Saint Matthew 24: 15-28
Third Last Sunday: 10 November Anno Domini 2019
Father Jay Watson SSP
Are you in trouble? While you deny it, pride and all that, you are in need of daily assistance. Do you have enemies? You do, but you mistake mere earthly actors as your adversaries, when, in reality, your most deadly foes are Satan with his demons, the world’s tempting mammon, and your own sinful nature.
You should be ashamed of your sinful old self. But, once you confess your daily sins, then you should believe and confess that you are delivered from the hands of your enemies, that you have no shame because you trust in The Lord. You rely on His mercy and He never lets you down.
Do you not know that your body is the Temple of The Holy Spirit? Does grace abound that sin may abound?
When The Lord spoke by His faithful pastor, Saint Daniel the words that are also written by the blessed Evangelist and Apostle Saint Matthew, know that they were spoken and written for The Church—all the Lambs of The Good Shepherd: then, now, and in the future. The historical fulfillment of the prophecy about the “abomination of desolation” has more than one historical point in time. Christ “is the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” [Heb. 13.8] If the fearful event, enemy, environment, which is abominable, and a desolation, was only something that happened when a Roman General slaughtered some Jews and placed idols in the Temple, then The Lord’s warning to His Church loses its meaning.
The point is that there is God and there is the devil. There is The Truth (Christ enfleshed—incarnated) and there is the lie. There is the fulness of God’s creation (His creatures) the super-abundance of Mercy, Life, Light, Peace, and Communion by his filling Word, and there is the diabolic void and emptiness of the abominable one. Not the “Abominable Snowman” of legend, but the abominable ancient dragon, the evil foe, of the desolation of apostasy, rejection, presumptuous sin, and ultimately hell.
Cain went to a desolate place in his blackened heart when he allowed Satan to place abominable rage and hatred inside him.
Sin always causes fallout and tragic desolation for the victims, perpetrators and bystanders. Adam and Eve felt the desolation of losing one son by murder and the other son by banishment.
When the sons of Jacob sinned in their desire to murder Joseph both were subjected to desolate times while the abominable one who smells of sulfur laughed in gibberish glee.
So, point not your finger at perceived enemies but rather turn the hand inward to smite your own diseased breast: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! So, fight. Repent and strive and engage in some spiritual fisticuffs with the serpent and your “old Adam.” “Know ye not that your body is the temple of The Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?” [1 Cor. 6. 19] Your enemy thinks he’s a roaring lion because of the hissing, braying, and other imbecilic sound-effects his forked tongue produces, but the true and real Lion of Judah fights your battles for you even as He fought and won the War at Calvary.
Yes, to be sure, when Jerusalem was surrounded by the Roman armies in 70 A.D., or even more prescient, when the Legion were still some miles away, Christ’s words to flee quickly without lingering, were meet, right, and salutary. But your ability, or even willingness, most of the times to follow God’s advice, His Law, is not what will save you. You are Jesus’ elect, His own chosen brothers and sisters—He adopted you: YOU ARE + BAPTIZED! He always shortens your trials, temptations, and limits the abominable one from harming you, because He did not shorten His own time. He came in the fullness of time to obey on your behalf, and to suffer and die—not quickly—but after six long hours of bearing the sin and the sins of the world. Yes, flea from sin fellow Saints, but take heart that Jesus did not flee from Satan but wrestled Him all the way to the Tree, let him bite deep into His sacred heal, and then crush the vile serpent at the point of seeming total desolation. There hanging dead on the crucifix, the Lord of Life, Himself, becoming abominable in the foul death of your sin, on the mountain where once Isaac was spared by the substitution of a ram, Jesus did not spare Himself but became the final Lamb of God—the Paschal victim.
Do not listen to the false “christs,” the false prophets, and the false pastors. Do not follow their own self-created illusions, delusions, and mumblings, to enter the desert of self-justifying works or the secret prayer closets of pietism and self-centered Pharisaism. Hear The Word of The Lord as He has called His own servants to preach it, teach it, and administer it.
The “carcase,” that is The Body, The Flesh and Blood, of the Victim, Who while always remaining Victim, is dead no more, but alive, victorious, triumphant, ruling in all power, is on the Altar of Heaven’s footstool…for you! There the Son of Man comes to be eaten, and drunk, and held as tight as He holds all of you right now—in perfect forgiveness. Come fellow eagles, gather in Grace.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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