 Name the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit The team grace we know that we've been walking through the commandments Seeking to understand how we are called to live as the children of God Did you notice our first reading? from Chronicles it recounts how God's people began to inflict upon him infidelity upon infidelity And what was the definition of infidelity in the scriptures that the God's chosen people the Israelites Chose to live as the other nations They followed the sins and the practices of those outside of the covenant of God And eventually God's anger was so fueled and his punishment was so necessary The God allowed for the destruction of the holy city Jerusalem and the desecration of his own temple The Ark of the Covenant was lost in that desecration and has never been retrieved A discipline to God's people and then God's people were moved to Babylonia 70 years to make up for all the lost sabbaths Did you hear that in the scriptures? I preach that before look at how seriously God takes the Sabbath If my people want to be slaves, then they will be treated as slaves. You will not honor the Sabbath That will let you play out and suffer the full consequences of your choices The lost Sabbaths one of many infidelities upon infidelities inflicted God's by God's people What does that tell us? Dear friends, it tells us that as the children of God who understand our vocation our call that we are Summoned to live differently We should not be thinking or acting or behaving as the unbeliever When we act as the other nations as those outside of the Covenant Then we inflict upon God infidelity upon infidelity we provoke his punishment upon us his discipline But of course we have the commandments to help us to clearly understand How we are called to live to be a light to our feet to understand what is right and what is wrong? So we have these ten commandments and we've been discussing how the ten commandments consist of two tablets The first tablet the first three commandments are relationship with God The second tablet the fourth to the tenth our relationship with one another our relationship with our neighbors Later in our Lord's ministry. He's asked teacher. Which is the greatest of the laws? Jesus had over 400 ordinances from the law of Moses that he could appoint you to The Lord goes right back to these two tablets This is the greatest of the laws that you shall love the Lord your God with all that you have You shall love your neighbor as yourself The Lord is affirming these two tablets this path of life This is how the children of God are called to live these are the greatest of the commandments The fact our tradition even calls these two tablets the great commandments love God love neighbor So as we walk into the commandments again, we seek the wisdom of God to help us How are we called to live in the world that has forgotten God in some places are aggressively combating the ways of God How are we the children of God called to live and please God that we will understand in our own mind and hearts That our way of life is very different than that of the unbeliever Should be told we've been very spoiled in the West That our culture matched the Christian moral way of life for so long Almost 200 years that was rare and the history of the church that has been extremely rare The vast majority of the time we Christians the children of God We are the oddballs Because we follow a different path We approach things differently And so the unbeliever looks at us and thinks that we are the ones with the problems That has been the norm through the history of the church as the West more and more slides back into barbarism and moral filth Once again, we Christians will be different and we are called to live differently To follow the commandments of our loving father and to pursue our Lord along the path of love So with that said let's continue our walk through the commandments today We talk about the sixth and the ninth commandments the six you should not commit adultery the ninth You will not covet that means to lust after your neighbor's wife These two commandments lie at the heart of our sexual way of life Before diving however into any of the specifics given by the catechism of the Catholic Church And they're extensive. I want to make a simple obvious, but oftentimes forgotten point A point of emphasis that we Christians we approach our sexual powers very differently than the world around us In fact that difference is a mark We are doing something right We are not following the path of the nations of the unbeliever Now as a help to understanding this simple principle that we approach our sexual powers differently I want to provide three principles these principles can be found in all of our sexual teachings And so it's good to have the principles so that we're not sure what the church teaches we can have things to guide us The first principle is that as the children of God our sexual powers are connected to our capacity to love Not our capacity for pleasure Not our capacity for satisfaction We Christians understand that our power our sexual powers are connected Intimately connected to our power to love But what is love? Love is the very power we have as human beings to be like God Other entities other creations do not have what we have is the capacity to love and the more we exercise love the more We are able to see the face of our father That our world has defined love differently We are told by our society that love means emotional satisfaction Love means I'm going to get whatever I want love means that you have to make me happy That's not love. I Believe psychologists call that narcissism and