Sermons of Fr Paul Robinson SSPX

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Living the Capacities of Our Supernatural Life, Sermon by Fr. Paul Robinson, SSPX
On the day of our baptism, we came to the church alive with physical life but dead in supernatural life. It was because of this fact that our soul was dead with sin that we, or our godparents, had come to ask for eternal life.Then, we went through the ritual of the baptismal ceremony during which we underwent a symbolic death. The pouring of the water on our heads was like a burial in water from which we then rose again to a new life. The ceremony was a symbolic dying with Christ and a symbolic rising with Christ to a new life.What was not symbolic was that, when the water was poured upon our heads, the death of sin was driven from our souls and a new life started to dwell there, a supernatural life.This is what St. Paul means in today’s epistle when he says, “we were buried with Him by means of Baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ has arisen from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life.”What this means is that, before Baptism, our soul was not capable of doing anything in the supernatural order. It could not move in the supernatural realm and was dead to that realm.We know that an animal is dead when it does not move, when it does not have self-movement. We go up to a dog that we are not sure whether it is sleeping or dead. We move it with our foot and nothing happens. Because the dog does not move, we conclude it does not have physical life.Our soul before Baptism was like that in the supernatural order. We were not able to make any supernatural movement.After Baptism, our soul becomes alive with a new type of life, a supernatural life. That life does not get rid of our physical life or lay on top of our physical life; rather, it goes inside of it.The life of God goes inside of our spiritual soul and gives it new capabilities.It goes inside of our mind and gives our mind the ability to believe the mysteries of the faith.It goes inside of our will and gives it the ability to choose a supernatural good, to love God above all things, to seek the salvation of our soul above all things.St. Paul focuses particularly on one new ability that the new life of Christ in our soul gives us the ability to do: it gives us the capacity to be dead to sin.
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15:54
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15:54
Holiness and the Reverence of the TLM, Sermon by Fr. Paul Robinson, SSPX
Today, we have one of the vocation stories in the Gospels. These are some of the most beautiful stories we read about in the Gospels, and we find them in all four Gospels.They all consist in three things: a meeting, an invitation, and a following.These stories are beautiful and powerful for us because they are a representation of our own life.Of course, they are particularly a representation of the life of a priest, a monk or a nun, those people who have given their lives for the service of Our Lord Jesus Christ.But they are also a representation of the lives of the Catholic faithful. All of the faithful are called by Our Lord to be holy, to follow Him, to love Him and serve Him in their lives.The vocation story in today’s Gospel helps us understand what we need to do to answer the call of Our Lord. It is interesting that Our Lord was not content with preaching from the boats of these fishermen whom He was going to turn into fishers of men.He could have just stopped preaching and said, “Come, follow Me”. But, instead, He wanted to work a miracle before issuing the call. Why did He do this?Because great reverence is needed to follow the call of Our Lord. It is not enough that we see Him as a great preacher; we have to see Him as God.Our Lord works this miracle of a great catch of fish, so great that there are more fish than can be contained in one boat. Both boats were even sinking when they were filled with the fish. When St. Peter sees this, he has an immediate realization: this man is holy. I don’t think St. Peter knew yet that Our Lord was God. But he knew that He was holy: only a holy man could work such a miracle.When St. Peter sees the miracle, a great reverence for Our Lord awakens in his heart. He casts himself on his knees, in an attitude of respect, submission, and petition. He realizes how sinful he is in comparison to Our Lord and tells Our Lord that he is not worthy to be in His presence.But, in fact, the truth is the contrary: the reverence of St. Peter for Our Lord is what is going to enable him to answer the call of Our Lord and fulfill his great vocation of being the first Pope.The same is true with answering the call to holiness. Our Lord calls all of us to a greater union with Him. It is reverence that will enable us to answer that call. Reverence will make us want to pray, will make us fervent in our prayer, will make us fear sin and keep a close watch over ourselves.Reverence is often what leads Catholics to traditional Catholicism. They start to realize the respect that is owed to God, that that respect is not given in the New Mass, and that the TLM treats God with the respect that He deserves.
