Dear Readers,
My
name is Father Franz of Saint Titus, Independent Old Catholic Church (IOCC) of
Africa.
Primate Archbishop George Le Mesurier, IOCC of
America
Primate Emeritus Archbishop Maurice McCormick, IOCC of America
+++
Primate Emeritus Archbishop Maurice McCormick, IOCC of America
+++
Bishop George OtienoOdhiambo, IOCC of Africa
+++
Father. Franz
Devantier, IOCC South Africa
Invocatio:
P.
In nomine Patris, et + Filii et Spiritus
Sancti. Amen.(In the name of the father, and of the Son, + and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. )
Confiteor:
A. O Lord, Thou hast created man to be immortal and made
him to be an image of Thine own eternity; yet often we forget the glory of our
heritage and wander from the path which leads to righteousness. But Thou, O Lord, hast made us for Thyself
and our hearts are ever restless till they find their rest in Thee. Look with the eyes of Thy love upon our
manifold imperfections and pardon all our shortcomings, that we may be filled
with the brightness of the everlasting light and become the unspotted mirror of
Thy power and the image of Thy goodness;
Through Christ Our Lord. Amen.
Absolutio:
P. God the Father, God the + Son, God the Holy Ghost, bless,
preserve and sanctify you; the Lord in His lovingkindness look down upon you
and be gracious unto you; the Lord +
absolve you from all your sins and grant you the grace and comfort of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
17th
Sunday after Pentecost – 5th October 2014 (Colour of Celebration – Green)
“The Liturgy reminds us today of the great
commandment of charity towards God and our neighbour. “The precept is twofold,” declares St Augustine,
“but charity is one.” We love God above
all and our neighbour for His sake.
Announcements:
We are actively recruiting candidate Priests. A custom program will be created for each
candidate to reach the goal of Ordination to the Priesthood. Please contact Fr. Franz father@waseff.com
Special Prayer Requests:
=>
Let’s pray for the Salvation of all the souls on earth, and the return of Jesus
Christ to earth.
News:
Still looking for a place to
meet on Sundays.
Download your free copy of “Atonement
for Everyone” by Father Mac Khruisium here:
Sacred References:
Epistle: Ephesians,
chapter 4, verse 1 - 6
Gospel: Matthew,
chapter 22, verse 34 - 46
Homily / Sermon:
Firstly I will discuss the “New Commandment” that Jesus
Christ brought to us.
Secondly I will discuss the ignored, but true meaning of
the Catholic Church.
New Commandment
The Pharisees were in a group talking about Jesus Christ,
and trying to find ways to test him out of the scriptures. One of them who was a lawyer, and had a very
clever line came forward and asked Jesus this question:
“Master, which is the great commandment in the law?”
Now you must understand that Jesus had been talking about
things that did not seem to make sense to the Pharisees. They were trying in their way to make it
understandable, but at the same time, they were trying very hard to discredit
Jesus Christ. So when this lawyer
approached Jesus Christ with his specific question, the Pharisees it seems were
hoping that this would be the leading question to discrediting Jesus
Christ. However the answer that Jesus
Christ gave, was not what they were expecting, in fact I don’t think that
anybody there saw it coming. It was
almost as though Jesus Christ was waiting for this lawyer to approach him, so
that he could give the teaching of the New Commandment.
Jesus Answered: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart, and with all thy soul , and with all thy mind.” This is the first
and great commandment.
Jesus goes on to say: “And the second is like unto it, thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”
But Jesus is not finished yet, he goes on to say: “On these
two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
In this teaching Jesus Christ had told the Pharisees, his
disciples, and all that were present there that day, that the great commandment
was to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and secondly to love your neighbour
as yourself. Before the lawyer who was
with the Pharisees could make any comments on this amazing revelation, Jesus
goes on to explain something that is as profound today as it was then. On these two commandments hang all the law
and the prophets.
