Monthly Archives: March 2020

A Stiff-necked People, Plague, Penance, and the Promised Land – March 24, 2020

“Then if you walk contrary to me, and will not hearken to me, I will bring more plagues upon you.” (Lev. 26:21)

The stoppage of ALL public Catholic Masses in the United States, and in many places around the world, is unprecedented. We know that private celebrations of the Mass by priests continue, but nevertheless, public Masses have ended. One has to go back to the 300’s A.D. in Rome, before Christianity became legal with Emperor Constantine, to find a time when no public Masses were offered anywhere. The Eucharist and the Mass are the source and summit of the Catholic faith. Yet, there is a blackout of public Masses everywhere now. This should grab our attention. 

The Old Testament offers many examples when God grabbed the undivided attention of his people by sending plagues upon them too. This does not mean that plagues are synonymous with sin. There is not a one-to-one correlation, as Jesus said in the New Testament (John 9:3). It does not mean someone suffering from the virus, or any other ailment for that matter, has sinned in some way. No, not at all – think of the righteous, but long-suffering, plague-afflicted man, Job. 

However, the Bible does make it abundantly clear that plagues can be a tool that God uses to discipline his people and to draw them back to himself. A good father chastises his children when they make bad choices, or are doing something harmful to themselves or others. The global size, scope, and unprecedented nature of the current COVID-19 pandemic suggest something unique is happening. 

We, as a Church and a society, continue to stubbornly embrace a moral turpitude against the sanctity of life and marriage and the family. Furthermore, there are unresolved ecclesiastical sexual scandals within the hierarchy of the Church. Others have even made the connection to the public, fertility-goddess ceremony of the pachamama idol in the Vatican during the Amazonian synod last fall and the current outbreak. There is no denying that a certain laxness has crept into the Church in belief and in practice. We see this reflected in flippant casualness in regards to the Real Presence of Christ in Blessed Sacrament. This same lessening of the faith can be discerned in the other sacraments as well, like infrequent Confessions. Worse still, some have left the Church all together. In short, there has been a general falling away from the faith.

In similar instances in the Old Testament, God called his people a “stiff-necked people” (Ex. 32:9), because they were stubborn, obstinate, and recalcitrant in their sins and unbelief. When they refused to repent, God did at times send plagues upon them. In the Book of Exodus, God dealt with the hard-heartedness of pharaoh by sending ten plagues upon him and the Egyptians for not letting his people, the Israelites, go free to worship Yahweh. The last plague, the death of the firstborn sons, led to the freeing of the Israelites, and the institution of the Passover sacrifice. Out of the plagues, God ultimately brought something good, as pharaoh finally relented and let his people go. 

The plague that brought the first Passover is the same Passover sacrifice that Christ celebrated at the Last Supper, or the first Catholic Mass. The Passover sacrifice was a prefigurement to the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, the true Paschal Lamb of God, and the Eucharist. It is the same public sacrifice that God permits now to be stayed by a plague.

It was not just the Egyptians who had to contend with plagues because of their hard-heartedness. The Israelites, too, in their wilderness wanderings often times strayed from the will of the Lord, descending into idolatry and immorality. Even at the foot of Mount Sinai, the mountain of God, as Moses was receiving the Law, the Israelites worshipped the golden calf and “rose up to play,” a euphemism for sexual immorality. God immediately answers this with a plague: “And the Lord sent a plague upon the people, because they made the calf which Aaron made.” (Ex. 32:35) 

There are numerous other instances throughout the Old Testament that God chastises his own beloved people through plagues:

  • “While the meat was yet between their teeth, before it was consumed, the anger of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord smote the people with a very great plague.” (Num. 11:33) 
  • “behold, the Lord will bring a great plague on your people . . . ” (2 Chron. 21:14)
  • “they provoked the Lord to anger with their doings, and a plague broke out among them.” (Psalms 106:29)

We get the point. Plagues are one means that God turns us away from sin and leads us back into obedience and sanctity. It is a wake up call. Sin has consequences. This is not something our sophisticated modern ears really want to hear. To our insulated Disney World perspective of life, if you will, these are foreign concepts. The reality of sin and just punishment is something we wrestle with. Yet, here we are. 

This corona event may be a necessary prick to our consciences. But, one may ask, for what reason? Perhaps, it is a reminder that God is in control, and he has established his unchanging law and commandments that we are obliged to follow. The coronavirus has been an earthquake to our society, to the world, in terms of our collective health, economy, and way of life. It is an unmistakable call to penance. We avoid activities now that would endanger our mortal bodies, but what about preserving our immortal souls? This is a spiritual event. It is like a large, blinking, neon yellow “CAUTION” sign to stay on the straight and narrow path to eternal life.    

The physical crisis is a symptom of our underlying spiritual crisis. It is meant to wake us from our spiritual slumber. We know that God only allows evil for an ultimate, though mysterious, greater good. Scripture tells us that God “desires all men to be saved.” (1 Tim. 2:4) Our heavenly Father wants every single one of us to be in Heaven with him. We must play our part though by turning away from sin, and offering repentance and prayer. This great momentary pause in things is an opportunity for us. It is our monastic moment, cloistered in our homes, to examine honestly the state of our souls. Perhaps, if we loosen our stiff-necks and turn away from sin, then later, like the Israelites, we may enter into the Promised Land.  

