A reading of the holy gospel according to Matthew. Jesus said to his disciples, you are the salt of the earth. But what if salt goes flat? How can you restore its flavor? Well, of course you can't.
Then it is good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill can't be hidden. Men do not light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket. They set it on a stand where it gives light to all in the house.
In the same way, your light must shine before men so that they may see goodness in your acts and give praise to your heavenly father. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. Allow me please to repeat that last sentence of our blessed lord who is speaking.
He says, in the same way your light must shine before men so that they may see goodness in your acts and give praise to your heavenly father. If there has been in speaking at least of the Western world, I venture to say nothing separated Christians in the sixteenth century and to a certain extent right down the centuries more than this question of faith and good works. It's a it's in a sense an unresolvable question if you think it's an either or proposition. As you know, Martin Luther, who initiated the Protestant movement, and you have to keep that separate from the Church of England and the Episcopalian Episcopalians or whatever they were called in those days, emphasized or or deemphasized action, works. Because you see, Luther took the view of Saint Paul.
This is what transformed Luther's life when he had this experience. And we know he had it, there's no guesswork about it. Just what it consisted of, that we don't know. But Luther's whole life was changed with a little tiny text out of Saint Paul that the just man lives by faith and Luther added the word alone. That's not in say the word alone is not in Saint Paul.
So that now in in mentioning this, I am merely stating it as a fact. And if any of you have taken the time to study Luther or the reformation period of Western Europe, you will understand why, to some extent, Luther emphasized faith as against what we call good works, in quotation marks. Because everybody who gives a thought to it realizes that a mere physical action of giving money to the poor or suffering the sick or burying the dead or whatever you have it, as a physical action, what is it? Nothing in the sense of a moral good. It becomes a moral good only if it gets an imprint from a human personality or even something more.
It it has to have the imprint of supernatural faith. Well, everyone agrees to that if they think about it a bit. Now the problem is how do you reconcile these two things? Because here's you here you have a and this isn't the only text of our blessed lord. Look at the beatitudes.
Well, I it's it's too clear that that our blessed lord emphasized the the fact that we are obligated to do good actions. That is not enough for us to fall on our knees and adore God and say, God, I love you, and go off go through all of all of those motions, and then do nothing about it in the sense of physical action. It's not a lot not for me to say I love my neighbor. Well, I can you see that kind of love gives me no problems whatsoever. It's when I get down to the nitty gritty day in and day out inter interaction with my neighbors that loving neighbor becomes a problem, just as I'm a problem to them.
And so we have for example Saint Thomas More writing when he was in the tower. Any moment he might be called upon to go down and be executed. He'd had no idea when it would happen. It could happen at any moment. So while there he wrote his famous consolation.
Now the point that he begins his book by pointing by by of course referring to the the Lutheran Protestant view which was so dominant in England, but notice it wasn't accepted in England. England was not Protestant in those days. This was under Henry the eighth, of course. So Thomas More, what he in effect says and what we all have to say, It is a truth of God almighty that I can be saved only by the faith of God the faith of of Jesus Christ, and I cannot earn it. See, this is the one of the points Luther made, that faith and his right.
There's no way that I can earn as a reward. Faith, it's a gift of God. Let us remember that. It's a gift of God. And if we have it, let us cultivate it.
We did not give it to ourselves. We did not earn it. It is not a reward for the nice and good things we do. On the other hand, as Thomas More, I'm really quoting him because it's as good as anything. He he stated it as clearly as anybody could state it.
At the same time, we have to come back to this truth that it is not enough to say, Lord, Lord, I believe in you. I love you, and I love all men. That's not enough. It has to be converted into action. And here's a very clear statement of that from our blessed Lord.
It's not enough to have that candle. Think of the baptismal. I always think of this. When a little baby is brought up here at the altar, born just a few weeks previously, Here it's brought in and the candle is given to it. It says, carry this candle as a light.
Notice that's a physical action. Now here's a sentence that I just wanted to leave with you. But and here's what our lord is saying. Let your light shine before men so that the goodness of your acts may be seen. Don't hide your candle under a bushel.
But now notice this, and give praise to your heavenly father. Now there's the catch. In other words, what our lord is saying, what you do, the light that you carry in before men, it must shine brilliantly so that they will see the goodness of your actions and give praise to who? To you? Oh, what a marvelous man.
What a marvelous woman she is. How good. How generous. You know, that's just nothing but philanthropy. That is nothing but first rate altruism.
Christ says that they look at my good works and see my heavenly father in them. Now that's a big order. That's a big order. How do you do that? And yet that's what our lord said.
He does not say alone, do good works. He says, carry your light so that men will see it. Do good actions so that men will give praise to your heavenly father, not to you. This I this is not easy doctrine, and I I'm not I don't want to give you any impression of oversimplifying a very serious, serious problem of theology. I'm not minimizing it.
I'm only giving you the facts, ladies and gentlemen, as we used to hear on TV. Just the plain facts. And this is it, that we are saved by faith alone. But faith alone without good works is dead. St.
James says that. Of course Luther threw that out. So there you have it. You've got to put all of this together and then there's something else which we often forget, that our good works must be evidently directed not to me, not to my neighbor, but to God, that my heavenly father may come through and be evident to men in my good works. I can only say that is a big order.
I have to add right away that that order comes from Jesus Christ. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen.