A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced their enemies, the Sadducees, the Pharisees assembled in a body, and one of them, a lawyer, in an attempt to trip up Jesus and attract him, asked him, teacher, which commandment of the law is the greatest? Our lord replied, you shall love the lord your god with your whole heart, with your whole soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it.
You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself. On these two commandments, the whole law is based, and the prophets, our lord said, as well. And this is the good news, the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit. Amen.
There this is the feast of Saint John Euds, e u d e s, Eud, from Caen, France, and chiefly around Normandy. But this and I want to say a few words about him, but I can't skip over without calling to your attention this extremely important statement of our blessed lord. Because it's so often, well, let us say, misinterpreted. You notice there are three commandments here. And the first to come the first one is to love God.
God comes first. Our blessed lord is telling us this. And the second commandment of love involves yourself. Love yourself. A third commandment is love your neighbor as you love yourself.
You can't squirm out of that at all. But you see, parts of this are sometimes not even quoted. You would think that the the the law and the prophets is summed up in love of neighbor. But you don't even have to be you don't have to believe in God to love your neighbor. You don't have to believe in God to love cats and dogs either.
The first commandment is God's existence. My existence as a creature, and my relationship to him. That's absolutely first in the order of common sense, if you admit God as your creator, and in the order certainly of theology because this is our blessed Lord speaking. And it's not two commandments, there are three here. And the Christian life must be based on all three, but with proper priorities.
God first, myself second, neighbor third, down to me with a love that I love myself with. You can't escape it. And if the problem of being a good honest to God Christian is to hold these three things together, and not to be lost in the third, that is love of neighbor which can be just what we today call sociology, philanthropy, good deeds, social welfare. As I say, you can be the most God fearing atheist the world ever saw, and be a wonderful philanthropist, and love your neighbor even to the extent of giving your life for him. So let you see, God is being so much forgotten today.
And after all, if there is a God and I'm his creature, then without any doubt what matters most, not exclusively, but what matters most is God and my relationship to God. You cannot deny that. And that, what I've said, was so enormously and splendidly and magnificently illustrated in the life of Saint John Hughes, who lived in the seventeenth century, 1601 to 1680. Now, the reason I'm bringing him in here this morning is this, that a great that we are acquainted with the sisters of charity. We are acquainted with the sufficient fathers whose work was the was devotion to seminaries.
We are acquainted with Saint Vincent de Paul, the the Vincentian priests, the Vincentian nuns, their work in hospitals, running seminaries, with all of this we're well acquainted. A sister of Charity with their big bun that you know was a pretty conspicuous lady walking down Connecticut Avenue. Well, they're not that conspicuous anymore, but we are acquainted with these things. Mother Seaton, up here in Emmitsburg, our neighbor. All of this goes back to John Hughes.
All of it. He is the one who inspired it. He is the one who gave it thrust. He is the one who in Kahn, in Normandy, first went to a Jesuit college. Notice he was born in this would have been about 1620, so that the Jesuits were just in about their fourth generation.
He became an oratorian, and at a very early age became aware of a number of now this is the first half of the seventeenth century, remember. The sixteenth century is a century of reformation. And this is France, chiefly in Normandy. What he saw was the need of preaching, of bringing the truth of Jesus Christ to the people. We didn't have the word-of-mouth was the practically practically the main, if not the exclusive, medium.
He saw that clearly. But he saw something else even more clearly, and that was the need of parish priests who were educated and had the spiritual formation to be truly priests of Jesus Christ. Remember, this is after the Council of Trent. This is after Saint Charles Barra Mayo, who was a great proponent of seminaries. Now, it was John Eud who in a short and well, in a pretty good lifetime, he died in 1680, But the thing is that he established about six seminaries in and around Normandy.
And because that is for the education of parish priests. Because up to this time it had been a haphazard situation. And for your regrettable information, that's about where we are today. Believe it or not, although there's an encouraging sign that the pendulum is swinging back a little bit. But it was Saint John Ute in France who had this conception of providing a very definite specific kind of education and formation.
Notice that word formation. You don't hear much about it anymore. It simply means that that a human being has a job to do and is formed into it. And that doesn't come by osmosis. It doesn't come by just stargazing.
It doesn't come by wishful thinking. It comes from a dedicated life. It a channel in ways that will form the person. And if that vocation, if that calling is to be a priest of Jesus Christ, then that formation be such that the man or the woman reflects in their life, in their person, Jesus Christ. Unambiguously, Jesus Christ.
So John Hughes had this vision. But more than that, more than that, he can be looked upon as the father of social welfare, of public health, of hospitals, of bringing medical aid and care to the poor. He can be looked upon as the beginning of the Good Shepherd nuns dedicated to he founded a group of through the help of the visitandes, he founded a group whose specific work was to accept and to welcome with the charity of Jesus Christ prostitutes, and to help them to reform their lives. That continues in the good shepherd order. So that the influence of John Ute in our world, that is the world which came under the influence of the French missionaries, and that includes practically the whole Eastern Coast Of The United States, all the way from Canada down to Florida.
And certainly, and the Vincentians were very active out in St. Louis, and all of this goes back to St. John Youth. So can we omit paying tribute to that man today? Can we not fail to recognize what one dedicated person can do by simply trying to do what he sees to be the work of the Lord, the opus dei.
It wasn't easy. Now don't think that everybody just simply say said, yes, John, anything you say will do. Nothing he accomplished was accomplished without trouble, opposition. Nothing. That's the way of the Christian life, folks.
And so today, as we honor this man, let us reflect that is another one of our companions. That is the company we keep. He is present with us to help us in a world which in many ways, in many ways, I'm not exaggerating this, the world that we're living in in The United States Of America today has great similarities and parallels with the France that John Yude knew in the seventeenth century. It didn't dominate him, he dominated it. And so the church of Jesus Christ must dominate its century today, in our place, in our time, today, in our daily lives.
In the name of the father, the son, and holy spirit. Amen.