Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a sermon given on Pentecost Sunday, May 24, 2026.
Today is the birthday of our Holy Mother the Church. And so we should be grateful for our Catholic faith. We should be deeply grateful for the Catholic faith and for the ability to practice it because there are many in the world who are not able to do so.
The Dispatch
For us, we receive extra persecution from the hierarchy for practicing it here at this chapel. But there are many in different places in the world where souls cannot practice the Catholic faith. This is due to, among other things, a lack of priests.
There is a lack of courage on both ends, really: on the part of the clergy and the laity because they realize having the true faith and practicing it integrally is going to cost them something. But we have the Catholic faith, and it is worth everything. It is worth any suffering. It is worth any trouble. And so I think we should have an even greater amount of gratitude.
At Pentecost, by the power of the Holy Ghost, timid disciples became holy apostles; fishermen became fishers of men and spoke with heavenly wisdom. The tongues of fire descended and one flame of divine truth illuminated the whole world.
At the Tower of Babel, pride-filled men sought their own truth. They sought to make their own order. They sought to make their own global order. It was actually very similar to what you see today. It is on repeat. Similar heresies are being synchronized now. You have them all at once. But it is a repeat of Babel, where man tried his best to make heaven on earth without God. And that is exactly what we are seeing today.
At Babel, God divided the tongues of men. If you look at the modern church, it may rightly be called the Tower of Babel because it is babbling on about some sort of order on earth without God. But it is not with God. It has a different idea of God. Man has become God. There is no place for him or for his divine truth in the modern church’s false rites and novel doctrines. It is the replacement of God with man.
The Church is what unites the world
Up until that time in Genesis, there was only one language, which seems to have been revealed by God to Adam and Eve, by which they conversed in the Garden of Paradise. But at Babel, they lost the one divine tongue which had, in a certain way, united them.
The sacrifice of the Mass is how we converse with God in the one universal tongue of his family, the Catholic Church, today. So the Catholic Church undoes Babel. But today everything is divided. The conciliar authorities say to us, “you are dividing the church.” But it is the exact opposite. They prefer the tongues of men, of confusion, of disorder, and error of every kind. What has come forth from thousands of vernacular languages? They have lost the truth. They have lost the faith. They have lost the language. It is a different language, a different religion.
They call this a “new order,” a synodal and global church. Like Babel, it is a false religion, a usurpation of proud fallen man. And it is disguised as some kind of earthly heaven, but truly it is a hell.
Pentecost overcomes the division of Babel
At Pentecost, all nations hear one and the same Gospel. One truth, one faith, one baptism. Pentecost is the remedy to Babel. The Holy Ghost, the spirit of truth, the one faith, the one language by which we worship God. The sacred rites of the church. This is what overcomes Babel. Babel is the spirit of the world, the spirit of Antichrist.
Pentecost gathers us in true unity. One hears a lot of talk about unity and peace today. But this is at the level of man, at the level of Babel. God is on the outside. It does not prioritize God. It is not established on his truth. It is not about the faith. But at Pentecost, the Holy Ghost gathers into true unity what pride has scattered.
And this is why the Church always cherished one sacred tongue in its public worship — Latin, inscribed in the wood of the cross. The Church is always guarding unity in doctrine and worship throughout the centuries. The unity is in the doctrine, in the faith, not in the brotherhood of man, not in fraternity. And so the point, the central point of unity, is what is off today. The papacy is enforcing this false unity of fraternity and of a brotherhood of man.
What we as Traditional Catholics are doing is actually defending the papacy. When we are fighting the errors of the modern world, and when we are calling out the hierarchy, the ones sitting in the chairs of power — the ones who are materially occupying them but who do not have the faith, who are formally not Catholic — what we are doing is we are upholding the deposit of faith. We are calling them back and we are defending the offices that they refuse to defend.
We have to do this. We have to do their job. We are defending the papacy while they dismantle it. We hold to the faith that their predecessors held to. They must return to the unity of eternal Rome. And yet, all they say is, “well, you are disobedient.” They have no logical argument! No logical argument at all.
And so the church is always guarding unity in doctrine and worship throughout the centuries. The spirit of the modern age has done the opposite. It is trying to fragment novelty, introduce continual change and evolution with each man seeking his own expression, his own truth, his own interpretation, his own religion. That is not the spirit of Pentecost, but the spirit of Babel. Many are deceived by this. A lot of the deception is willful. Some say they are being “obedient,” but actually they are clinging to a lower good — to comfort, to security, to a “safe place.”
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The earthly Babel — the order of fallen man — is an all-inclusive path of the world, of sodomy, of sin, and of scandal. On the other hand, the narrow way of truth has been “excommunicated.” The way that had been marked out by so many saints and holy popes and the apostles until now, and was enshrined in every council and dogma and catechism. This has been excommunicated from the modern church beginning at Vatican II.
