A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Jesus said to his disciples, if you want to avoid judgment, stop passing judgment. Your verdict on others will be the verdict passed upon yourself. The measure with which you measure will be used to measure you. Why look at the speck in your brother's eye when you miss the plank that is in your own?
How can you say to your brother, let me take that speck out of your eye while all the time that plank remains in your own. You hypocrite, remove the plank from your own eye first, and then you will see clearly how to take the speck from your brother's eye. 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. This is a wonderful translation, that word plank as you all understand.
That's a great improvement on the Dali version. Today, we are not well, it is is the feast of Saint Thomas More and Saint John Fisher, both of the martyrs in the sixteenth century. Thomas More, of course, was the first layman to be chancellor lord high chancellor of England under Henry the eighth, and paid for that honor with his head. Saint John Fisher was a bishop of England, a contemporary, and a friend of Moore. Both of them alone, almost alone, almost alone, in all of England, refused to admit that the king of England was the supreme head of the church of Jesus Christ, which calls itself Catholic.
Now what does one say about these two men? Well, one of the first thing I wanna say in connection with this gospel. With all that Moore suffered under Henry the eighth, all that Fisher suffered under Henry the eighth, neither one of those men condemned Henry the eighth or even pejoratively criticized They deal they dealt with issues. They dealt with issues. And Saint Thomas More especially, as far as he could this is one of the great sort of mysteries of the drama of his martyrdom was the way he moved heaven and earth almost literally to avoid taking a confrontation stand with his king.
Because Moore never lost his regard and his high respect for Henry the eighth as his king. Said Moore on the scaffold, I die, the king's loyal servant, but god's first. Now the one point I wanna make about these two men is this, was their their solitude, their isolation, their aloneness, their aloneness. And when I think of them, I think of Saint Colby, the Polish priest who gave his life for the father of those 10 children. And who didn't know the man at all.
And his the penalty of doing it was death by starvation, which wound up by his being poisoned to death. Now, we hear so much today about society, about community, about work, about being together, that it's not when the president was shot, the man who pulled the trigger on the gun, it wasn't this particular man who did it. Oh, no. It was all society who did it. We are all guilty.
This is Dostoevsky's theme in brothers Kyra Mazov. We are all guilty. Yeah. That's a lot of stuff and nonsense. There's no such thing as collective guilt except in the sense in which you have the collectivity of the individual.
There's no reality to a pile of bricks except for the bricks. There is no such reality as a community. There's a moral unity we call a community, but notice it's a moral unity, a union of wills. In all of England, Saint John Fisher was the only bishop who refused to take the oath of the supremacy of the King of England over God's Church, the only one. He was the only one that stood up and said that the king's marriage to Anne Bullen was adultery.
And, of course, he paid for it almost immediately with his head. Saint Thomas More, with the exception of the Carthusian monks, a few of them, not all but about a half a dozen or 10 or 12 Carthusian monks, plus one or two they were the only ones at that time who refused to take the oath of supremacy. That is admitting the King of England was head of the church, because Henry said he was. Now the big argument that was brought to to Fisher, when of all the hierarchy, he refused to do it and stood up in front of Henry the eighth and said, I won't I he said when Henry said all the bishops said, agree, Fisher stood up and said, I do not agree. And when he did that, he knew very well what the penalty was going to be.
You did not cross the king. Indignoxio, rageous, more zest, the indignation of the king is death, and he knew it well. Now the argument brought to Fisher was, by Henry VIII, face to face, look, all the bishops of this realm have agreed to take the oath. All the leading rectors, the chancellors of the universities on the continent as well as in England, have admitted that the marriage was invalid, his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. And what did Fisher say?
Of course, they had been bought, you know. And Fisher said, it may be true. It was true that all the bishops of England subscribed to the oath, but he said they are not the Catholic church. They are not the church of Jesus Christ. Now the point I wanna make is this was a highly academic theoretical question.
It wasn't a it wasn't a very practical thing of everyday life, like we're talking about the nuclear bomb or something. This was a highly theoretical question. There wasn't a council you could you could appeal to. Remember, Moore changed his mind. In the beginning, he thought that maybe it was possible to have king the king as head of the church, but he changed his mind radically and paid for it with his head, of course.
The point I wanna make is those men went to the tower in their individual cells just like Colby went, and they were utterly alone. Now that's how we stand before God almighty in our own responsibilities. In the last analysis, I have to say, I will, I will not. This I choose, this I refuse to choose. In the last analysis, this is what it boils down to.
And just over the weekend I officiated at a wedding a good many miles away from here. And there were several 100 people there, all extremely heterogeneous group. And here I was up here at the altar talking about the Holy Spirit and the bond between husband and wife and the sacramental character of marriage. And the thought struck me, I might just as well, for the most part, be talking to the trees. I felt no response whatsoever from the congregation.
At least half of them were Catholics. I mean, that's a rough I mean, in name. At the during the mass, there was practically no response from the community. Now my point is, what part does god play in their lives? And now let's extrapolate that.
What part does God play in the daily life of most Americans today? I mean, in the daily life. When we stand alone before God and say, I will do this for God's sake. I refuse to do this for god's sake. How many of us do that?
What is our standard? You can tell your allegiance to god by your decisions about whether you about any decision, any decision. But you make that decision alone. Now you may get help from all kinds of help all around you, but in the last analyses, you say, I will serve, I will not serve, just as Lucifer did or as the saints have done. If there's any lesson about from Warren Fisher, it's the lesson of of of of depending.
Now remember, both of these men, and this is what I want to conclude with, both of these men had a profound fear of their own weakness. Both of them. And they said it said it explicitly. They were scared to death that at the last minute they would surrender and give up because they were so scared. So scared.
They depended completely on god. This is in writing. I'm not theorizing this at all. This is a matter of authentic record. They were deathly afraid of their own weakness.
And so there we are. I leave those men to you as examples. Moore was a layman. Fisher was a was a priest and a bishop. We can take one or the other or both of them as examples as and not only examples, you see.
But that's that's a great thing to be able to look up and say, look, here's the way some of my some of my friends they're my friends. That's how they acted under stress. We're in a period of stress, believe me. Believe me, we're in a period of stress stress. The allegiance to the holy father is is, in some instances, extremely slim even on the high echelon of the hierarchy.
Priests are being isolated. They're being exiled because of what they because they're called papist priests. Right today. Right today. I had heard of an example no less than twenty four hours ago.
So you stand before God in your individual autonomous responsibility. You can't slough it off. You stand there and you face God. Not with fear except the wholesome fear of your own weakness, but the absolute trust and confidence in god's strength. With him, you can do everything.
In the name of the father and of the son, the holy spirit, amen.