Homily for the Feast of Saint Rose of Lima

Preached by H.E. Bishop Edward Slattery of Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA during his Pontifical High Mass in the Traditional Rite at the LMS Training Conference for Priests, Merton College Chapel, Oxford, August 29, 2007.

Time exercises over all those born under the sign of corruption a certain tyranny. This is the tyranny of false perceptions and it afflicts us all.

Those who are young think themselves possessed of the wisdom of the ancients, while those of us who are ancient, or at least those of us whose bodies have begun their slow process of dissolution and decay, still guard in our memory the illusion of perpetual youth. We can hardly bend or kneel, and to genuflect is to suffer a peine forte et dure, but we see ourselves still as capable now as when we were thirty or forty.

This tyranny of relative perceptions afflicts everything which man considers with his in­tellect or touches with his hand. What is new is old and what is old is relatively new, to those who delight in the questions of time and space.

The Diocese of Tulsa, for example, over which I exercise a shepherd’s care, is a relatively new diocese, counting fewer than forty years since its erection. As a new foundation, we have no real history, no legacy of architecture or culture, no saints to whom we can point. Now in comparison to our Diocese, the state in which we live, Oklahoma, is quite old, since this year it celebrates it centennial. To reach a hundred years is quite an accomplish­ment in the New World, where old buildings are routinely torn down when they are forty or fifty years old so that we can build something newer and more modern; and we Okla­homans, more than most Americans, I think, revel in our newness. Our cities and towns have a newness that is almost raw and an energy which is nearly uncontrollable.

On the other hand, for us Oklahomans, the ancient cities of Latin America exude an ever­present sense of history; so that it stretches one’s imagination to consider that the streets of Lima were not quite fifty years old when Isabel Florez de Oliva - or as she is venerated today Saint Rose of Lima - trod them in the third quarter of the sixteenth century together with her saintly friends Juan Macias, Martin de Porres and Francisco Solano.

Such is the tyranny of relative age that when we consider that Oklahoma is new, while Lima is ancient, but that Lima was new when Oxford was already ancient, we must also consider that when Oxford was young, in the time when the Bishop of Rochester was overseeing the foundation of this college in 1264, the rites by which we worship God.

today were already celebrated for their antiquity, cherished as something received from Apostolic times, already surrounded, layer upon layer, by protective veils of mystery. The chant which is such a singular characteristic of the Apostolic Rite of the Latin Church and which has moved us to deeper and richer experiences of prayer throughout this Confer­ence, was more ancient than time in the time when ancient Dunstan restored the monastic ideal at Glastonbury.

Such considerations of what in human experience is confounded by the tyranny of rela­tive time leads us to a further consideration - since while we may have been born under the sign of corruption, we have since been reborn in Christ under the sign of His incor­ruptibility. Christians have been redeemed from the tyranny of time with all its delusions and its pervasive corruption so that we live in a time that is outside of time, what we call the ‘end-times’, and experience our lives and all the pursuits which occupy us as being al­ready caught up in the eschaton, when time will be fulfilled and the Kingdom of Him who is ever ancient and ever new will be revealed in its fullness.

Nowhere is the in-breaking presence of the eschaton more truly perceived by sinful humanity than it is, now, at Mass, when the whole Christ – that is, Christ and the people re­deemed by His obedience and now united with Him as their head – offers an act of perfect worship to the Father. Christ offers Himself and those united with Him, in a total surrender in love. Joined as we are to the humanity of Christ, and filled with His life-giv­ing Spirit, we worship the Father in the only authentic and true worship, worship of God in Spirit and in Truth. This worship, simply put, is the perfect obedience of Jesus.

That mankind should experience salvation as true worship of the Father is what St Paul calls God’s secret plan, hidden from all ages, but now revealed to those who are being saved. We have been made one with Christ in His perfect obedience, so that by His life, death, resurrection and second coming, our lives and the certainty of our death, the hope of our resurrection and the ultimate finality of our longed-for holiness, might be given to the Father as an acceptable sacrifice, and that we should discover in the making of that sacrifice the love by which we are redeemed.

To put it simply, our worship of God in Christ is our salvation.

This is the meaning of the Eucharist we celebrate. When we worship the Father, we are actively and fully and consciously participating in the same sacrifice by which we are re­deemed. And because we have been redeemed by this same sacrifice, our worship of the Father is authentic and true, whether our Sacrifice is offered in the magnificence of this l3th century chapel, or in the humbler dignity of the city churches and rural chapels from which we have taken our leave to attend this week’s Conference.

I consider this truth of the Faith fundamental for us who have immersed ourselves this week in the history of our ancient rites and prayers. We who step forward to the altar of God who gives joy to our youth must remember that Christ alone is the celebrant of our Sacrifice. When we celebrate the Holy Mass, for ourselves, for our salvation and for the salvation of those redeemed by Christ, it is Christ who is the eternal High Priest of this covenant in his Blood.

And thus is the Mystery of our Redemption revealed as the Mystery of God’s humility; our salvation revealed in the humility of Christ the Priest, who in order to be constantly offered as a perfect victim allows sinful men to stand in His Person and to speak the words, “Hoc est enim Corpus Meum”.

Amen.