A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Jesus glanced up. He's in the temple, know. Jesus glanced up and saw the rich putting their offerings into the treasury. And then he saw a poor widow putting in two copper coins.
At that, seeing the widow, Jesus said, I assure you, this poor widow has put in more than all the rest. They make contributions out of their surplus, but she, from her want, has given what she could not afford, every penny she had to live on. And this is the gospel of the lord. Praise to you, lord Jesus Christ. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit.
Amen. Today we celebrate the feast of Saint Cecilia, virgin and martyr, although she had a husband according to the legends we have about her. Now, Saint Cecilia is an intriguing figure, very intriguing, especially in an age where we expect to have half a page of history filled with footnotes, where we don't think anything has actually happened unless we can verify it in some way or other with an artifacts, but above all with some kind of a written testimony or witness. We have become today extremely conscious of the problems of verifiability, you know, very much so, thanks to Wittgenstein and company. Now, the thing that's intriguing about Cecilia, well, there are two factors co correlated.
First is, this is a fact. You don't need any footnotes about it, that Saint Cecilia was and is, but especially was, probably the most popular of Roman martyrs and saints. The second intriguing fact is that until the fourth of the fifth century, we practically have nothing about her. Well, let me say nothing. And this is very strange, but it's a fact.
It's a fact. You see, today we are so tied up with being bookish. Of course, now we're going into the computers. I guess we won't have to read, we can just look at some kind of a screen or something. But the thing is, we have become so conscious of books since the sixteenth century and the invention of printing, that is the invention of the movable type I should say, that unless you can verify it with some kind of a paper, it ain't so.
Now I'm the first one, I am absolutely the first one to stand up and if you tell me something, I want to know how do you know it, Above all, how do you know what you say you know? Did it happen? How do you know it happened? Were you there? How was it transmitted to you?
That's a very sensible question. There's nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with it at all. And there's nothing wrong in being very severe about your standard or your criterion of truth and certitude and of assent. Not if you're a reasonable, sensible person.
Of course, most of us are not, as Cardinal Newman pointed out, and as we well know. You know, so much so that that a man who began a book, a psychologist, began his book on anger, and the very first line in it says, We are creatures totally of our feelings. But anyway, we talk about ourselves as being rational animals, of course it may be flattering to ourselves. But we have an obligation to try to be sensible. We have an obligation to try to be consistent.
We have an obligation of trying to be logical. We can and you can only reject those ideals by drowning yourself in irrationality and absurdity. Now, that having been said, the next question is, how do you know things? Only by the written word? Because you see, the written word is one of the most fragile things you can play around with.
And I'm not talking about the problems of translation, that just multiplies the situation. But the written word is extremely fragile. We talked today about the wonderful thing of having the mass in the vernacular. Our theology books now are in the vernacular. Well, let me tell you, the little Latin I know, I can read Saint Thomas with much greater ease than I can read Chaucer.
And I can read Saint Thomas with greater ease than I can read the original of Thomas More's writings. Thomas More is supposed to have written pretty good English. I'm really pointing out the just a just one little facet of the problems of language. Words are tremendously fluid. They're mercury.
And little Alice in Wonderland or through the looking glass was very close to the truth, or at least Humpty Dumpty was when he argued with Alice. Now the question is, is the written word the only valid witness we have of the past? That's the question. Or is there such a thing as the Catholic church has maintained from the the very beginning called tradition, what is handed down tradizio? You just think of how many people have not lived in this world, in spite of the fact that they were conceived and born and married and had children, and who lived in a community, but whose you could not verify that they ever lived.
The first time I tried to get a passport, I hadn't been born, according to the state of Maryland. But I had a full consciousness that I had been born. I was here, I mean I felt I was, but they told me I hadn't been born because there was no birth certificate. So if we're going to just sit of course, it's absolutely irrational to say that the only kind of testimony is what is written down. It's crazy.
And let me tell you, while today we make so much of the written word and testimony of that sort, remember the written word is just as fragile as the word which is passed down by tradition. Because and in some instances, believe me, what is passed down word by from generation to generation can be more reliable than the written word, can be more certain than it can be, I say. So here we have great Saint Cecilia. Did she live? Well, if she didn't, you've got a lot of explaining to do that you could have this that you could have a person so popular and not have any substance to to the smoke.
And so the the legends we have about her are are very fascinating, very romantic, of course. And we can take them to heart. But the point I would like to make is is a plea for the anonymous saints. I say anonymous because they're only known to God almighty. You you can you know, you hear so much about what's wrong with the world and we're going to pot and the church is falling apart.
Don't believe it. The church isn't falling apart. We have a lot of half Catholics and pseudo Catholics, and they are the loudmouths for the most part. You don't hear anything for the most part from people who are slugging it out day after day, holding up the ideal of Jesus on the cross, doing their duty with their family, with their job, with their ambitions, with trying to fulfill what they see as God's will, no one writes about them. They are not news except to Jesus Christ.
He knows. He knows. And what matters, folks, when the chips are down is what Jesus Christ thinks of you. You may be anonymous, but not to our In the name of the father and of the son and the holy spirit. Amen.