4th Sunday after Easter

Taken from De Fide Catholica

Sermon for the 4th Sunday after Easter

The acceptance of the truth makes the difference between a disciple and a true disciple. This was our conclusion last week. But let us be sure we have a solid understanding. We are not speaking about the general and objective truth given to everybody, namely the Revelation, but of a more intimate and personal truth: the truth about myself. Who am I? What is my vocation? What does God expect from me? Knowing this truth will make me a free and true disciple, on the condition that I accept it. This condition seems to be a paradox, because, in order to be free, we must accept the ‘vocation’, so to speak, of slavery.

We never grow tired of drawing spiritual advice from Saint Francis de Sales. “ God has ties with whom He enchains as His servants. Our Lord Jesus-Christ enchains many souls with ties of love and dilection and He makes them His subjects and slaves, but it is a sweet slavery. These souls have no consideration of fear, but are totally attracted by the love of Our dear Master and come to consecrate themselves entirely to His service.” Saint Francis de Sales speaks here about the Religious who “have left the false freedom of the world.” It is truly a false freedom because it is illusory. Liberty, or freedom, is the new battle cry of the world which wants to establish its new order. But what kind of liberty?

Liberty is now a god, or a goddess, whichever you prefer, with its religion named democracy. It has its priests and preachers, the great champions of human rights, the tenors of tolerance, the cantors of freethought. But as soon as you deny their creed, they excommunicate you and ban you from of the society. The great inquisitor Saint-Just has returned the verdict two centuries ago: “No liberty for the enemy of liberty!” Since this day, the blade falls and falls again. It is important to have good worshipers totally devoted to the cause. So the goddess Liberty eliminates all its opponents, and for them, it has no tolerance. You might say that I exaggerate and that today there is no more guillotine. For sure, Liberty shows a nicer face today, but it can still kill you on a social, political and professional level. Today, in our democratic countries, the victims of the goddess Liberty are more numerous than you can imagine. And I even don’t speak about the millions of sacrificed victims offered to the new Baal, the unborn babies who don’t have a chance to defend themselves in the womb of their mothers. What a tragic and sarcastic irony in the land of freedom that are our modern democracies!

Today France will have a new President. Next year, the US will have their new president. And soon or later, the other western countries will have their new Presidents or Prime ministers. They all promise changes; they all promise the beginning of a new era with more security, more prosperity. Were are lucky: after decades and decades of liberty, which allows us to choose the best man – or woman – to lead our country toward happiness, we certainly live today in a wonderful world where peace and justice mean something.

But when I open my eyes, I see a different world than the world promised by our politicians. Do we have to be surprised? After all they all belong to the religion Democracy and worship the goddess Liberty and its saints: Rousseau, Danton, Washington or Lincoln for example. Yes, Democracy is certainly the greatest illusion of the modern times. It is the illusion to believe that you are free because you can vote and decide. But decide what?

Almost all the major laws are decided in the Masonic lodges. Then it is just a matter of time. The great Democracy starts its brain washing so that people finally accepte these laws and vote for them. Then, they say that the people has decided, so the laws are now legitimate. Today they teach your children in the public schools that homosexuality is just a legitimate difference and tomorrow your children will vote for a candidate who is in favor of same-sex marriage. They call this the social-progress, the progress of the ideas, of tolerance etc…

Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a professor of economics at the University of Nevada wrote an interesting book named: Democracy – the god that failed. I wish it is true, but Democracy is still an active and powerful god. The perspective of Hoppe is more about economics, but he has some interesting thought. He shows what are the so-called progress of Democracy: “In comparison to the 19th century, the cognitive prowess of the political and intellectual elites and the quality of public education have declined. And the rates of crime, structural unemployment, welfare dependency, parasitism, negligence, recklessness, incivility, psychopathy, and hedonism have increased.” In a more lapidary manner, Pope John Paul II evoked the “structures of death” of the modern society.

Dear Brethren, we must understand that the world is against Our Lord Jesus-Christ. It is not new. The world wants us to be its slaves and it makes us believe that we are free. The world has established its new order with its new religion and its new creed. It is a caricature of the true God and of the true Religion and we can recognize here the author of this new order, the one who is jealous of God from the beginning: Satan!

As Saint Augustine said, there are two cities which are fighting against each other. We have to choose, one or the other, but we cannot belong to both. One will make us free, the other gives us the illusion that we are free. One seems hard, because it involves renouncements, the others proposes a world of pleasure and comfort. One asks you to humble yourself in front of the true God, the other makes you a god. But one is good and leads to the real liberty and happiness while the other is a trap that leads to perdition.

Now you can choose. But when you choose, be sure to be really free, because your choice will have terrible repercussions now on earth, and later in the eternity. As Saint Francis de Sales says again, our free will is really free only when it is slave of God’s will.

May Our Lady help us to understand this and to escape from the slavery of the world, so that we can enjoy the true liberty of the children of God.