we would certainly call it pride and selfishness That's not love True love respects human dignity my own and that of my neighbor True love seeks the good in the other I see a good in that person and I want to serve that good I'm willing to either even suffer To die to myself in order to bring out that good in that other person that I love That I'm called to love True love has a willingness to die to itself We are willing to die to ourselves to our own desires In order to serve the good in the other Listen to st. John in his first letter This is how we know what love is That Jesus Christ laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives our our lives for our brothers and sisters Listen to the Apostle. This is how we know what love is That Jesus laid down his life for us and that we are called to lay down our lives for one another Love in a fallen world a company's suffering Love in a fallen world Requires sacrifice Love if it is to reach its full fruition Needs the help of the other virtues Including chastity now. Yes. Yes. Yes dear friends chastity is actually a virtue a fruit of the Holy Spirit That is given to all the baptized Chastity is not reserved to the priests and religious You know those who are married are called to observe chastity those who are single are called to observe chastity It's expressed differently But we are all called to temper and order our sexual desires according to God's truth According to his teachings That's our first point Our sexual powers are connected to our power to love And don't forget that dear friends because that is a radical counter-cultural statement today Because our world will tell us our sexual powers are connected to pleasure And it's so fickle and so capricious and cost so causes so much hurt The first point our sexual powers are connected to our power to love. Here's our second principle our entire way of life as Christians is Centered on God's covenant on family That God would create a covenant with each of us on the day of our baptism and welcome us Into his own divine family of Father, Son, Holy Spirit that our entire lives as Christians is seeking to live up to this unmerited call this undeserved call To be a member of God's own family And so therefore by extension everything we do our whole moral life is about our union with God About family and by extension that then flows into the entire way of the life of the church Our entire moral life centers not simply around the divine family, but then by extension upon the human family defined clearly as one man and one woman for life a Mutual loving service to one another The generosity for children and the welcoming of extended members of the family That's the family and our entire moral life Focuses on the family every moral teaching every vocation in the church The priesthood the religious life single for the Lord widowhood all the other vocations of the church are in service to the family and Rely upon the family that is the heart of our entire moral teaching Because the family is the cell of society is the cell of the church Incidentally, dear friends, that is why secularism and ideology attack the family They seek to redefine it to broaden it so extensively that it has no identity And to allow it to become one more self-created entity of people that we happen to enjoy being around It's not the family Family is much more than that Family is grounded on a sacrament Between one man and one woman it is placed within a history and traditions And it consists of people that we are called to love Even when we don't like them That's family Family is about love our entire life as Christians is about family So our first principle love and our sexual powers go together. Secondly, this is all about family and our third principle The understanding of the sexual act itself The sexual act has two dimensions the unitive that husband and wife Can mutually donate one another to themselves to each other Receive that gift that is unitive the communion and union of husband and wife And it is procreative that they will welcome children The sexual act must consist of both the unitive and the procreative Anything that separates or divides these two aspects of the sexual act Are not of God In fact, we humans say as Christians they are from hell His mother Drexel would teach us One of our American saints is very dear to my heart She would summarize all this and tell us that our spirit is out of the Eucharist Namely a total gift of self Because once you understand that love and the sexual powers go together once you begin to understand that this is about family Once you begin to understand that the sexual act is unitive and procreative We can then place the Eucharist in a whole broader context that this sacrifice this sacred meal is a part of our union with God Just as the Lord here in this sacrifice offers his body So we are called to do the same And so our sexual powers are understood with understood within the context of our entire moral life and our following of Jesus Christ Our ordering of our passions both in how we forgive how we serve the poor and how we control and exercise our sexual lives All of this comes together in this Eucharistic spirituality To lay down our lives In service to God and neighbor Listen to what Saint Paul says I Appealed to you therefore brothers and sisters By the mercies of God To present your bodies as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God your spiritual worship Saint Paul exhorting the Christians of his day as well as us offer your bodies as a living sacrifice Do not allow the desire for sexual pleasures or the inclinations of our fallen nature To manipulate this