Oct. 15, 2017 Homily: Consecration of the Ordinariate to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

Throughout these past six months, the Church has been observing the 100 ^th anniversary of the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima in Portugal. Anniversaries such as these are important because they can be graced moments of spiritual renewal, and it was this in mind that I asked all of the priests of our Ordinariate to join with me in praying for you, the people entrusted to our care, on the 13 ^th of each month throughout the summer. This pilgrimage of prayer culminates today with the consecration of the Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. 

Here at Our Lady of Walsingham, being a Marian Shrine Church ourselves, we have perhaps a particular appreciation of the power of prayer and devotion in these centers of grace. Their importance in the life of the Church is ultimately not about the apparition, but about the message which, to be judged by the Church to be authentic, is always a meditation on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. How can it be otherwise, particularly when the apparition concerns the Mother of the Word Incarnate? And so, this morning, as a final preparation for our consecration to Mary, we can return to the message of Fatima so that Mary can instruct us for discipleship today.     
 
The message of Fatima is a message of conversion.
 
Our Lady spoke of global events, and by invoking particularly the consecration of Russia, warned of the dangers of godless totalitarianism that would shackle human freedom and be a source of suffering for millions. And yet, the medicine which Blessed Mother prescribes for these global ills is eminently personal. Prayer, acts of penance, and ongoing personal conversion. The ebb and flow of world events which seem so well out of our control always comes down to specific actions by specific persons. Social ills, such as the hardening of heart towards the dignity of human life particularly the most vulnerable, poverty, attacks on the very definitions of marriage and family life, a cavalier and materialistic attitude towards the gift of human sexuality…these things don’t just happen. They grow in a culture that has lost the ability of self-examination and introspection, when the individuals who comprise that culture become indifferent to the real effects of sin and deaf to the language of virtue. 

Mary teaches the children of Fatima to pray…the first weapon in the arsenal that brings about the conversion of the world. The practice of prayer — hear that word: the practice of prayer which the Church has always taught — the morning offering, intentionally giving the day over to God, the punctuation of the day with familiarity of the Lord’s Prayer, Hail Mary, and Glory be, the scriptural mediation that is the Rosary, and prayers in the evening or before bed when we consciously set aside a few moments to consider the day and examine our consciences — that practice sharpens our spiritual senses so that we see and judge the things of this world rightly, so we do not follow or be led by the wiles of the Devil like lemmings off a cliff.

And Mary exhorts her children to go to confession. Regularly. What a tremendous grace God has given to the Church in opening for us this conduit of his mercy and love! Not only are our sins forgiven and we are again made whole, but through regular interaction with this sacramental grace, the effects of that grace deepen and we begin to get at not only our surface sins, but at those areas of brokenness deep within us out of which our sins arise. This is why regular confession is so essential to lasting conversion. It is like building up an immunity through regular exposure to the medicine of grace. Mary shows us that the path to holiness is not, in the end, extraordinary and meant for only a few intrepid souls. It is accomplished through those seemingly ordinary practices the Church has always placed at our disposition. 
 
The message of Fatima is a message of Peace.
 
It is no accident that the apparitions at Fatima take place in one of humanity’s darkest moments. The First World War just ended, having unleashed the horrors of modern warfare, scarring the face of the human family with the terrible new concept of all-out war. And this was just the harbinger of still darker things to come: economic depression, the rise of totalitarian ideologies, the evil of racial genocide, and the nightmare of the Second World War. It is no wonder that the message of Fatima centers so squarely on the need to pray for peace. 

But what is peace? What are we actually meant to pray for? Peace, as the world knows it, is either understood as a feeling of security or contentment, or it is defined negatively, by the lack of tension or violence or sickness, or any number of external forces.  But therein lies the fatal flaw of worldly peace. It is an illusion of security and contentment that does not and cannot last. Worldly peace inevitably succumbs to countless threats, be they big picture, political, forces like some crazy dictator in North Korea, or the more personal threats to our feelings of security and contentment that arise out of our own, often broken relationships, out of the financial difficulty that we did not foresee or plan for, out of the illness that besets us or someone we love…and the list goes on and on.  As an external reality, worldly peace falls prey to external realities over which you and I have little or no control. 

