By FR. JAMES ALTMAN
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Dear family, not every day is a day to bemoan the sinners in the swamp. Today we get celebrate the saints. All Saints — those saints who were the exemplars of the Deposit of Faith — also known as the unchanged and unchangeable Truth — for which all suffered in this life — for which each and every one suffered martyrdom, red or white.
All saints are those who — right now — rejoice amidst the Wedding Feast of the Lamb as St. John the beloved Apostle saw: “They all prostrate themselves before the Throne singing out Amen, Blessing and glory, wisdom and thanksgiving, honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever amen.”
They are the ones who have washed their robes, and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb.
So there it is, dear family — the Threshold for being among the few who are —All Saints. We, too, have to wash our robes in the Blood of the Lamb.
And there’s no big secret about how to go about laundering our robes. Clarity is charity — clear Truth is Love — so Jesus made it crystal clear how to do it. He taught us and then He showed us — Calvary — His Calvary.
But let us get this straight, dear family. We still have to do our own laundry on our own Calvary. We actually wash our robes in the Blood of the Lamb when we join Jesus the Lord by picking up our own crosses — daily — and joining Him there.
By the way, here’s something you may never have considered before. We always think of Jesus carrying His cross on one and only one day — Good Friday. Oh NO! Dear family, that thinking is error. That was only His final cross. Every day of His Incarnation was a cross — from His first moment of Conception to His last breath on Calvary.
Dear family, understand the full meaning of St. Paul’s brilliant synopsis: “Though he was in the form of God, Jesus did not regard equality with God something to be grasped at. Rather, he emptied himself and took the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men….He humbled himself, obediently accepting even death, death on a cross” (Phil. 2:6-8).
Let us understand that from the first moment of Conception — to the last moment of breath — Jesus was carrying the greatest cross of all — death to Himself — thereby rendering life — for all others who would follow Him.
We, dear family, are expected to do the same. Otherwise, we will not be counted among All Saints. In fact, we will not even among those who still are washing their robes in Purgatory through their sacrificial reparation of praying for us!
Let us consciously choose, then, to be among the few who start washing our robes now — so that we will not be among the many — thrown out of the Kingdom because we, like the man in Jesus’ parable, tried to sneak into the Wedding Feast without putting on the wedding garment.
So here’s something to think about. All Saints and All Souls in Purgatory are praying for us — praying that we keep our eyes upon Jesus — so that we — like them — attain to eternal salvation. But guess what? Guess who is not praying for our eternal salvation? That’s right — the many in Hell, of course, but also those currently prancing down the broad road to destruction. Why are they like that? Because like the old saying goes: Misery loves company.
Do we understand that they, the demons and the damned, and their willing minions on Earth, are exactly who are behind the wholesale change to the Deposit of Faith regarding what constitutes grave sin?
By the way — you’ve heard me say — if you ever want to know who to vote for, just figure out who Hollywood is voting for and vote for the other guy. That’s all you need to know. We can expand that by saying just look at the birds of a feather, like Planned Parenthood, and the Marxist Communist group that dares to call itself Black Lives Matter. We also can include left-wing socialist publications like Vanity Fair! Vanity Fair just published a hit piece on faithful Catholics — ripping into the great cardinals of the Dubia, including Cardinal Burke, ripping into faithful Catholics leaders everywhere, praising the Pachamama and Pope Francis, and this is how totalitarian they are, even ripping into an obscure priest from La Crosse, Wis.
Dear family I only can thank Vanity Fair for proving once again what enemies of the Real Jesus, and the Real Catholic Church, they actually are. Thank you, Vanity Fair!
Dear family, keep All Saints and the Deposit of Faith in mind so that every single time you see any single person — or political party — or publication — propose that we redefine sin as not sin, it is the exact same thing as the original viper in the Garden holding out the fruit to Adam and Eve and saying, “Oh, certainly you will not die!”
Dear family, I hope that you never think of me as a broken record when I say again and again that we must strive, 24/7/365, to be a saint! Rather, I hope that you think of the evil people all around us as the broken record that keeps playing and playing and playing: Go ahead — certainly you will not die.
On this Feast of All Saints, as we recall the Deposit of Faith, let us realize that all those saints were among the few who fully understood the Truth that, “Oh yes we will die if we listen to you, Mr. Viper.”
So the next time you hear people say something like that about the non-negotiable Intrinsic Evils — always and everywhere wrong — realize they are nothing but vipers in the Garden — a brood of vipers — killing souls with their poison.
Just yesterday, one of our great faithful priests in America, a loyal son of Mary, texted me Bishop Barron’s endorsement of Fr. James Martin’s new book in which Martin continues to paint gray in the normalization and/or promoting of same-sex unions. Remember, Barron quoted Von Balthasar, the theologian who proposed “dare we hope all are saved?!” Never mind that this completely ignores the fact that the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy Mother of God, the sinless Virgin, did not sin when she scared the Hell out of those three children by showing them the reality of Hell. How can anyone lend any credence whatsoever to such a Godless, ridiculous proposition of “dare we hope that all men be saved?!”
Barron’s endorsement on James Martin’s book reads — I couldn’t make this up, dear family — it reads, quote: “Fr. Martin is a winsome guide for those who want to deepen their friendship with the Lord.” Really? A winsome guide? When was the last time you read in the Gospel that Jesus the Lord described our life of strife in this sinful world as winsome?