powerful gift of sexuality To order that and to offer our bodies our desires as a sacrifice Once we understand these three principles Now we're ready to dive into the specifics So let's use the catechism of the catholic church as our guide and let's walk through a few issues that Address that are involved with the sixth and ninth commandments The catechism begins with two interesting bedfellows Which sadly have become very popular in our culture today Namely masturbation and pornography Masturbation is a moral evil because it takes the sexual act that is meant to be shared with another in mutual and loving self donation And turns it into an isolated act of selfishness It offends both human dignity and the sexual act And yes, it is a grave sin if it is not confessed one should not receive holy communion Because it offends the sexual act and the marital act so seriously That one must confess it in the sacrament in order to receive mercy By extension pornography oftentimes very closely related to masturbation Perverts the intimate giving of spouses to each other by mocking it. It mocks the sexual act By turning it into a raw act of offensive self arousal Pornography is directly from hell As christians we do not participate in pornography If that is in your home, get it out If your spouse is looking at pornography, hold the line There's no faster way to kill the spiritual moral health of your family than do pornography We do not do such things as christians Pornography turns a beloved child of god into a base object of mere pleasure What would you do if someone took one of your children or grandchildren And used them in such fashion These people that are viewed in this pornography are children of god And to think that you can treat god's children in such a manner And there be no consequences Shows the foolishness of sin We do not engage in pornography Pornography strips the person of their dignity It objectifies them As if there are some animal A person made in god's image Sometime ago popes and jampo the second Kind of shook people up because he said Pornography is wrong Not because it exposes too much of the person What? But because it exposes too little Because pornography turns a person merely into one step above a piece of meat But the person that's involved in that pornography that person has a soul That person can love and be loved That person is a child of god and pornography strips all that away And pornography is a grave sin because of what it does to the human person to their dignity If one is viewing pornography, they should not approach this sacrament If you are in pornography, you must repent Do not approach and receive the body and blood of jesus christ without on your soul That must be seriously confessed Sometime ago a different parish assignment A man approached me and said father I need help It was a younger man so what's going on? He says I have a really bad pornography addiction He began to describe his life as a while he really have a serious pornography addiction He said I need help Started going to support group at a christian therapist And began to really reform his life out of darkness into light I asked him I said what was the moment of grace that woke you up? He said well, we have our second child a little girl He said when I held my daughter in my hands He said in my heart I just knew that I'd never want anyone to do anything to her to hurt her And I realized when I was engaged in all that garbage That those were somebody else's daughters Because I was filled with such guilt That I knew I didn't want to be a part of this anymore Thanks be to god for his conversion I pray for the conversion of anyone who's stuck in that great slavery of pornography Pornography is a grave offense Civil authorities are called to prevent the production and distribution of pornographic materials And our catholic political leaders should be at the forefront of this effort To ban pornography from society it hurts society it hurts families it hurts marriages it hurts children The catechism goes on to describe prostitution Which oftentimes flows within the culture the terrible dark culture of masturbation and pornography Prostitution also does injury to the dignity of the person By reducing them to an instrument of sexual pleasure Or into a mere mercantile object of personal satisfaction The catechism of the catholic church states clearly Prostitution is a social scourge Pornography and prostitution usually involve women But also men children and adolescents The latter two cases add even greater perversity And involve the added sin of scandal scandal because how can a christian be involved in such things? We are not called to live With the moral code of the other nations, but according to the law of god To know what is right and what is wrong The catechism goes on to also say that when it involves children or adolescents These practices and power and industry That supports all of these horrors to human dignity You see oftentimes what will happen people who are in pornography they will say well look it's okay I just watch adult pornography. It's just a few times No, don't justify this before the living god When you're involved in pornography, even if you're viewing adult pornography You are empowering an industry an industry that prostitutes children and adolescents and exposes them and puts them into pornography You are an accomplice to great evil because you are empowering that industry Even if you think somehow yours is not as offensive To god or to his moral teachings The catechism moves on It describes Cohabitation Churches move from masturbation pornography. She then moves to prostitution. Now she moves