you a blessing. Benedicte omnipotens Deus. Amen. Of Mary.
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