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Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen preaches at the 50th Anniversary

Mass of the Diocese of Raleigh - 1974

Transcript:

"Your eminences, Your excellencies, brother priests, vowed religious and all beloved in Christ.

We are saddened by the absence of Bishop Waters, we are gladdened by the presence of this ceremony because it was his dying wish that it be held. I find in this wish a very faithful proof of the life of our Blessed Lord. He never spoke of His Passion without speaking of His Resurrection and the bishop did not speak of his death without speaking of the joy of this occasion.

I believe that we can sometimes tell in an eminent way, the eternal destiny of some people by the day in which they are born, the day in which they die. Bishop Waters was born on the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, he was ordained on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and he was buried on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. I am sure that if anyone of us could ever choose the days on which we will go to the Lord it would be to duplicate the great feast of Bishop Waters.

Now we celebrate first of all the anniversary of the diocese and also the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Let me tell you something first of all about the Immaculate Conception. Why the Blessed Mother was conceived without sin. Just imagine that it was a river here, a polluted river, and there is a ship sailing on it. And over here, there is a clear river. If a ship wishes to pass from the polluted waters to the clear without the merging of the two, there has to be a lock into which the ship passes and then is raised to the level of the clear waters. Now, humanity has been sailing on somewhat polluted waters for centuries, and Christ did came to give us a new humanity and a new screen of grace in order to shout out that contact with an older generation of which we will speak in a moment. We have the lock, and the break of the Immaculate Conception.

Let me speak then first of all of the Church from an historical point of view and then from it about it from a spiritual point of view. First of all, from an historical point of view, because some of you are troubled about what has happened these last 15 or 20 years to the Church. You are confused, bewildered, there are a number of neck ecclesialogists, that is to say those who are predicting the end of the Church on account of what has happened today. Now let me console you on this anniversary. Remember that every 500 years, there are great crisis in history, so we have to put this diocese of yours into this great perspective of history. Just quickly glance over the two thousands years of Christianity, think of the tremendous crisis that happened to the Church in the first cycle of 500 years. There was the fall of Rome, imagine, here is a city in a civilization that endured for eight centuries and now it collapses. Saint Jerome in the cave of Bethlehem thought that the end of the world had come. Augustine spent 18 years writing the City of God trying to explain it. But the Church survived. And then, in the second cycle of 500 years, came the eastern schism, the break away of many of the eastern churches from Peter, the head of the Church. And with that the Muslim invasion which came up a hundred and twenty miles of Paris. We had 500 dioceses in northern Africa in those days and now they are reduced to 5 as a result of that. But the Church survived. And then came the third cycle of the religious revolution, when there was a reform of doctrine when it should have been a reform of morals. And the Church survived that and we began a great missionary activity in the Church.

Now we are in the forth cycle, and it is not the fall of Rome, it is not the eastern schisms or a Muslim invasion, it is not a religious revolution. What are we witnessing today? We are at the end of Christendom! The end of Christendom, not the end of Christianity. What is Christendom? Christendom is the economic, political, social life of a nation as governed by the Gospel ethic. That is finished! And the sooner we recognize it, we can begin to rebuilt anew. Now just quickly, three evidences of it. First, a one of the sacredness of life: two millions abortions in the last few years in the United States. Secondly, the breakdown of the sanctity of marriage, and marriage is always the sign and symbol of God's covenant and relationship with humanity. And the third, is the belief that God is dead and that man must build his own world.

Now, given this fact, I am profoundly convinced of it, let me give you three observations about it. First, the Church liveth throughout all of these changes, and the Church is not a continuing thing, the Church is something that dies and rises again. The law of the Church is the law of our Blessed Lord; unless there is a Good Friday, there won't be an Easter Sunday. Unless there is a crown of thorns, there will never be a halo of light. The Church is always coming out of a tomb. And the Church will come out of this, and we are not to think that the Church is wedded to any particular civilization. That was the trouble with the disciples of Emaus. When the Risen Lord appeared to them and they said we thought that You were the One who would restore Israel. Imagine! Identified with a culture... So the Church is not a continuing thing. Secondly, we Christians are being tested for our salvation. We are in a warfare. We have almost have forgotten the fact that God has to test us periodically. The Jews were tested for example in a desert, Moses was tested and one instance he fell. Our Blessed Lord was tested. Tempted on the mount by Satan. We are tested. And we are to thank God that we are not tested in a very difficult way. The German Christians were tested with Nazism, the Russian Christians were tested with Communism, and we are tested with what? With whether we are going to accept Christ or the world! That is easy, that should not really be a difficulty. So we are becoming less and less, many are going over to the world. Remember when Gideon went to do battle with Medianistes, he had an army of 30 thousands and he was to do battle with an enemy that had about 50 thousand troops and God said to him, "Your army is too great, tell the cowards to go". How many cowards were there in God's army? 20,000! He had 10,000 left, now your army was still far too great, "send them to the river and watch them drink", some threw themselves prone on their stomach, drank easily unto the fall; others ran along the river and lapped up the water with their hands in the fashion of dogs, and God said " That is your army" but I will be with you. So in the test, we are loosing some, please God they will come back, but in a crisis, the Lord wants only the true, and the faithful, and the strong. And the third reflection about this crisis is, never be discouraged. These are wonderful days to which to be alive, marvelous. Twenty years ago, was it difficult to be a Christian? For example, nobody ever locked a front door, a bicycle would be safe on a lawn for months. All that is changed. But today we are being tested, and so we have to stand up and be counted for the Lord. And when there is a certain wave and a current of secularism, such as worldliness such as there is in the present time, remember this, that dead bodies float downstream. It takes a live body to resist the current. And that is why we are to thank God that we have an opportunity to proclaim our faith in Him until the emergence of this new day when the Church will take on a new glory, and that is the historical side of the church and you featured 50 years into that you will never be discouraged."