to cohabitation And what is cohabitation? Cohabitation is when two unmarried people are living together in a romantic relationship. Dear friends, we don't do this as christians I know it's become very popular among the nations. I know there are so many unbelievers who are living together But as christians, we do not do this We don't play a house. We don't offend the sacrament of holy matrimony. We wait until we're married. That's what christians do And again more and more that is becoming the odd expression in our culture Once again, we christians are called to be different The catechism tells us that such arrangements are reserved for marriage And incidentally this command in terms of cohabitation does not end with age So simply because you're in your 70s doesn't mean you get a pass, right? Everybody wants to throw the 20 year olds on there, but let's talk about the 70 year olds, right? My first wife died. I'm just kind of hanging out with this other friend. Okay We do not cohabitate their friends no matter what our age. This is binding on every christian disciple The catechism goes on to speak of fornication, which is the carnal union between two unmarried people It is gravely contrary to the dignity of the persons and of human sexuality Which is naturally ordered to the good espouses and the generation education of children Dear friends, it's gotten so bad that there are times when I have to Define this word for people or provide this with language this word People will come and they'll begin to confess adultery Whoa Then as they begin to explain that's not adultery adultery is when one or both people are married to someone else To know what you're describing is fornication. Why? My goodness have we even lost the words Fornication to unmarried people having sexual relations. We don't do that as christians So sexual act is bound to our love and that love is bound to commitment The sacrament of holy matrimony The catechism goes on To describe rape, which is the force of a violation of the sexual intimacy of another person It does injury to justice and charity Rape deeply wounds the respect freedom and physical and moral integrity to which every person has a right It causes grave damage that can mark the victim for life Mother church despises rape Marital rape is rape And is similarly denounced It is utterly violates the intimacy and the security that should be the mark of the marital union Simply because you are married to someone Does not mean you have the right To overcome their free will Marital rape is still rape and a grave offense before god Rape is always an intrinsically evil act mother church has no greater language and intrinsic If you ever hear intrinsic it means the greatest the most severe because it's always wrong No circumstance no condition no intention nothing can change the moral identity of this act And when she says something is intrinsically evil That is mother church telling us this is the worst of all evils And that's how she describes rape Graver still is the rape of children Committed by their parents and incest Or those responsible for their education Or to whom they have been entrusted Such as in pedophilia and other such violations And our church still is in a state of repentance Because there was a time when we protected perverts like this When we defended pedophiles We are still in a state of repentance for that The church should have a clear voice Echoing the teachings of god these are grave sins against god and his moral teachings Incidentally sometime ago speaking to a victim Of sexual abuse and it was described to me that Our society is so uncomfortable That oftentimes victims are not welcome to share or talk about their trauma They go they see perhaps a therapist, but then they Can't talk to their family or their friends because people are uncomfortable We have to become very comfortable with that dear friends as Christians We have to be the source of comfort for those who are suffering We have to provide a place of security and openness Or those who have suffered such offenses Can talk and discuss what they have gone through And know that they are not alone that they are still loved That is one of our responsibility as Christians The church continues in the catechism by speaking of homosexuality Homosexuality is defined as the relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant Sexual attraction towards persons of the same sex When we talk about homosexuality we have to distinguish between orientation and acts So someone can have a homosexual orientation It means they have this sexual attraction to someone of their same sex But they understand that that's a disordered affection They seek by god's grace to order that perhaps by living a chaste life They can live a happy life, but they understand this is how it's called. They are called to live A homosexual orientation the person bears no moral guilt for that It's a sign of the fallenness of our nature In fact those who pursue the grace of god and the chaste life can oftentimes achieve great holiness But the orientation is different from a homosexual act A homosexual act is contrary to the natural law They close off the sexual act to the gift of life They do not proceed from a genuine affective or sexual complementarity They are grave offense to god as our creator As Christians we are clear in our teachings on homosexual acts Their catechism continues in terms of married people It addresses the regulation of children This might be news to some of you That mother church says that there are times in which married people should properly plan out their children When they can look and say in order to properly care