The peace of Christ, the peace which passeth all understanding, the peace for which Our Lady bids us to pray is altogether different. Peace is first of all a gift of God in Christ: “not as the world gives do I give to you.” It is not a feeling, but act of the will, of desiring what God desires and loving how God has taught us to love in the incarnate love of his Son. In short, Christ’s peace is an internal, spiritual, and lasting state of confirming our will, our heart, with that of Christ. The will of God, remember, is not something outside of us, an external norm to which we must somehow conform our thoughts, feelings, and actions. That’s a worldly view! Religion is not moralism! Rather, God’s law is interior to us. It is first of all written on our hearts because God has created us in his own image and likeness — and that means something: modern societies ignore natural law to their own peril. What is more, in Baptism and Confirmation, we have received the Holy Spirit, the power of God and the presence of God dwelling in our souls, instructing us, strengthening us, and whispering wisdom to our conscience. The most Christian of prayers is simply: thy will be done. 

It is Mary’s prayer, at the Annunciation and throughout her life up to and including standing at the foot of the Cross. Thy will be done. The fruit of this prayer is the peace that comes with surrendering ourselves to the will of God, which is no mystery. Christ has told us: God wills that we be saved, that we come to knowledge of him as Father, that we achieve the happiness for which he created us! When you grasp that truth in faith, that God desires and wills our happiness and salvation, then everything else — prayer, good works, fidelity to the moral teaching of Christ’s Church, active discipleship — become path to happiness, the means of accepting the gift of lasting peace and sharing it with others. And when the Christian soul achieves that maturity wherein we can pray, like Mary and all the Saints, Thy will be done, then we stand on the firm foundation, the cornerstone which is Christ himself. Because it is first his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. And after his Resurrection, he gives the Holy Spirit to the Church to dwell in our hearts and to pray this prayer in us with power that no evil can overwhelm. God who dwells in us through the Sacraments: that is our true treasury of peace. 
 
The message of Fatima is missionary.
 
We are observing this centenary of the apparition of Our Lady at Fatima because and only because three little children were undaunted in their desire to make this message known. By the standards of the world, the events at the Cova da Iria should have passed entirely without notice. Little children are not considered to be the most credible of witnesses, and indeed their story of the Apparition of the Mother of God, in the middle of nowhere, to poor, illiterate children, is the very definition of incredible.  Yet they could not remain silent, and because truth itself is attractive, something in what they said resounded in the ears and hearts of the adults who heard them. And because of them, thousands gathered on the 13 ^th of October to witness the miracle of the dancing sun. Because of them, the Church has been refreshed in the call to conversion and penance as the means for achieving interior peace. Because of them, we today are consecrating our Ordinariate to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, trusting in her patronage for our growth and flourishing. 

In the long history of God’s revelation to His people, the whole history of Judaism and Christianity, God always chooses the most unlikely of witnesses to proclaim to the world the most profound truths.  Do not think for a moment you don’t have a role to play in the continuing unfolding of God’s revelation, for you certainly do. This Cathedral parish, our whole Ordinariate is missionary. It’s very existence is a testimony to what happens when men and women of integrity do not settle for what is familiar or comfortable, but put out into deep waters because of what is true. Ours is a mission to those Christians, men and women of integrity, who likewise find themselves on the search for the greater truth of Christ and His Church. Ours is a mission to our fellow Catholics, showing that the unity of our Catholic faith does not demand assimilation or rigid uniformity, but allows for a vibrant diversity and the expression of our patrimony of English Christianity that has nurtured our faith and prompted us to seek the fullness of communion in the first place. 

You may be tempted to look around at this relatively small gathering of a few hundred souls on a Sunday morning and think, well, today’s consecration is not going to change the course of the city of Houston, let alone anything beyond that. And, if it were just up to you and me, that’s probably true.  But it isn’t about you and me. It’s about God, and about having faith that He can accomplish infinitely more than you or I could ask or imagine. He needed but a spark of faith in three young children to ignite a blaze that spread first across Portugal, then Europe, and to the whole world. Are we willing to allow God to start a new fire of faith in us?
 
Conversion: deepening and purifying our relationship with the Lord so as to look at the things of this world with clear eyes;
 
Peace, that well of interior strength that is rooted in the intimate knowledge of God’s love and the conformity of our will with His;
 
Mission, how the fruits of conversion and peace are put into effect in daily discipleship—this is the message of Our Lady at Fatima, and the faith in which you and I are consecrated this day.