First Sunday of Lent: The Power of the Rosary and Spiritual Warfare
Offertory
"Out of the depths I have cried to thee, O Lord: Lord, hear my voice..."
Summary of Headings
- Introduction to the First Sunday of Lent
- The Necessity of Spiritual Warfare
- Exorcism and Procession
- Catechism and Confirmation
- Upcoming Events and Announcements
- Reflection on the Epistle and Gospel
- The Role of the Blessed Virgin and the Rosary
- Conclusion and Call to Prayer
Introduction to the First Sunday of Lent
The first sermon is for the First Sunday of Lent in the traditional Catholic liturgical calendar. The second sermon is for the First Sunday of Lent in the traditional Catholic liturgical calendar. The first sermon is for the First Sunday of Lent in the traditional Catholic liturgical calendar. The second sermon is for the First Sunday of Lent in the traditional Catholic liturgical calendar. The first sermon is for the First Sunday of Lent in the traditional Catholic liturgical calendar. The second sermon is for the First Sunday of Lent in the traditional Catholic liturgical calendar. The first sermon is for the First Sunday of Lent in the traditional Catholic liturgical calendar. The second sermon is for the First Sunday of Lent in the traditional Catholic liturgical calendar. The second sermon is for the First Sunday of Lent in the traditional Catholic liturgical calendar. The second sermon is for the First Sunday of Lent in the traditional Catholic liturgical calendar. The second sermon is for the First Sunday of Lent in the traditional Catholic liturgical calendar. The second sermon is for the First Sunday of Lent in the traditional Catholic liturgical calendar. The second sermon is for the First Sunday of Lent in the traditional Catholic liturgical calendar. The second sermon is for the First Sunday of Lent in the traditional Catholic liturgical calendar. The second sermon is for the First Sunday of Lent in the traditional Catholic liturgical calendar. The second sermon is for the First Sunday of Lent in the traditional Catholic liturgical calendar. The second sermon is for the First Sunday of Lent in the traditional Catholic liturgical calendar. The second sermon is for the First Sunday of Lent in the traditional Catholic liturgical calendar. The second sermon is for the First Sunday of Lent in the traditional Catholic liturgical calendar. The second sermon is for the First Sunday of Lent in the traditional Catholic liturgical calendar.
The Necessity of Spiritual Warfare
So please help us out with that. And thank you very much for everything that you have helped us with thus far. Right after the sermon, there will be the minor exorcism of Pope Leo XIII performed. So before anybody gets ideas of head spinning and pea soup, that does not happen. But the fact of the matter is there's a lot of evil in the world. There's a lot of power that the devil has in dominion over the world. So therefore, it is necessary for us to combat it head on and recognize the fact that our battle is not with the powers of this world, but with the principalities and powers of the spiritual world. And our battle, our combat is first and foremost and always a spiritual one.
Exorcism and Procession
So this is performed every year here in our chapels in Florida to try to mitigate the damage that these forces have, inflict, also to help release any sort of power that they may have over any of our faithful, but most specifically to be able to protect our chapels from the many attacks that can occur. So that will be right after the sermon. And then because of the procession and everything else, I'm afraid that the catechism in Spanish, which we usually have this Sunday, will be canceled. I'm very sorry that the catechism in Spanish will be canceled today, simply because we have too much going on with the procession and everything. But next Sunday, we will have the catechism.
Catechism and Confirmation
We have a children's catechism beginning on November 2nd. If you have not signed your children up, please make sure you do so. The sign-up sheet is in the vestibule. I remind everybody that there is a solemn obligation in every marriage, to not just have children, but to educate them in the faith. Now, the chapel does provide a sort of supplement to what you're supposed to give to your children to help them out, especially in their preparation, their knowledge of their faith before they receive sacraments. So please make sure you sign them up. Also on that point, we have the confirmation sign-up sheet as well. We finally have a general idea of when the bishop is going to be coming down. As everyone knows, it's kind of difficult for the bishops to travel the entire world, doing all the ordinations and all the confirmations for the SSPX. And so it looks like during January, we will have Bishop Fillet coming in. But we still don't have a firm date, although there is a rumor that it will be January 10th, which is interesting because that's also St. Philomena. So that will be quite an adventure. But say a prayer that we get a fixed date here pretty soon, that we can... we can be able to prepare. But for those of you who have not been confirmed, please make sure you sign up. If there are those of you with positive doubts about the validity of your confirmation and would like conditional confirmation, please come see me so that we can go over those doubts. Also, usually the idea is about children of about 10 years old are the younger ones that we allow to be confirmed. But if that is left up mainly to the parents, discretion, if you would like younger children or older children to be confirmed, please come see me about them as well. Confirmation is a very important sacrament. All the sacraments are, of course, but it is very important, especially in this day and age, for children, for adults to have the strength of the soldiers of Christ to be able to combat the many battles that we have. Again, the sign-up sheet's in the vestibule.