That last statement is perhaps one of the most far reaching
and profound statements that have ever been made. In a nutshell what it means is that if you
love God and your Neighbour, then you automatically fulfil all of the laws and
stipulations in the books of the law, and also any thing that was mentioned by
any of the prophets. Now things had
become so easy and yet so hard for us.
So easy, because instead of trying to comply with an impossible array of
rules and regulations, all you had to do was to love God and you fellow person
as yourself. So hard, because it was
difficult to accept that all you had to do was love. This statement was so amazing, because now
anybody could achieve the difficult task of re-uniting with God. You no longer needed to be a Pharisee, and to
live a life of complying to thousands of difficult to remember laws. Now you just had two, or as is sometimes
pointed out one Law, which is to love God and your neighbour.
You will notice that Jesus Christ refers to the three
aspects of a person, your heart, soul and mind.
So now you have these Pharisees, who had spent a lifetime
studying and living the laws of the scriptures.
After the words of Jesus Christ, they did not have any comments of
offer, even the lawyer could not think of anything to say after the words of
Jesus.
In a way you can say Jesus is having some fun with the
Pharisees, because they were still hanging around, hoping that something would
come up, that they could use to discredit Jesus Christ with. So after a while Jesus asks the Pharisees:
“What think ye of Christ?
Whose son is he?”
To put that in perspective, “Christ” had been spoken of
throughout the books of the law and the books of the prophets. The Pharisees were experts on the “Christ”. They could tell you anything about the Christ,
except the most important thing which was that “Jesus was and is the Christ”. You see they had no idea that Jesus was the
Christ, as his disciples likewise had no idea at the time. You see this information had not yet been
shared by God, the time was not right yet.
The Pharisees thinking that this was an easy question answered: “The Son of David”.
Jesus Christ in turn asks them this question: “How then
does David in spirit call him Lord saying,
The Lord said unto my Lord, sit though on my right hand,
till I make thine enemies thy footstool.”
“If David then call him Lord, how is he his Son?”
No man was able to answer this question. Of course we have the advantage of 2000 years
of hindsight, and so can pass some comments.
It could be that the Pharisees were looking at the question from a
purely physical perspective, rather than a spiritual one, and so could not
formulate anything that made physical sense.
For us it is enough to know that God is spirit, and is not limited to
three dimensional space and linear time.
You see Jesus was referring to God who sits on his throne in Heaven, and
at his right hand is the word, or Jesus Christ his son. On the day of judgement, once everyone has
been divided into those who are to unite with God and those who are not to
unite with God. Those who do not unite
with God on that symbolic day will find themselves revealed as the enemies of
God, and find themselves under the feet of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the morning and the evening
star, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. There is no way that you can explain such a
spiritual existence of God in physical terms.
Even the most learned of Pharisees had to depart that day, without
having made any comments on this final statement of Jesus Christ.
However the most important point that the Pharisees went
home with that day was the lesson of the New Commandment. They had been taught, as the disciples and
everyone else that day had been taught, that all of their learning of the
scriptures, and exercises to follow every stipulation of the law was
meaningless, because the great commandment was simply to Love the Lord Your
God.
The true meaning
of the Catholic Church
Now you may be wondering why I would refer to the true
meaning of the Catholic Church. I speak
of this because the word Catholic means universal.
In the Epistle we are asked to look to and look after each
other in love. We are to do this in
lowliness and meekness. You see to stand
up in front of the assemblies and to tell the others that you have helped a
certain person, but giving them certain necessities such as food and drink, and
shelter and clothing etc is not the correct way to go. If we do that then we have already received
our reward for the good deed, and have not built our treasures up in
heaven. So we find that we need to help
people without letting our ego’s get in the way. We need to help people, because they are our
neighbours, and we are loving them as we love ourselves, as in the second part
of the new commandment. As those who are
being helped, will not feel good, when the news of the help that they have
received is freely given out to everybody.
So we should not do this to them, because we love them as
ourselves. Therefore we should exercise
our charity with lowliness and meekness.
