Cultivating Our Catholic Faith Like Crops

Introduction

The Epistle and the Gospel today are quite concise. You don't really need, there's not a whole lot you can do to expound upon them because what our Lord says, what Saint Paul says are remarkably quick and to the point and very clear. But I'd like to touch on one of the things that our Lord said. Not everyone that says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Receiving the Faith

It's easy for us to receive the faith. Honestly, the vast majority of us probably received it soon after we were born. We received the grace of baptism. Therefore, we received the habitual virtue of faith. From that very moment, we received our inheritance to the Kingdom of Heaven at that time. We received our citizenship to heaven and for others who are converts. Yes, you had a, shall we say, a longer, rougher road to that destination. But the fact is nothing. It was not because of your merits that you received that grace, not one of us. It was never, never because of our merits or because we earned our right to be called citizens of heaven. But rather it is the goodness of God.

Beyond Superficial Catholicism

So while it's easy for us to say, Lord, Lord, to declare Christ king, to say that we are faithful Catholics, to be essentially good Catholics, it's easy to be that superficially. But the whole point is that we must be more than just superficial Catholics. We must be Catholics to the very core of our being. How are we able to accomplish that?

Cultivating Faith Like Crops

For an analogy, I'd like to take a look at how you cultivate crops. Not the massive farms that everyone sees where everything is mechanized and done automatically. But when you actually have to take care of a small plot of farm or a small crop that you are trying to take care of, it takes a lot of work and it's not something you can just do as a hobby. It requires your dedication and considering that your life depends upon it all the more so. So the first thing we must understand about this is that this is life and death. This is a question of life and death. Eternal life. Eternal death.

The Seed of Faith

Because while, as Saint Paul points out, we speak as human things. Because of the infirmity of our flesh. We are human. We are born into this world. We are creatures of this world. But Christ elevated us and gave us something more. By his death on the cross. He opened the gates of grace. And he presented to us an opportunity. We have received that fruit of the opportunity. We are able to now do something with that. We have had the seed of the faith planted within our soil. We have had eternal life in this seminal form planted within our soul. That is the seed. But as everyone should know, you don't just throw a seed on the ground and expect it to grow. It needs to be cared for.

Effort and Grace

So Christ may have given us the grace. He may have given us his own life and his adopted nature. But he does not give us the full victory without our help. We have to put in the effort too. And so he gives us everything we could possibly need. He gives us the sacraments. He gives us the mass. He gives us all the tools and all the materials we could possibly ask for to be able to bring this to a full accomplishment. But he is going to ask us to do our bit. He can give us as much as we need and more, vastly more. But we are going to have to put in our effort too.

Removing Sins and Vices

First, when we want to take care of this seed, which is the life, the spiritual life in the ground of our soul, the first thing we must do is we must get rid of the weeds around it. Each and every one of us, we have sins. We have vices. We need to get rid of them. We need to take care of them. And again, anyone who's ever pulled weeds knows that you don't just pluck the leaves off the plant and hope that it never comes back. Weeds always grow. And so what you do is you have to pull them out from the very root. That requires patience and requires digging around, preparation, and a lot of other things. But it also requires a lot of care.

Cultivating Virtue

We cannot obsess about the pulling out of the weeds, but it must be a priority. The weeds are our sins, our vices, our bad habits. The things that lead us into sins. So how do we do that? First and foremost, we stop the things that incline us toward that. For example, if we are inclined toward laziness, if we have a particular device of laziness, well, the remedy for that is what is referred to as “acting against.” So instead of trying to fight against every circumstance where we feel a temptation toward laziness, we do the exact opposite of what our inclination of laziness is telling us. I'm too tired to say a rosary today. Maybe I'll just go to bed without saying a rosary. I'll give it a miss this one time. Well, then the response is we say six mysteries instead of five. Of the rosary. By going against the inclination, we are actually forming a good habit.

Developing Good Habits

Within some vices, we need to cut off occasions of sin. We need to starve the vices of their of what the things of what feeds them to be able to help us. Sometimes we need to do various things, but whatever the vice is, we need to have a strategy of how we are going to pull it out. And we need to have a strategy of what we're going to have, what virtue we're going to practice to combat it directly.

