A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Jesus went up, went out to the mountain to pray, spending the night in the on the mountain alone with God. At daybreak, he called his disciples and selected 12 of them to be his apostles. Simon, to whom he gave the name Peter, and Andrew his brother, James and John, Philip and Bartholomew, Matthew and James, son of Alpheus, and Simon called the Zealot, Judas, son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who turned traitor. Coming down the mountain with his disciples, Jesus stopped at a level stretch where there were many of his disciples.
A large crowd of people was with them from all Judea and Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. That's a good bit of geography, and especially in the days of our Lord where you didn't have a lot of Mercedes running around. People who came to hear Jesus and to be healed of their diseases. Those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. Indeed, the whole crowd was trying to touch Jesus because power went out from him, which cured them all.
And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Have you ever noticed or taken account of the fact that in almost every instance, when our blessed Lord faced up to a very serious problem, where he was making an important decision, how he withdrew by himself alone and prayed alone, And often it's he went up onto a mountaintop. Today, not especially today, but we too we today hear a great deal about what we call liturgical worship, or the which is just another way of saying, the public worship of the Church of Jesus Christ. And of course, looking at it from a certain point of view, it is by far the kind of worship which is most proper to a Christian, most proper to all of us in the church that we worship God as a community.
The church of God is a community. But that's italicized, that's underlined, that's put up there in red ink. In another sense of the word, there isn't the only kind of religion and of worship comes from the person, from the individual. A community, a church, is made up of nothing but individual human beings. And it's what each one contributes in his own self which goes to the collectivity of the whole.
And we all know we can function better. We can do things as a group that we couldn't possibly do left alone. We know this. But you see, today you can read certain articles, I mean right now, that so inflates what we call liturgical worship that you think there was something wrong about getting down on your knees at your bedside in your own bedroom and praying to God Almighty. I very recently read an article on liturgical where I matter of fact, it's the article which I quoted at length here a couple Sundays ago, where if the whole thing was about liturgical work, but of course they put a little caveat in there that, well, you know, it's alright.
In other words, it's not bad to pray alone. Well, see, this is ridiculous. This is absurd. I just happened last night to get into a program, I don't know what you call it, was called Monastery or the Monastery. And if you saw it, I don't know what your reaction to it was.
I don't know, it's some trappist monastery up in Massachusetts, a documentary I think they call it. And they what I happened to see of it was mostly interviews with some of the monks. And of course the great question is, why do you become a monk? You seem like a pretty sensible person. You don't seem like fit fodder for Saint Elizabeth's.
What are you doing in this place, leading such an unnatural life? And the answers were various. But the thing, among other things, good and positive and negative, which came out of it was this, that these men are committed to worshiping God with a complete realization of what they're doing in their own person. And this is so frightfully important for all of us. We can't get away from it.
Just joining a crowd doesn't make us a bit more religious unless we respond to that group. It doesn't do you a bit of good to be playing on a good soccer team unless you're making your contribution. And that has to come from you. No one else can do it for you. Others can help you to do it.
But when it comes to the worship of God, it is not it is not, in essence, teamwork. God almighty died on the cross alone, on his own cross. You see, we have gotten away from this idea of personal religion. There's no question about it. No question about it at all.
It was not an uncommon thing not many years ago that a Catholic home had a little nook or a little corner of some room, or sometimes even a special room. It was the guest room or something where there was a little altar and a statue. And where the people actually the family gathered once in a while to pray. And during Lenten Advent, they'd gather around and say the rosary. Well, you see, there is no substitute for personal religion.
There is nothing, because there won't be anything without personal religion. If you have 11 men on the football field, supposedly playing football, and none of them is playing football, you're going to have a fine team. So let us let us look, as I've said, time and again, in these matters which are causing so much befuddlement among our good Catholic people, unfortunately, Let's look at Jesus Christ. Let's look at our blessed lord. He has the answers to this very clearly.
He he said the first commandment is to worship god, not yourself, not your neighbor, not the poor, not the rich. The first duty is to worship God. Well, how do you go about doing it? Only an individual human being can do it. As I I I wish to repeat myself, we do things better when we do them together, and the Church of Jesus Christ is a community.
But there is no community without the individual person, without the individual communicant. And there's no substitute for that. No substitute for it. If any of you played team sports, you know how once in a while you'll get a floater who does float with a team, but no one's being deceived who's out there playing with a guy. Of course, we can be carried along by the crowd just like a cork on the water, but a cork is only floating on the water.
It's it's not at all supporting itself at all. It's only doing it because it's lighter than water. And so we've got to come back to this honest to God fact that, you know, in a in a real sense of the word, I stand alone before God. And I stand alone before God to say, God, here I am. I worship you to the best of my ability.
And I use all the means. I use every help I can find because I need those helps. I can't do it alone. Our blessed Lord said, without me, you can do nothing. Don't forget it.
And read just just this tiny little point in conclusion. Don't don't, for heaven's sakes, weigh your worship, the value of your prayers by how you feel about them. It's the worst possible barometer. It's no barometer at all. It's a snag, a snare, a trap.
Probably some of the best prayers you ever gave to God were given when they seemed to you nothing. Nothing at all. The question is, did you do it? Did you do go before god and say, god, here I am, and I'm giving you what I have. It ain't much, but it's all I have to give you.
But I do try to give that to you. But even there, I need your help. Without me, you can do nothing. In the name of the father and of the son and the holy spirit, amen.