A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. As Jesus moved about, he saw a man named Matthew at his post where taxes were collected. Jesus said to Matthew, follow me. Matthew got up at once and followed Jesus. Now it happened that while Jesus was at table in Matthew's house, many tax collectors and those known as sinners came to join Jesus and his disciples at dinner.
The Pharisees saw this and complained to our lord's disciples. What reason can the teacher have for eating with tax collectors and those who disregard the law? In other words, this bunch of hopeless sinners. Overhearing their remark, Jesus said to them, people who are in good health do not need a doctor. Sick people do.
Go and learn the meaning of my words. It is mercy I desire and not sacrifice. I have come to call not the self righteous but sinners. And this is the gospel, the good news of our lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen.
I want to add a word or two to my well chosen remarks of yesterday morning because they didn't go far enough. They were we didn't hit the the crux of the problem, which is our lord. Now, remember, I quoted from our holy father's first homily, first address, first sermon as he entered, Warsaw two weeks ago yesterday. It was a sermon in the Cathedral Of Saint John. And in the one of the significant sentences of that discourse that I at least think is significant is this, in a special way, the holy father said now his remember, he's talking to the Polish people two weeks ago from yesterday.
Now think of their history. We're not in practically in the memory of all of us. Poland had been wiped off the face of the earth as a nation. Just keep that in mind. Think of how it's been overrun, how it's been divided, how it's been crucified.
First by one, then by another, then by a third. It's been a terrifically, horribly persecuted people. Really, it's awful. And it goes way back thousands of years. That's the group he's talking to, and he's talking to them in the year of our lord 1983, in June, two weeks ago yesterday.
And this is his first address, so it's important. The most important part of a sentence, well, the is the first and the last. Now he said in the course of those that homily, in a special way the redemption is available to those who suffer, and perhaps suffer more intensely because they cannot fully perceive the meaning of their own suffering, and even more, the meaning of their own existence. That's the question on many a person's lips today. Lord, why does this happen?
Then the next step is, why am I here at all? What is it all about? Now I think of Colby. You see you see how we it's so easy to glamorize this thing. He offers himself and he volunteers for a man he didn't didn't know at all, didn't even know the name of, to suffer death by starvation in his place.
And immediately, he's thrown in down into a cell with some other prisoners, and there he is in in his loneliness. I think of Thomas More in his loneliness. The point I'm making is loneliness. You see, the point is that it's so often when we're down in the pits, we feel so utterly alone. But my dear friends, you are in supremest good company.
Our blessed lord on that cross was there too. Remember, he said from the cross, my god, my god, why have you abandoned me? I've never been able to that is a tremendous thing that the son of god on the cross went through all the sufferings of being absolutely alone. Today, you see, we hear so much talk about our societal aspects, our community aspects, our living together as one family. Well, let me tell you, when the chips are down, you are going to be alone, and you will be crying from the cross, my god, my god, why have you abandoned me?
If you haven't felt it yet, you've been very fortunate, but you're not dead yet. We all go through that, and don't make any mistake about it. It's a matter of degree and frequency, not a matter of whether or. Now what I want to leave with you this morning is this. This prayer that we've been saying every day of the week, it goes back to last Sunday's mass, that we will walk in the radiance Now notice these words in the text.
In the radiance of God's truth. Not of God's feeling, not of God's emotion, not of God's sentiment, not of God's making me feel fulfilled. You think Colby felt fulfilled in that stinking dungeon cell? You think Moore felt fulfilled in that cell that he had in the tower with Fisher and those Carthusian monks? I don't know how he felt.
The point is feeling is irrelevant. And I say it again, it is irrelevant. That you see, these prayers of the mass are so honest to God authentic. You can't match them. I mean, not to some of the new ones, but these older prayers of the entering hymn prayers.
You pray that God will give us the strength to walk in the radiance of his truth. Now the great truth of Jesus Christ is he came to save us. He didn't come to save us tomorrow or yesterday, today. He came to save a Colby in that stinking cell. He came to save a Thomas Moore in his solitude up in that tower.
He came to save this grieving parent who's lost a child, a grieving spouse who's lost a lifetime companion. Our blessed lord comes to save to that we will walk in the radiance of his truth when the news comes you have you have terminal illness. It'll hit us all one day. We're all terminally ill, you know. Just as we don't feel that, we forget it.
Christ came to save us in the existential situation of our daily lives. And the greatest thing is that we feel that life is worthwhile, that what's happening to me is important and has meaning. This is absolutely essential. And when this is missing, that's why the rate of suicides is going up. As I told you, the second greatest killer of young people is suicide.
The first killer is the automobile. And so this statement of, our holy father this this is one of the sentences in his first address to the to the, Polish people, and you know the circumstances of his coming there. We know now that it's turned out, well, it's turned out fairly. At least he wasn't assassinated. The situation isn't worse than it was, and there's a lot of hope that it's better.
But this was his first statement to the Polish people, and his voicing their when you take a Polish people there's practically not a Polish person that can't see in his family some vacant chair, that they don't that they do not have some very close relative who has been a what? A senseless victim of persecution, of bias, of prejudice, of hate. What sense can you make out of it? You better make some. Frankl, Victor Franklin, man's search for meaning.
This was the key key to Auschwitz, and Frankl was a Jew, remember. Viennese, Jewish psychiatrists. We've got to have meanings alike. We've got to feel that what is happening to me here and now, not yesterday and not tomorrow or next year, but today, that death has meaning and that I'm in the hands of God. All these readings from the old testament, I don't know what to make out half of them, but there's one thing comes through clearly, that God is running the show.
God is running the show. That comes through absolutely clearly. And so, the thought I wanna leave with you is God is running the show. Life has meaning, and it has meaning. And my existence has me no matter what kind of existence.
Whether I'm on the peak of the wave of joy and happiness and tranquility, and when things are prosperous and everything's going smooth, it happens once in a while. Or when I'm down in the trough, when I can't even see any blue sky up atop. When I'm down in the dumps. When I feel like saying, my god, my god, why have you abandoned me? He hasn't abandoned you.
He's asleep in that boat. He's asleep, but he's with you. And he has given meaning to life. I have come. Our blessed lord said, that you might have life and that you might have life more abundantly.
But the key is you have it with him. You must walk in the radiance of his truth. In the name of the father and of the son, holy spirit, amen.