With you. A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. On one occasion, Jesus said, father, lord of heaven and of earth, to you I offer praise. For what you have hidden from the learned and the clever, you have revealed to the merest child. Father, it is true.
You have graciously willed it to be so. Everything has been given over to me by my father. No one knows the son but the father and no one knows the father but the son and anyone to whom the son wishes to reveal the father. Come to me, all you who are weary and find life burdensome, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon your shoulders and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart.
Your souls will find rest, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. We are today commemorating what we call the feast of all souls, and I object strenuously to the way that is phrased. A Catholic does not believe in an un individualized immortality.
We are not Platonists. There's a lot of Platonism around but we do not we believe in personal immortality. And the soul is not me. I am not my soul. And thus as I say you are not a now Platonist.
We believe that the teaching of the Holy Roman Catholic Church is and has been, has never changed. It's a matter of words I admit. But these words have significance because we overlook the fact that it's the individual human being who has immortality the moment I will say they're conceived. So that when we pray today for the poor souls, keep in mind we're praying for individual human beings, men and women, young and old, whose lives were were lengthened into many many years and decades of years, many who may not have survived birth. These are all individual human beings And it's the immortality of the individual human being that the church has always taught and has never changed of course.
The difficulty is sometimes our language doesn't reflect the truth too well. And that's the first point I want to make it. That idea that it's the individual me, the I, the Joe McAllister, who was born at a certain time and lived a certain life and died at a certain moment, that is the person who goes into immortality from this temporal world of time and space. Now I know there are a lot of problems about this but let's keep the great truth translucent truth. It's the individual self, not just my soul, because a human being is not just a soul.
So we today commemorate, we think of, we remember our dear ones who have gone. Gone where? Where are they? Because in many ways they're as real as they ever were, Perhaps more actual than they ever were. It's just that a curtain has come between us.
And there are many, many, many mysteries about dying and death, plenty of them. But let's think of this, after all we talk about a horizon, but the only reality a horizon has is the distance I can see. I can change the horizon by just going up on a mast of my boat, 35 or 40 feet, and I've changed the horizon. But that's all I can see. I can't see beyond the horizon whatever wherever it is.
But that doesn't mean there's a not there's not a lot out there to be seen. And so let us not be afraid of facing up to the mystery of death as Saint Paul calls it, because it is a fantastic mystery. Now the third point I want to make is this, you know, in the sixteenth century, the century of Reformation, the great the great overwhelm well, yes, the great overwhelming doctrine. I guess I'm safe in saying this, that was at the apex of the whole pyramid was this, having to do with good works and being saved by the marriage of Jesus Christ. We've touched on that many times.
Now one of the one of the most poignant applications of this truth was in the doctrine of purgatory which the church had always taught. And which of course Luther and company rejected. Because now why did they reject it? Because you see they said what can man accomplish by suffering to expiate for his sins? The only thing can save him is the grace of God.
Well, we agree to that. The only thing can save me is the grace of God. But we disagree that there is not such a thing a thing, not such a thing as good works. And that good works can play a part in my salvation, and I have it on excellent authority. The authority of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ.
And remember even the good solid sincere God fearing Luther, of Luther's own time, they have they may have rejected the Catholic doctrine of good works, but they didn't reject good works. Now this has special application when we think of the poor souls as we call them. Those men and women, old and young, good and bad, who have made it in a sense but not completely. Even a man like C. S.
Lewis who never became a Catholic and who supposedly was an Anglican, he accepted the doctrine of purgatory as a necessity. Because there has to be a preparation of the imperfect to enjoy the perfect. That's common sense. If a person is totally ignorant of the value and the merits and the quality and the richness and the of good sterling silver, if they're totally ignorant of it, what do they care about it? Nothing, it means nothing to them.
What does a baby care whether you feed it with a stainless steel spoon or sterling silver spoon? Doesn't make any difference to the little old balling baby. The cereal is just the same. So you've got to go to God with something. You have to have a certain modality of knowing and loving and serving him face to face.
Face to face. We say it seeing God as he is. Have you ever thought what you're saying when you say that? And so this idea of the church which it has always had is that we have this state, this state of of perfectibility where it's an interregnum and interim situation where we are being prepared to enjoy what otherwise we could not even comprehend at all. And then finally, there is this idea of the call it the mystical body of Christ, call it the union of the church.
I don't care what you call it. It's an idea where all baptized persons constitute a totality. The church triumphant, the saints in heaven. The church militant, there we are on earth struggling in the trenches. And in between, the church suffering as we call it.
It, human beings in this middle state being prepared for the heaven which they have earned, the paradise that is certainly theirs. And the church has always thought the council of Trent reaffirmed it had to because it was so violently denied by Lutheran and Calvin. So the council of Trent reaffirmed this that the the living, the church militant can help those who have gone and are now in purgatory by their good works, the holy sacrifice of the mass. And let me tell you most vigorously that the second Vatican Council reaffirmed that completely. And so we're on very solid grounds today as we feel united with the church.
We think we think a lot about the saints. Their names keep cropping up all through the liturgical year. We think a lot about the church militant, that's where we are. We know a lot about the church militant. But we don't give enough thought to that to that church suffering.
Those men and women on their way, they have it made. They're not in a case in a in any case or situation of doubt or ambiguity or probability. They are not in an uncertain state. They have it made. They are one with us.
We should be one with them. And the church has down the centuries explicitly taught that we can help them. We can hasten that day of their own eventual triumph and vice versa they can help us. And so today as we think of this feast of the church, it's our feast. Yesterday was all saints, today we say all souls.
The church suffering? Yesterday the church triumphant, today the church suffering. We the church militant, we're all together in the fight. We are all together. We are living in the presence of these heroes and heroines.
Those who have gone ahead. Some of them attached to us with fondest and most loving memories. Let us not forget them. Let us realize it with the with the act of sincerest faith that we can help the people who are in that middle state by our prayers, works, sufferings of this day, the opus day idea, and through the holy sacrifice of the mass which is the greatest prayer of all. So today between the feast of all saints and the feast of all souls, here we have a vision of the church.
Be one with it and rejoice in it. Remember, we are men and women of the resurrection, and hallelujah is our hymn. In the name of the father, son, the holy spirit. Amen.