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16:52
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16:52
There Is No Salvation Outside the Church, Sermon by Fr. Paul Robinson, SSPX
Today, we celebrate the feast day of the pillars of the Catholic Church, Sts. Peter and Paul. St. Peter was chosen by Our Lord to be the first Pope. He preached the Gospel to the Jewish people and established the headquarters of the Church in Rome, where he was eventually martyred.St. Peter was buried on the Vatican Hill in Rome and a church was built on the spot. This is the same place where the Vatican Basilica is today. The bones of St. Peter are in the crypt below the Vatican and so the central church of the Catholic Church is literally built on St. Peter.St. Paul, meanwhile, spread the Gospel to the Gentiles, starting communities of Catholics all throughout the Roman Empire. He also ended his life in Rome, where he was likewise martyred.The institution for which these two saints died is the only divine institution on this earth. By this, I mean that it is the only institution specifically founded by God. When Our Lord came on this earth, He founded one institution before leaving this earth, what we call the Catholic Church. His association with this institution is so close that we speak of the Church as the Bride of Christ. God is married to the Church He founded.What this means is that Our Lord chose to make the Catholic Church the one institution on this earth that would communicate the fruits of His Redemption to mankind. Our Lord takes all of the graces that He merited on the Cross and He has them pass through the Catholic Church to souls, especially through the administration of the sacraments by the priests of the Church.It is for this reason that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church. There is only one Savior, Jesus Christ. He has chosen to found only one divine institution on this earth, the Catholic Church, and He has only given to that Church the power to save souls, the power to communicate to men the graces that flow from the Cross for the salvation of souls.
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15:32
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15:32
Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, Sermon by Fr. Paul Robinson, SSPX
When Our Lord was in the middle of preaching His famous Sermon on the Mount, He took some time to instruct the people on how to pray.He said to them, “When you pray, go into your room, and closing your door, pray to your Father in secret: and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. But in praying, do not multiply words, as the Gentiles do; for they think that by saying a great deal they will be heard. So do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. In this manner therefore shall you pray: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” (Matt. 6:6-9)What is interesting about this passage is that Our Lord speaks of God as our Father four times in a short space. He is not referring to the First Person of the Trinity so much as God in Three Persons.Almighty God is our Father in Heaven. He created us. He takes care of us. He is the source of everything for us. He wants us to join Him in Heaven. He is my Father because He created me. He is our Father because He created all of us.There are so many things that follow from this fact that God is our Father. But today, I want to highlight three of them.
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16:43
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16:43
The Dangers of Sedevacantism, Sermon by Fr. Paul Robinson, SSPX
Just three weeks ago, we had a momentous event in the life of the Church, the election of a new Pope. Robert Cardinal Prevost became the 267th successor of St. Peter and so the oldest institution in the world continues.And yet there are some in the traditional Catholic world who do not accept that Leo XIV is the Pope of the Catholic Church. These people are called sedevacantists.Sedevacantists are Catholics who believe that there is no Pope of the Catholic Church because the Pope has fallen into heresy. Most believe that there has not been a legitimate Pope since Pope Pius XII died in 1958. I want to warn you against this opinion.The sedevacantists represent something new in the history of the Church. There have been bad Popes throughout the Church’s history, as well as anti-Popes, but never a movement of people who have claimed that the Pope had no authority over them and yet claimed to remain Catholic. It is striking that Our Lord Himself was not a sedevacantist. The religious leaders of His time were evil, yet He supported their authority, “ The scribes and the Pharisees have sitten on the chair of Moses. All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do: but according to their works do ye not; for they say, and do not” (Matt. 23:2) Perhaps this example of Our Lord is why there has been no real sedevacantist movement until modern times, despite the fact that there have been plenty of bad Popes.Perhaps another reason why there have never been sedevacantists until the current crisis in the Church is that no one in the Church has the authority to depose the Pope. There is a principle in Canon Law which states that “No one judges the first seat”. There are theologians who have speculated that the Pope might automatically lose office if he falls into heresy. But it is clear that no individual Catholic is in a position to say whether that has happened or not. Our Lord certainly does not ask us to decide whether this or that person is the Pope or not. The Church could never have any real unity if that were the case. Just think what would happen if a company would run that way. For Abp. Lefebvre, it was theoretically possible that a Pope could lose his office by falling into heresy. But, in practice, he realized that he was not in a position to make that judgment and the prudent thing to do was to give the Pope the benefit of the doubt. That was why, while he recognized the terrible scandals that were happening in the pontificate of John Paul II, he yet went to the Pope and tried to work with him to get permission to consecrate bishops. We will obviously be doing the same with Pope Leo XIV. Unlike Abp. Lefebvre, the sedevacantists do believe that they are in a position to decide with certainty that there is no Pope. But this seems rash, imprudent and prideful. It also seems to represent a bad ecclesiology. The Church simply cannot work that way.
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18:33
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18:33