17/05/2026
A Homily for the Sunday after the Ascension
+ In these days after the Ascension, as the Paschal candle stands extinguished and we wait in expectation and hope for the consoling fire of Pentecost, the Sacred Liturgy of our Holy Mother the Church gives us a somewhat stark warning about living as faithful witnesses to Christ. “They will put you out of the synagogues; indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. And they will do this because they have not known the Father, nor me,” we are informed by the words of Our Lord himself in this morning’s Gospel.
Historically, these words apply to the expulsion of early Christians from the Jewish synagogues as it became clear that Christian faith and life was a substantial development of Jewish belief that the authorities of the time deemed unacceptable. Christianity rightly boasts of and venerates its roots in the Old Covenant, but it remains a fact that the New Covenant fulfils the Old and surpasses it. The Old Covenant no longer suffices. Because of this reality Christians were expelled from Jewish synagogues and—as we see clearly in the martyrdom of St Stephen (cf. Acts 7)—were indeed killed out of a supposedly godly zeal.
But what are we to make of this prophecy today? We hear it proclaimed only days after the Holy See has threatened to excommunicate those who plan to consecrate new bishops for the Society of St Pius X, and the new bishops themselves, at the beginning of July. (In spite of much sensational reporting, there is no question of the excommunication of their faithful, etc.) The parallel is not exact—there are many issues involved, and they are complex—but the echo of Our Lord’s prophecy at this time is unnerving, particularly given the zeal with which those who wish to celebrate according to the older liturgical rites of the Church have been excluded from their churches and chapels since the 2021 liturgical, historical and pastoral travesty that is the Motu Proprio Traditiones custodes, which has brought about further disunity and division whist purportedly seeking unity through the imposition of a ritual uniformity never before known (or required) in the life of the Church.
Many are the good and loyal Catholics who have experienced expulsion from their places of worship and the killing off of the sources of grace and of pastoral care for themselves and for their families at the hands of prelates who, seemingly, “do this because they have not known the Father, nor me.” We ourselves have had to step outside of the system, as it were, in order simply to survive—something no one wishes to do, but which, in extraordinary times, may become truly necessary in conscience.
Necessity is, of course, the key, as the Society of St Pius X often says. For the older liturgical rites are not a matter of mere aesthetic preference: they are the integral source and summit of our Christian life and mission and guarantee a ritual and doctrinal integrity that is, at best, ‘watered down’ in their successors—and which, if we examine the increasingly poisonous fruits of the virus of synodalism that has been unleashed in the Church, is at times utterly compromised, if not downright rejected, by those who would proscribe that which of its very nature “remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.” (Benedict XVI, Letter, 7 July 2007) Maintaining the rites of the usus antquior—the Divine Office, the sacraments, sacramentals, etc., included—is not a personal ‘choice’: it is conviction that at this time in the history of the Church they are necessary to guarantee a continuity of faith and life with the Church founded by Christ on the Apostles at a time when other means do so less effectively or are at times hijacked for ends utterly inimical to the Deposit of Faith.
This is not to malign the good will of many of those in authority, or of clergy, religious and laity who have struggled for decades, and who continue to struggle, to be faithful, often in the face of much opposition, at times from bishops and other ecclesiastical superiors. Nor is it to question the validity of the newer rites when celebrated correctly. This is, however, to underline the pastoral necessity—i.e. the necessity for the salvation of souls—of free access to the Church’s unadulterated rites and teaching: something that the fruits that communities who celebrate them produce make abundantly evident. Sadly, this is a reality which seems still to be ignored.
What, then, can we do when the choice seems to be between disobedience and dissolution? This is no small question, and we do well to consult St Thomas Aquinas and other sound theologians on its implications. In doing so we find that material disobedience to positive law (as distinct from Divine law) can, extraordinarily, be tolerated for a truly necessary good: a father must feed and protect his family—there is no virtue in allowing them to starve to death or to be destroyed by danger. At certain times we must act outside the norm. And, as the fourth-century martyrs of Abitene teach us so eloquently, sacramental starvation is not tolerable: sine domenico, non possumus (without the Sunday Eucharist, without the liturgy and the sacraments, we simply cannot live).
But first and foremost—we must pray. In the context in which we find ourselves, the counsel of this morning’s Epistle is particularly pertinent: “Keep sane and sober for your prayers,” St Peter insists. So too he urges us: “Above all hold unfailing your love for one another, since charity covers a multitude of sins. Practice hospitality ungrudgingly to one another. As each has received a gift, employ it for one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.”
Prayer, charity, hospitality and mutual service are most certainly necessary at all levels of the Church of our times, and persevering in each of them will bring many graces, particularly for those who are persecuted or who, as it were, find themselves ‘ecclesiastically displaced’.
In these days when we await the coming of the Counsellor whom Our Lord promises to send us from the Father, we can, then, each redouble our prayers that the Spirit of Truth shall truly inhabit those in authority and, as we shall sing in the Sequence of Pentecost, flecte quod est rigidum, fove quod est frigidum, rege quod est devium. (Bend what is inflexible, warm what is chilled, correct what has gone astray.)
Not only should we beg Almighty God to send the Holy Sprit to melt the technocratic hearts that govern the Church so coldly at times, we should also implore Him in particular to fill the Holy Father with his sevenfold gifts of wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord in the exercise if his unenviable but utterly crucial duty to protect the integrity of the Deposit of Faith and the unity of the Church under it, of which the Sacred Liturgy is the living source and sacramental. The Holy Father needs our prayers at this time!
Let us begin now, as we go to the Altar of God this morning, praying earnestly that through the inspiration and gifts of God the Holy Spirit charity and Truth will prevail on all sides and all talk of excommunication shall cease; that true hospitality (and not shallow ‘inclusivity’) will be shown, and that those who have been given the gift of the episcopacy and papacy will employ them, as good stewards, in the service of all of their flock after the example of the Good Shepherd Himself (cf. Jn 10). With the help of our prayers, through the power of God the Holy Spirit, this can yet come to pass. +
