A reading of the holy gospel according to John. Jesus crossed the Sea Of Galilee to the shores of Tiberias. A vast crowd kept following him. Of course, this is all before the rest. This goes back to our lord's life.
We have this parallelism between the acts of apostles giving the early history of the church and all at the same time now in the gospel readings, we have incidents from our lord's life, putting the two together to confirm and reaffirm our belief in Jesus Christ, the risen lord. So Jesus then saw that he was being followed by a vast crowd even after he crossed the Lake Of Tiberias. So he went up into a mountain and sat down there with his disciples. The Jewish feast of the Passover was near. And when Jesus looked up and caught sight of the vast crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?
Jesus knew well what he intended to do, but he asked this to test Philip's response. Philip replied, not even with two hundred days wages. Now could we buy loaves of bread enough to give each one of them a mouthful? So there must have been a lot of people there. Now one of Jesus' disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, remarked to him, there's a boy here who has five barley loaves and a couple of dried fish.
But what good is that for so many? Jesus said, get the people to sit down. Now even though the men numbered about 5,000, was plenty of grass for them to find a place on the ground. Jesus then took the loaves of bread, gave thanks, and passed them around to those who were sitting on the grass. He did the same thing with the dried fish as much as the people wanted, 5,000 and more.
When they had had enough, Jesus said to his disciples, gather up the crusts that are left over so that nothing will go to waste. At this, his disciples gathered up 12 baskets full, all of this left over from those who had been fed with the five barley loaves. When the people saw the sign that Jesus had performed, they began to say, this is undoubtedly the prophet who is to come into the world. At that, Jesus realized that they would come and carry him off and make him king. So he fled back to the mountain alone.
And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and the holy spirit, amen. And this is one of the wonderful deeds that Christ did which some of our contemporary biblical scholars try to eliminate as a miracle. You've heard the facts we all begin with. There's no question here of the text or its ambiguities or of its being spurious or interpolations, none of that.
This is the text beyond dispute, and so you have what the text says. And to give some psych some sort of psychological or allegorical interpretation of this is simply to reject and deny the text. And this has been chosen by the church to as one of the miracles that Christ did, which is extremely impressive, that Christ did wonderful things. We call those wonderful things miracles. The Latin word is miraculous.
This morning, I want to go back to Gamaliel, where Gamaliel speaks with great deal of pragmatic common sense. He's a contemporary man. He's telling his associates, look, now these let's not think of these men as a bunch of scoundrels. They weren't. They may have been prejudiced and biased, but, for the most part, they were acting as far as we can see with sincerity.
Once again, that word sincerity, watch it. You can be a veritable devil and still be sincere. Nobody's ever accused the devil of insincerity. So when they're wondering about these disciples of Christ, how they're behaving, how they're getting a following, how they are becoming a threat to the welfare of the nation, see, keep that in the back of your head. The Jewish leaders were were walking a very tight rope because the Romans held the leaders responsible for the people.
And while the the Jews were not too happy with having the Romans there, it wasn't too bad a situation because the Romans gave the Jews just as they did with any of their colonies a great measure of freedom as long as they told the lie. Now there's one thing you couldn't do, and that was have an insurrection, anarchy, and the Romans would crush that ruthlessly as they as they did. Now the leaders of the people were well aware of this, and we ought to see that and not simply eliminate them as a bunch of cheats of hypocrites. I know Christ called the pharisees hypocrites, but there were some very good pharisees. So not all of them were hypocrites.
Not all members of the Sanhedrin were hypocrites and liars and self seekers and prejudiced and biased and men who had little real love for god almighty. Some of them loved god very profoundly, and they loved their people. So Gamaliel comes in and says, look. It's a purely pragmatic argument even though Willie James hadn't come on the scene yet. He says, if this work is of God, you're not going to stop it.
And if it's not of God, it'll fade out of its own in its own way, in its own time. So just sit tight, Gamaliel says. In other words, Gamaliel is being, as I say, an contemporary man. Let's see if it works. If it works, it's an argument for its authenticity.
That's the way we that's the way we repair automobiles. I like that argument very much to a certain extent. It has its limitations, of course. But today, we have eliminated the sense of history. In the schools, in many instances, instances, they don't even use the word history.
They use the word social science or something. History is about in the same class as as the teaching of Latin and Greek, although Latin seems to be staging a comeback. But to me, being a Catholic means a continuity with the past of two thousand years. When Gamaliel said, look, if this is the work of God, it will succeed no matter what you do. And if it's not of God, it will fail.
It'll flop. It'll sink under its own weight. Look at the history of the Catholic church. I didn't say Christian, I said Catholic church. Anyone who takes the tie and this is tedious.
It isn't easy. You know, this idea that learning and seeking knowledge is all fun and games and joy, no one who's tried it will ever say that. And so we think go back and I don't care what part of history that you look at the Catholic church, you will find man's weaknesses and some weaknesses among I dare and I'm bold enough to say even among women. There are weaknesses in the church and have been. And in so often, the church seemed to be on the losing side.
It seemed to be crushed. It seemed to be so much on the way out that its opponents already celebrated its demise. It's happened time and again. Time and again. Where is the church today?
Here it is. You're here. I'm here. We have a continuity with the past, and that continuity is essential to the authenticity of the present. Because if we don't have that tie with Jesus Christ through the successive generations of men and women who profess the true faith that he gave it to the apostles, then we are the worst and the most disappointed and the most frustrated people that the world has ever seen.
So this continuity is frightfully important. Sunday, I was it was perfectly incidental, but I'm going to repeat it. I quoted and I used a quotation from Thomas Aquinas, thirteenth century. And the quotation that I used came from Saint Gregory the Great, the sixth century. So Aquinas in the thirteenth century was quoting Gregory this is Gregory the Great in the sixth century, and I'm quoting him in the twentieth.
That's the church. That's the Catholic church. And if you wanna see an example of how truth prevails, look at Thomas More. In all of England, there was only one bishop that backed up more. Only one of the whole hierarchy backed up his position.
The rest of it sided with Henry the eighth. Those who loved Moore and those who hated him, all of them were against what he was doing. Even his daughter whom he loved dearly begged him to give up the idea. He was crazy. He paid for it with his head.
And what he really faced was much more than beheading. It was it was a charge of treason. And so I lay before you this argument of Gamaliel. Don't be too disturbed by what you see going around on around you. It's been that way since the church was founded.
In the very beginning, it was that way. Christ said it would be that way. But what comes out perfectly clear clear predicate adjective, not the adverb, is that the church has endured despite everything humanly speaking that would have destroyed her. And you don't just have to think of the Renaissance. And so take courage in that.
Know where your allegiance is. That one thing Moore had was the clarity of his thought. He never wavered. And if there are always of many ways of looking at the church of Jesus Christ of seeking truth. One way is to open your ears and to open your eyes in the present tense to see what have you now which has that unbroken continuity with the past right back to Jesus Christ.
And if we cannot trace back that continuity, let's forget the whole thing as a sorry mess. But if we can, then let us glory and in true Easter joy sing out loud and clear, hallelujah. Praise god. In the name of the father and of the son and holy spirit, amen.