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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Lord Jesus, King of the universe, by your blood you have purchased for us our salvation, you have purchased for us the whole world. As we draw together to meditate upon the power of baptism, we ask you to renew the grace of baptism in each and every Christian here. We ask you to give us insight into your plan for the world. You who live and reign forever and ever. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. We’ll just go over what we’ve gone over already. We speak about baptism as being the seed of the entire spiritual life. That everything that you need to become a Christian is given to you at the moment of your baptism, which most of us cannot remember. Baptism does three things for us. It puts sin out. Everything that draws us away from God, everything that makes us alienated from God and unable to be with him, it puts that out. It brings God in. We become adopted sons of our Father in heaven, so that we can call Jesus truly our brother. And we can say that we are Jesus. We are his presence on the earth. And finally, our baptism brings us into the communion of the church. That we are now members of this mystical body of Christ spread across the world. Our baptism is permanent. It cannot be undone. It cannot be reversed. There’s no power in heaven or on earth that can undo your baptism. It’s like a dandelion that’s just like, mmm, concrete. This is the best place to live. By our baptism, we share in the three offices of Christ, priest, prophet, and king. And so, me, Father Carmel, and Father Phil, we are ministerial priests that we have exercised priesthood in a certain way. But before we were ordained, all three of us were priests of the baptism. We were baptized priests. And that’s every Christian, a baptized priest. And a priest’s job is to make things holy, to take things that are not in the way of God. To take things out of the everyday world. And to bring them up into the realm of heaven. We call bringing things up into heaven, we call that sanctification. We do that with special times and special seasons and special places. Just like, you know, a chalice or a church is not a place given over for ordinary use. Our time that we spend in prayer and our time that we spend in the Lord is wasted time from an earthly point of view. And then as priests, we also bring the presence of God down into the world. That’s mediation. And then last night we talked about how as baptized Christians, we are all prophets, that we speak on behalf of God. That a prophet’s job is primarily to tell the future, but to speak on behalf of God, to be his voice in the world. That arguments and facts are not the most convincing witness that we can give to our Lord. But what is the most important is this relationship to the living God. That we talk to him as a living being, as a being with its own intentions, with his own plans. We don’t treat God with that spirit of geometry whereby we try and control everything, but we approach God with the spirit of finesse as a living being. And that when it comes to studying, our study should flow from the relationship with God. It’s not something that should go ahead of the relationship with God, but instead we should be following after the study should flow on the relationship with God, rather than just being an academic pursuit. And finally we get to this last office that we see Christ exercise. This office of King, of ruling, of reigning. We remember in John’s Gospel that famous interchange between Jesus and Pontius Pilate, the representative of Roman power and authority in Judea. Pilate doesn’t quite know what to make of Jesus. He’s used to bandits, he’s used to rabble rousers, he’s used to revolutionaries. As he’s questioning Jesus, he eventually gets to the point where he’s like, are you a king? And Jesus says, I am, but my kingdom is not of this world. And I’m afraid sometimes as Christians we take the wrong message from that. We think, okay, well, Jesus is not the king of this world, so he’s the king of heaven. And so that’s what that means, is that Jesus, he is just the king of heaven, right? But that’s not what the Bible would say. The Bible says, though he was in the form of God, Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at, but rather he emptied himself and took the form of a slave, being known in the likeness of men. He was known to be of human estate, and it was thus that he humbled himself, obediently accepting even death, death on a cross. Because of this, God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name above every other name, so that at Jesus’ name every knee should bend in the heavens, on the earth, and under the earth, and every tongue proclaim, Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. That comes from the letter of St. Paul to the Philippians, chapter 2. And if you’re a priest, you pray that every week on Saturday night, so it gets into the memory after a decade or so. It says that every knee will bow before Jesus, those in heaven and on earth and under the earth. Every knee shall bow, those of angels, those of men, and those of demons. That Jesus’ kingdom, truly and rightly, is everything that exists. He’s not just the King of heaven, but the King of the whole world. So he’s the King, but his kingdom is not of this world, it’s