Of the holy gospel. According to Saint John. Jesus said to his disciples, I solemnly assure you, unless the grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat. But if that grain of wheat dies, it produces much fruit. The man who loves his life loses it, while the man who hates his life in this world preserves it to life eternal.
If anyone would serve me, let him follow me. And where I am, there will my servant be. Anyone who serves me, the father will honor. And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord. Praise to you lord Jesus Christ.
In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Prefacing my well chosen remarks for this morning, may I say I am mighty happy to be with you. Once again, I missed you all. But I did not forget you. My trip to Rome was a gift and it's something I feel very responsible about.
A passing on in some way or other what I was so generously given. Now the first point I want to make and it's just a happy coincidence that this is the feast of Saint Antioch, Ignatius of Antioch. Now he's a very special person, remember. Some of you here have read some of his letters. We have them.
He dies in a hundred and four AD. Now, what I'm driving at is is the historicity of the church, of the Catholic church, merely as an historical fact. We go back to Jesus Christ. We are not born of the community's consciousness today or yesterday. Now Saint Ignatius of Antioch is from Antioch of Syria, And we have an idea that traveling in Europe in those days was like traveling in the Middle West.
They got around. They got around plenty, and it was no big deal to go from Rome over to Antioch. The roads were there, and the travel was there, and the wayside stations were there. It was all set up. You could get a letter delivered over there pretty near as slowly as you do in The United States today, or maybe faster.
This man, Ignatius of Antioch, traveled from Antioch to Rome eager eager to be a martyr. He begged his fellow Christians in Rome, don't do anything to keep me from being a martyr. He wanted to go to Jesus Christ and this this choice of the gospel reading today is exquisite. That our blessed Lord said, if you want to save your life you've got to give it away in this world. That's a tremendous sentence folks.
It's tremendous that you've got to die to yourself to live with Jesus Christ. Our Lord said that. I didn't make this up. Now the point of the tremendous I'm speaking from myself and different people are impressed by different things. What what matters to me is historicity of a fact.
Is it a the alleged fact, is it an authentic fact? Now the church is there's being all kinds of attacks made on the church today from within, from within. And I repeat, from within. After all Judas Iscariot was one of the 12, and he is the one who betrayed Jesus Christ. Now, Saint Ignatius wrote these letters and he is our first witness to the earliest days of the church outside of the books book of the acts of the apostles.
And he has a lot to say there about the priesthood and about bishops. And this is what is being contradicted today in within the church. That the priesthood is simply something that is a job which the community elects somebody to. I had a few well chosen remarks on that three weeks four weeks ago, quoting our Holy Father who spoke very explicitly on this subject to a group of bishops. It is Saint Ignatius who stands witness.
Remember, he dies in 01/2004, and he knew Polycarp who knew Saint John. That's how close Saint Ignatius is to the Apostles. And he comes to Rome to die a martyr and a witness to the church. Now here's the point. Those of you sitting out there who have read his letters or some of them, as I know some of you have, The point you can't avoid is this, you feel at home reading them.
You feel at home. They were written in Greek, you are reading a translation, and yet what Saint Ignatius says there is familiar. It's your religion. He quotes Saint Paul, he quotes the Gospels, he talks about bishops, talks about going to Jesus Christ, he talks about being the bread that will be eaten by the beasts. So that it I have something more to say about Saint Peter.
But this is a don't miss the point today. We belong to the not the American church. See, that's what you're hearing. You're hearing talk about the American church. What's the American Catholic church?
In my collected mail, there was a an issue of a certain newspaper. It was filled with this idea of the American church. What's the American? Are we in schism? And how can you be how can you divorce yourself from Rome without divorcing yourself from men like Ignatius of Antioch?
And nobody can deny that he is one of the earliest fathers of the holy Roman Catholic Church. He, Ignatius, is the one who went all the way from Antioch of Syria, go he went all the way westward to Rome where he met his martyrdom by his own will. He wanted to die. Of course, the Freudians make all kinds of get get all kinds of deductions from this. The fact is he begged for martyrdom.
You see, what we don't realize in our lives that it's just possible. Jesus meant what he said. When the only way you can save your life is to lose it for the sake of Jesus Christ. In the name of the father, and of the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.