Salve, Regina, Mater Misericordiae.
This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.
Today in the life of the Church is known as Laetare Sunday,
and it also is known also by another name, that is, the Golden Rose.
And in it, the Church shows herself truly to be the compassionate leader of mankind back to God.
For during this Sunday, the Church asks us to put aside the mournfulness of the season
to focus on the joy and the consolation of the Paschal Mystery,
and most especially that mystery manifested to us
by the Lord Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Through every holy sacrifice of the Mass, and so, the Church in her liturgy is truly perfect.
She neither overemphasizes this point or that point, nor underestimates this point or that point,
but always she points out to us the virtue.
And so, today, by the very change in the liturgy, flowers are allowed again to decorate the altars.
The music for the Mass takes on a more joyful tone because,
it has compassion on our humanity, because in today's Gospel,
our Lord tells us very clearly through the parable that he came in order to have compassion on sinful man.
And so, the Pharisees and the scribes would refuse to accept this joyful message.
And so, this day, we learn to enter into that message more earnestly and more fervently.
And so, the Church changes its tone in order to encourage us,
both to be faithful and to be faithful, but also to be faithful. And so, the Church changes its tone in order to encourage us,
both to be faithful and to be faithful, but also to be faithful, but also to be faithful,
both to be faithful, but also to be faithful,
to persevere with great fervor to the end of this holy season of Lent,
and more importantly, to the end of our lives so that we may share in joy the mystery of our salvation for all eternity and the life to come.
And so, Laetare Sunday, also called Rose Sunday,
after an ancient tradition of the blessing of the Golden Rose,
in which the vic of Christ would bless the rose,
then proceed to one Church,
and there preach on the mystery of the rose not in its earthly understanding but in its supernatural
signification and so he would give a talk on the beauty of the rose on the beauty of its color
and the beauty of its fra of its fragrance he would delineate those mysteries by which we see
the rose as one of the most beautiful of god's plants and also that mystery in which the leaves
are five and three in order to indicate both the humanity and the divinity of christ and also
our humanity and our restoration in christ because ultimately the rose would be the sign of both
christ and his mother and also he would point out that even though the rose is a beautiful bush
it has its thorns it has its difficulties and so we must sojourn through the difficulties of
this life always focusing on that greatest of all things which is the beauty of the rose
all mysteries and the mystery of the blessing of the rose would also show to every member of the
mystical body the filial devotion that is required for us to give to the pontiff because by it
we truly recognize our joy and most especially in that institute that christ has established
until the end of time for the salvation of man and so when the pope would return to the sea
of peter that is saint john the lateran if there was a prince then reigning
in the empire he would hold the stirrup of the pope and thereby help the pope dismount from his
horse and there the prince would receive the rose as a sign that it is the church who bestows the
mysteries of god upon all humanity including the leaders of all nations and so it was truly a sign
of humility on the part of the prince and also a sign of humility on the part of the pope because
as the first pope would tell us
the chosen people. Gold and silver I have not, but what I have I give to you. And he would give to
them the same things the Lord would give. He would cure the blind man at that moment, and he would
continue to cure both body and soul, and will continue until the end of time as the vicar of
Christ. And so our Lord will tell a parable in which all these great mysteries of our faith
would be revealed to us. We see very clearly that this son took all that was given to him. That is,
he took all the blessings of creation and decided to go off and live with them according to his own
mind and his own heart. That is, he decided to found the pagan nations. And so he would live in
that paganism and fall into a most depraved of states, a hopeless state according to human
machinations.
But yet a state in which God was still held them in predilection and still would hold forth to them
the mystery of salvation, and ultimately who the apostles and their successes would go and claim
those nations. And so when the son had fallen into that depraved state, he finally comes to his senses
and begins to grope in the darkness for a way back to God his Father. That way would be taught to him
first and foremost by St.
Paul, in which he would explain to them the one key that they had lacked in their attempt to come out of their
depravity was the doctrine of original sin. And once that doctrine was established in their minds and in their
hearts, he would then tell them the way out. And so he was first clothed in the best of robes, or more
literally, he was clothed in the first robe, an allusion back to the time of Adam and Eve, but more
especially of our grace.
And so we have received the white garment of salvation and sanctifying grace in our baptism and also when that
beauty to the soul is restored by a sacramental confession, if we have fallen into the state of mortal sin.
And so Christ always seeks to close us in the best of robes. He does not hold out to us the second or the
hand-me-downs, but always he is trying through his mercy and his compassion to restore the soul to that
great beauty that God had ordained all souls to possess from the beginning of time.
Next, he places a ring on the hand of this son because the ring was made of gold and it was the mark of a free and a
noble man because, free and noble, because cleansed of sin.
Next, the father would tell him to put shoes on his feet or sandals on his feet because slaves go about barefooted while
citizens' feet are always shod. And so our feet are to be shod with the grace of God because a slave was not allowed to wear
sandals or shoes because it was a way to keep him in his slavery. For he could not flee because he could not
persevere. Ultimately, his feet would become cut and swollen and infected, and there he would simply lie down waiting for the
masters to come and catch him.
Amen.
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or I'm okay, you're okay, but freedom always had a sense of mortification, that is, we could
understand it very clearly if we understand this notion. I am free to use the roads of this nation
so long as I obey the laws, that is, so long as I keep myself within the bounds of decency.