not from this world. It’s of heaven, it’s from heaven, it’s coming down on earth. The kingdoms of this world, the governments of this world, how do they operate? How do they function? Well, they can only function by way of coercion, with at least the implied threat of force and violence. How many people here would pay their income taxes if they didn’t think that the taxman was going to come and get them? No, without that, this will get me in trouble, so fine, I’ll write the check. Our government wouldn’t be able to function. That’s how kingdoms in this world work. Every kingdom in this world always has that implied threat in there. And Jesus, well, his kingdom is not of this world. He doesn’t force anything. In fact, if we look at the way that he behaved, he allowed himself to be mistreated. He allowed himself to be killed. He didn’t try and force his will on anyone, but accepted the injustice, accepted the violence from Pontius Pilate. As he said to Pontius Pilate, if my kingdom were of this world, my servants would be fighting, but my kingdom is not of this world. Violence and death, they may have power here below. They may be able to compel and push you to do certain things, but they don’t really have power over Jesus. Jesus, the risen one, Jesus, the immortal one, Jesus, whom the bonds of death could not hold. So Christ’s kingdom is not of this earth, and somehow he is also the king of all. And maybe you look around the world and you think to yourself, it doesn’t really seem like Christ is in charge. I see all sorts of people who take no notice of him. I see all sorts of sin and iniquity reigning. So why isn’t he acknowledged as the rightful king? And I think it might be helpful for us to take a look at Matthew chapter 4, which, what, a week and a half ago was our Sunday mass reading. And we’re just going to go straight to the end. Jesus is being tempted by the devil. And again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. And he said to him, all these I will give you if you will fall down and worship me. Then Jesus said to him, Be gone, Satan, for it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God and him only you shall worship the Lord your God. So notice the argument that Jesus doesn’t make. Notice what Jesus doesn’t say here. He doesn’t say that doesn’t belong to you. He doesn’t say that isn’t yours. That’s mine already. How can you give me what’s already mine? Jesus, while resisting that temptation, doesn’t seem to be all that concerned with Satan’s claim of authority there over the kingdoms of this world. And in fact, many parts of the Bible and Jesus himself refer to the devil as the rightful king. Many parts of the Bible and Jesus himself refer to Satan as the king of this world. We look at the second letter to the Corinthians, Chapter four. St. Paul says we have renounced disgraceful underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word. But by open statement of the truth, we would commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God. So St. Paul uses this phrase. He calls Satan the God of this world. And in his last days on earth, John, Chapter 14, Jesus says, Now is the judgment of this world. Now shall the ruler of this world be cast out. So all over the Bible, we have this this doctrine that the kingdoms of this world were conquered by Satan. And then in that time in the Garden of Eden, he had power and influence over humanity. That’s why Jesus’s exorcisms are important. That’s why there’s so much of the Gospels dedicated to Jesus driving out all sorts of demons. If he’s the one that can take the fight to them, he is the one who is more powerful than them. He is the one who can conquer them. So we have this incident from Mark, Chapter three. And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, Jesus is possessed by Beasable and by the prince of demons, he casts out demons. And Jesus called to him, called them to him and said to them in parables, How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end. So what Jesus is saying there is, don’t be ridiculous. Satan keeps all of his demons in line. They do his work in his will. I am not driving them out by Satan’s power. And then he says this, But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house. So who is the strong man in this parable? Well, that would be Satan who guards his possession and guards his house. And Jesus is the one to march into his house, to bind him and to begin to plunder his goods. So you could think of the whole of the Christian story as Jesus being the king who returns to reclaim what is rightfully his. That he takes back out of Satan’s hands those whom he has chosen to save and bring them back to himself, to bring him back into his kingdom. Jesus is the rightful king of the world, and he is waging war against the devil to take back his kingdom. And we’re not just on the sidelines for this. We’ve got this beautiful scene from the book of Revelation, Chapter 4. And John has been caught up into heaven and we get a peek into the throne room of God, the control center for the entire universe. Round the throne of God were twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones were twenty-four elders, clad in white garments with golden crowns upon their heads. And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, The twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne. So