Homilies of Father Abbot

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
My very dear sons,

The entire Catholic Church gathers today to celebrate a most solemn moment in the liturgical year. The sacred actions and words of the Lord on the occasion of His impending Passion have changed the world forever and will resound throughout the centuries until the end of time, as long as one faithful Christian keeps this mystery in his or her heart, as long as at least one honest man remains alive to remember these tremendous things. Never did the words of a mere mortal, whether philosopher, statesman, or poet, so move the human race to honor and adore God in spirit and in truth as did and still do the words recorded by Saint John in the great discourse of farewell we have in […]

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
My very dear sons,

Just awhile ago we were processing with palms in our hands, singing the liturgical Hosanna pium that re-echoes each year those ecstatic praises sung by the children long ago, when the Messiah Himself, the Savior of the world, road upon a humble donkey along the road into Jerusalem. What could be more fitting, more beautiful? But just now we have listened to a far different chant, a song of sorts, but not a joyful song. We heard with no small sorrow the inspired words of Saint Matthew relating the Passion of the Lord. Now it is no longer the Hosanna that rings in our ears, but the dreadful cries of Crucifigatur, Let Him be crucified! (Mt. 27:22)

To be sure, the Passion is the […]

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
My Very Dear Sons,

A great thinker once wrote something to the effect that all Philosophy is really a meditation on death, not in any morbid sense of the word, not as would be some unhealthy obsession with death, but in the sense that the human mind, searching for an understanding of our condition on earth, naturally turns at some point to the ultimate questions about our existence, including that of our final end. Why do we live? Why do we die? Socrates, in his own heroic death, demonstrated the truth of the idea that this is the fundamental interrogation.

As we are now in Passion Week, the liturgical time leading up to Holy Week and the climax of the whole liturgical cycle, our thoughts are centered […]

When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Juda, in the days of king Herod, behold there came wise men from the East to Jerusalem, saying “Where is he that is born King of the Jews?” (Matt. 2:1)

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
My very Dear Sons,

In some places today’s feast of the Epiphany is referred to as the “Feast of the Kings.” It is not hard to understand why. Although the narrative of Saint Matthew refers to the travelers from the East as “Magi,” which is to say “wise men,” making no mention of their royal estate, Catholic tradition has associated with these mysterious figures several verses of Psalm 71: “The kings of Tharsis and the islands shall offer presents: the kings of the Arabians and of Saba shall bring gifts: […]

The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his ways, before he made anything from the beginning (Wisdom 8).

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
My Very Dear Sons,

As with every solemnity of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, this one too, feast of the Immaculate Conception, is about God—entirely about God. In His infinite wisdom and goodness God deigned to create a world; to place in it human creatures made in His own image and likeness; and to send a Savior to redeem those same human beings, once through sin they had plunged themselves into spiritual death. The Blessed Virgin Mary is a most holy and beautiful witness to God, a flower growing as it were at the foot of this great work of God in the world.

Better yet, it […]

Post haec vidi turbam magnam…After this I saw a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and tribes, and peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne, and in sight of the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands (Apoc. 7:9).

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
My very dear sons,

We pilgrims along the way of faith cannot as yet see the end of the road. That great City contemplated by Saint John is still beyond the horizon, around the bend of our earthly existence. Our precious Catholic Christian faith gives us, it is true, a certain knowledge of that end, the only one for which God truly destines us, depending, of course, on our free acceptance; but we cannot yet see clearly this heavenly Jerusalem […]

Delivered during a Special Mass on the occasion of the Centennial celebration of the apparitions at Fatima.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
My Very Dear Sons,

At a moment when the world is torn apart by acts of terror and rumors of wars (cf. Matt. 24:6), while looking, heavenward, perhaps as never before, for a sign to ease the tension, the prophetic messages uttered one hundred years ago at Fatima concerning the Immaculate Heart of Mary and our need for conversion seem more to the point than ever, more eloquent than anything mere human words could convey: they bear upon the very destiny of our lives and of the world. Even as secular society, living under the enchantment of a technical power seemingly limitless, continues to ask for entertainment and amusement rather than […]

Signum magnum apparuit in caelo…A great sign appeared in Heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. (Apoc. 12,1.)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
My very dear sons,

Because we live in a place of spiritual darkness or, more exactly, of spiritual twilight (that half-light of Faith, as opposed to the vision), because the final truth concerning God and His Church has not yet appeared to our mortal eyes or to the eyes of our souls in its full splendor, because we struggle through life not knowing all there is to know about ourselves or about the world, having only a partial understanding, because of all of this God sends us signs in order to help us keep on […]

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
My very Dear Sons,

Where are the men in our day? Where are the giants? The book of Genesis tells us that in early times “there were giants upon the earth [in Hebrew, “Nephilim”]…the mighty men of old, men of renown” (Gen. 6:4). Holy Scripture explains—although this is wrapped in mystery—that after the sons of God went in to the daughters of men there came into existence an extraordinary race living on the earth. What happened to those great men, those giants? The Book of Wisdom implies that they perished in the flood in the time of Noah (Wis. 14:6). We do not really know otherwise, as the modern world has lost their trace. We only have those obscure mentions in the Holy Scriptures. Nevertheless the biblical image of these giants […]

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
My very dear sons,

In her spiritual Diary, Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, the apostle of Divine Mercy, writes of a vision she was granted, one centered on the Last Supper and the Institution of the Most Holy Eucharist. On today’s great feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, Corpus Christi, it is enriching to share in this splendid revelation that God made to Sister Faustina about the Sacrament of the altar. Allow me to read a passage from the Diary of Saint Faustina.

During this hour of prayer, Jesus allowed me to enter the Cenacle, and I was a witness to what happened there. However, I was most deeply moved when, before the Consecration, Jesus raised His eyes to heaven and entered into a mysterious […]