A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Jesus said to his disciples, do not lay up for yourselves earthly treasures. Moths and rust corrode and destroy them. Thieves break in and steal them. On the contrary, make it your practice to store up heavenly treasure, which neither moths nor rust corrode nor thieves break in and steal.
Remember, where your treasure is, there also is your heart. The eye is the body's lamp. If your eyes are good, your body will be filled with light. If your eyes are bad, your body will be in darkness. And if your light is darkness, how deep the darkness will be.
And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Plato in his republic, in defining and describing the guardians of the state, they're going to run the show. One of the things that he pays very special attention to is dying. Dying.
He describes at length and insists upon the qualities that these guardians of the state have to have. And one of them, and probably one of the most important ones, is that they know how to die. That's in the Republic of Plato. It's there for your reading. Take these two readings now.
We had this one. The first one where Saint Paul is boasting boasting of all that he suffered for Jesus Christ. Then you take our blessed lord's words today which are so solemn that if our if our eyes are darkened, we are in darkness indeed. And the and the opposite side of that coin, the contrary side of it is our blessed lord's words, I am the way, the truth, and the life. And those of you who live in me will have life eternal.
We are told that our sorrows will be turned into joy. We are told that death is simply a passing incident in my career. These are all things that we accept academically, academically. Yesterday, we had a funeral of missus Anna Mae Bausch. Now this lady knew how to die.
She's not the only one, but she's the most recent one in this parish. She had a long illness. Now, it used to be, it used to be that one of the greatest moments in a man or a woman's life was that was their deathbed, and they made a big deal out of it. How they died with dignity, with confidence in God, surrendering their soul. Their last words were treasured.
Immortally treasured in some instances, or almost immortally. But today we have the attitude of eliminating death. We look upon physical death as the utmost horror. Look at all this talk about nuclear war. Now remember, in all of that talk, all you're talking about is physical evil.
That a lot of people are going to die. Well, confidentially, lot of people are going to die. War or no war, nuclear war or no nuclear war, atomic fission or no atomic fission. I accept the fact of death. I accept the truth that all men are born to die.
So unless you know how to die, how do you know how to live? And Plato insists upon that, that you could not entrust the state to men who didn't know how to die. They wouldn't be reliable. They wouldn't be responsible. They would be mediocre.
They would be inferior. And Plato insists that you must have the best to rule. Now those of you who were acquainted with missus Boucher know well her long period of illness and how she bore it, and how her family rallied to her cause. This is public knowledge in the parish, but these are things which are significant. I could stand up here on doomsday and talk about death.
But to be to be personally acquainted with someone who does die a noble and Christian death, that is a sermon beyond words. Beyond words. No priest can stay in a pulpit and match it. Nobody. And so as it sound this is not an original thing, but the greatest sermon if you want to use that word that we can preach is the way we die.
What is our attitude towards death? Some years ago, it's getting to be a lot now, a lady did a very a very valuable research job on death and dying. This was a statistical study. She went through, she controlled her findings. She gathered the facts as she could gather them from the people who were dying.
Terminal cancer patients for the most part. Now many of you have read the book. It's it's still on the paperback. It's still published. It's still obtainable on death and dying.
Now the thing that that comes through to me every time I go back and reread that opus is that you see very little difference, if any difference, as she reports it. Now I that's very important for you to notice, as she reports it. Because all she all I know about the book is what I read. Now as she reports what she found in terminally ill people who knew they were dying and what their attitude towards death was, you see very little difference between those who had no belief in God or eternity, and those who said they believed in God and eternity. Very little difference.
Now, how do you account for that? Missus Bausch was a Christian woman, a marvelous Catholic woman. She knew she was dying for weeks and weeks, so did her family. Now, you see, this is the value of a parish that we are united. That in the same day we can have a baptism, we can have a marriage, we can have a funeral.
The same day. The same priest can do all three. You have the whole cycle of life within eight hours, in less than eight hours. But that's life. We're all in that cycle, and we're not going to escape the what we call the phenomenon of death.
And so this is not a pessimistic note at all. Because as I said, if you don't know how to die, how do you know how to live? If you can't answer the meaning of life in terms of the fact of dying, what have you left to view the present? Well, of course, there's always the escape of hard work, of sex, of love. Oh, a lot of things.
You you can you can find escape in a lot of things for a while. For a while, but only for a while. Because death is one thing that catches up with us all. And so the greatest joy, one of the touching, and yet one of the most down to earth accounts about death that I know of is C. S.
Lewis's, The Grief Observed When He Lost His Wife. He nearly committed suicide. Now he was a good God fearing Christian, yet he nearly committed suicide. Remember our Lord cried at the tomb of Lazarus, even though he knew he's gonna bring him back to life. And the thing that Lewis brings out is this very fact.
When he when he had lost his wife and when he saw other couples and he said one of them is going to go first. And so we have to bring our Christian faith, our Christian love of truth in other words just as we have today our blessed lord's telling us. Unless your eyes are opened with the light of god's truth brought to us by Jesus Christ, you are blind. In the name of the father and of the son and holy spirit. Amen.