If I go about driving drunk, eventually I lose that freedom to use the roads, and so ultimately
what is here signified is that true freedom is doing the will of God, and that is why Our Lady
truly is the free woman, not the slave woman Hagar, but the free woman Sarah, because she is always the
firstborn daughter of the Father, she's always the mother of the Son and the spouse of the Holy
Spirit, and so she is free because she does always from the first moment of her conception what God
has created human beings to do.
That is, she praises her good God from the moment of her conception and throughout all eternity.
Next, the Father takes the fatted calf and slays it for his Son. That is to show us that the Father
takes great delight, and hence, in the conversion of the sinner, and hence, that joy is felt and
experienced by the whole of the heavenly court when someone converts from their sin and begins
to accept God.
The teaching of Almighty God, because one of the primary teachings of our faith is that teaching by
which we focus that God is merciful and that he restores all things that are lost by sin and are
restored in our repentance, but primarily this fatted calf signifies that greatest of all the
mysteries which we have been entrusted with, that is, the sacrificial mystery of the holy sacrifice
of the Mass.
It is illusion.
It is the most profound mystery, and so, our Lord, after trying to explain these mysteries to the
Pharisees and the scribes, points out to them that ultimately, they will be slaughtered.
Ultimately, they would not accept these mysteries because, as it begins, this, your son,
who has burnt himself out, consumed his substance, in the carousing of his pagan world,
has come.
And, so, ultimately, what is being done here, the Pharisees and the scribes are accusing
our Lord himself of sin.
And we know very clearly they would do that.
Indeed, they would tell us that he cures by the power of the air.
This is his bescherming of the pure sin.
They would tell us that he cures by the power of ourキنا
of Beelzebub and so it is the highest form of blasphemy and ultimately it was
why our Lord's predilection was transferred from the chosen people to
the Gentile people for a time so that the Gentile people basking in the glory
and the salvation of God would ultimately go into that land and claim
the chosen people again for Almighty God and so our Lord would show very clearly
by his whole life that this accusation this charge this charge that is
universally almost universally again hurled towards our Lord this charge was
false because we because our Lord showed preference to the unworthy over the
worthy that is the Gentiles to the Jews sinners to themselves but why did he do
so he did so because sinners by their repentance in their faith render
themselves to the Jews and the Gentiles to the Jews and the Gentiles to the Jews
themselves worthy of this predilection of God worthy of the gospel and the
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that is if we are truly repentant then we truly
know what joy is because this can all be summed up in a very profound mystery
what is it that we receive we can sit and we can go on and indeed we must go
on but ultimately it is reduced to a very simple formula we receive Mary as
our mother in this life
and in in as our mother for all eternity in the life to come because as her
children we are called to praise God by way of sacrifice in this life in order
to praise him in the beatific vision for all eternity in the life to come and so
ultimately we could say that there is no direct reference to the mother of God in
today's gospel but that would truly be a false notion in a false understanding for
the humanity of Christ is spoken of, and it is spoken of from the very beginning. I will put
enmity between you and the woman, between her seed and your seed, and so from that moment forward
until the very final page of the gospel, Our Lady is present, present as the mother of first the
Christ child and then all those that she wishes to have as her children, that is the whole of
humanity, and so ultimately this mystery is a mystery about receiving the mother of God and from
her all those graces that our Lord tried to teach the chosen people were at their disposal this day
if they would only repent of their sins and joyfully look forward. We do not, as it were, say
that as Christians we are to manifest the false joy that we see in our modern world, but we are
to have a very sober joy, a joy by
which we can
take delight in the good things in this life and also in our suffering, and so ultimately we are
reminded of some of the martyrs. St. Lawrence would one who particularly would come to mind
that as his humanity felt the agony of his being burned on the grill, his soul was joyful and
transcended the very pain he experienced. We are also reminded of the Franciscan martyrs who by
the Mohammedans were
cast upon shreds of glass and metal, rolled around cut to to shreds and then
handmade poured over them boiling vinegar into those fresh wounds, and yet while they
experience all the torments of their agony, they transcended it by the intercession of
the mother of God and truly remain joyful through their suffering, and let us not think that
the saints are unlike us.
Let us not think together, Lets not wonder, or let us not think together, that we are one of a million itulexic tambourines of life.
that in their mind, the same thoughts
we probably think that we would have.
Lord, there's no way I can endure
what I see unfolding before me.
I see them take the vases.
I see them take the glass, throw the metal down.
I know why they're breaking it.
I know what they're preparing.
Let it be the bed of my glory,
but not by my own strength, Lord, for I cannot do it.
And indeed, some of them probably even took a holy gulp
as they were about to be cast on,
cast onto the instrument of their torture
that would ultimately become the instrument of their joy
because depending upon God,
they would transcend the suffering
and ultimately would receive their eternal reward.
And ultimately, that is the joy we are to all focus on,
that after a life of prayer and suffering,
we are called to joy,
to join God for all eternity in the kingdom to come.
And so, let us truly rejoice this day,
focusing on that which is to be given to us
if we persevere in our faith,
that is, the vision of God
in the presence of his mother and all the angels
for all eternity in heaven.
Amen.
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Amen.