A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Jesus, seeing the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross the lake to the other shore. A scribe approached Jesus and said to him, teacher, wherever you go, I will come after you. Jesus said to him, the foxes have lairs, the birds in the sky have their nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head. Another, a disciple, said to Jesus, Lord, let me go and bury my father first.
But Jesus said to him, follow me, and let the dead bury their dead. This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit. Amen. This last sentence where a man who wanted to follow Jesus, notice the text says he was a disciple, asked to be excused for a little while to go and bury his own father.
The impact of that statement has to be viewed in the light of the times, and the thought of a son neglecting to bury his father was unthinkable. Unthinkable. And yet Jesus says, follow me and let the dead bury the dead. In in other words, what our Lord is saying in in absolutely an uncompromising way is that nothing takes precedence over following him. Nothing takes precedence over following Jesus Christ.
That's a hard truth, an extremely hard truth. But yet, there is no doubt that that's what our Lord demanded. And here is just another little instance to refute as ridiculous this idea of saying, that Jesus was just a good man. How can you call a man a good man with such arrogance? So again and again and again, this idea that Christ was just a wonderful human being, equally as good as Socrates and Buddha and Muhammad, that's for the birds.
And even a self respecting bird has more sense in his tiny little head than to accept it. Now, today we have a feast of a sort of a mysterious person in some ways. And yet in other ways a monument, absolutely a monument. We have the feast of Saint Irenaeus of Lions or Lyon, a city of France, Gaul. And yet he comes from Asia Minor.
He was Greek speaking and Greek writing. The writings that he wrote are all in Greek. Was a at least he was an acquaintance of Polycarp. He knew Polycarp. Whether he was a disciple, in other words, whether he was old enough to be a disciple of Polycarp, that's another question.
But he definitely knew Polycarp as a young man. Polycarp was a new in person Saint John. And so we have Irenaeus just once removed from the disciple John. And here we find a man from Asia Minor in the second half of the, I guess you call it the second century, he was born about a hundred and forty, died roughly in February. Here he comes from Asia Minor and winds up in Gaul, in what we call France today, in Lyon.
Not only that, but he was a great apologist. There's no question about this at all because we have a complete Latin translation of his Greek work against the heretics. And it's a very a most significant document. And the point I would like to lay before you good people who may never see either the Latin or an English translation of it, is this, you can pick that book up and you feel at home there. He's talking about the things you know about and the truths that you accept.
For example, now I repeat, he dies around February. He was acquainted with Polycarp who was a disciple of John. That's how close he is to Jesus Christ, the son of Mary. Here are some of the things which without a doubt, without any doubt, he stressed against the so called Gnostics or heretics. Notice, Gnostics are heretics.
First of all, that Christ is the son of God and redeemer. That there's only one God, there aren't two gods, a good one and a bad one. That's that extreme dualism. Next, that Mary was a virgin and that Christ was born of a virgin. That in the that in the sacrament of the Eucharist as we call it, you have the real presence of Jesus Christ, the son of Mary.
And that that is a sacrifice. That what is what I like for you to notice. It's not just a banquet, it's not just a convivial dinner or a supper or a meal, it's not just a gathering together of the community, it's a sacrifice. Which of course today is downplayed by a lot of our not separated brethren, but those within the fold. You see they take a they make a big play on that little verb is.
But with Pollock, with Irenaeus, are things perfectly clear. And I repeat, he dies around February and he's in Lyons, and he was born over an Asia Minor. Think of that. Whether he was a martyr or not, that is open to some question. In other words, you can't prove that he was, but there's a late tradition around the sixth century that he was a martyr.
So he stands as one of the outstanding apologists. That there's one God, that Jesus Christ born of Mary, a virgin is is is our our redeemer, and that only through him is there redemption, that there aren't two gods, that matter is not evil, that the material things of this world are not evil. That as you all know is one of the basic ideas of Gnosticism. He holds to the fact that the mass, as we call it, that the mass is a sacrifice and that Christ is really present in the bread. He didn't use the word transubstantiation.
But you don't have to, neither did Jesus Christ use the word trans it's Aristotelian. So that here we have a man, and we have a Latin translation of this word. We do not have the original Greek, we have parts of it in Greek. And I'd like also to for you to notice that some very important passages as regards the primacy of Rome in that Latin text is highly controverted and will probably never be solved. But what I have laid before you, from what I've read, is certain, and what I've gotten is not from a Catholic author.
And the translations I read were not made by Catholics. So I think we can trust them, as well as you can trust any translation. And the first word about a translation is not to trust it. So today we are celebrating this, and to me it is tremendous to think in this very important city. Lyons was a mighty important city, mighty important commercially, culturally, every other way.
It played a it was a most significant center in the Roman Empire. But how he came from Asia Minor across there and became an outstanding defender of the faith using the Greek language, it's it's an amazing thing. An amazing thing. But you see, it brings it get home to us again the diversity of this thing we call the Catholic church. It brings home to us again the the contemporary living voice of the church.
We of course, Irenaeus is is also a witness to the to the New Testament, some of the writings of the New Testament. But the point is, his standard was this: The test of orthodoxy is what did the apostles teach? Apostles, of which John was one, of whom John was one. That was his test. What did the apostles teach?
So when he took his little old pen in hand and started to write this, his refutation of the Gnostics, his standard of truth of the Church of Jesus Christ was not a book, but the living voice of Christ in the Church through the Apostles. And there is no other standard to compare with that. Because once again we come back to this perfectly solid logical argument which is inescapable. If there is not in the contemporary world, whether it's the second century AD, whether it's the twentieth century AD, if there is not a living voice speaking with the authority and the truth of Jesus Christ, then the whole thing is a washout. There's nothing in between.
Unless you take a union view of religion that it's good for you just like taking some sunburn lotion or having a drink of scotch. And that's not exactly the kind of religion that produces markers. And so today, as we honor this man remember, unfortunately in the western church, we do not make enough, and especially today. You see, today people are concerned not with the history. They say, Oh, don't bother me about it.
How do I feel? Ah, that's the word. Am I reborn? Now by being reborn means that you've got all the effusions, the enthusiasm, all this inner emotion. And I'm not downgrading that.
I'm only saying it's not a test for true religion. That's what I'm saying. But that's that's what we're doing dealing with today. It's sixteenth century Protestantism. It's that inwardness.
Instead of looking at Christ and saying, what is your truth objectively, it's what I feel. Is my life fulfilled? And Luther himself says, I know I'm saved when I feel that I'm saved. Well, you know how you can generate feelings and how you can dis generate feelings. A good dose of indigestion can destroy your faith in no time, if faith is feeling.
And so today, let us not underrate, let us I would urge you to get to anchor yourself. Anchor yourself. This was Newman in the fathers of the church. They should be more than names. These men were monuments, and we are one with them.
That is the kind of company we keep. In the name of the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.