Father Robert Altier currently serves as assistant pastor at the Church of Saint Agnes in Saint Paul, Minnesota. His parishioners found his homilies so interesting that they decided to publish them on a website, www.desertvoice.org, from which the following homily is taken (this text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing). In our March-April, 2004, issue, we had published his homily for January 1, 2004, with the title "Will 2004 see the era of peace promised by Our Lady?" This homily for January 1, 2005, continues on the same theme:
by Father Robert Altier
May the Lord bless you and keep you! May the Lord let His countenance shine upon you and be gracious unto you! May the Lord give you peace! (Numbers 6:22-27.) Those words are words that must ring in our hearts very, very deeply. That is God's desire and will for each one of us, that we would be at peace. The only way we are going to be at peace is if we are allowing the Lord's countenance to shine upon us, and the only way we allow that is if we place ourselves in front of Him in prayer.
What we need to be very careful of is not trying to control things. We certainly learn lots of lessons. If we think back to a year ago at this time when we were here, I mentioned to you at that time that a lady by the name of Maria Esperanza, who was and has been incredibly accurate in the various predictions that she made, said that by the end of 2004 everyone in the world will know that God exists because they would have all had an experience of Him. 2004 has now come and gone, and that prediction has not been fulfilled. However, what we do need to be very careful of is the timing on any of these things. The prediction will indeed have its fulfillment; the question is when.
Even some of the great saints have made predictions with regard to time and they have been wrong. Saint John Bosco, for instance, when he built the church of Our Lady, Help of Christians, had "1858" placed on the cornerstone, the year the church was built; and then right underneath it he had "19xx" inscribed into the cornerstone. When he was asked, "What does that 19xx mean?" he said, "That is the year of Our Lady's definitive victory." Obviously, he was wrong on his timing.
So where are we now and where are we going? 2004 was indeed a very momentous year. We have seen lots of good; we have seen lots of evil. Maria Esperanza, who predicted her own death by the middle of 2004, did in fact die this year. But she herself said that the core of the earth is unstable and the earth will be convulsing. In the year 2004, the number of volcanic eruptions on the earth has been ten times the norm of what it is every other year. The number of earthquakes on the face of the earth is unprecedented. The number of tornadoes last year was the most ever. The hurricane season was extremely difficult, as we are all painfully aware from seeing on the news. We can see that what is happening in nature is simply reflecting what is going on in the spiritual realm. It is unstable; it is convulsing; it is not at peace. When we look at the tragedy that has recently occurred over in the ancient countries, we realize there are things that are occurring that are just simply not the ordinary. It is one thing to be able to say, "Well, in certain areas like California, of course, we expect that there are going to be earthquakes; they happen all the time," but tsunamis that kill over 125,000 people (according to the numbers as of today) do not happen very frequently.
Several years ago, I mentioned to the people here that the labor pains had begun. And labor pains, just like a woman who is preparing to give birth, start out relatively easy and distant. Then they get closer together and they get stronger. They are getting much closer and much stronger, and that is not going to stop as we continue forward. Things will continue to progress. Things on that level will continue to get worse.
Once again, there is only way we are going to be able to remain faithful - and that is prayer. If you do not pray every day deeply in your heart, you will not make it. Am | clear? If you do not pray deeply in your heart every single day, you will not make it. The time is short, the devil is rampaging, and he wants your soul. You have a free will. You have to make a choice, and you have to put your choice into practice. If you are going to say that you are a follower of Jesus Christ, if you are going to say that you want to go to heaven, then you cannot just simply give lip service to the Lord anymore. You must live the faith that you profess or you will be lost. That is how critical the time is in which we are living.
I think we are all well aware of the num. ber of people who are falling away from their faith. It is happening in droves. Yet, at the same time, God is preparing for His new Pentecost. We are seeing unprecedented numbers of people coming into the Church, Still an average of 300 Protestant ministers every year are becoming Catholic in the United States. The number of mediocre Catholics who are walking away from the Church is growing, and the number of good Protestant people who are becoming Catholic is growing. We are getting the better deal.
But the reality is we need to pray and we need to look at our own attitudes. There are many, myself included, who were hoping that 2004 would bring the beginning of all these various things. Yet if we look at our own dispositions, perhaps in God's mercy He is giving us a chance to rethink them because it is very easy to sit back and look at all the evil in the world and root for God to come down and wipe it all out and hope that all these people get trashed. That is not God's way. God is just and He will deal with the evil. He is also merciful. Recall the words of Saint Peter that if God seems to delay, the delay is intended for salvation, so that more souls will be able to be saved. It is not our task to sit back and pray that lightning would fall from the sky and kill these people. Recall what Jesus did to James and John when they suggested that might be a possibility: He rebuked them. So He will with us.