Upcoming Events and Announcements
October 18th, which is a Saturday, we will, after the 9 a.m. Mass, the ladies of the League of Our Lady of Victory invite all the ladies of the parish to come and participate in a tea party that they wish to have. There are little signs and posters on the walls and the doors of the chapel and of the parish hall. Please come and participate, but take a look first to see what is entailed, dress code, things like that. I remember there was some dispute about hats, but I'll leave that to everyone to sort that out. So please go to the bookstore to sign up if you are interested. Also, the calendars for the 2026 year that the Angeles Press puts out are now in the bookstore. It has some very beautiful art from the Renaissance era. So please go take a look. They're in the bookstore for sale now.
Reflection on the Epistle and Gospel
Lastly, I'm sure everybody noticed, but during the Rosary, after the Rosary, we recited the Lenten hymn. It's the litany of Our Lady of Victory, not the litany of Our Lady of Loreto. This is an approved litany, approved by Pius XII. It goes back quite a ways, so just to give you a little bit of context. It was compiled by Monsignor Nelson H. Baker. He was a priest of the Diocese of Buffalo. He was known for his extraordinary charity, deep devotion to Our Lady of Victory. He, after serving in the Civil War, and later making a pilgrimage to Notre Dame de Victoire in Paris, he placed all of his work under the Virgin's protection. In Lackawanna, near Buffalo, he built an entire complex of charitable institutions, orphanage, maternity hospital, school, homes for the poor, and elderly. It was collectively known as the City of Charity. Grounding this work, he built the magnificent Our Lady of Victory Basilica, which was completed in 1926. It was modeled after the Parisian shrine that inspired all of his works. It became a spiritual and architectural monument to Our Lady's intercession, and to Father Baker's lifelong trust in divine providence. He died in 1936, and in 2011 he was declared venerable by Benedict XVI. So starting this Sunday and moving forward, for the Mother of Victory, we have a few things to say. The months of October that occur, the month of Our Lady of the Rosary, the month of Our Lady of Victory, we are going to be reciting this litany after all of our rosaries.
The epistle for the 17th Sunday after Pentecost is taken from St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians, chapter 4. Brethren, I, a prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that you walk worthy of the vocation in which you are called, with all... Excuse me, we're in Our Lady of Victory. I'm sorry. The epistle for the Feast of Our Lady of Victory is taken from Proverbs, chapter 8. The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his ways. Before he made anything from the beginning, I was set up from eternity and of old, before the earth was made. The depths were not as yet, and I was already conceived. Now therefore, you children, hear me. Blessed are they that keep my ways. Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not. Blessed is the man that heareth me, and that watcheth daily at my gates, and waiteth at the posts of my doors. He that shall find me shall find life, and shall have salvation from the Lord.
And the Gospel? Let's take from the Gospel according to St. Luke, chapter 1. At that time the angel Gabriel was sent from God into a city of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. And the angel being come in said unto her, Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, who having heard, was troubled at his saying, and thought with herself what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said to her, Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace with God. Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and shalt bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God give unto him the throne of David his father. And he shall reign in the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end. And Mary said to the angel, How shall this be done? Because I know not man. And the angel answering said to her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee. And therefore also the Holy which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And behold, thy cousin Elizabeth, she also hath conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month with her that is called barren, because no word shall be impossible with God. And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to thy word. Thus for the Gospel, please be seated.
