Feast of the Holy Family, Dec. 30, 2012
Fr. Anthony Brankin
I have always been convinced that a priest needs to preach about the things that we believe—particularly about God and all the supernatural mysteries. How do we get to heaven? What is Grace? What are the sacraments? What is sacrifice? How about hell and purgatory? Who is Mary? How do we pray? What is the church? This is preaching about the creed—the profession of faith.
It is incredibly important to preach the creed because if our people do not know what their religion teaches (and why it is true) they can easily fall prey to those who will destroy their faith. They will succumb either to the so-called Christian sects—or to the atheists.
But equal in importance to preaching about the Creed—and maybe even more importantly these days—is preaching about the Ten Commandments. If the creed is all about the things that we must believe in order to be saved—then the Ten Commandments are about what we must do in order to be saved—in other words—how we live our lives in light of what we believe.
This is so important because we seem to be at a moment in the history of our country and world and faith when our people most need to know what they believe and why they believe it—and how they must their lives in order to live as God wants them to live.
Only bulwark against sex fiends
We are at the very crossroads of history when the Church and her teachings are the only bulwark against the atheists and materialists and sex fiends who run this country who believe neither in the Creed nor in the Ten Commandments. Without our Catholic faith—its doctrine and its morals—our people will be helpless in the face of the evil that is assaulting them. This evil is not an accidental evil—like an earthquake or mudslide. This is an intentional evil that has been visited upon us by evil people who masquerade as our friends. They are not.
If the Sandy Hook Massacre confirms anything in our minds and hearts, it is that something is fundamentally wrong in our society. Deeply wrong. And what is wrong is that evil—that which is against God—against the Church and against love—is growing and taking hold of our lives and wreaking havoc everywhere it touches The problem with Sandy Hook is not assault rifles. The problem is that we have created an access for evil into our homes by our permissions—by our laws—by our policies—by our lack of faith and dismissal of God and the Church—through the politicians we elect and the celebrities we support and the media we love—we have created a generation of people with no family, no faith and no love—people who act out that absence of faith, family, and love as monsters. They are indeed monsters for whom life or death means nothing—because they have been taught that love means nothing.
Sandy Hook causes
Sandy Hook is what happens when husbands abandon their wives in search of sex. Sandy Hook is what happens when mothers abandon their children in search of fulfillment. Sandy Hook is what happens when there is no one home to take care of business—and the internet and media and politicians and celebrities become the surrogate mothers for the abandoned offspring of our modern age.
There has been a battle going on for the souls of our families for a long time now—and most of the time we are not even aware of it—unless we become aware of that battle we shall lose the war.
I saw a child-care center the other day—and on its awning it said that they take children from six weeks to twelve years old. Six weeks old! I had a hard time imagining some mommy handing off her newborn baby to a bunch of strangers at six weeks old. But that is what we have come to—dropping off our children to a storefront facility so that they might live in a pack of other babies—in a dirty room with triple decker cribs that look like Brookfield Zoo for babies with a neo-Nazi caretaker who becomes their surrogate mother.
I wonder if the young killer from Connecticut was himself abandoned at some impossibly early age and thrown into one of these child-care centers to spend his days scratching and clawing for love and attention from strangers. I bet he was.
Throw out the TV
And then they taught him just enough motor skills and reading skills to bang out the rest of his short sad life on a keyboard in his bedroom—killing imaginary aliens and soldiers and enemies of every sort. And you wonder—what did he think was imaginary—the images on his screen? Or the people in his life? Well we know now, don’t we? If we are going to survive the next millennium—as Church—as family—as individuals—we have to separate ourselves from the dominant culture which has become totally obsessed with evil. We cannot go along with it anymore. And that means getting rid of the television—throwing it out—stop buying games—stop giving them money at the theaters so they can corrupt us—stop co-operating with these people who are destroying our families we have to do it ourselves since the destruction will never end on its own. Why should it? The politicians and pornographers are making too much money. We must end our co-operation with the evil of this culture or we will be consumed by it.
Now you might ask: What does this have to do with Advent and Christmas and peace to men of good will and even happy holidays? Well, if Jesus is going to be born in our hearts and in the world—there must be room for the birth—and there will be no room in the inns of our souls—if those souls are full of the dirt and dross of this world. If our poor children are made to fill their heads and scar their hearts with nightmares of monsters and killers and death and mayhem, then there will be no place for sweeter scenes of Jesus and God and the Saints and the angels.
The predators we have bred
If our children begin to sense or intuit from their songs and movies and games—and even from the lack of brothers and sisters—how they are a burden to their parents—and they are not really loved by their parents or anyone for that matter—will that not be played out in their families—and then in many more Sandy Hooks? We are going to have to do more than hire security guards in our schools—we will have to arm our teachers with their own assault rifles and rocket launchers—barricade our theaters with sandbags, and seal up our homes with steel walls and infra-red grids to protect us from the army of loveless—fatherless and motherless predators that we have bred.
Advent is not just a promise—but a warning. If we are going to open our lives to Jesus—there must be room for Him. But there will be no room for Him if our lives are full of the garbage of the modern Age—and there will be no end to the Sandy Hooks.
Change society back to God’s laws
If all this death and sadness is the price of living in the modern age—then we have to get rid of the modern age—throw out the television—throw away the games—stop listening to their lies and temptations and change the way we think—change the way we feel—and then change this society back to God’s laws—and God’s love and if we do that we might have a chance.