we’ve got this highly symbolic vision of the twenty-four elders representing the twelve tribes of the world. This is a vision of the twenty-four elders representing the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve tribes of the kingdom of Christ, the whole of the people of God, the whole of the baptized. Those twenty-four elders are us. They wear crowns too, though they bow down and worship the one at the center on the throne. So on the day of your baptism, after the baptism itself, one of the rituals that we do is we place a white garment on you, place a white robe on you. They look different depending on where you are at, but that white garment shows that you are one of these twenty-four elders in the throne room of heaven. So Jesus is reconquering the world and part of his domain he is handing over to you to keep track of, to keep care of. You are given a little spot in his kingdom to govern in place of the King of Kings. So as a baptized Christian, you have real work to do, real work that Christ has given you. You make a real meaningful contribution to the life of his kingdom. And if you abandon your post, I guess that work doesn’t get done. Now maybe it seems a little too good to be true. We just splash a little bit of water on you and all of a sudden you inherit this magnificent kingdom. But you got to earn your place there. It isn’t something that’s necessarily going to be free. I want to take a look at a passage that probably many of you are familiar with, but maybe haven’t looked at in this way before. This is Matthew chapter 16. Jesus asks the disciples, who do people say that I am? Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, still others, one of the other prophets. Jesus says to them, but who do you say that I am? And Simon Peter said in reply, you are the Messiah, the son of the living God. Jesus said to him in reply, blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my heavenly father. And so I say to you, you are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. You’ve probably heard this passage a thousand times, but let’s take a look at it with fresh eyes. First, what is the church? Is that the church right there? That pillar, these pillars holding up this building? Is it the roof? Is it the floor? Is it the whole building? No, that is not the church. The church is the assembly of the believers. The church is the people gathered here tonight and all across the whole world. And so when Jesus is talking about building his church on this rock, he’s not talking about an opportune building opportunity, a place where we’re not going to have to deal with settling over time. Now he’s talking about where am I going to place my assembly? Where are they going to stand? They’re going to stand on Peter and on his confession of faith. So this assembly standing upon the rock. And Jesus says the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. Now most of the time when I hear this passage quoted and this little part emphasized, people take that as the promise that the church will never fail in her mission, that the church across the world will never be entirely extinguished, but the Holy Spirit will always keep the body of Christ alive. And that is true. That is a true thing. I’m not going to get in the way of that interpretation. But what do you know about gates? Gates don’t attack. The gates of the netherworld are a defensive measure, not an object. Not an offensive measure. And so when Jesus says that the gates of the netherworld will not prevail against his assembly, he is leading a siege against the powers of the underworld. That we are on the offensive. That we are taking the fight to him. And he assures us that as long as we are founded on this profession of faith as Christ as Lord, the gates of the netherworld don’t have any power against that. And so we are not on the defensive. We are attacking. We are attacking Satan’s stronghold. Jesus promises us that we are going to win. Jesus is leading an expeditionary force into enemy territory, dropped behind enemy lines. And our job as Christians is to liberate those who are trapped under the spell of Satan and bring them into his kingdom. And so each and every single one of us, each and every single one of us is a soldier in Christ’s army. And he is going to share the spoils of the victory with us. And so you want that heavenly crown. You want to be there in his throne room good. But in order to reign with Christ in his heavenly kingdom, you’re going to have to fight with him here below. So what is this territory? What is this territory that the Lord is taking? The first territory that the Lord takes is our own self. The first place that Jesus needs to conquer is right here. As a result of our fall, we’ve gotten a little bent out of shape. We’ve gotten a little moved out of place. Our intellect has been darkened. It cannot see the truth as readily and clearly as it is supposed to be seen. Our will is weakened. We cannot always and consistently choose those things we know to be good. And our passions, our emotions, they’ve become disordered and unruly. It will draw you into things that are not good for you if you let them get ahead of you. So the first place that Jesus begins his campaign of conquest is he begins by enlightening that intellect. Sometimes he does it very quickly. Sometimes he does it slowly with