A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. The women hurried away from the tomb half overjoyed, half fearful, and ran to carry the good news, that is that the tomb was empty, to Christ's disciples. Suddenly, without warning, Jesus stood before them and said, peace. The women came up and embraced his feet and did it homage. At this, Jesus said to them, do not be afraid.
Go and carry the news to my brothers that they are to go to Galilee where they will see me. As the women were returning, some of the guard went into the city and reported to the chief priests everything that had happened. They, in turn, convened with the elders and then worked out their strategy, giving the soldiers a large bribe with these instructions. You are to say, his disciples came during the night and stole the body while we were asleep. If any word of this gets to the procurator, we will straighten it out for you, and we'll keep you out of trouble.
The soldiers took the money and did as they had been instructed. And this is the story that circulates among the Jews even to this day, and this is the gospel of the lord. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. I am very much impressed by two things.
The first is that today in I think it's almost fair to say that you see the strongest evidences of Christianity, a real honest to God commitment among people who have had something like a religious experience, who are reborn Christians or however you want to say it, but that they have had some kind of a a mystical experience. That's the only I don't know what else to say how to call it. We today, what we call the mainline religions have been on the decline, including our own Catholic churches. Whereas the upswing of what you other words are called fundamentalists and the moral majority, all this, but they all come back. It all comes back to a concept of some kind of a personal experience or a personal relationship with God Almighty.
Now that contrast this is the second point. That contrast and notice, there's very little talk about the church or about historicity or about the or about continuity of the sacraments or how many sacraments. You don't hear anything like that. Nothing. It's all that I I have met god, I am his, and and it goes on and on and on.
Now the second point is is this. If you go back to where all of this in 1982 started, it started in the sixteenth century with the Protestant Reformation chiefly triggered by Martin Luther. But, actually, the prime mover, it turned out, became to be Calvin and Calvinism. Now here you have just the in a sense an opposite point of view, that they had a tremendous concept of baptism. And it was out of their out of their tremendous concept of baptism as lifting man human beings out of the dead to bring them into the life of being a Christian that they got their idea of that and not they didn't get the idea, but I mean that they emphasized so much the community, the universality of Christ's priesthood.
That it came out of that concept of baptism. So here you have these two different points of view. And what do we make of it? Well, of course, during the past couple of weeks, and especially Holy Week, the people who take their religion more or less seriously and some very seriously, it's a time of tremendous buildup. But what is it a buildup to?
What is lasting about it? What do we carry over? What has been accomplished? Is it just a matter of theatricals, of dramas, of the spectacles, or what? It can be that.
It can be that. If that's all it is, it's not very much. Now to me, one of the main concepts concepts is is this this idea idea that Christ died on the cross, and it's a terrible mistake to miss the main message, and the main message isn't his suffering. Plenty of people have suffered down the ages. They've suffered as cruelly as Christ suffered as far as the physical aspects are concerned.
The main point is is this is that the cross expresses the love of god for men, for human beings. And yesterday, I quoted I just ran across a a very striking quotation from Saint Peter Chrysoglou who wrote this sermon in April, April, on Ravenna, the Adriatic Sea. He's a contemporary of Saint Augustine who's in Hippo and of Saint Jerome who's over in Palestine. And what was his message in this sermon, which is extremely dramatic? He keeps making the antithesis.
But that Christ on the cross was what he was trying to do was to give his love to us. And what does Saint Peter Chrysoglou's what does he pinpoint that to? This is 04/1933. Luther didn't come along until the sixteenth century AD. What does Saint Peter Chrysoglou's emphasize as regards the love of Christ expressed in in the Christian community is the universality of the priesthood.
Now this concept, I don't know whether we get it or not, but this is what was being preached by this man in Ravenna on the Adriatic Sea in April. So we didn't wait until Martin Luther came along to tell us about this. But this thought has not been very dominant. But the reformers in the sixteenth century, they made it extremely dominant. That's the reason they said we don't, especially Calvin, we don't need any priests to it.
We are all priests. And they were absolutely right in a sense. In a sense. Now Vatican II in the constitution on the church, Lumen Gentium, it emphasizes these two things, that is the community of the priesthood of all baptized Christians. However, it it very carefully distinguishes that from the hierarchical priesthood or however you wanna refer to that is to the men who are ordained by a special sacrament to offer the holy sacrifice of the mass.
But the thing is we mustn't forget either of these things. We must hold them two together. And to me, what is this talk about being reborn Christians? If you have been baptized once, you don't need a second baptism. And so I pray that the grace of Easter will be this reinvigoration of our faith, of our love for that God became man.
Honestly, if when you think about this, we take it so flippantly. I don't mean we're flippant, but we say the words. But think of what you're saying that this unspeakable, unimaginable being, whatever it is, we don't know god, Became man and as the son of a woman, gave his life on the cross out of love, not to scare us, not to make us full of fear, but to try to win us by his love. In the name of the father, the son, and holy spirit. Amen.