A reading of the holy gospel according to John. The crowd remained on the other side of the lake versus the Lake Of Galilee. The next day, the crowd realized that there had been only one boat there and that Jesus had not left in it with his disciples. Rather, the disciples had set out in that single boat by themselves. Then some boats came out from Tiberius near the place where they had eaten the bread after the lord had given thanks.
Once the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they do embark in the boats and then cross the lake and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the lake, they said to him, rabbi, when did you come here? Jesus answered, I assure you, you are not looking for me because you have seen signs, but because you have eaten your fill of the loaves. You should not be working for perishable perishable food but for the food that remains unto life eternal. Food which the son of man will give you.
It is on him that God the father has set his seal. At this, the crowd said to Jesus, what must we do to perform the works of God? Jesus replied, this is the work of god. Have faith in the one whom he sent and this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit.
In the response, we repeated this phrase or something like it. Happy are those of blameless life. Once again, that gives me trouble. If only those who are a blameless light or good life are going to be happy, then most of human beings are already damned to unhappiness. Because our blessed lord himself said, I've come not to save the just but the sinner.
We're the ones who have the savior. If we were a blameless life, we wouldn't need a savior. After all, holy week services, we used to sing out with joy. Felix Kulpa, happy fault referring to Adam and Eve's contribution to our present state through original sin. Felix Kulpa, why Felix Kulpa?
How can you call something that apparently was a tragedy something that is happy? Well, the church has been doing it for centuries because it was the reason of our Lord's coming was that man needed a savior because men and women are and have been and will be sinners. Sinners. Not just people who have a poor inheritance, not because they have a poor environment, not because the devil made them do it, but because men and women have it in their power to commit sin. Which means an act whereby we knowingly, freely, and willfully turn away from God.
That's a very poor definition of sin because this it doesn't make sense. We don't so much turn away from God as we turn to one of his creatures. And turning to one of one of his creatures, we can't have it both. You can't you cannot have contraries or contradictory simultaneously in your possession. So that seeing means not so much a willful turning away from God, that's an indirect sort of thing.
The willfulness is the choice of a creature over the creator. That's the essence of the whole business. As unless of course, you have a mind that man is is nothing but a filthy morass and that man has inclinations to sin, which I think is a lot of malarkey. It certainly was never the teaching of the holy Roman Catholic church. It's been the teaching of some Catholics, not of the holy Roman Catholic church.
Now, therefore when we when we so glibly blessed are the happy are those who have blameless lives. We're not in that category, at least I'm not in that category. And if happiness is going to be be measured in terms of innocence, there's not going to be much happiness around. And yet the whole joy of the of the Easter season it is the is the confidence that Easter and the fact of our notice I said not truth but fact of our Lord's resurrection that it gives us joy. Joy to whom?
To those who didn't need a savior? Of course not. Easter is a joyful season because it gives hope and life and confidence and trust to those who needed a savior. It's not likely that we would have been with Christ on Calvary. We would have been I can't make any commitments for other people, but I probably would would have been with the rabble out there hollering if you beat God come down from the cross.
I've often wondered what in the world would have happened if Christ had come down. Of course Newman has got has he's answered that question somewhat. Remember he's nineteenth century, but as he pointed and he answered somewhat that objection somewhat when he said if that had happened, people would dismiss it that it was just an illusion or it was just some sort of a mob psychotic psychology in which this thing was projected. Notice he was writing in the nineteenth century. He's a contemporary of our great good friend Freud, somewhat a contemporary.
Now, so that this business of those happy are those with a blameless life. You know, we if we can sing out with the church Felix Culpa as regards the sin of Adam and Eve, whatever it was, then certainly we do not have cause in our own sinfulness to be despaired or to be even sad and grieving with it. Now I know you you can quote me any number of saints. The one that comes to my mind is Saint Peter Claver, the great saint of the slaves down in Cartagena. And you'll say how how they had this awareness of sin that that made them going around crying.
Literally, tears, made troughs in their cheeks. I know this. You know it. But the point is this is the extraordinary thing. This is the extraordinary thing.
The church sings out Felix Culpa. Happy fall, joyful fall, a fault in which we should rejoice. The church is talking about sin of some sort. I don't know what it was. But it's talking about some kind of a grievous fault that has afflicted the whole human race, not just some picadillo of an individual here and there.
And the church sings out, Felix Kulpa, happy fault because it meant that we needed a savior and that that meant that we got one. So, you see what I find so much today is a lack of Christian joy. That is I I don't ask me to define it. I I can't define joy, but I know it when I see it, and I know it when I feel it, and I know it when I recognize it. And it's it isn't something that you can get out of a bottle of scotch or getting a good job or or having a good successful tennis match or even a soccer game or something.
It can come out of all of these things to some extent. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about something that Clive Staple Lewis talks about when he says surprised by joy. And remember that's the man who said that when he fell on his knees and committed himself to some kind of belief in God, he was the most miserable man in England. See, it's a very complex picture.
But the point I want to make this morning is, happy are those whose lives are blameless. That needs a little bit of revision, interpretation, let us say. And that interpretation means that we do not lose sight of two truths, that we are sinners and needed a savior, and then the second great truth that we have one and that gives us the that gives us the whole thrust of shouting out with the church, Felix Culpa, even when the sin is mine. Name of the father and son, holy spirit. Amen.