Fostering Spiritual Growth

So how are we going to focus on specific virtues? What virtue would be perfect for laziness? Fortitude. Let's work on fortitude. Overcoming of obstacles to accomplish difficult things. That would be a good thing. There are many more examples that we could use, but this is the first point. First, we need to get rid of the bad habits. We need to get rid of the vices. And again, that can be the work of an entire lifetime, so long as we are constantly working at it. That's okay. But we make the effort. And every moment that we are making the effort, we are winning victories and Christ's life can live more deeply and more completely within us.

Nourishing the Seed

The second aspect of it is that we have to feed and cultivate the soil around the seed. If the seed needs to grow, it needs to receive all the possible nutrition that we can give it. And that nutrition comes from specifically studying and praying. Those two things most importantly bring us to a point that we have a more fruitful experience in the spiritual life. We are able to pray more perfectly. And we are because we know more about the faith and we are able to know the faith more personally and apply it more perfectly because we are able to pray more deeply.

Importance of the Mass

First and foremost, of course, that is the mass. We must come to the mass. We must attend the mass. We must have time with the mass. This is the source of all grace. It is the source of our spiritual life. It is the source of everything we could possibly ask for. We must be with the mass at all times. But again, we can't live here. This is not supposed to be our entire life. And yet it is. This is supposed to be the source of our entire life. It's supposed to be the sum total of our entire life. But we can't actually live here. We can't actually live in this little brief moment of eternity. We have to go back out into the world and we have to confront ourselves and the rest of the world with what we received here at the mass.

Applying the Mass in Daily Life

And again, that's not easy because our faith is weak. But that is why we need to carry the mass out with us and apply it day by day with meditation and the rosary. Those two forms in particular. Meditation is particularly complicated because it means confronting God face to face. With the rosary, we can kind of hide behind the words. But meditation is really deeply personal. But those two forms of prayer are very necessary for the cultivation of the virtues that are necessary for our spiritual growth. And it is necessary these two forms of prayer are necessary for each and every one of us to apply the lessons of the mass in our everyday life. So we must have meditation and rosary in our everyday life. If you can spend time with the Blessed Sacrament, all the better. But meditation is a good replacement if you cannot. But spending time one on one with Christ in a very personal, intimate way is necessary for our spiritual growth.

The Role of Spiritual Reading

And of course, in order for that to happen, we need to study. We need to have good spiritual reading, scripture reading, whatever else. Just have something that is feeding our soul constantly. Archbishop Lefebvre referred to spiritual reading as the nourishment of the spirit of the prayer life. We need that very badly in every facet of our life. Remember that our life is not for here on Earth. It is in service of heaven, always in service of heaven. And so while we can focus on the things of this world, we must always try to subordinate them to the things of heaven. And that is where meditation comes in. It helps us to accomplish that, to see the spiritual in things, to understand it and to do it, to accept it.

The Fruit of Spiritual Life: Joy

There's a third element that we must talk about for which we need to cultivate the good fruit within our soul. And that is the first fruit, the first fruit of a spiritual life. A good, healthy spiritual life is joy. This is a difficult one because we're not naturally joyous creatures. We may be, some of us may be more happy than others. But happiness isn't joyfulness. Joyfulness is the natural consequence of contentment, of having what we want and what we need. Joyfulness is the first fruit of the presence of the Holy Ghost within our souls. That is the indwelling of God Himself. That is grace by the mere fact that we are in a state of grace. By the mere fact that we can attain a state of grace. By going to confession, going to communion, by going to the mass, saying the rosary, etc.. There should be a deep and peaceful joy within our souls. We shouldn't look for physical happiness. That's not going to help. But we do need very badly a deep, peaceful joy. God is with us. He's not going anywhere. We're the ones who walk away from him. He is the one who was willing to die for us. He is the one who is willing to give us everything. He is the one who is trying so hard to save our souls. We are the ones who are causing him so much trouble in this attempt. Whether it's by our weakness of faith or our weakness of will, whatever it may be. Whatever may be the problems, we need to make sure that this joy is present.

Conclusion: Joy in God's Love

But the reason the joy is present is because we know who God is and the fact that He loves us enough to make his preferred place of dwelling our souls. Needs to be the source of tremendous joy and unshakable joy, regardless of all the turbulence in the world, regardless of the attacks of the devil. And regardless also of our own personal difficulties, we must have absolute confidence and peace in this fact. Christ is here. The Holy Ghost, the Blessed Trinity dwells within my soul. They love me so much that they are willing to live with me in this way, elevating my soul to an adopted kinship so that I can be perfectly and eternally happy with them and therefore be fulfilled in my joy and be confirmed in it eternally with them in Heaven.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.