We don’t float around, winsomely pondering what it takes to attain to eternal salvation. St. Paul did not winsomely ponder his canings, his scourgings, his stoning, his jail time, nor his martyrdom. But there you have it. Bishop Barron wrote that James Martin’s book is “a winsome guide for those seeking to grow closer to the Lord.”
If you look up “winsome” to see what it means: It means “attractive or appealing in appearance!” In other words, good and pleasing to the eye!
Now see if this sounds familiar: “The woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes, and the tree was desirable for gaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it” (Gen. 3:6).
Memo to Fr. Martin and Bishop Barron: Allow me to recommend a true guide “for those seeking to grow closer to the Lord.” It is called the Deposit of Faith, 2,000 years of unchanged and unchangeable Truth. Dear family, if we want to read about the Deposit of Faith, let us not read some winsome guide from anyone. Let us read Sacred Scriptures instead. Let us read up on All Saints. Let us open some books by the great Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen who spoke Truth with clarity.
Now, focusing back on what “a brood” actually is, it struck me to look up the actual definition for that word. Listen up and comprehend its meaning and its implications in the way both St. John the Baptist and Jesus the Lord used that term specifically. The definition of a brood is a number of young produced or hatched at one time; a family of offspring or young — a breed, species, group, or kind. In short, the progeny of a parent.
Now, listen to the words of St. John the Baptist: “When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his Baptism, he said to them, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance’” (Matt. 3:7-8).
And now listen to Jesus the Lord. Jesus ripped into the Pharisees in Matthew 12, calling them — a brood of vipers. Then, Jesus ripped into them again in Matthew 23, beginning with verse 23, saying “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites.” Jesus went on to call them hypocrites a few more times, along with blind guides and whitewashed tombs. Finally, in verse 33, Jesus again called them, quote: “You serpents, you brood of vipers, how can you flee from the judgment of Gehenna?”
There it is, in black and white. No gray. “You serpents — you brood of vipers.”
Dear family, a brood of anything comes from its parent, which means that the vipers come from their parent. And who is the original viper? Who is the original father of lies? Satan, dear family, Satan. Understand, then, that those Scribes and Pharisees, who knew their Sacred Scripture, knew exactly what Jesus meant when Jesus called them what He called them.
What we are seeing in the Church today is nothing new. We saw it in a major way in 1517, with onset of Luther’s deformation of the Unchangeable Truth. Remember, Luther reformed nothing — Luther deformed Christianity. He it was who rewrote Sacred Scripture to fit his personal philosophy: “saved by Faith alone.”
Luther said, in effect: “Be a sinner and sin on bravely, but have stronger faith and rejoice in Christ. Sins must be committed. To you it ought to be sufficient that you acknowledge the Lamb that has taken away the sins of the world. The sins cannot tear you away from Him even though you commit adultery a 100 times a day and commit as many murders.”
Oh dear family, there are no words of condemnation strong enough for any shepherd to lead any sheep down that broad road to destruction. Do we understand that this is the modus operandi of wolves in sheep’s clothing in our day? They are pied pipers leading people to think that they can support or engage in intrinsic evils yet stand up and say “thank God I’m a Christian!!”
So again, if we want to read about the Deposit of Faith, let us not read some winsome guide from any of the brood of vipers. Let us read Sacred Scriptures instead, and also do some reading up on — All Saints! Let us conclude, then, by calling to mind some Truth written by some saints, writings that affirm the Deposit of Faith. (A profound synopsis of the following is found on the great website, Catholic Answers, which has awesome tracts on the fundamentals of our faith.)
In AD 208, Clement of Alexandria wrote: “In this way is he [the true Christian] always pure for prayer. He also prays in the society of angels, as being already of angelic rank, and he is never out of their holy keeping; and though he pray alone, he has the choir of the saints standing with him [in prayer]” (Miscellanies 7:12 [AD 208]).
In 233, Origen wrote: “But not the high priest [Christ] alone prays for those who pray sincerely, but also the angels…as also the souls of the saints who have already fallen asleep” (Prayer 11 [AD 233]).
In 253, Cyprian of Carthage wrote: “Let us remember one another in concord and unanimity. Let us on both sides [of death] always pray for one another. Let us relieve burdens and afflictions by mutual love, that if one of us, by the swiftness of divine condescension, shall go hence first, our love may continue in the presence of the Lord, and our prayers for our brethren and sisters not cease in the presence of the Father’s mercy” (Letters 56[60]:5 [AD 253]).
In 305, Methodius wrote specifically about our Blessed Mother: “Therefore, we pray [ask] you, Mary the most excellent among women, who glories in the confidence of your maternal honors, that you would unceasingly keep us in remembrance. O holy Mother of God, remember us, I say, who make our boast in you, and who in august hymns celebrate the memory, which will ever live, and never fade away.”
Similar writings and affirmations are found in St. Hilary of Poitiers in 365, St. Ephraim the Syrian in 370, St. Basil in 373, St. Gregory of Nazianzus in 380, St. Gregory of Nyssa in 380, St. John Chrysostom in 392, St. Ambrose of Milan in 393, St. Jerome in 406, and St. Augustine in 400, 411, 416, and 419. The bottom line is that we have had for 2,000 years of unchangeable Truth that the holy saints pray and intercede for us, Glory halleluiah!
Let us call upon their intercession now as we approach the altar and prepare to enter into the Lamb’s Supper: All you holy angels and saints, pray for us.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
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