A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Jesus looked up to heaven and said, father, the hour has come. Give glory to your son that your son may give glory to you in as much as you have given him authority over all mankind that he may bestow eternal life on those you gave him. Eternal life is this, to know you, the only true god, and him whom you have sent, Jesus Christ. I have given you glory on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do.
Do you now, father, give me glory at your side, a glory I had with you before the world began? I have made your name known to those you gave me out of the world. These men you gave me were yours, and they have kept your word. Now they realize that all that you gave to me comes from you. I entrusted to them the message that you entrusted to me, and they received it.
They have known that in truth, I came from you. They have believed it was you who sent Now for these I pray, not for the world, but for these you have given me, for they are really yours. Just as all that belongs to me is yours, so all that belongs to you is mine. It is in them that I have been glorified. I am in the world now no more, but these are in the world as I come to you.
And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. These words of our lord as trans as reported by Saint John are they are terribly affectionate. There's love, loyalty, remembrance. There's the looking into the future and that our blessed lord apparently is has knowledge, of course, he has of what these men of his are going to have to suffer, what they're going to go through for him.
Because for them, carrying the message, it's just beginning. Just beginning. And he speaks some with as if they were such a wonderful, almost a perfect bunch of men. And we know how imperfect they were, how utterly imperfect, utterly imperfect. Two out of the 12 would be re denied Christ.
In a sense, both of them were traitors. Two out of twelve, one sixth. And the other the other five sixth weren't so hot either. And notice with what affection Christ speaks of them, that they are that they are going to be his messengers. Now a messenger carries a message.
See, this is a point. I know today we say that the that the that the medium is the message. Silly. It's ridiculous. That's like saying the tool is the product.
Of course, you need a tool. You need tools to build a house, but the tools aren't the house. McLuhan and Company notwithstanding. And so today, our blessed lord emphasizes the messengers, and he also speaks of the message that they are to convey, that that that that message will be preserved. You see, these words have so much meaning for us today, so much meaning.
There is so much departure from respect for truth. That's in the world around us, and you're not going it begins a long time back, and today we are reaping the fruit of it. The great problem today, as someone said, is epistemological. That's a fancy word. All it means is a problem of knowledge.
How do you know? How do you know that you know? What's what is certitude? How how do you know when you're certain? Well, of course, many answer is you can't.
There's no such thing. All you have are possibilities and probabilities and statistical inferences. That that's the air around us. The idea that there's such a thing as an absolute truth, that there was that there's such a thing also as an absolute goodness. As a matter of fact, the idea there's anything absolute is is generally, not always, is generally rejected, generally rejected in the world today, if not totally rejected, if not totally.
We emphasize action. Action. Notice, there's not a word here about action. The whole emphasis of our blessed lord before his ascension was upon the message, and he prays for the messengers. Because if the messengers if the messengers suffer, if the messengers don't deliver the message, there's no message delivered.
And notice, our blessed lord did not give his his apostles a book. He didn't he didn't record anything. He gave them a message orally, orally. And that is the message he prays today in this touching it's really a touching statement. And the same way with Saint Paul.
Look how he speaks, with great love for his people that he did his best to bring them what? The truth. Not a lot of ifs and buts and probabilities and possibilities and maybes. He said, I brought you the the the good news. We didn't use the word good news, but he said, I brought you the the the truth of Jesus Christ, and I suffered for it with you, and I love you and keep it, the truth.
Because you see, unless you have truth, where do you go? You say, oh, it's it isn't important what you believe. It's what you do. How do you know what you should do? If truth is so unimportant, how do you know what is good?
There's no use talking about action unless you have truth because then the action becomes action for action's sake. And you know how true this is. You see somebody lying in an accident, and someone say, what are you doing for them? Well, you know, in some instances, the best thing you can do for that accident the person there is to do nothing. But you see, people say, oh, how horrible.
How cold blooded. They're not doing anything for that poor victim. Maybe that's the best thing you could do because you have some knowledge. Other people are ignorant. And your knowledge says, look, there may be broken bones here.
We shouldn't move that person until we know something. That's knowledge. That's truth. And today, truth is downgraded. We are losing it.
Since I saw you last, I was with a group of people, young a young professional people, and about three or four lawyers there. And these young Catholic lawyers said, what we need is someone to get up in the pulpit and to give us the doctrine of the church. That's what these one of them said explicitly. Said we need to know, not just to have a rehash of what has just been read in the gospel. But you see, it isn't being done.
Generally speaking, we have slid away from this concept of god's truth, the holy spirit. The way I Christ said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. The truth. He didn't say I'm action. And so in these days preceding Pentecost, let us these are our lord's own words as recorded by Saint John.
They're not my words, and you've heard them. I tried to read them so you would get the point. It's not the same as if you read it to you by yourself, which I urge you to do, but let us respect the truth and love it. But the first thing you have to do before you love it is to know it. You can't love what you don't know.
And so these days before Pentecost, let us take this to heart. Our blessed lord, his emphasis upon truth. It's not easy. It's not easy to get it. It's not easy to keep it, and it's not easy always to to to understand it.
Far from understanding it completely, but Christ never said he would that he never demanded us to understand it completely. All he asked of us was to believe in him. I am the way, the truth, and the life. In the name of the father, son, the holy spirit. Amen.