A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Jesus said to his disciples, when the paraclete comes, the spirit of truth who comes from the father and whom I myself will send from the father, he will bear witness on my behalf. You must bear witness as well, for you have been with me from the very beginning. I have told you all of this to keep your faith from being shaken. Not only will they expel you from synagogues, a time will come when anyone who put you to death will claim to be serving god.
And all this they will do to you because they know neither the father nor me. But I have told you these things that when their hour comes, you may remember my telling you of them. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. There is so much talk about peace that you would think it was almost Easter Sunday or Christmas.
There is so much talk about the preserving of life that you would think there is absolutely nothing more important than physical life. Now, that's particularly uppermost in my mind this morning after seeing that exposure on sixty Minutes last night about those two doctors who are being sued. I hope I don't know whether you saw it or not, but you know what the big problem is today about as they say, pulling the plug. That everybody, under all conditions, must be kept alive with every mechanical gadget that we have available today, and they are enormously available. You put these two things together, this idea of of creating a perfect world here, that is not Christ's idea at all.
And I don't care who says that. When you talk about the peace of Christ, you're not talking about the peace of the world. And yet what we all want is the peace of the world be because the peace of Christ is far from being the kind of peace most of us want. Just like Lewis said, the love of Christ is something we don't want sometimes. We don't want to be loved, not the way Christ loves us because Christ loves us for our ultimate welfare, for our ultimate good, and that's what we're losing sight of.
Now you take this this text this morning from Saint John. This is tremendously important in the world in which we're living today. Our perspectives are getting all twisted. And for the Christian to try to keep his his equilibrium, it's almost almost impossible. As Mubridge pointed out in a recent book of essays, we are the victims of the media.
And what does what does the media or the what do the media, what do they proclaim? They proclaim the values of this world. And I don't care what name you give this. The name that comes to your mind, of course, is Marxism or dialectical ical materialism. But but as Mugridge points out, at the basis of socialism, whatever kind of socialism, is the concept of making this world a fine, comfortable, happy place to live.
And that is contradictory of Jesus Christ who said, I have come not to bring you peace but the sword. When we talk about wishing one another peace here, we're wishing one another the peace of Jesus Christ. And if you want to look at his peace, look at his life. Look at what he told us. Look at what he tells his disciples today.
He says the day is coming when they'll not only persecute you, but they'll even kill you in the name of god. Do you believe that? That's what Christ says. Are we you see, the point is to to live as a Christian today is extremely difficult. There are so many forces just working on us, churning us up to obliterate obliterate the goals, the ideals, the aims, the truths of Jesus Christ.
It takes a lot of resistance. And let me tell you, it takes a lot of truth. Because when the chips are down, you come back to the basic idea of truth to hold you up. You're not going to depend on your emotions and on your sentiments and on your feelings and on this wonderful euphoria that we can get occasionally. And some people think they ought to be getting all the time out of their religion.
Did Saint Thomas More have that in the Tower Of London? Did a John Fisher have it? Did the Carthusian monks have it? Do many many a priest, many a nun working under the severest conditions all alone, not seeing anything being accomplished by their work with I'm not exaggerating this. Right today in certain parts of the world, divorced from all comforts you might speak of, but above all, from the consolation of seeing some results of your work.
And they see practically none. And yet, what what sustains people like that? Well, if you look at this world, there's nothing there to sustain them. Not a single thing. The only thing that will sustain them is Jesus Christ.
And the only thing that will sustain us is Jesus Christ. Now how do you get in contact with Jesus Christ? How do you throw the switch? How do you get the the voltage running through the lines? Because if you can't answer that question, forget it.
And I repeat, it doesn't consist in fine feelings, in the trustfulness, which is a feeling. It comes from truth. I recently read an account by a young man who was a fervent Catholic from a fine Catholic family, went to a Catholic college, and wound up by being a Mooney. And then in the course of a few years, for various reasons, he reconsidered the situation and has separated himself from the group of people and is possibly or probably on his way back to his Catholic religion. He's not there yet, not as when that article was written.
He says in that article, this is recent, very recent within the last week, that according to the statistics of the organization, 30% are Catholics. Thirty percent. And the interviewer asked him, well, how do you account for so many Catholics being there with with relative to other religions? He said this, because they don't know their religion and that others do. That's his answer.
They they they they don't have the foundation of truth in order to meet the attacks upon what they had taken and accepted. Because you see, it's so easy. We're doing it today. Two weeks ago, I gave that talk on on on the catech catechetics or catechesis, which simply means teaching. It means handing down the truth of Jesus Christ.
That's what it means. I don't care what name you give it. But it's handing down his truth, and that truth is the truth of his living church. And you get it from the church's mouth. Because unless you can make some kind of practical, operational contact with Jesus Christ, what do you have?
A fluvia, enthusiasms, feeling, emotion, sentiment. These are fine. They're great. But they'll not hold your ships on course in a storm. That's the anchor of truth, and that's what we have to get at.
We get it from the living voice of Christ living church speaking in his name. Behold, I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world. That's our consolation. That's our joy. We know we're in a tumult.
We know we're in a confused world. We know we're in a battle. We're either up in the front. We know this is this is commonplace. Unless you know this, you don't know what being a Christian is.
And this Christ told us, come back to what Saint John tells us. Notice Saint John is the one who talks so much about love. How about this sentence? That they will not only persecute you, but they will even kill you in the name of god. That's what Jesus promised his disciples.
Are we his disciples? What do we expect? What are we looking for? What do we what are we looking for? Let me come back to that article about the Mooneys because the second reason he gave for this attraction to the Moonies is the is the association, the companionship, the friendliness that they find.
Because let me tell you, there are no holds barred in the demands they make upon the people who join them. For example, if you get married, you're not allowed to have intercourse with your wife or your husband for a year and a half. How about that? We even eliminated abstaining from meat on Friday and got eliminated. It was too tough.
So it's not that the Moonies don't demand plenty from their proselytes. They demand tremendous. They commit they a tremendous commitment and discipline. Absolutely. They're not afraid.
That is what Christ demands. That's what he told us. And so let us take to heart the what our what what Saint John's saying this morning. Let us let us understand who we are. Let us understand where we are.
Above all, let us understand where we're going. What are we called to? What is our vocation as Christians? Christ tells you. But what he what what he's telling you here this morning that you'll be persecuted, that they'll even kill you, that's only part of the story of being a Christian.
Because to be a Christian is to be joyful. Because a Christian is has the truth which he's living by. I mean living by. The trouble is so many people call themselves Christians but aren't trying or actually living the truth. They take the hard part and they do not make enough of the good part, the sustaining part, the part that is the basic foundation of the true joy of Jesus Christ and the peace that he promised.
In the name of the father and the son, holy spirit. Amen.