A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Mark. Peter was moved to say to Jesus, we have put aside everything to follow you. Jesus answered, I give you my word. There is no one who has given up home, brothers or sisters, mother or father, children or property for my sake and for the gospel who will not receive in this present age a 100 times as many homes, brothers and sisters, mothers, children, and property, and persecution besides. And in the age to come, everlasting life.
Many who are first shall come last, and the last shall come first. 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. Of course, what Peter is saying here, lord, look what we've given up to follow you. What are we going to get out of it?
What are we going to get out of it? What are we going to get out of being faithful, loyal Catholics? What are we going to get out of it trying to fulfill the commandments of God and of his church? Often, if you try to fulfill them with sacrifice. It can only be done many times, only with a penitential spirit.
It's not fun and games. And now notice that our blessed lord makes a promise. Did you notice that? In other words, he doesn't rebuke Peter. Our lord says, if you give up these things and notice what you're giving up.
Home, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, your own children, your own property. What's left? What else what else in this world is there to give up? Outside of giving yourself up a suicide or something or the equivalent. And our and Christ says, you're going to if you wanna give those things up, he says, you will receive in the present age, whatever that means, a 100 times as many homes and brothers and sisters and so forth.
Does this mean that Christ is inviting husbands to abandon their families, wives to abandon their children, children to abandon their parents in their old age or when they need help? Is that what our lord is saying? Is is he telling us here that we should go out and get rid of our property? Separate ourselves from everything, I mean, physically, from everything we own? That's that's the ultimate sense of property, propious, my own.
Is that what our lord is telling us? No. No. Let me hasten to say, some have taken it that way. In the time of Saint Jerome, there were plenty doing and fleeing out into the Nile Valley by the thousands.
Because they said this is what Christ want this is what Christ said. He didn't say you had to go into the Nile Valley and be hermits. What he's say what Christ is saying here at least, certainly he's not saying that explicitly. That is perfectly clear. If anybody says he's saying that, they're the burden of proof rests on them.
Because as you know, in the last analysis, it's nonsense, and Christ never was guilty of nonsense. What Christ is saying is we must give these things up. They cannot be our masters. They cannot own us. Now I say can because we know that they can own us.
We know very well we can be their slaves. We know that. If you wanna be a Catholic, if you wanna be a follower of Christ, it's a problem not to be a slave of the things we own, as we say. In other words, the things we own own us. And some of that is almost inevitable as things are.
And the great struggle is to survive this, is to is not to let that happen. Because by our very station in life, by the things we are bound under god's law to do remember, one one of the first commandments is honor your father and your mother. Is our blessed lord saying here, throw out the 10 commandments? No. I said it was nonsense if you interpreted that severely.
It's nonsense. It's absurdity. But what Christ is saying, there cannot be in your life anything, any person superior to God to God. Now just Sunday, I had a had a meeting with a young couple who are thinking of getting married, and we're supposed to be discussing, know, being a celibate, I knew all about marriage, of course. But the thing is, being a third party, you do know something about it.
Now the thing that because I've seen a lot of marriages break up. I've seen a marriage that I performed here break up in less than a year. So I know something about marriages breaking up. If if a if if two people and this I use this as just an example because this is at the summit of human relationships, the commitment of a man to a woman and a woman to a man for life, for better or for worse. They're not going to keep it if they can only see each other.
But if both of them look to God and put God first as a third party to their bedroom, it's a horse of another color entirely. Entirely. I recall here a story of Robert Cole, the psychiatrist who does a good bit of writing. And he says he met a black woman in the South who was having a tough time with her husband, they split. And she went to a mental institution for a couple of months and returned in good shape.
So he came and wanted it to be taken back. And this good lady said to him, I'll take you back if you're willing to be one of the three of us. And he said, what do you mean the three? And she said, god. I have discovered god.
And that's you see, that's what this is about. If we put God first, everything else will fall into line, and we will find the happiness that Jesus promises. Notice he makes a promise here. He's not saying if you give yourself to God, you're going to have an arid, abandoned, sad, morose life. He says just the reverse.
Christ says it. Do we believe him? Let's try it. In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit.