1. Feast of Christ the King.
Next Sunday is Feast of Christ the King, the end of Liturgical Year C. In the Liturgy, Holy Mother the Church is reminding us that all of us are going to go before the General Judgment seat of God. And then the world will end by fire. We must be prepared for this last judgment because eternal reward or eternal punishment will follow. This General Judgment Day is always referred to as the Seventh Day, or the Sabbath. This is pre-figured by Christ staying in the tomb on Saturday after His crucifixion.
2. The day before the Sabbath is Good Friday; when the whole Jewish people would have their last test from Christ. This is referred to, according to St. Bonaventure, as the sixth day.
The Catholic world, like St. Bonaventure and Pope Benedict, had been waiting for the sixth day. St. Bonaventure dealt with it in his “Theology of History,” while Joseph Ratzinger made that book the topic of his thesis. This was providential because the awaited sixth day was already occurring during the Pontificate of Pope Benedict.
The sixth day is what is described in the 33rd Sunday Gospel in Ordinary Time.
3. 33rd Sunday, the last day before General Judgment Day.
God placed man on earth, not for man to enjoy the beaches, but to test man. The test, similar to the test of the angels and the first man is; whether they will chose to do God’s Will or their own will. If they choose God’s Will they pass and is rewarded with heaven. If they choose their own will, they fail and are condemned to hell. This is putting aside the possibilities of repentance and recurrence of sin.
While there are small tests in between where failures could be paid for in purgatory, there will be a final test where there will be no purgatory to correct imperfections. Today’s Gospel is the final test wherein it is required that we be perfect since there is no purgatory to make up for imperfections. And so the situation of this final exams is slightly different. The test is slightly more difficult.
4. What is happening in the 33rd Sunday Gospel happened on Good Friday and this is happening today. The Gospel begins with ‘Beware the Scribes.’ This was a warning about priests, bishops, cardinals and even a pope.
‘The sun shall be darkened, the moon will not shed is light and stars will fall out of the sky.’ The sun is the Pope, the moon are the cardinals, bishops and priests; the stars are the theologians. It is the same description of the stars that the tail of the dragon dragged down from the heavens.
They will be in the dark means they will know nothing on how to save one’s soul or how to go to heaven. Pope Benedict mentioned this state of the priesthood at the beginning of the ‘Year of the Priests.’
Like on Good Friday, all the bad priests, from Caiphas the High priest down to the Pharisees and scribes, were most vocal against Christ and even killed Him; while the good ones like the disciples of Christ, were silenced and were hiding.
The same thing is happening today. The priests who know nothing on how to go to heaven are the most vocal and entertained by mass media. While the good ones are silenced and persecuted.
Not only do most of the priests fail to teach the way to heaven, they teach errors and uses Canon Law to repress the truth, , just as the Jews used the Mosaic Law to condemn Christ. They shout and influence others to shout ‘crucify Him.’
Their disobedience to the commands of Christ deprives them of the theological virtues of Faith and Charity. These sins makes God chastise the Jews with the lost of the Ark of the covenant and its contents during the time of the Maccabees and on Good Friday.
Today, due to the lost of Faith and Charity we have lost the Ark of the Covenant and its contents; the Eucharistic Presence and the Mass. Due to rampant disobedience to the commands of Christ there is no Mass and Divine Presence in the Eucharist. Our tabernacles are empty as pre-figured in the empty Holy of Holies on Good Friday.
5. Because of the spiritual state of darkness in which most of the priests, bishops, cardinals and, probably, even the Pope, it becomes of the utmost importance that we master the theology of the four visible signs of the True Church as recited in the Nicene Creed every Sunday. And it can be an added help to know the enhanced version of the same visible signs as explained by St. Robert Bellarmine that was propitiously translated into English just a few months ago. We can be very certain through these signs to know who are in the light and who are those in darkness.
Those who have the four or 15 visible marks of the true Church are the priests of light while those without all the signs are the priests in darkness. Follow the light and abandon the darkness.
6. We must have the knowledge on what are the four visible signs of the true Catholic Church, One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic and their explanations. Or, we must know the expanded explanation of these four signs as explained by the Fathers and Doctor of the Church. The most succinct and clear explanation is that of St. Robert Bellarmine that by God’s grace had been translated into English just recently. And together with this is another book of the same author entitled ‘De Romano Pontifice’ describing a Pope of light from a pope of darkness.
7. While the Nicene Creed’s visible signs are; One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. The expanded 15 signs explained by St. Robert Bellarmine are; Catholicity, Antiquity, long duration, multitude of believers, apostolic succession of bishops, agreement with the ancient church, the unity of the church, holiness of doctrine, holiness of the Fathers of religion, the glory of miracles, light of prophecy, confessions of our adversaries, unhappy end of those who oppose the Church and the temporal happiness of those who defend the Church.
If we use the latter 15 Marks of the true Church we can see that practically all the persons we know, from the Pope down to the cardinals, bishops, priests and laymen do not have these signs of Catholicity. And neither the Diocese, parishes, religious orders and Catholic organizations we know.
These priests are not the ones who use to have Faith and Charity and lost them. No, these are priests who never ever had Faith in lives. And these dioceses, parishes and religious orders are similarly those who, due to their very poor evangelization, were never able to make the mature human act of Faith, the proper disposition, for the supernatural theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity.
8. Other signs of the approaching General Judgment.
There are many other signs that this General Judgment of God is approaching; earthquakes, super storms,wars, etc….but these had been happening since the time of the dinosaurs. For Catholics, the most reliable sign that the end is by the door is the ‘great apostasy’ from the pope down to the bishops and priests. And consequently among the laymen. Only a true Catholic with the four visible signs can detect an apostate because he is not one of them.
9. When we see that nobody around us has the visible signs of true Catholicity then, as Christ said, we may not know the ‘the exact day or hour,’ But we can know if He is near, even at the door.
This is the sixth day. Tomorrow the true Catholic Church will rest for a while in the tomb to rise the next day, Easter Sunday, to eternal life in heaven.