The Role of the Blessed Virgin and the Rosary
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Just an aside, the epistle for this feast day is very beautiful. The Proverbs about the, shall we say, the eternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Speaking on that point, I do highly recommend Archbishop Fulton Sheen's book about the Blessed Virgin called The World's First Love. It speaks very beautifully about this relationship between God and the Blessed Mother. As mentioned before, we live in a world of darkness. When Adam and Eve sinned, they fell from grace. But as a result, they cursed all of humanity, each and every one of their offspring, to deal with the wounds of original sin. They went from having perfect integrity, illumination from God himself, and grace, to unfortunately having to deal with, now we have to deal with the lack of grace, the lack of integrity, where our intellect is darkened, our will is weakened, our passions are out of control. Also, we have to deal with a desire for evil, a desire for that which is wrong, and disordered desires. This is something that we all have to put up with, each and every one of us. But, we are able to, by the grace of God, mitigate the damage that is done. We are able to fight against the many evils that are incurred by original sin. We are able to overcome them. We are able to find God. We are able to pursue grace. We are able to overcome our imperfections and form good habits to defeat the bad ones. The problem is, it's not that easy without the grace of God. We need help. We are not that strong. We are weak. We are ignorant. We are blind. We are any number of things. We are imperfect on so many levels. And there is a darkness in our soul, that is a result of this sin. And therefore, we have to fight constantly to contain it, and to restrict its influence and power over our actions. And therefore, it's necessary for us to seek out the help of God, His grace, and His order, His structure. Because alone, it's very, very difficult to do this, and impossible to save our souls. But, we have the ability to do so much good, because God works through us. The problem is, in our modern world, this is not possible because of the absolute and total rejection of God and His order. Everywhere we look, we see God being refused, people turning away from Him, not accepting any sort of order over them, or even themselves. Rather, praising and blessing all disorder, anarchy, lack of structure, lack of discipline, just letting our passions do whatever we want, to run rampant all over the place. We praise ignorance and weakness. We encourage immorality. We coddle it so much. We normalize evil. The devil truly has his playground here on this earth. And so many people are trapped in it. When we look upon the world, it's easy for us to become frightened. It's easy for us to become angry, frustrated, fearful. Desperate. It's easy for us to walk away from everything. To turn away. To just focus on ourselves. To despair of anything ever being better ever again. To despair of any sort of a victory. This is why the world is filled with rage, and hatred, and fear. This is why there is so much finger pointing, and disgust. This is why there is so much that has to do with the devil's work. His darkness clouds everything. The world, every society, has either never known the order of Christ the King, or has openly and actively rejected him completely and totally, and done everything they can to push him away. Just yesterday I was talking to a Cuban refugee who was telling me about the playbook of the communists. The very first thing they do is they go after the Catholic Church. The very first thing. Once the communists are in control, that is the first thing they do. They persecute the church. And this is all over the world. Because that is the darkness of the devil. But that is only one sign of it. There is so much of the devil that we see all around us. Just see how people react to each other. How people interact. Their inability to control themselves, their rage that pours out so much, so easily, over the smallest things. Their anger over not getting their way. Worse than that of a little child. And when we look upon this, and we realize there is a very sad secondary point. And that is the one place that we should find hope against all this darkness. Clarity in all this confusion and strength with all this weakness is the Catholic Church. And regrettably, the Catholic Church is playing the world's playbook right now. Regrettably, the leaders in the Catholic Church are more focused on being with current events, with coddling sin, with encouraging people in their darkness. Rather than giving them light and hope and strength and protection. But through all of this anxiety-inducing difficulty that we see all around us and even within us, we should never fail to understand that we too are creatures of our environment. We have these same defects within us. Each and every one of us. No matter how much we try to run from the truth, or how much we try to run from all society and hide from it, no matter what we have done to be able to protect ourselves, we still have, just by osmosis, some of those same issues. Who among us, turning on the TV and watching the news, or looking at the news on the internet, or reading the latest scandal about what the Pope did, or whatever else, has not felt immense sadness, almost desperation, or rage and anger at what is being done, or hurt and frustration at the situation in the world? We can see it, why can't they? We get so angry at the multitude of voices about all these issues. Which of us doesn't have those same sensations that we condemn other people for having? In fact, there's not one of us. So therefore, we need hope. And it comes to us in the form of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She is the star of the sea. The North Star, the one that never moves. The one that is the fixed point for sailors to find reference to wherever they go. No matter what storms have cast them off course, no matter what difficulties they have gone through, they can always find the North Star, and it can always guide them. That is our Mother. No matter how bad things are, she will always give us grace. No matter how horrible the situation in the world may be, she will always give us hope and light. No matter how difficult it may be to be virtuous, she will always give us strength. No matter how blind and ignorant we are, she will always teach us and instruct us and guide us. Because she is our Mother. Because she is the Mother of God. And because we have her Rosary. When Our Lady herself gave the Rosary to Saint Dominic, it was for the purpose of being able to combat the heresies of the time that were consuming Spain and parts of France. The Albigensian heresy. Interestingly, a