A reading of the holy gospel according to Matthew. Jesus said to his disciples, do not fear those who deprive the body of life but cannot destroy the soul. Rather, fear him who can destroy both body and soul in Gehenna. Are not two sparrows sold for next to nothing? Yet not a single sparrow falls to the ground without your heavenly father's consent.
As for you, every hair of your head has been counted, so do not be afraid of anything. You are worth more than an entire flock of sparrows. Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will acknowledge before my father in heaven. Whoever disowns me before men, I will disown before my father in heaven. And this is the gospel of the lord.
Praise be to the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. It is not often that we have two texts of the first and second readings which so unite in that famous trilogy of unity, coherence, and emphasis. But today, we certainly have.
I hope you recall what was read to you from this first letter of Saint Peter about suffering as Christians. Now notice how St. Peter emphasizes that. Christian suffering. And he says, don't get yourself involved in crime for which you're punished.
That doesn't count. That's on the opposite side. So what Peter is talking about is is the sufferings of this life, whatever they be, and there is no life without them. It's just a matter of of quality quality and quantity. He say that when these sufferings are Christian sufferings, then you with the submission of them to Christ, you can rise above them.
You can rise above them. It's not a certain promise that you absolutely will do it no matter what you do because here we have a definite contribution to make. Now when we come to the second reading from Saint Matthew where our blessed lord is telling us, do not fear remember, this is the feast of Saint Agnes, virgin and Martha. And so these texts have to do with that. Here you have an innocent young woman who is offering her life freely for her faith as a Christian.
So as I say, keep that in mind as you think of these texts. Now in the second reading from Saint Matthew, our Lord the the not the world. Now in reading these two texts, I could not refrain from thinking of Franklin, a German psychiatrist, a student of Freud, who had before the war, before he ever was thrown into a concentration camp as a Jew, had a firm conviction that what most amounted to having a wholesome life, what we would call a normal, healthy life, was a proper motivation. And when he was thrown into the concentration camp where he spent several years and was exposed to to absolutely the same horrors than any other prisoner, here is where his what had started out as a theory, he felt was was physically, empirically vindicated. Because it's a fact that in those groups of prisoners in those concentration camps, most of whom were Jews, but there were a lot of people in there who weren't Jews.
We forget that. Some survived and some perished. And the answer is, what was the difference? And as far as Frankl is concerned, maybe some of you have read some of his works, as far as his concern, he thought he had an answer. And that was in what they thought of themselves.
What did they think of themselves? In other words, were they something worthwhile? Were they something that even the most horrible physical torture could touch, or weren't they something like that? Now in a I recently read the story of a of a German priest who was thrown into a concentration camp. Father Feteau, who's who's who's living right now, had dinner with a great friend of his last evening.
Now he recounts in there. Now he's not writing as a psychologist or a psychiatrist, but he's just giving what was his experience in the concentration camp. He survived it. Many survived it. And those who survived, as far as I read these books, and what better testimony can you get than the testimony of men and women who were there and survived?
It amounts to what they thought of themselves. And it was not a coefficient of the physical horrors that they were exposed to because they all were exposed to about the same. Some survived and some did not. Saint Agnes is a martyr, and there were many who did not measure up to that standard, that terrible crisis. Now as someone has said in the is saying the same thing, whether the same stone that polishes a diamond, ruins the diamond, or improves it and polishes it to perfection, what is the difference?
It's the way it is handled. It is what people think of themselves. And if a person has an awareness that they individual are an object of God's love from the very moment of their conception, as our holy father said in the mall last October. If we are convinced of our worth in the presence of almighty God, then as Saint Paul's as Saint Peter says and as our Lord says, what can they do to the real you? Now these two texts, certainly for all of us, have profound meaning.
How do we handle life's difficulties? And let's think of our own. Let's not think of laying down our lives in some kind of a a huge event where we're called upon to make a great declaration of faith. That declaration of faith may be how you talk to your child in the morning before he or she goes to school. How do you reply to the boss who gets on your nerves and so on?
There's the proofs of faith. Not in some make believe world, it never happens, but in the nitty gritty day in and day out conflicts of our own life. There's our grief. There's our physical illnesses, pains, aches, mental, physical, bodily, anything. Who is without them?
That isn't the question. Nobody is without them. The question is, how do you handle them? And if you if between a so called Christian or Catholic and a so called pagan, you can't see any difference, what conclusion must you come to? There's something wrong, radically wrong.
And so what Saint Peter says here in that his first letter, what our Lord says so clearly, what is vindicated in human experience time and again, let us take it to heart. Let us live our lives with honest to God faith that we are individually, not collectively. We are not anonymous before God. We're individuals, individuals. And that's the kind of immortality we're talking about.
Not my soul, but me. How can anyone have a low estimation of themselves if they're convinced of that truth, and that is the truth of God. Who made you? God made you. And why did God make you?
You. He made you to know him, to love him, and to serve him. That is the way you embrace suffering as a Christian. In the name of the father, and of the son, and of holy spirit. Amen.