for our current children And assessing our resources we cannot welcome another child right now Mother church says that's responsible Parents should do that and be good stewards of their family The church warns however That they are to make sure that their decisions are not motivated by selfishness But that their decisions are in conformity with the generosity appropriate to responsible parenthood When children have to be spaced out they are to use moral means Which is natural family planning or other such methods One of the benefits of using NFP is not only that a married couple can morally space out their children But also it forces the husband to know and honor the body of his wife Because he is very much involved in that process As Christians we do not engage in contraception We do not put chemicals in our bodies in order to keep the other at bay We do not cover ourselves in things in the most intimate act between man and woman We do not do these as Christians That's not how we understand the sexual act that is not how we understand love We do not do such things That is a grave violation if you are contraception as a married couple You must repent before you receive holy communion. That is a grave offense And I regret that it's not preached more often We do not do such things When there must be a regulation of children we must follow the moral means This is natural family planning Again, it also teaches married people the important virtue of marital chastity Married people simply because they're married does not mean that it is suddenly an indulgence To just dive into any sexual expression whenever they want whenever they want Marital chastity requires a certain temperament and the exercise of the other virtues Years ago a friend of mine after he married He spoke to me rather frankly And said, you know, I didn't realize how hard it was To live a Christian marriage. He was from a divorced family. He didn't know He said, there's like this is really hard, you know Like welcome to the cross buddy. Like Jesus wasn't joking And he goes, you know, I didn't realize all the things that are involved in this He says, you know, like our sexual life. He's like, I didn't realize How little sex I was gonna have, right? He says if I knew that I would have seriously rethought the priesthood, right? Okay, right Now he has some maturing. Okay, but he gets it Right. Our lives are not our own. Our bodies are not our own We are not animals that are simply moved by our desire for pleasure We are Christians. We are children of God Disciples of the Lord Jesus and we order all things even our sexual desires The catechism continues by saying that research aimed at reducing human sterility should be greatly encouraged Is a great sorrow for married couples who cannot have children The church understands that Nevertheless Any technique that leads to in vitro fertilization is vehemently denounced We do not create children in this fashion Children should be born from the intimacy of their mother and father There are many methods that can help with that morally But we do not engage in in vitro fertilization Children have a right to be born from the love of their mother and father To have their rights respected as a human person They're dignity respected from the moment of their conception Dear friends, I suspect that many of you are not aware of the whole process of in vitro fertilization To summarize it just quickly Multiple eggs are fertilized embryos little human being Then they go through and they assess the viability or the traits of the different embryos They choose which ones they want and the others are either frozen or most often thrown out And that is the worst example of eugenics. I can imagine the contemporary world That we literally look at human beings. Oh, this one's going to be a male. This is going to be a female This one might have this problem or this one might have this color hair and they just pick in the others they throw out How do you explain to the child later in life? You got four brothers are we through in the garbage? Because they didn't measure up We picked you but not them We don't do that. That's eugenics christians that is repulsive to us We don't engage in such things The church clarifies and lets us know That a child is a gift. No one is owed a child a child may not be considered a piece of property or a right The only one in that context who has rights is the child himself or herself Again, the right to be born within the love of his mother and father her mother and father And to have their dignity respected from the moment of their conception and not treated as a mere piece of property The catechism continues further and denounces adultery When two partners of whom one at least is married to another party Have sexual relations even transient ones that is the grave sin of adultery adultery is an injustice He who commits adultery fails in his commitment He does injury to the family transgresses the rights of the other spouse and undermines the institution of marriage He compromises the welfare of his children who need the stable union of the parent marriage Throughout all the scriptures the single most announced sin by god Is the sin of adultery? God hates despises adultery There is no single sin more mentioned and more punished in the scriptures than adultery In large part because of the union the intimacy and the trust Between husband and wife It is so sacred that god uses that union as a model to describe his union with us His people his church So we have to be very careful those who have committed adultery if you have not repented You must repent as quickly as possible to those who perhaps are