A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. On entering the city of Jericho, Jesus passed through the city. There was a man there named Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector and a very wealthy man. He was trying to see what Jesus was like, but since he was a he was very short, he couldn't because of the crowds. So Zacchaeus first ran out in front of the crowd, and then he climbed up a sycamore tree which was along the route that Jesus was following.
When Jesus came to the spot where Zacchaeus was up in the tree, our lord looked up and said, Zacchaeus, hurry down. I mean to stay at your house today. Zacchaeus quickly descended and welcomed Jesus with delight. Well, when this was observed, everyone began to murmur. He has gone to a sinner's house as his guest.
Zacchaeus stood his ground. He must have heard this. So he stood his ground and said to Jesus, I give half of my belongings, Lord, to the poor. If I have defrauded anybody in the least, I pay him back fourfold. Jesus said to him, today, salvation has come to your house, for this is what it means to be a son of Abraham.
The son of man has come to search out and to save what was lost, and this is the good news of the lord. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Yesterday was the feast of Saint Albert the Great, Burgess Mons. However, I was deflated or separated from that topic by some very, I'm sure, cogent and well chosen remarks on the subject of prayer because this is frightfully important that we have a good clear notion of what prayer is all about. Whatever else we're called to be, we are called to be men and women of prayer.
However, I wouldn't wanna make Albert the Great the least bit unhappy in his heaven by passing him over. Furthermore, I couldn't do it and be happy with myself. Whether it'll make him happy or not remains to be seen. I'll take it up when I next see him. Albert the Great is one he's the only man that even during his lifetime was called the Great.
He died in '12 about December. He died after Saint Thomas who was his pupil. Now the first thing I we have to realize is this, you don't have to be learned, you don't have to be a scholar, you don't have to be an Aristotelian, you don't have to be a Platonist, you don't have to be a philosopher at all. You can be as ignorant and as dumb as the Courier of ours who became a saint, Saint John Vianney. You don't have to be educated to be a saint.
This is not one of the requirements. Christ didn't come to establish a university or to give us all PhDs, or to say you've got to be a scholar, you have to have your nose in books, you have to do this and you have to do that to be my disciple. Not in the least. All Jesus said was, take up my cross and follow me. That having been said, we turn to the fact that the church of Jesus Christ has always been concerned with doctrine, with what is taught, truth.
You see, Christ did not give anybody a book. What Christ did was to talk was to address his disciples and told them going therefore, teach ye all nations. Notice he put that first, teach ye all nations. Well you've got to have content to teach unless you're a PhD in education. There's got to be content.
So obviously if our Lord said go out and teach all the nations, he had a he must have given them something to teach. And as a matter of fact he said that, Go out and teach what I have taught you, and I'm with you until the end of the world. I am with you until the end of the world. Not a book. And then he also said, baptize in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit.
That's what Jesus did. He didn't buy a Xerox machine or a printing press or a computer. He sent live men out with a living message of truth. And so the church of Jesus Christ from the very beginning has been concerned with truth, with doctrine, and the history of the church is extremely dramatic in this. It wasn't a matter of morals which separated Northern Europe from Rome, it was a matter of doctrine.
But today, we're not interested in doctrine. I just read yesterday a recommendation from a very successful priest who is a very earnest he thinks that the preaching of the word of God is extremely important and who does not believe that. Most of us fail to do it properly, but we try. So I do not want to cast any aspersions on this man's sincerity. But one of the things that struck me says don't talk to the people about transubstantiation, they're not interested in that.
They're interested in how to bring up their children. Is that true? Is that what our Catholic people want from the pulpit? Then why don't they go to professionals in bringing up kids? Most priests haven't brought up many children, you know.
It's not one of the things that come with the laying on of hands, how to bring up a family. Who said we're experts at that? I can't believe that they that this man and yet this man's a very well thought up preacher. So that's what he said, don't teach doctrine. They're not people aren't interested in it.
Is that a fact? If that is a fact, we are in worse shape than I ever thought we were in. Let's come back to Albert the Great. Here was a man, he was a German who moved around Europe. Now when you when you read about these fellows in the thirteenth century, the thing you realize is how how united Europe was in spite of everybody having a little fight once in a while.
Here he is a German, went to the University of Padua, went to the University of Paris, came back to Cologne. Thomas Aquinas crossed the Alps, I don't know how many times on foot. They wandered around, one language, one faith, in a sense one nation. It was the holy Roman Empire. There was a unity there that we don't have at all.
This man stands for the summation of knowledge of his day. That is no exaggeration. That's not just my opinion, I haven't read scarcely a work of his in the original. I merely take but he his writings are beyond are voluminous. And here's a man who was not only a good religious, he was a Dominican, one of the early Dominicans.
Notice he dies in December. He was learned man, he was called a magician, he was a writer and a preacher and a teacher, he was a teacher of Thomas Aquinas, he was a bishop, He was all of these things. He was a pastor, and he was all of these things magnificently magnificently. He is Albert the Great, and he's one of us. And I tell you, my dear friends, when we come into the Catholic church, we kneel down in before the blessed sacrament, And on our we are surrounded.
Here's Teresa of Lisia, just a plain little ignorant innocent girl. Here we have Saint Teresa of Avila, a doctor of the church learned. Here we have a man who was so thick, so dumb, so hopeless that he couldn't get ordained, but he got ordained and became a saint, the Curie of ours. He's right there. And right next to us, we have a man like Albert the Great at the summit of learning of his day and a saint.
That's the company we keep. In the name of the father, of the son, and of holy spirit. Amen.