Go into all the world, to every creature

The Paschal Mystery is, liturgically speaking, complete. Our LORD ascends to heaven to prepare a place for us. He did so after forty days, not forty-three.

Mark 16:14-20 

14 At length he appeared to the eleven as they were at table: and he upbraided them with their incredulity and hardness of heart, because they did not believe them who had seen him after he was risen again. 15 And he said to them: Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature. 16 He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned. 17 And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name they shall cast out devils: they shall speak with new tongues. 18 They shall take up serpents; and if they shall drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them: they shall lay their hands upon the sick, and they shall recover. 19 And the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God. 20 But they going forth preached everywhere: the Lord working withal, and confirming the word with signs that followed.

Homily by Pope St. Gregory the Great29th on the Gospels

I may be allowed to say that the disciples' slowness to believe that the Lord had indeed risen from the dead, was not so much their weakness as our strength. In consequence of their doubts, the fact of the Resurrection was demonstrated by many infallible proofs. These proofs we read and acknowledge. What then assureth our faith, if not their doubt? For my part, I put my trust in Thomas, who doubted long, much more than in Mary Magdalene, who believed at once. Through his doubting, he came actually to handle the holes of the Wounds, and thereby closed up any wound of doubt in our hearts. 

Now confirm to our minds the trustworthiness of the fact that our Lord did indeed rise again from the dead, it is well for us to remark one of the statements of Luke Acts i. 4. "Eating together with them, He commanded them that they should not 1 John xiv. 16, 17 xvi. 7. depart from Jerusalem and a little afterward: "While they beheld, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight." Consider these words, note well these mysteries. After "eating together with them He was taken up." He ate and ascended: that the fact of His eating might show the reality of the Body in Which He went up. But Mark telleth us that before the Lord ascended into heaven, He upbraided His disciples; with their unbelief and hardness of heart. From this I know not why we should gather, but that the Lord then upbraided His disciples, for whom He was about to be parted in the body, to the end that the words which He spoke unto them as He left them might be the deeper imprinted on their hearts. 

When then, He had rebuked the hardness of their heart, what command did He give them? Let us hear. "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature." Was the Holy Gospel, then my brethren, to be preached to thing insensate, or to brute beasts, that the Lord said to His disciples: "Preach the Gospel to every creature"? Nay, but by the words "every creature" we must understand man, in whom are combined qualities of all creatures. Being he hath in common with stones, life in common with trees, feeling in common with beasts, understanding in common with angels. If, then, man hath something in common with every creature, man is to a certain extent every creature. The Gospel, then, if it be preached to man only, is preached to every creature.

Any man who would equate this, the "Great Commission," with the Jihad of the Mohammedans, is suffering from a delusion, proffering deception and possibly under some kind of diabolical possession. 

When those Shepherd's fail to "preach the Gospel to every creature," they disobey the very LORD GOD Himself. The very Jesus, that come to earth as man in the womb of the Virgin, lived, taught, suffered, died, arose and ascended. This very Jesus, they defy.

Praised by Jesus Christ, now and forever. Amen.

Good Shepherd Sunday and the Lamb's High Feast - woe to the hireling who defy the True Shepherd

Today, is "Good Shepherd" Sunday according to the Gospel in the proper Roman Rite. Why the liturgical revolutionaries had to change it to next week in the nervous disordered and modernist rite after 1500 years can only be described as diabolical.

It is critical for every Roman Catholic to get themselves free of the modernist rite and return to the traditional Mass and to read the Divine Office according to the pre-revolutionary rites. Those who cannot, I urge you to at least read the Missal on line for Sundays if that is all you can do and to read and pray the Office according to the Divino Afflatu available at the top right tab, "Divine Office." 

Not only will it strengthen you to endure the horrors coming upon us in Church and State, it will give you solace and comfort and connect you with the riches of the faith from those who came before 1950 and the false notion of a great Catholic decade, in fact, a decade leading up to destruction.

The Sermon below is by Pope St. Gregory the Great who died in 604. Would that every priest and bishop could write and speak as this today.

From the Holy Gospel according to John

John 10:11-16

At that time, Jesus said unto the Pharisees: I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd giveth His life for His sheep. And so on.

Homily by Pope St Gregory the Great.

14th on the Gospels.

Dearly beloved brethren, ye have heard from the Holy Gospel what is at once your instruction, and our danger. Behold, how He Who, not by the varying gifts of nature, but of the very essence of His being, is Good, behold how He saith: I am the Good Shepherd. And then He saith what is the character of His goodness, even of that goodness of His which we must strive to copy: The Good Shepherd giveth His life for the Sheep. As He had foretold, even so did He; as He had commanded, so gave He ensample. The Good Shepherd gave His life for the sheep, and made His Own Body and His Own Blood to be our Sacramental Food, pasturing upon His Own Flesh the sheep whom He had bought.

He, by despising death, hath shown us how to do the like; He hath set before us the mould wherein it behoveth us to be cast. Our first duty is, freely and tenderly to spend our outward things for His sheep, but lastly, if need be, to serve the same by our death also. From the light offering of the first, we go on to the stern offering of the last, and, if we be ready to give our life for the sheep, why should we scruple to give our substance, seeing how much more is the life than meat? Matth. vi. 25. Antiphon at the Song of Zacharias. I am the Shepherd of the sheep: * I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: I am the Good Shepherd, and know My sheep, and am known of Mine. Alleluia, Alleluia.

And some there be which love the things of this world better than they love the sheep; and such as they deserve no longer to be called shepherds. These are they of whom it is written : But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth 12. He is not a shepherd but an hireling which feedeth the Lord's sheep, not because he loveth their souls, but because he doth gain earthly wealth thereby. He that taketh a shepherd's place, but seeketh not gain of souls, that same is but an hireling; such an one is ever ready for creature comforts, he loveth his pre-eminence, he groweth sleek upon his income, and he liketh well to see men bow down to him.

V. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us.
R. Thanks be to God.

And a most relevant hymn from the Office in its English version and one of my personal favourites. 

 Ad regias Agni dapes,

Stolis amícti cándidis,

Post transitum Maris Rubri,

Christo canámus Principi: 

Divína cujus cáritas

Sacrum propinat sánguinem,

Almíque membra córporis

Amor sacérdos immolat.

Sparsum cruorem postibus

Vastator horret Ángelus:

Fugitque divisum mare;

Merguntur hostes flúctibus. 

Jam Pascha nóstrum Christus est

Paschális idem victima,

Et pura puris mentibus

Sinceritatis azyma.

O vera cæli victima,

Subjécta cui sunt tartara,

Soluta mortis víncula,

Recépta vitæ præmia. 

Victor, subactis inferis,

Trophæa Christus éxplicat;

Cæloque apérto, subditum

Regem tenebrárum trahit.

Ut sis perénne mentibus

Paschále, Jesu, gáudium,

A morte dira criminum

Vitæ renatos líbera. 

Deo Patri sit glória,

Et Fílio, qui a mórtuis

Surréxit, ac Paráclito,

In sempitérna sǽcula.

Amen.