A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Mark. Jesus went up the mountain and summoned the men he himself had chosen who came and joined him. Jesus named 12 of these men as his companions whom he would send to preach the good news. So out of the whole group, he selected 12. They were likewise to have authority to expel demons.
He appointed the 12 as follows. Simon, to whom he gave the name Peter, James, son of Zebedee, and John, the brother of James. He gave these two the name of Bonaerges, or sons of thunder. Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James, son of Alpheus, Thaddeus, Simon of the Zealot party, and Judas Iscariot who betrayed him. And this is the gospel of the lord.
In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. Whenever this text comes up, you can't miss the fact that our blessed lord in select first of all, he had a chosen group. Then out of that chosen group, we're told today, whom he has taken up on the mountain. See, it's a very it's special.
He doesn't do this off the cuff. So he takes this rather more or less large group by himself up a mountain, and then out of that group, he selects a special group of 12. And one of those 12 is Judas Iscariot, who's going to betray him. Did he know that or didn't he know it? Well, if he's the son of God, he certainly did know it.
But the point I'd like to make is this, that at the very beginning of the church of Jesus Christ, you have a traitor. Let's not forget it. And down the centuries, the worst, the most virulent, the most successful, the most persevering enemies of the church have come from within, not from without, come from within. The Protestant reformation didn't start with a bunch of Mohammedans or a group of Jews or a bunch of pagans or a bunch of Indians from the New World. It began with fine, loyal Catholics, more or less loyal.
My point is not to emphasize that aspect. That's too obvious for anyone who wants to think. It's this, that we've got to have the right perspective of the church of Jesus Christ. And if there's anything sure, it's that if he did anything, he founded a church. He sure didn't write a book.
So if either he founded a church or he didn't because I say we're very sure that he didn't write any he didn't write anything. He did not leave a leave us a single written word. What we call the word of God comes at the earliest about thirty years after his death. Now I'm not at all arguing against divine inspiration and all that. I'm really stating the fact that the New Testament did not come from Jesus Christ.
What he did do, he left us a church. Now what have we a right to expect of his church? Perfection that is going to be in conformity with this world, that it is going to correspond as we're hearing so much today to the needs of the people of God? Does the church follow need of the people? Or is the church the word of God God speaking, contemporaneously speaking?
I don't mean in the written word, I mean contemporaneously speaking. Is it a is it a society of the chosen, the elect as Calvin pointed out? Or is it a collection of of grubby people? Grubby, we're all grubby. We are redeemed, but let us not forget what we're redeemed from.
It's like a man who's lost a leg. He may be reinstated into society, but he still is an amputee. Original sin, course. The the effect of original sin of destroying our goal in the supernatural order, our blessed lord restored that. He brought us.
He reinstated us in the order of grace, but we're still slightly amputees. The church is a church of people trying to make it. We're we are the church militant. And out of 12, our blessed lord had a traitor. So what do what should we expect in the church?
Perfection? Not at all. It's a it is the church militant. It's a church trying to make it. Now today we have the feast of Saint Ida's.
I know very little about her, and historically there's not much to be said for, but her tradition is extremely rich. That here was a very innocent young girl who sacrifices voluntarily and willfully her life for Jesus Christ. That is the great thing. And of course, a lot of romance has grown up around it, but that's the basis of it. Now in a few days, you will have the feast of Saint Francis de Sales.
Then in another day or so, you will have Thomas Aquinas. Just within the next, say, or five days, you're going to have this collection. These are all part of the body of Christ, but look how different they are. And these are the saints. These are the ones we know about.
Look at the look at the Thomas Aquinas' thirteenth century, Francis de Sales is the eighteenth, and Saint Agnes is very early. So you're talking in terms of maybe sixteen fifteen hundred years of spread. This is the church of Jesus Christ. And all during that time, you had all kinds of heresies coming along and and aberrations of one sort or another. And yet in all of this, in all of this, you have the church.
Not stable. It's it's being tossed around like a ship in a storm, but securely anchored. Remember, a ship can be very securely anchored and have one heck of a time. If you've any of you've been in that situation, you'll know what I'm talking about. Just because you're securely anchored doesn't mean that you're not being a very state of tumult and saying your prayers.
That's the church. That that's not an remember, one of the earliest symbols of the church of Jesus Christ is a boat. And so when I say the church has has it's has it has huge it has kept its course, but it's kept its course like a torpedo, which has to be corrected all the time, and slow moving pictures will show that to you, which I've actually seen. Of course torpedoes are obsolete now, but that impressed me like no end. Because when you see a torpedo, at least I have, that torpedo seems to go on what we call a beeline towards its target.
It's no such thing. A slow motion picture of that shows you that old torpedo wobbling, but it's adjusting itself with a gyro compass. So that our picture of the church is one of the church militant, but it's the church of Jesus Christ. And the point is this, we talk about the church as the body of Christ, well, look what the world did to Christ. Look at it.
There it is up there. Right there. So what do you expect of Christchurch? A nice, calm, tranquil, we talk about celebration. We are forgetting the word sacrifice.
Instead of talking about the holy sacrifice of the mass, we talk about the Sunday celebration. There's more here than words. I'm not fooling around with semantics. You're here dealing with something very basic. It's your whole concept of what religion's all about.
So you take them, you take Zainai, here's a very simple girl, as far as we know, simple in the sense of being innocent, simple in the sense of not being complex. She had nothing to deal with this Francis de Sales, and certainly nothing at all like Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century. Remember, that's a violent century. She had nothing like that. She just hewed to the light.
All she knew was Jesus Christ. All that Aquinas knew was Jesus Christ. And all that Saint Francis de Sales knew was Jesus Christ. Each was a man or a woman in his own time. Then you take with Saint Isaac, take a exam think in terms of a Saint Teresa of Avila, and then immediately, in this in the order of Carmelites, here you have a Saint Teresa, the little flower of Lisieux.
How different they were. Yet they're all saints. We we we stand with them. Now these are the peep these are the saints we know about. But don't forget that underlying these names that we know, there are thousands and millions of anonymous saints.
Don't forget that. Whose names may not be even on a tombstone. And even if they're on the tombstone, how long does a name endure on a tombstone? Go into some of the cemeteries of the revolutionary days. And remember, that's only two hundred years ago.
So the church of Jesus Christ is to show us Jesus. It's to present us with Jesus, but let us know how it's doing it. It's doing it through the tangible concrete existence of things. We need that. We're not gnostics.
And what is this? You're talking about the church as a living body, visible body, in which it's putting you on the track with the sacraments to eternity, to salvation. And that's what Jesus came to do, and that's all he came to do, not to make this a better world, but to make us better for heaven. In the name of the father, the son, and holy spirit. Amen.