A reading of the holy gospel according to Matthew. Jesus said to his disciples, what do you think If a man has a 100 sheep and one of them has gone astray, does he not need the 99 in the hills and go in search of the one that was lost? And then if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the 99 that never went astray. So it is not the will of my father who is in heaven that one, even one, of these little ones should be lost. This is the gospel of the lord.
In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. There's a recurring prayer that we have during the holy season of Advent. It's called holy because in a sense in itself, it's holy, but the main thrust of it is to make us holy. The whole purpose of it. And that's this prayer.
It occurs in various forms. We pray that we will judge rightly, that we will judge rightly the things of this earth and seek the things that are of heaven. Now we, you know, we say these things morning after morning and week after week, but why do you think this is put in as a prayer? It's put in as a prayer and it's a very recurrent prayer during this holy season of Advent because it's against human nature, and we're human ergo. We're being asked to do something superhuman.
How many people are running their heads off to get to heaven? We notice how Sunday after Sunday and time after time, we speak of hastening to meet the Lord. I don't find anybody, including myself, wanting to die. Not in the wonderful weather we've been having anyway. When we get fish Friday in fall, that'll be different.
But the thing is, you see, we use words and and we lose ourselves in the fantasy of words. They just roll off of us without making any impression. The church is wise with the wisdom of human nature. We don't wanna die. We don't wanna go to heaven, most of us, because we're not saints.
Yeah. But we're called to be saints. See, this is the this is the the absolute simple truth. Most of us aren't going to have our names in in the chronology of the saints, in the martyrology. But if we don't if we don't make it as saints, we're gonna make it as something very unsaintly.
We have that choice. Now the church is asking us, praying for us that we will judge rightly, notice that word rightly, about the things of this world and that we will seek the things of heaven. Now, of course, generally, when we say to to judge rightly of the things of this world, we we most often think that we make too much of them. Well, let me tell you, there have been very honest to god holy people who have made too little of them. Just read some of the so called theology of the sixteenth century among men such as John Fisher and Saint Thomas More just to mention two, two very well recognized saints.
And especially Fisher, how they had a very lopsided view of the things of this world. How they how how there was this concept that matter is evil, which means our feelings, our emotions, our passions are evil. That's judging not rightly, but wrongly. So when we say judge rightly, we mean two things, that we don't exaggerate their importance, but on the other hand, that we do not minimize the importance. You know, we've used such words as despise.
A lot of these prayers, you know, would go around with, let us despise this world. That that cuts me like a raspy, a rasp. Here are the things of God that God has made, and we're praying to God to despise them. You see, even as a tender boy of eight years old, I saw that was nuts, that kind of talk. And just because it's in the form of a prayer doesn't make it sensible.
The the church is wise. When you're when you're with the church, you're secure. Her prayers are firm and decent. Decent meaning meaning becoming proper. And so the church asks us to judge rightly about the things of this world and to cling to seek the things that are above Because this is the heart of the problem, that we should properly love the things of this world and at the same time seek heaven.
And as Newman has pointed out time and again, and if there's any man who knew the human heart, including our dear and beloved and lately lamented friend Freud, Newman knew the human heart as few knew it, and he had the ability to express it. He may not have been a great theologian, but he was a great psychologist in the best sense of the word. He believed that human beings have soul for one thing. Now when you put in the concrete the beauties, the fascination, the attractiveness, the huge appeal, the necessity with which we must seek the things of this world in many essence, and against that, you put this idea of heaven but you never see, you never feel, you never touch, you never taste. And when these things come in conflict, if nature has its way, what what direction will we go unless we are helped by God?
And that's what the church is praying for especially in this season, holy season of Lent, that it's a season to make us holy. Not that we're going to look down and despise and reject the things of this world. Remember, men and women who take the three vows, it isn't because they despise and reject in that sense the things that they are giving up, it's because they love them. You don't give up something worthless and think you're doing somebody a favor. So the church and her wisdom of the centuries and her insight into the human heart puts on our lips this prayer.
Very simple. But but think it over and make it your own. We need this help. We need to keep before our eyes our destiny, which is not to be fine, good citizens of this world. We're not called upon to be that anymore since baptism.
We are called upon to be citizens of the city of God, and that's no mean calling when we have this conflict often with the city of man. But remember, if it's a city of man, God made it. And so the church, well aware of what she's about, puts on our lips this very simple basic prayer that we beg God for light and strength to judge rightly the things of this world and to seek the things of eternity. May it be so. Name of the father, the son, the holy spirit.
Amen.