heresy that is quite parallel to the Heresy of Saint Dominic. It is paralleled by all of today's errors and problems. A heresy that is born of despair, of hatred, and many other things. She gave hope to Saint Dominic in the form of the Rosary. She gave light and protection to the world through it. It is the most powerful tool that we have in our arsenal. Besides the Mass and the Sacraments, and the Holy Cross, the Rosary is the most powerful weapon we have. And it is the most accessible as well. One of the purposes of the Rosary was to give the lay people a sort of breviary. The breviary is the divine office that the priests and clerics are all bound to. Where we recite the 150 Psalms every week. And we have many lessons and prayers. It is not always accessible to everybody. But the Rosary is. 150 Hail Marys for the 150 Psalms. It is Our Lady's Psalter for that reason. It is the perfect tool for meditation. Meditation is one of the most important things that we can do because it gives us strength of mind and intellect, and it gives us strength of will. We don't like to be quiet for that long. Not our minds. We need distraction, movement, activity. We need images and colors. We need all sorts of things. Meditation forces us to take all of our faculties of the mind and the will and combine them into a single focus. And that is really hard for modern man to do. The Rosary is the perfect tool to accomplish it. Because it gives us 15 mysteries to dedicate our attention to. These 15 mysteries are the most essential and the most important mysteries of the faith. We must contemplate them. And because they are the mysteries of the faith, no matter how many times and from what angle we look at these mysteries, we will always find something new to take out of them. Every time we can do something with them. It is a tool of meditation because we take a basic prayer, the Hail Mary, and we repeat it over and over and over again. It's prayer work. It's a prayer we have memorized. It's a prayer we have within our memory. Every small child should memorize it at a very young age. And by the by, again, I emphasize sign up for catechism. Precisely for this point. We must have these prayers memorized. And we must, therefore, utilize the prayers to calm ourselves, to calm our minds, to focus our minds. If you want to call it such, like a mantra. Something that we repeat over and over again. Passing the beads through our fingers. It's actually quite therapeutic. But it also is a focus. It's a guide. Something to help calm our mind. Get all the stuff out. All the activity. All the frenetic energy. All the distractions. The fear. The anger. The desperation. To focus it all into this one simple device in meditation. These mysteries will elevate us. They will guide us. They will strengthen us. They will encourage us. Especially in our darkest moments. You know, a man told me a story one time. He was having fainting fits. Sometimes when he would stand up, he'd keel over and pass out. Went to the doctor. The doctor spoke to him for a while about what was going on. Decided it was just stress. I say just, but that is actually one of the major curses of our day and age. Everybody is so, it was wound so tight. Very stressed all the time. He was just so stressed that he kept passing out. The doctor saw his scapular and asked him, are you Catholic? The man said yes. The doctor said, well, I'm not religious. I don't follow any religion. But since you're Catholic, pray your rosary. So psychologically, it is proven that that practice of passing something through your fingers and repeating a sort of mantra-like prayer over and over. And focusing your mind on one particular object. Actually is extremely healthy in letting go of all the stress and all the difficulties and problems that you have. To relieve so much of everything that you have bound up within yourself. I think we all should, I think we all need that pretty badly today. And most importantly, the world needs us to have that. There are so many lost souls that the Blessed Mother wants to save. She desperately wants. Our Blessed Lord. To be King of all. She desperately wants to save each and every one of us. And her rosary is the tool for that to happen. But the rosary doesn't just miraculously appear to people. We have to bring it out to them. She gave it to us. So first and foremost, we must use it as she would want us to use it. As a tool of meditation. To relieve ourselves of the many burdens that we carry unnecessarily. To relieve ourselves of the burden of confronting the darkness of the world and the spirits in this world. So that we can overcome so much of it. Her rosary is our hope. It is the crown of roses that we place upon her head each and every time we pray it. It is a recognition of her as our Queen. As the Mother of God. As our great hope. As our great intercessor. In her many apparitions, she talks about so many ways that she protects us and helps us. And Fatima describing how many souls she protects from hell. In La Salette, she talks about holding her son's heavy arm back from chastisement. In La Salette. And so many other examples of that. We have thousands and thousands of miracles at Lourdes. Proving her strength and her ability to touch this world. We have so many gifts from her. But not one is greater than that of the rosary. It is our weapon in darkness. It is our weapon against the devil. And his power and his minions. It is our light when we cannot see. It is our relief when we are overburdened. It supports us and encourages us on so many levels. Something we desperately need. Be faithful to the rosary. Every family should say the rosary together each and every day. If possible, all 15 mysteries. If not, five. When you are sad and tired and overburdened. Say a decade at least. When you are driving. We all know exactly what kind of high octane traffic there is around us. Say the rosary to stay calm. To keep your calm while everybody else is losing their heads. When you see the horrors of the world. And you hear the tragedies and the scandals in the church. Say the rosary. To comfort you and to strengthen you in times of very great difficulty. When you suffer. Say the sorrowful mysteries. Or the joyful. Or the glorious. Whichever ones you find most comfort in. Say the rosary as a family. Because there is no one who is going to buy it. Because you will find your family together stronger. Than that of our Blessed Mother. Her healing hand will do more for our family and its woes. And more for the world and its difficulties and darkness. Than the rosary. Stay close to the Blessed Virgin Mary. She will always guide us correctly. And she will always maneuver us and help us. Until we find our eternal home. With her as our queen in heaven. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, amen. Thank you.