people. But our faith, our ability to believe in what God has told us about himself and to hold on to that firmly, that begins to enlighten our minds. We begin to see his way is the good way, his way is the right way. And as we spoke of at length last night, start to get to know this Jesus as a person, as a human being, as our Lord. We come to know this God who has created us and who loves us. This faith that we have should lead us into repentance. We see God’s goodness and we see our own unworthiness and our own ingratitude towards him. We have this repentance, this metanoia, this transformation of the mind that leads us to understand that while we are away from Christ, we are in bondage to the powers of sin and darkness. And so through our faith, through our humble repentance, Jesus releases us from the powers of darkness and brings us on board into his kingdom. Now, perhaps this happens at baptism for an adult convert. They begin to see the goodness of Christ to be drawn to that. This may also happen for somebody who’s baptized as an infant but falls away later in life, but is brought back to the sacrament of confession, is able to be restored in that way. In either way that it happens, even if it has to happen more than once, God enlightens that mind. He brings our soul and our mind into a true communion with him so that we really know him as he is, as the living and loving King of heaven and earth. And so you’ve gone through a good confession or you’ve been baptized. You’ve had everything that’s the sin. The sin is now out. The God is in and you’re in the church. But you’ll find that you still have these disordered passions inside of you. You’ll find that there’s still parts of you that haven’t been fully redeemed yet. Why am I still sinning? I repented. I said I was sorry and I should have the Holy Spirit in my life now. The Lord wants us to share in the struggle. The Lord wants us to participate in our own sanctification. And so he allows us to struggle with sin. He allows us to struggle against our own tendencies, to engage in self deceptive and self destructive behaviors so that we could go stronger through the combat. So maybe after you’ve come back, you’ve got to learn how to tame your appetites a little bit. But you don’t give in to lust or drunkenness or those sorts of things. That’s what you fight against. Maybe you fight against that for a while. Maybe the victory is easy. Then you’ll find yourself struggling against anger, against being judgmental. Lacking charity, being fearful and timid when you should be bold. This struggle, this struggle against the darkness within us, that is a huge part of the Christian life there. Jesus is retaking the territory of our souls, but he’s not going to do it all by himself, at least not 99 percent of the time. That we’re going to have our own rule and our own struggle and our own participation in straightening out the disordered passions. During the season of Lent, we always remember our most potent tools for combating disordered passions and the darkness within us. Those tools are prayer, fasting and almsgiving. That everything we do is to be able to pray. Those tools are prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Every year on Ash Wednesday we hear Jesus preach about these things. We take them as opportunities and as tools to start straightening things out, to get things better ordered. So I know we’ve already said plenty about prayer, about that relationship with the living God. But if you’re really praying, you’re always being humbled. You’re realizing who Jesus is, who our Lord is and who you are. Who is the Lord and who is the servant of the Lord. That humility is very good. And that prayer and that contact with the Lord is very good. It disposes you to actually receive the grace and the power you need in order to, well, win, to win in the combat. So there’s prayer, fasting. Fasting helps us to bring our unruly appetites under control. Has anybody here ever grazed before? You just walk into the kitchen and you just sort of thoughtlessly consume food. Yes, all of us have done that. It’s easy. We live in America. We’ve got big grocery stores full of lots of food. And you could just go in there and graze. You begin to thoughtlessly consume. You’re not doing things intentionally and rationally. Your body gets used to that. Your body gets used to too much. When you’re fasting, you have to be able to walk into the kitchen and look at the place where you normally graze and say, not today. And your stomach’s going to be like, why? And you just have to say, because we’re fasting. And the stomach hates that explanation and doesn’t want you to do it. So this fasting, this brings unruly appetites under control. And almsgiving. Maybe the appetites don’t get you so much, but it’s the stuff that gets you. It’s the stuff, all of these things, this wealth, these acquisitions, the status. Maybe that’s what’s got you tied down. Parting from anything, perhaps that’s difficult for you. Well, almsgiving, giving away your things to those who are genuinely in need that can detach you from the goods of this world. In order to distract you from God, Satan will use anything. Anything. Bad things, good things, he’ll use it all. So maybe he’ll try and distract you with the goods of this world, the good things that we are supposed to use in service of God. Satan will try