OUR PRIORITIES: GOD, CHURCH, CHRISTIAN MORAL LIFE

 

Brothers and sisters in Christ—

Two hundred and twenty years ago, during the French Revolution, the French King, who was a prisoner in the Tuileries Palace, tried to escape with the help of certain of his friends, and flee to the Austrian Empire.  He traveled with his family—his wife, the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, and his son, the Dauphin Louis.  They disguised themselves as peasants, and they traveled in a public carriage all the way from Paris to Chinon (near Varennes) on the Austrian border.  But there an old peasant woman recognized the King from his image on the country’s money.  At that point, the royal family was arrested, and subsequently they were condemned to death for treason.  The King and Queen were beheaded at the guillotine in January 1792, and later the Dauphin died in prison as result of his mistreatment.

     Naturally, this was not a perfect family.  Of course, they were great sinners, just like we are, but they were also great benefactors of the Church, and their Catholic Faith was a high priority for them.  After their death, the power of the Revolution was turned against the Church, which it destroyed altogether, and many faithful people died as martyrs for the Name of Christ.

     Later, after the restoration of the monarchy, King Charles X tried to make atonement to God’s justice on account of the horrific sins of the Revolution, but his government was destroyed by the same evil forces, which murdered his brother and his family.

     In the end, France had to suffer the terrible humiliation of the Franco-Prussian War. Then, the repentant nation came on their knees to beg the last surviving grandson of King Charles X to accept the crown of France.  On the 24^th of December, 1870, the eve of the feast of the Nativity of Christ, eighty-one years after the arrest of King Louis XVI and his family at Chinon, the emissaries of the National Assembly came to this man with their proposition.  But courageously, Henri, Comte de Chambord, refused the crown of France, because he refused to accept the tricolour flag as the true flag of France.  He refused to accept the symbol of the people and the ideology, which had murdered his family and destroyed his beloved Catholic Church.  Instead of this evil symbol of revolutionary ideology, he, just like his grandfather, proposed that France atone for the great offenses that it had committed against God during the dark days of the Revolution.  He believed that France should return to the use of the old flag—the flag of the three fleurs-de-lis, which the very first King of France, Clovis, had adopted as an expression of his new faith in the Holy Trinity, and his love for the Most Holy Mother of God.  In the opinion of this last surviving son of Clovis’s family, Henri Comte de Chambord, these were the ideals to which France ought to return.

     The repentance that St. John the Baptist preaches in the Gospel today calls us to change our lives and refocus all our energy on the truly important things—our priorities: our God, our Catholic Church and virtue.  Our God, after all, is the only one who is truly immortal and eternal. Our Church is continuation of Christ’s Incarnation in this world, is, therefore, the instrument of our salvation. Virtue is the experience and evidence that Christ lives in us.

     In order to embrace repentance, we must accept the Spirit of Christ, Who is the Spirit of Self-Sacrifice.  The Spirit of Holy Self-Sacrifice is indeed the true “Christmas Spirit,” for Christ, the Word of God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, descended from Heaven in order to give us life as a ransom for many. Therefore, holiness means to participate in the Spirit of Self-Sacrifice, and we see in our calendar that the royal retinue of the Child Jesus, as he comes in the feast of the Incarnation, includes a great many martyrs.  On the 27^th of December, we celebrate the feast of the Holy First Martyr and Archdeacon Stephen, on the 28^th of December—the feast of the Holy Martyrs of Nicomedia, and the 29^th of December—the feast of the Holy Innocents, killed by King Herod in Bethlehem.  These people died for the Name of Christ.

     But it is not absolutely necessary to die in order to be a martyr.  We Christians, if we are faithful, become martyrs each and every day, and many times in the day, when we sacrifice our advantage and profit for the sake our priorities—our God, our Catholic Church and our faithfulness to the ways of virtue.  Henri Comte de Chambord sacrificed the crown and position to which he had been born, because he remembered the words of the Lord: “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his very soul?” Perhaps we sacrifice our lunch so that we have time to pray, or visit a nearby church, or perhaps a half an hour of time in front of the TV in order to pray as a family, the way our families did, when we were children. Perhaps our small sacrifice is to make the Sign of the Cross in the public place without shame or embarrassment. In small ways such as these, we build a habit of self-sacrifice, and by the grace of Christ, we become virtuous people.  When we have a choice between a large or a small portion, we take the small one, or when we choose between a soft chair or a straight one, we choose the straight one, because we recognize that if we accustom ourselves to comfort, it will hinder our love for Christ and others.  But if we accustom ourselves to repentance—to self-sacrifice, it will make a place in our hearts for love.