A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Jesus said to his disciples, I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. When he comes, however, being the spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth. He will not speak on his own, but will speak only what he hears and will announce to you the things to come. In doing this, he will give glory to me because he will have received from me what he will announce to you.
All that the father has belongs to me. That is why I said that what he will announce to you, he will have from me. And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. From time to time, I have mentioned to you my conviction that there is in this world of ours a multitude of living anonymous saints.
Yesterday, I came into contact with one, A lady up in years who had spent most of her life as a registered nurse lost her sight, became blind. Another lady, also approaching the age of retirement, if not beyond it, one of her good works was going to the nurse and reading to her chiefly from the bible, from the new testament. Now you all realize that for a person in years to try to learn braille is practically impossible. So this blind nurse was extremely grateful to have someone come to read to her, and especially the New Testament, and then to talk about it. You can't talk to a book.
You can't talk to a cassette. So these two met about every week, I guess, and they would have a little reading, and then they would discuss what they read. The reader became blind suddenly, woke up one morning and couldn't find her telephone. So, she called up the nurse to tell her that she could not meet her and read to her anymore. And the nurse says, why not?
And the lady said, because I am blind. Do you know what the nurse said? Well, then we have to sing a new song to the lord. Isn't that a tremendous thing? That was her reaction.
Here she's blind. The lady who'd been coming to read her suddenly loses her sight. And the nurse's reaction to that situation was, well then, now we have to sing a new song. Now if there's anything that impresses me about the lives of the saints is this, how their lives were unpredictable. How in practically every instance, I'm almost willing to say every instance, it was not only unpredictable, it was not only unforeseeable, but what they had to go through was simply unimaginable.
Now I don't mean to say it was horrible or anything, but in the it was beyond their imagining, at a at a certain moment in their life, when things began to happen. And they couldn't see why this was happening. And they couldn't understand it. This is absolutely routine. It is normal for anyone who takes up the cross of Jesus Christ and tries to follow Christ.
As I say, the lives of the saints, these are the canonized ones who have written biographies, why this is commonplace. But you see, we don't bring it down into our own lives. When things happen, violent things sometimes, and sometimes not so violent. Losing a job, that's not violent, but it can be terrific for a family. Here's a man I'm not drawing upon my imagination at all.
Here's a man who has a good job, good family, everything going fine. He goes to the doctor because he had a slight cough, and the doctor says, if this was a few years ago, a good many years ago. He said, you've gotta give up your job. You've gotta get out in the open. The man was flabbergasted.
Can you imagine the reaction of his wife when he came home that night and told her, I've gotta give up my job. We have to move. We have to leave this part of the country if I wanna live. Now we have to sing a new song. There is the key.
There is the key. That, of course, is a quotation from one of the Psalms. But this is so true. Every day of our life, it's a new song. Don't think that.
Don't say we're gonna do it tomorrow. Don't say something's going to happen to me next week, or when it happens, something something traumatic, such as losing my sight. Can you imagine what that is? But that that good nurse's reaction remember, she was a she had seen a lot of suffering, trauma of illness and remember, when a family has illness, the whole family is ill. It's like dropping a stone in a in a pond of water.
The ripples go all the way to the shore. Everybody is involved in this. Not just the person who's who's in the bed sick. And her reaction was only this. Now we have to sing a new song.
We can't go on as we were, but it's gonna be something new. And there was no no sadness or regret. She didn't tell this good lady, oh, I'm so sorry. I don't know what you're going to do. I'm flabberg.
You know, all this rigamarole. All she said was, now, this moment, we have to sing a new song. Indeed, it's a new song. Can you imagine the newness of your life if you lost sight by the time you leave this church? And the thought that came to me was this.
You hear so much about the pursuit of religion and the sacred. United States News and World Report had an article a couple weeks ago. And notice this kind of thing, this reaching out for the emotional sentimental feeling part of religion. Notice the age group. Notice the age group.
Notice that these are people mostly in good health. Notice that these are people who for the most part are free of burdens of life, for the most part. They are not facing senility. They are not facing blindness. They are not facing loss of hearing.
They are not facing the loneliness of seeing their friends die and depart, of seeing their husbands and their wives go, and being left alone, alone. Loneliness. But you see, there was no loneliness on the part of this good nurse. Now we have to sing a new song. Oh, indeed, a new song.
And that's what we face every single day that we see the sun rising. It's a new day. Can we say with the lord, now, today, let us sing a new song? The name of the father, and of the son, and holy spirit. Amen.