Our hearts must be like His heart, and that is to be merciful. We need to pray for the conversion of sinners. We need to pray for these poor souls who are not praying for themselves. We need to pray for the people who are falling away from their faith or have fallen away. We need to pray for those who do not know Jesus Christ. That is our task. If our disposition has been wrong, then God is giving us a greater opportunity to get our own disposition correct. Otherwise, we are the ones who are going to have to stand before God one day and answer for why we were not merciful, for why we were not like Him. That will not be a happy day for us if we are sitting back saying that we are followers of Jesus Christ and members of Jesus Christ but we are not living the life of Christ. It is necessary for us to live what we profess.
Now as we look forward, we all must understand where we are going. Each one of us must make a choice - a radical choice. Not a theoretical one, not an emotional one, but a choice with our whole heart and soul and strength, because the world as we know it is changing rapidly. We are going to be caught in the squeeze and we are all going to be tested. We are going to be tested severely. There are things that are going to be happening in our world that are not only way bigger than we are and completely out of our control, but they are going to test our faith.
God will indeed intervene. But just like He did two thousand years ago and as we heard in the second reading, in the fullness of time when things are right, and in fact when things are at their very worst. Now we could sit back and say, "How could they get any worse than they are right now?" They can, and they will. We have a way to go yet. None of us can sit back smugly and say, "I can handle this. This is no problem. I'll be faithful. I'm with the Lord all the way to the end!" A word to the wise: Do not trust in your own strength for anything. If you try to rely on yourself, you will be lost. Our only hope - our only hope - is Jesus Christ, and of course His wonderful mother because this time has been given over to her. She is the one who is orchestrating the whole thing and she will deal with it. But we must pray.
All too many Catholics like to give lip service to Jesus and then they run around like a bunch of pagans but they do not want to live their faith. God is right here in the Blessed Sacrament. He is exposed on 55 altars in the Twin Cities area 24 hours a day, and we do not have enough Catholics to sit in front of Him. That is a scandal. Why is it that we as Catholics do not want to pray? Why is it that when we know we have God right here we ignore Him? Why do we think that when things get difficult we are going to turn to Him when we do not turn to Him any other time? See the principle: If you are accustomed to turning to Jesus in prayer, when times are difficult you will turn to Him again; and if you are accustomed to not praying, when things are difficult you are going to try to rely on yourself because you won't pray. Now you begin to see that this time that is merciful may be merciful for us, as well as for the rest, because we need to get our act together. We cannot be sitting back in judgment of other people because we ourselves need to put things in place.
We must pray. We must frequent the sacraments. We must strive to live holy lives. When all is said and done, right toward the end of this whole mess, whenever that will be, the Church will be crucified. If you will remain faithful to Jesus, you can be crucified with Him. It is the greatest privilege that any Christian person has ever had in the history of the world. Are you willing to go to Calvary with Jesus Christ? Are you willing to allow yourself to be crucified with the Church? It is not going to be a cakewalk. If we are not living it now, we certainly will not then. Remember the words of Our Lord. Number one, He asked the question, When the Son of Man comes, will He find any faith on earth? Number two, He said, If the time were not shortened, even the elect would fall astray. This is not going to be easy, it is not going to be fun, but it will be holy. It is the most incredible privilege that anyone could ever be granted, but it will not be forced upon any one of us. We have to make the choice.
That is the direction we are headed. There is much to come and we do not know the timing. But it will be fairly soon because the birth pangs have already begun and they are getting stronger. So now we have to put it into practice. We have to make a choice. - The dichotomy is getting clearer, and we praise God for that. We see it in our young people who are rejecting the worldly ways and are striving to live a spiritual life. We see it in various elements of our world where you can see the good coming up strongly. There is much, much hope, and that is where we need to focus ourselves. Let the world far apart; just keep your focus on Jesus and pray. If you get worried about all the things that are happening out there, you are going to take your focus off the Lord and you are going to be in trouble... As long as we keep our focus on Jesus, the promise of the blessing that we heard in the first reading will be ours, that the face of the Lord will shine upon us and we will be at peace.