A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Jesus said to his disciples, stay awake. You cannot know the day that your lord is coming. Be sure of this. If the owner of the house knew when the thief was coming, he would keep a watchful eye and not allow his house to be broken into.
You, likewise, must be prepared in the same way. The son of man is coming at the time you least expect. Who is the faithful, farsighted servant whom the master has put in charge of his household to dispense food at need. Happy that servant whom his master discovers at work when he returns. I assure you the master will put him in charge of all his property.
But if the servant is worthless and says to himself, my master is a long time in coming, and then he begins to beat his fellow servants to eat and drink with drunkards, that man's master will return when he is not ready and least expects him. The master will punish him severely and settle with him as is done with hypocrites. There'll be wailing den and grinding of teeth. This is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen.
By coincidence, sheer coincidence, as we say, this particular reading from Saint Matthew reporting our Lord's own words about being ready to die, to meet our God, comes right within hours of the funeral we had here yesterday of mister Thomas O'Ran. And during the mass that con celebrated, of course, the corpse in the coffin was right there. And then I was up there at the altar, as I've been many times. Nothing unusual about that. But at after the consecration, when all three of us priests held the host up and all of us bowed down before Jesus Christ, son of God and son of Mary, that we believe was in that host, a a kind of chill ran through me.
But the thought struck me, Tom's out in that coffin. What was he making of this mess? What was his realization or appreciation or consciousness or whatever of us holding up this transubstantiated bit of bread? You know, things like that hit you just once in a while, and it hits you pretty hard, and it's it's very fleeting. You've experienced this.
It's very fleeting, but it's extremely impressive, and you remember it. But, you see, the we we live as I think about that, have been thinking over it since yesterday morning, we live as if we weren't going to die. You see, actually, that's how we most of us live. And in many instances, we've got to live that way. But if someone very correctly said, I don't know who it was.
Maybe maybe no one said it. Maybe I just created it. But unless a person has come to terms with dying, how can he live happily? Happily. Because if all you have to look forward to is is an open grave which closes on your really, it's not even a body after it ceases to be living, you know.
It's not even a body. If that's all there is to life, then how do we live life? How should we live life? What should we make of it? But if that is not what is all there is to life, if there is some truth in our religious conviction and the universal belief of mankind, remember that.
The honest to god atheist is a very rare commodity. He's a rare bird, and I mean a real honest to god atheist. You have plenty of agnostics for whom I have little regard. You know that. But you see, I can I can or I have respect for for a real atheist?
You you know the difference between those two. See, the atheist says there's no god, and I'll prove to you there's no god. Well, I'm prepared to say to him, I I know there's a god, and I'm prepared to prove to you there is a god. But you see, the agnostic, he says, well, everything you've said about god, oh, yes. It is so true.
If only it were true. But after all, how do we know? How do we know that there is a god? Then he goes on to to tell you all the things that are wrong in the world. Then you say, yes.
But there's an answer to the problem of evil. There's an answer to the problem of dying. There's an answer to the problem of tragedy. There's an answer to the problem of carrying the cross, and the answer is Jesus Christ. And he says, who's Jesus Christ?
You say, well, he's the son of god. And the good agnostic says, well, it may be true. But after all, how do we know? You know, this goes on and on. You're wasting your time.
It's better to go into the nearest bar and have a good drink. But, you see, you can deal with an atheist. Because when an atheist comes to believe like Clive Staple Lewis, when those guys make a turnabout and come to believe in god, you have got something on your hands. Believe me. Take a man like Chesterton.
Take a lie a man like Warren, who was the associate of Dorothy Day, the daily work. When people like that or many of these communists, when they become Catholics or Christians, they are fervent because they're just as fervent now in their conviction about God and the meaning of life as they were persuaded and convinced and vigorous when they thought the opposite. And so we come back to this business of of living with the thought of dying. There's nothing wrong with that. How are you going to escape it?
Everybody living in this parish is gonna be brought up in this aisle or some other church aisle or somewhere, and and there'll be a corpse, and there'll be an obituary in the paper, and so what? That's that. And the world keeps on going about its business. The cars keep zooming around four 95. Nothing changes.
But it's a great change for the person who was living today and comes in here in a corpse in the in the coffin two or three days later. That's a big change. I think most of us will have that verified when we meet in the next world, when we can have a really a really honest to god eyeballing eyeballing dialogue, as we say. Very interesting, most interesting. But it's an inescapable fact that that's what's going to happen.
Now you see, there's one thing our blessed lord he didn't pussyfoot about things. He didn't wobble. He was not an agnostic, to put it mildly. Our blessed lord took a firm stand. You knew where he was, and he put it on the line exactly.
Exactly. And his doctrine, you see, isn't a doctrine of pessimism. Our blessed lord, message he brought is good news. It's the best news the world has ever seen, the best news the world has ever heard. But it's his news, and it's not the message of the world.
It's his peace is not the peace of the world. His happiness is not the happiness of the world, and his dying is not the dying of the world. See, you've gotta take the whole package. And it's the honest to God Christian who takes that whole package. He takes Jesus Christ.
He takes his entire message. Christ said, you've gotta come after me. If you wanna follow me, you have to pick up your cross and follow me. Who in the heck wants to carry a cross? That's no joke.
Most of us are are working like the dickens just to avoid carrying crosses. Sometimes the effort of trying to avoid it is worse than the carrying of it. You know? But that's the way we are. We're very sensible people at all times.
We are controlled by reason. That's what we theorize about. But you see, our blessed lord didn't give us the message of just carrying the cross. You have no choice about that. You're gonna get clobbered with a cross whether you like it or not or whatever other words you wanna use.
It's inevitable. Life is not a joy ride, and there's no such thing as painless Christianity. The only thing our blessed lord said was that if you do it with him, you will have his happiness and you will have his peace. And that is beyond the world's understanding, much less its giving. In the name of the father and of the son, holy spirit.
Amen.