tempted with adultery Because the compromise is slow, isn't it? the low the jokes Delayed attention and so on to those who might be on the path to adultery and you know don't fool yourself You know Stop this at once go back to your spouse Remain true to what you have promised god and to continue to love your wife and your family That's where you belong The catechism continues divorce is a grave offense against the natural law It claims to break the contract to which the spouse is freely consented to live with each other until death Further divorce is immoral because it introduces disorder into the family and to society This disorder brings grave harm to the deserted spouse The children traumatized by the separation of their parents and often torn between them And because of its contagious effect, which makes it truly a plague on society Now as the church says this Listen to also what the church says in the catechism It can happen That one of the spouses is the innocent victim Of a divorce decreed by civil law I suspect that anyone who's with us today who's been through a divorce Is most likely the victim of that divorce Your spouse chose to break their vows or leave you or pursue someone else Oftentimes those who continue to practice the faith are the innocent victims and mother church recognizes this The catechism continues this spouse therefore has not contravened the moral law You bear absolutely no guilt that your spouse is chosen to be unfaithful There is considerable difference the church continues between a spouse who has sincerely tried to be faithful to the sacrament of marriage And it's unjustly abandoned And one who through his own grave faults destroys And seeks to abandon a valid marriage Mother church makes that distinction I pray But those of you who have been to that horror of abortion that sorrow of abortion This you may have of divorce That you would understand these teachings and the church's clarity in terms of where the moral guilt falls And more importantly where it does not fall And when the church speaks about divorce or if you read the scriptures and it speaks about divorce It is speaking to those who abandoned their marriage It is not speaking of the innocent victims The church continues to In the catechism and says that there are times in which spouses should be separated Did you know that the church says there might be times when maybe spouses need to cool off That they should be away Of course the church hopes that such separation is therapeutic That allows for the marriage to be healed and to be saved But it is permitted in certain occasions The church denounces polygamy as well as open marriages Which I hear back open marriages where spouses share one another my goodness Especially among the older generation That you got to be careful what party invitations you accept, huh? You know So we do not of course go into such things biblically. Those are called orgies. We do not participate in such things Dear friends our lady had found them. I told the children That sins of the flesh Are the number one sins That lead people to hell And I pray That no one here goes to hell I don't want you to go to hell I pray one day that together we can rejoice together Before the face of our father in heaven Years ago at a different pastoral assignment a young woman came to me She began to describe her life She had been involved or was an accomplice to many grave serious dark sins And she felt completely ashamed of herself Completely broken She said to me at the end father. I just want to take my own life My life is not worth living I'm just garbage That's how she felt She described all the things that had been done to her that she did that she was an accomplice to At the end when she was all done I asked her Do you think that you have done all this Because you are evil Because you are the child of god A child of god Made in his image and likeness You were made good You did not do all these things Or be a part of these things Because you were evil You were part of these and you did these because you were weak We are a fallen race different We should never allow the sins of ourselves or our neighbors to scandalize us Because we are a fallen race But dear friends, we are also the children of god and disciples of the lord jesus and we are offered grace Grace is what comes and heals our fallen nature It gives us strength. It allows us to exercise virtue This is why it is so important as christians That we both acknowledge the weakness of our fallen nature, but also the power that is offered to us in jesus christ This is why grace is so important the sacraments are so important that we can give ourselves god's own power So we can follow these commandments and allow virtue to flourish and to achieve holiness Did you hear our second reading today from saint paul god who is rich in mercy? Rich in mercy the immeasurable goodness and glory of his grace He offers that to each of us He offers that to each of us. We do not have to live in the slavery of sin We are weak. We should not be surprised by our sinfulness But we should also quickly avail ourselves of god's mercy and the help of his grace Dear friends, I pray that this summary of the sixth and ninth commandment have been helpful to you As we review all of the commandments and seek to understand how we are called to live as the children of god greatly loved by him Always accompanied by him. I pray that in your own discipleship In the vocation that you seek to pursue as god's children That you understand what we are called to do how we are called to live and in every way Invest you can but every day each day You give to god your five loaves and two fish