We do not have true unity, unless we follow what Our Lord laid down for us in the true Church, in that infallible doctrine which has always been universally kept. That is what we mean by Catholic —always, everywhere, and by all. If it is not universal — always, everywhere, and by all — then it is not Catholic. The Church has always recognized that novelty is not Catholic. It cannot be Catholic by definition. There is no such thing as a new order, except the New and Eternal Covenant, which was the fulfillment of the old.
“If anyone loved me, he will keep my word,” Our Lord says. The Holy Ghost is not given to confirm us in our own ideas, but to conform us to Christ and to the truth. The spirit of truth teaches us to abide in the words and commandments of Our Lord as handed down to us and interpreted by infallible Tradition. It cannot be “our idea.” It cannot be our own truth. It must be the truth handed on and lived through the liturgy, through the doctrines.
Living by the truth requires a willingness to suffer
Pentecost challenges us. It challenges us to be real lovers of the truth. And that means to follow it out when it is hard, when it costs us something. We can all talk about the truth. Many people like to talk about the truth. But will we follow it when it costs us something, when it causes us some inconvenience? How about when it costs us our life? We hope we will be faithful. And so we must implore the Holy Ghost to give us that fire.
The man who says he loves Christ, but is not ready to persevere to the end in this faith when it is under attack, and who is not willing to defend it, does not have the love of God in him. We must defend the faith but we must have it in our souls already. We must be rightly ordered interiorly before taking up the fight and pointing the finger at others.
If we are not willing to make personal sacrifices in our own life, how will we be able to do it in the context of fighting against the whole world, against the hierarchy, and against of these exterior enemies? We must first battle the interior enemies. We must conquer pride, self-love, self-will, vice, love of comfort, sloth, and sins of omission. We must wage a rigorous warfare against ourselves. That is our business: to die daily. And there are many forces at work pulling against us. They are looking to lead us astray first by negligence — omitting that little mental prayer in the morning, daily spiritual reading. Next, by other sins. The kingdom of darkness is happy to advance incrementally, little by little. We have to take back that ground.
That is why we pray so often for the Holy Ghost to enlighten us. A soul truly possessed by the Holy Ghost burns for the truth, burns for sanctity, burns to die to self-love. It is looking for every occasion and opportunity to allow Our Lord to root that up. It has to fight against discouragement, which is the biggest enemy of the soul. This is worse even than a fall. We need great confidence in God to stay on fire for Him.
We must also hate error and love virtue. We must be willing to take the narrow way over the wider road of the world. That means we must be willing to undergo not having the approval of men, which means we must conquer human respect.
Human respect is that which makes us choose the lesser good of man’s approval over God’s approval. We must be willing to stand alone in these times. You are blessed if you have one or two persons in your life that you can truly confide in today.
Never cease advancing in the spiritual life
The Church has given us the lives of the saints to see in them all of the diverse circumstances which holiness can be lived in. It is possible to live as a saint wherever we are. We are never lacking in opportunities to practice the interior life and to allow the Holy Ghost to take up residence in us.
All throughout the day, you will have dozens and dozens of little opportunities. I want you to think about that. Every minute. Every second. That is where you need to start, with the absolutely smallest thing that you can begin to deny, to mortify. Choose the good in those small things that don’t cost very much. The Lord says, “be faithful in the little things.” Practice virtue, put others first, die to self, mortify some passion.
These are the signs of those who wish to live according to the spirit of truth. Prepare a dwelling place in your soul for God. For the man who is established in this way, his treasure is above — he no longer fears suffering. His sight is fixed on heaven. Trials become small when endured for the glory of God. Let us ask the Holy Ghost to renew our fire for holiness, for truth, and for order. Raise your mind to God. It doesn’t cost any money. It is simply a choice we must make.
Heaven is our only goal
What is our chief desire? What is our primary aim? It should be a no-brainer. To stop dialoguing with other error, with fear, with our passions, and with comfort and compromise. We must reject the spirit of the world, the spirit of antichrist, novelty, impurity, human respect. These are all lower goods and disorders. The Holy Ghost is not the author of confusion and chaos. He is always moving us to a greater fortitude and clarity.
The science of the saints is to keep fervor and to always be increasing in holy disposition. We should meditate constantly on the four last things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell. These and the passion of Christ are the most powerful means second to the sacraments to stay on the path to heaven. Mortal sin, tepidity, bad habits and entertainment, useless distractions, cowardice. All of those have to go.
Remain faithful in the little things. This is where our progress truly lies. The apostles received this fire only because they persevered in prayer with Our Lady in the upper room. The fire of God descends upon those who persevere with her. May the Blessed Virgin, spouse of the Holy Ghost, obtain for us that sacred fire which transformed the disciples into holy apostles — a fire not of emotion, but of truth, holiness, courage, charity, and perseverance into death. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
