A reading of the holy gospel according to Luke. Jesus this continues, of course, the readings that we have been having from Saint Luke. So Jesus said to the ruler who belonged to the Pharisees who had invited him to a banquet. That's where we left him at the last reading. And Jesus said to this Pharisee who was his host, when you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or even your rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and then you be repaid.
On the contrary, when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just, and this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. This is such an obvious commonplace practice that Saint Paul refers to today that we wonder why he took the time to write it. Everybody knows that when the host and the hostess get together to form a list of the people they're going to invite, this is what they do.
They don't think for a minute of inviting people who have even a remote chance of ever inviting them back again. As we are now in the month, the great month of Thanksgiving, you will see this all around. Everybody's going out and inviting not their friends, not the rich, not those who can repay them and invite them back to a meal, but everybody will be swarming out to to bring in the lame, the halt, the blind, and the poor to partake of their banquet. That of course is commonplace. It also indicates how widespread Christianity is in effect.
Now, you see how kind of ridiculous you can get if you you take all of this in such a literal sense and you don't put it in context. Is our lord here telling us that we should not have a good relationship with our friends? Is Christ telling us, look, this is what you're supposed to do. Don't give a dinner for those who who whom you like, whose company you enjoy. No.
And then he tells us what we are supposed to do. Is that what Christ is telling us? Is he telling us that we should cut all the lines of family and blood and friendship and mutual relationship and a mutual giving and receiving? Is that what he's saying? You see, you can take the finest thing and make it the worst.
There is nothing so beautiful, so pure, so sacred, so magnificent that it cannot be degraded. And remember that the the finest the thing is, the highest quality, the purest, the worst will be its damage when you mishandle it, when you mishandle it. How our blessed lord has told us that you can't be his follower without hating your father and your mother and your sister and your brother and your aunt and your cousins and the whole shindig. Did Christ mean that we're supposed to hate our mothers and fathers? That wives are to hate their husbands?
Husbands to hate their wives? Is this is Christ saying that this is a a condition to be his follower? Well, he used the words in one context as you well know. So here again, my dear friend, this is the danger of a book. This is the danger of language.
This is the danger of human frailty and weakness and skullduggery because it's the sharpie who knows how to use words and to twist them. And today, with all the tools of communication we have, what can be done now is simply fantastic. I heard a speech on a tape, every word of which was a former president's. Every word came from his mouth, and yet he never gave that speech. What had been done was to take, at great pains I suppose, excerpts from different speeches that this gentleman had made and some very ingenious, tape cutter, splicer, put them together and got a magnificent speech to make this man say what he wanted him to say.
So what is our lord telling us here? I think whoever picked these things, of course, of it's a coincidence, but that last sentence of Saint Paul ties in with what our blessed lord is trying to tell us here. Because in speaking to the notice again, his host was the Pharisee, let me repeat that. So that our Lord's relationship with all the Pharisees was not one of enmity and adversary. In the last sentence of this reading we had this morning from Saint Paul to the Philippians, Paul says this, let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Now I think if you put these two together, you're coming closer to what our blessed lord is telling us. He's telling us we should love our neighbor. And who is our neighbor? Every single human being. And when I read something like this, I I I mentioned this, but take it to heart.
I have had people, not many, but some who have come to me with problems, chiefly marital problems. I had I've told you, not once has either of the two or both together ever said in regard to their problem, what is the will of Jesus Christ in this matter? What would Jesus have us do? Never once, not even remotely. These are all good Catholics, I suppose.
Not once has that attitude or that opinion been expressed or been implied. It wasn't there at all. Not at all. Now anytime a man and a woman appear in the Catholic church at a wedding ceremony, of course, the words are not essential, but the thing we're one of the prayers or one of the one of the statements in the rite is this, that each one of them is taking a responsibility for the other for their salvation. These are not the words, but this is the idea, that the husband is taking responsibility for his wife's salvation, The wife is taking responsibility for her husband's salvation.
This is a mutual relationship, and their married life is to be the way and the the ways and the means of their attaining salvation, not just for his or herself, but one for the other. Not once in the remotest way you can imagine has any husband or wife, one or the other or both, ever remotely raised such an idea when they had marital problems in my experience. Not once. Not once. It's me.
How could that devil treat me that way? I don't want any parts of him or her. There are no and it goes on and on. You know? Where are we?
You know, Christianity is not an easy thing. It is not all fun and games. It's not all this joyful bright light business. It's not all of the spirit that we're moving into, whatever it is, where we have peace and joy surrounding us if even if we don't want it, it's it's gonna be dinned into our ears till we're sick of it. That isn't Christianity at all.
Christianity, the following of Jesus Christ is a tough proposition. It's not fun and games. It's not self fulfillment in the ordinary use of that word. It is not seeking self. And yet, now it's not so recent anymore, I wasted my money on buying a book that was supposed to tell us all about the state of matrimony.
The very first paragraph in that book was on the subject of self fulfillment that a man and a woman has a right to that, and if the marriage gets in the way, well then you get out of it and try another one. Well, whatever that be, it oh, that didn't pretend to be a Christian point of view at all. That was from a point of view of psychological therapy. And whether we like it or not, you see, this is the world we're living in. And what I always try to think and to say is this, when we when we when we hear our lord speaking this way of being kind and good and thoughtful of others, notice I said thoughtful of others, to put ourselves in their places, not to go notice I haven't even said about judging.
Our lord said, judge not. He that's a command. We have no choice there at all. What I think of is how the world would be changed if we'd only do this, but it'll never be changed unless we begin someplace. And don't ever make this mistake which we make all the time that will will surely shooting put this into practice tomorrow or or with in some foreign parts or with an abstract abstraction that we call race or something of that sort that I'm going to be on prejudice towards the blacks or the Jews or the Italians or the men men and women from Mars.
Oh, no. That's a very safe way to be a good practicing Christian. It won't trouble you at all. Begin in your own homes with your own associates. The people you you meet in the elevator, the people you meet in your work, the people you meet on the bus at a metro or any place else, this is what counts.
This is where the nitty gritty part will come in. This is where the sandpaper is going to scratch. But if we don't begin there, forget all the rest of it. It's just nonsense, plain nonsense. And so, these words of our lord today are pretty solemn as most of his words are.
They much of it, very few of Christ's statements brings a smile to your lips. It's pretty solemn and and many times severe because all that Christ ever said was that we should take up his cross and follow him. That's the condition he laid down for being his follower. In the name of the father, son, and holy spirit. Amen.