Yes but what has that to do with “Catholic” you may ask. We get the concept of universal or Catholic
from the fact that our neighbour whom we love as ourselves, could be anybody
from any walk of life, from any background, of any race, of any country or
political or religious persuasion. So if
our neighbour is universal, then this is the first step towards understanding
the true meaning of Catholic.
“Endeavouring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond
of peace.” You see God is spirit, and we
are to keep the unity of the spirit, because there is just one God. Peace is one of the most difficult things to
achieve, but once you start on the path, you will notice the results
immediately. Sometimes a smile can start
things going in a positive direction, a hug or a warm handshake, or just a
positive comment on the efforts of another.
And after those little things we are more in a mindset for peace than
before. There is one God for all of us,
so if we have peace on earth between all different people of the earth, then we
have maintained or honoured the unity of the Spirit.
You see there is one body of Christ. Regardless of your background or belief
system, if you believe in Jesus Christ, then you are part of the one body of
Christ. You are part of the Universal body
of Christ, you are part of the Catholic body of Christ or the Catholic
Church. As I write these last words, I
and almost hear the objections being
thrown back at me. You see the idea of
the original Catholic Church, was a universal church, a church that embodied
everybody, Jew and Gentile, from every walk of life, from every background,
from any part of the world. The original
idea was a truly universal organization.
Over the last two thousand years for too many reasons to mention, in
such a small article, the Catholic Church has been polarized into something
that we thing of as the “Catholic Church”.
It is sometimes difficult to recognize that it was supposed to have been
the new religion for everybody, without any exceptions.
You see there is only one God, and that one God is for
everybody. That one God is the Father of
all of us. God is above all of us, God
works through all of us in diverse ways, and God is in us all. Despite all the religions of the world, there
is only one Jesus Christ, who came for the entire world and not just for one
religion or denomination. So the Church
of true Christians was probably imagined as the Catholic Church all those years
ago, but it did not really achieve what its name described it as.
We can embrace the concept of the Catholic Church, whether
we are Hindus, Muslims, Budhists, Catholics or Protestants. To us Catholic should refer to the one and
only God, and to the one and only Jesus Christ.
Whether we use the name Catholic or not, the concept is the same. Which is that Jesus Christ came to this earth
to give everybody the opportunity of choosing to unite with God, or to continue
in the old ways, with a extremely small percentage of success. By that I mean of all the billions of people
alive, only a miniscule number have been able to unite with God, without taking
advantage of Atonement for sin. All you
need to do is to pray the prayer of redemption, or get people that you love to
pray the prayer of redemption, because you have already done it, and your name
will be written in the book of life, and that is a promise that Jesus Christ gives
to us.
The Prayer of Redemption
Lord Jesus Christ, thank you for dying
on the cross for my sins.
Please forgive my sins and give me the
gift of eternal life.
I ask you into my life and heart to be
my Lord and Saviour.
I undertake to be baptized as called
for in the scriptures, Mark 16, verse 16.
I undertake to regularly partake of
Holy Communion, as in Mathew 26, verses 26-28.
Amen.
Mark, chapter 16, verse 16
Whoever believes and is baptized will
be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.
Mathew 26:26-28
And as they were eating, Jesus took
bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said,
Take, eat; this is my body. And he took
the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For
this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission
of sins.
Prayer:
Our
Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name: Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth
as it is in heaven. Give us this day our
daily bread. And forgive us our
trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil.
For
Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever.
Amen.
A Prayer for
Jesus Christ’s Return
From the
Understanding of God
Let
Understanding flow into all humankind.
Let that
Understanding fill the Earth.
From the Will
of God
Let God’s
Will become our will
The purpose
which only God fully knows.
From the Love
of God
Let Love fill
the hearts of humankind.
May Jesus Christ return to Earth.
Let the
Understanding, Will, and Love of Jesus Christ Reign on Earth.
Benedictio:
P. The peace of God, which passeth all
understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God and
of his Son, Christ our Lord; and the Blessing of God Almighty, the Father, + the Son and the Holy Ghost, be
amongst you and remain with you always.
Amen.
Love,
Father Franz of Saint Titus, IOCC, South Africa,
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