A reading from the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on the mountainside. After he had sat down, his disciples gathered around him. Then Jesus began to teach them. How blessed are the poor in spirit?
The reign of God is theirs. Blessed too are the sorrowing. They shall be consoled. Blessed are the lowly. They shall inherit the land.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for holiness. They shall have their fill. Blessed are they who show mercy. Mercy shall be theirs. Blessed are the single hearted for they shall see god.
Blessed to the peacemakers. They shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those persecuted for holiness sake, the reign of God is theirs. Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of slander against you because of me. Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is great in heaven.
This is the gospel of the lord. Be glad and rejoice because your reward is great. Where? In this world? No.
Our blessed lord said, in heaven. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. What would you think of a person who tries to run a race, whether it be a swimming race or a relay or a foot race or a cross country race, or whether it's trying to put a a football across the goal or a soccer ball or a hockey puck or what have you, what would you think of a person who's trying to achieve that kind of a goal, who doesn't think about it, who doesn't put that goal as the foremost thing he or she wants to do? This is called recently well, more or less recently, it was given the name cybernetics.
And the point of it is that we're encouraged to keep in mind what we want to do to imagine success, to to make it and to go to keep it in my mind going over and over and over how we're going to to to go ahead and to win that race, thinking out in terms of actual movements, not not in the abstract. No one ever won a game that way or of any sort. Now if there's one thing we Christians don't think about is our goal, namely heaven. It's almost out of style. We went through a period, you know, when it it was when when it was absolutely downright subhuman to talk about reward and punishment.
That was considered demeaning to the human being, to the dignity that we have as human beings. And we went through a period of this. We got it got into our educational system. It got into all kinds of things. Then doctor Skinner gets going and lo and behold you, it's all now quite respectable except the punishment part.
So we've come back now to appreciate the fact that there is something very practically, pragmatically successful in thinking as we say positively. What do we mean by thinking positively? It means keeping in mind our goal. Keeping in mind what we want to be. Thinking in mind what we want to do.
Thinking in mind what we want to achieve. And really thinking about it, not dreaming about it. But going over and over again, what must I do to get that success that I want? I don't care what you would whatever it is, we've got to do this. But we Christians just don't do that as regards heaven.
We live our lives something like a cross country runner. The loneliest kind of sport I can think of. Can you imagine somebody out there this morning running across the country? Anyway, suppose he knows where he's supposed to go. But suppose he says, oh, that's a very nice lane there.
I think I'll go down that lane. It is a beautiful lane. He smells a set he smells some baking coffee someplace. So he takes off after the baking and the coffee. Well, this is just fine except what's happening?
He's not on course. He's not thinking of his goal. Now we Christians do the same thing. Our blessed lord said, my kingdom is not of this world. And if you listen even with one ear to what I read this morning or if you read it yourself as I hope you did, notice what our lord is telling us is there is not of this world, is not of this world, and the world will never understand it.
It will hate you for it. Hate you. That is this world using that word as Newman used it and as we all use it, as our blessed lord used it. Not the world he created, but the world of man, the city of man. Three weeks ago, our holy father canonized, I guess I can say our most recent saint, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, k o k o l b e, Polish.
One of the few Polish names I can pronounce. Kolbe, Maximilian Kolbe, Franciscan priest. He canonized him for his martyrdom in 1941 in the prison camp of Auschwitz. What did Colby do there? Now the point I we don't have time to go into it, but remember this was the culmination of this 47 year old man's life.
He didn't begin being a Christian. He didn't begin being a martyr. He didn't begin being completely in love with Jesus Christ all of a sudden. When that afternoon, when the commandant of the Auschwitz, some of the whole whole encampment, somebody had escaped. So he said, we'll have to take 10 hostages and they will be starved to death.
And the next time we'll take 20. So they picked at random after keeping them out there in the hot sun in June for about eight or nine hours, they picked 10 men at random. And one of the Polish men shouted out, God help my wife and kids, two children. And Colby, the Franciscan priest who was not one of the 10, broke the ranks. That alone was a tremendous thing.
He endangered his life doing that, and went over to Freach, the commandant of the camp, and asked Freach to let him substitute for the man who had the children. His wish was granted and the 10 of them marched off into the starvation bunkers where they starved to death. Well, literally, they they were put out of their misery by injections of hydrochloric acid later on after two weeks of it. Now, the point I'm making is this, this is a frightening thing And you can't ask your you can't help asking yourself, what would I have done there? Would I have jumped out there and and given my life for that man?
He didn't even know him. And the Polish man who was freed never had a chance to even say thank you. And when he was canonized three weeks ago in Saint Mary in Saint Peter's Square, that Polish man was there in tears. Now, the point I'm making is that this is not to frighten anybody. This is simply to lay down what one man did, and in many ways an ordinary man, in many ways.
Maximilian Kolbe was not was a very successful man in in doing what he achieved to do, but he was in quite ordinary. And he walked into that starvation bunker from which there was no return. He was canonized a saint that three weeks ago. Now, we are all called upon to be saints, but we make a terrible mistake in thinking of sainthood in these terms. We've got to think of sainthood in realistic terms, in the terms of our life.
I don't know what my life will be tomorrow and neither does a single one of you here know for sure what your life is going to be tomorrow. Maybe between you and and eternity there stands only one bottle of Coca Cola or an apple with a razor in it. They are the kind of days we're living in. So today the church is presenting to you your goal, your vision. This is what you're aiming at.
How often do you think of heaven as your goal and luxuriate in the thought of making it, not in the thought of missing it, not in the thought of being a Saint Teresa of Lisia, not in the sense of a Teresa of Avila or a Colby. We we probably will never be called upon to be anything like any other except in one thing. One thing and we're all called to it, and that's to be faithful in loving Jesus Christ, the son of God, and in loving him to love our neighbor as ourselves. The name of the father, and of the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.