and convince you to pursue those things in place of God. The almsgiving. Willingly and intentionally separating yourself from these things. Not only is it good for whoever you’re helping, and a sign of charity for them, but as a happy effect, you’re less attached to those things that you’ve been holding on to. So that’s where the battle begins. The battle begins in our own soul. Jesus is retaking this ground for his kingdom and is going to hand it back to you to be governed wisely under him. Now Jesus also gives us battles to fight outside yourselves. You have this sphere of influence that goes beyond just your own immediate needs. And so that’s where I say we start close, we start moving our way out. Fighting the battles one at a time as they come. If you’re not working on yourself first, then going out and trying to fix other people’s problems isn’t likely to go well. The blind leading the blind is not a path for success. But let’s say you’re on a good path. You’ve got your feet stable, you’ve got a good program. You can look around to your family. What can I do here? Is there a relationship that I can patch up? Is there something that I have to confess to and ask forgiveness for? Is there somebody that I’ve offended? Is there somebody I can draw back in? Is there somebody who’s lost and I might be able to bring them back onto the right path? Bring them back onto a good path. Perhaps you can even go out into your workplace. Say this isn’t quite right. Maybe we can do that a little better. Certainly we’ll put you to work here at Holy Cross Church in our work of maintaining this place but also spreading the good news, spreading the word, being that light for the world here. So just consistently follow after the Lord in this way. Starting close and moving out. If you’re needed, hire up. If God wants to give you a promotion, He’s going to open up those opportunities for you. You don’t have to imagine that each and every single one of us, I’m going to give this from my perspective, but we don’t all have to be Fulton Sheen. There was only one Fulton Sheen. That was enough. That was all God needed. So if you’re needed, hire up. Wait for the Lord to invite you to that higher place. God will call you there. You don’t need to storm the doors yourself. And a principle, a principle that we can always apply, is that we are never to sacrifice God for anything else. As Jesus himself says, what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul? And so we’re trying to reign with Christ. We’re trying to be good soldiers in His army. And so if we are going to reign with Christ, then our reign will be like Christ’s. And who is Christ? Christ is the King reigning from the cross. Christ is the King conquering from the tomb. We shouldn’t expect this just to be floating from one success to another with no opposition whatsoever. Christ will reign in glory when He comes again at the end of time. At that point, the victory will be completed. But until then, He promises us that we are going to suffer. He even says outrageous and insane things like this. Are you encountering opposition? Are you encountering temptation? Celebrate. Blessed are you. That is a sign of God’s favor. Might not feel like it, but it is. Jesus also says, I am going to be a man of God. Jesus also says, if the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own. But because you do not belong to the world and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you. Remember the word I spoke to you. No slave is greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. So that is what we are facing. That is what we are looking at. Going out into battle and expecting to meet opposition. Our age seems to be an age of declining faith. Churches are closing down left and right. I think more people hear the name Jesus Christ as a swear word than they do as a prayer. I think God is brought up as a vulgarity more often than he is as an object of worship. And if you are anything like me, you make the mistake of turning on the news and finding out that the world is indeed going absolutely mad. It seems that the faith of Jesus Christ, at least here in the West, is in danger of dying out entirely. How blessed are we? How blessed and fortunate are we to live in these times? I have had moments where I would have wanted to live in another time, in another place, but guess what? I live here and I live now. And that is where God has put me. And he knows exactly what he is doing. And if he wants me to have to live in a world where we can’t tell the difference between men and women, then that’s the world that I’m going to live in. And that’s where I’m going to minister to. The deeper the hole, the darker the night, then the more brightly and brilliantly the light will shine. The steeper the slope, and the more desperate the struggle, and the more glorious and awesome the victory will be. God has not abandoned us, and the gates of the netherworld will not prevail against his assault, even though it seems that evil has its day. Jesus Christ is victorious. He is winning the victory over sin and death. And we are invited to be a part of his victory, of his struggle. You’ve been given a small share of his work, real responsibility, a real task, and everything you need to carry it out. If you endure to the end, you will be saved. And you will live in glory with Christ forever. Amen.