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Fatima, Baal, Mt. Carmel, and the Brown Scapular – March 9, 2020

On October 13, 1917, the Virgin Mary appeared at Fatima declaring, “I am the Lady of the Rosary,” and instructing the visionary children again “to pray the rosary everyday.” This is one of the great messages of Fatima to pray the rosary each day, in addition to the devotion of the first five Saturdays. What seems to be less well known and associated with Fatima is the devotion of the brown scapular. In that final apparition, Lucia saw Mary and our Lord pass through the mysteries of the rosary: first, she saw Mary and Jesus as part of the joyful mysteries; and then, they came in the sorrowful mysteries; and finally, the glorious mysteries. 

It is specifically in this last vision of the glorious mysteries that Lucia saw Mary as the Queen of Heaven and Earth in the form of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel holding in her right hand the brown scapular. Sister Lucia would later affirm, according to a Carmelite priest Fr. Howard Rafferty, in an interview on August 15, 1950 that, “The rosary and brown scapular are inseparable. You cannot have one without the other.” The scapular is integral to the original message. Just as the Virgin Mary asks each of us to pray the rosary every day, so too, according to Sister Lucia, does Mary want us to wear the brown scapular. This is why she was holding the brown scapular in the vision, as if asking us to take it and wear it. 

What is the brown scapular? If you are like me, I knew relatively little about it until recently. The brown scapular is imaged after the brown habit or garment that the Carmelite monks wear. These are the two brown wool cloths the monks wear over their shoulders covering their front and backside. The brown scapular is this garment in miniature form. It is a sacramental of the Church. “Scapular” is derived from the “scapula bones,” or the shoulder blades that the garment covers. The Carmelite monks wear the brown garment as a type of mantle covering themselves, an idea that originally shows up with them in history around the 13th – 14th century at Mt. Carmel in Israel. Tradition has it that Mary first gave the brown scapular to St. Simon Stock. 

The Carmelites were the original order consecrated to the Virgin Mary. This is why they hold a special place in Mary’s heart. They pattern their lives after her, just as “Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart”(Luke 2:19). So too, the Carmelites contemplate these heavenly matters and consecrate themselves to the Virgin Mary. Thus, the Carmelite mantle is synonymous with consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The brown scapular is the passing of this Carmelite garment to the secular world in miniaturized form. The large brown garment that covers the body in the ascetic world is shrunk to two little brown cloth pieces attached by strings in the lay world. It is the same Carmelite spirituality and Marian devotion extended to the average layperson living within the hubbub of common life.     

The idea of the Carmelite mantle extends all the way back to Elijah’s mantle in the Old Testament. The prophet Elijah had challenged the false-prophets of Baal at Mt. Carmel. Baal was the demonic god of the Canaanites, whose religion demanded idolatrous worship, cultic orgies with temple prostitutes, and even the sacrificial offering of infants. That is, the Canaanite religion was a depraved mixture of idolatry, sexual immorality, and human sacrifice. Elijah challenged the 450 priests of Baal at Mt. Carmel to see whose “god” would consume an offering by fire, a kind of liturgical battle. Baal, of course, did not answer, and the false-prophets stood mute. Elijah, on the other hand, called on the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and fire from heaven consumed the offering. Elijah, through Yahweh, defeated Baal and the false-prophets. This is the legacy of Mt. Carmel. Later, Elijah parted the Jordan River by touching his mantle to the waters (2 Kings 2:8), and thus, re-enacting the parting of the Jordan by Joshua and the Red Sea by Moses. This is a prefigurement to the Sacrament of Baptism. It is at that point that Elijah is taken up to heaven – linking the notion of Baptism to heaven. The brown garment, then, which is the Carmelite monks’ habit, is by extension reminiscent of the mantle of Elijah at Mt. Carmel. 

In modern times, we battle the same type of false-prophets of Baal that Elijah battled in ancient days on Mt. Carmel. The worldly influence of modernism pushes on us various forms of idolatry, especially money, power, materialism, and extreme political correctness. Sexual immorality too is rampant in our society. Even child sacrifice is the law of the land with nearly unencumbered abortion on demand. Baal and Baal-worship is alive and well in Western Civilization. Yet, just like in biblical times at Mt. Carmel, God comes to defeat Baal again. In our New Covenant era of the Gospel, God crushes the head of Baal through the Virgin Mary. Our Lady of Mt. Carmel asks us to embrace this special devotion and consecration to her Immaculate Heart through wearing the brown scapular.

We know the essential conditions of the Fatima promise: to pray the rosary daily, make frequent confessions, receive the Eucharist often, make spiritual sacrifices, as well as fulfill the first five Saturdays’ Devotion of Reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Yet, Mary also appeared at Fatima as Our Lady of Mt. Carmel offering us the brown scapular. Through a simple enrollment ceremony with a priest or deacon, we can consecrate our brown scapular and seek to live that consecration each day. It must be of great importance if Mary made sure to present it to the world again in such a very purposeful and dramatic fashion as at Fatima. The final apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes was also on the feast day of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, July 16th. Wearing the brown scapular is something very easy and takes little effort. Yet, it is a strong affirmation and a tangible sign of our consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It is a badge of our desire to live holy lives each day under the mantle of her guidance and protection. 

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