A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. After Jesus has entered the temple precincts And, while he was teaching, the chief priests and elders of the people came up to Jesus and said to him, and this is a very sensible question. On what authority are you doing these things? Who has given you this power? Jesus replied, I too will ask you a question.
If you answer it for me, then I will tell you on what authority I do the things that I do. What was the origin of John's baptism? Was it divine, or was it merely human? This is John the Baptist. They thought to themselves, if we say divine, he will then ask us, then why did you not put faith in it?
On the other hand, if we say merely human, we shall have reason to fear the people who all regard John as a great prophet. So their answer to Jesus was, we do not know. Jesus in turn said, then neither will I tell you on what authority I do the things that I do. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen.
Today, we celebrate the feast of our lady of Guadalupe. This is a shrine to our blessed mother just on the outskirts of Mexico City. You can walk up there. It's a well, it's a good walk, but you can walk it from the center of the city. The cult goes back to the first half of the sixteenth century, about 1,530 something.
The the whole business revolves around the very peculiar events that happened to a to an Indian man. Notice they weren't children this time. This business of the children, we have it in Lour, we have it in Fatima, we have it in a number of other places. But anyway, this was an Indian man, spoke no Spanish, and there were two things about it, and that was the miracle of the roses, so the wonderful business about roses, and then the image of the blessed mother that came at that time. The anyone who's been there now that they've built a new basilica there alongside the old one, which was sinking, you know.
Mexico City is built on a on on a lake, so they're all most of their old heavy buildings are sinking. So they they built a new basilica there, which I have not seen. I was been there several times with the old ones. Now, anyone of you who has been there and has seen what goes on there, will be startled, I think. It's not like Lourd.
You see, Lourd Lourd is very suave and sort of civilized. Everything's carefully arranged, and it's protected by a river, the Gulf. That's not the name of the river in Sedan. Now what I the point I wanna make is this this morning, very briefly, but we let's not be afraid to face this. If you've been down to Guadalupe and have seen those thousands of people, or at least any morning you'll see hundreds of them on their knees, many of them on their knees, approaching the entrance to the basilica.
And if you get there early enough, you will see them all around the open spaces. Remember, is right by the by the city. This is not in some mountain area. This is right near the city. They will have their little charcoal fires going, preparing some kind of a meal for breakfast.
And it's a hodgepodge of action, the smell of charcoal, coffee brewing, and that all these people moving in, of all ages, and and and men and women, children, boys and girls. And this was just an ordinary morning that I've been there. I've never been there for a big occasion. I don't know what it must be like then. You as soon as you get off your plane in Mexico City, the first cab you get in, there will be an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
You get on the bus, there'll be a an image or or maybe several pictures of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Our Lady of Guadalupe is all over the place. Now here's the question. Where is god in all this? Now that this is the big scandal for many Catholics who go down there and for and especially for non Catholics because they'll say, ye gods, this is just paganism.
This is just adoration of an idol. Well, let me tell you folks, that's a very superficial view. Very superficial. And remember, when things are so terribly obvious, that's the time to ask yourself, is it so? Is it so?
I often think about this particular question of knowledge when I sit here on a Sunday morning, and these pews are filled with people, and they take up a collection. And pew after pew, nobody puts anything in the collection box or basket or whatever they pass around. And somebody a stranger coming into this parish, seeing that basket being passed around, they'll say, ye. Had nothing being put in it in many instances. They'll say, gee, this is a poor parish.
No one's contributing anything. Well, the fact is they didn't drop anything into the basket. That's perfectly clear. It's obvious. It's obvious.
But it's so wrong. If you draw a conclusion that they're not contributing, those people have signed up and sending their checks in every month. So whenever and when anything is very obvious, that's the time to beware. It's like playing tennis. When you're winning, play as if you're losing, and when you're losing, play as if you're winning.
That's absolutely sound philosophy. To come back to this, first point I make is this, you cannot talk about Mary, the mother of Christ, without bringing in Christ. That's the first point. If you call her mother, she's got to be have a child. So you can't divorce Mary from from her son.
And it is the doctrine of the holy Roman Catholic church. It is the doctrine of the eastern church that Mary is the mother of god. Theotokos, the mother of god. Because Jesus Christ was had two natures but was truly God in one person, and she is the mother of that person. Therefore, she's the mother of God.
Took three councils to work that out. Ephesus, Nicaea, and Calcita. So you can't talk about Mary mother without implying her son. And her son is god, and ergo, she is the mother of god. Now, you know, we say that in a words but think of what that means.
We're saying that a a woman, a woman, absolutely the same as any of us except no sin was the mother of God. That's that's quite a statement. The second point is this, that whenever you have devotion to Mary, she always points not to herself, but to her son. To her son. Now in any given instance, you can concentrate your devotion to Mary.
That's true. But you can't do it without implying devotion to her son because everything that Mary is, anything she has, any merit she has, any grace she has, if all of this is due not to herself, but to the fact she was the mother of God. If that be so and that's the teaching of the church. If that be so, how can you exaggerate your devotion to her? The only way you can exaggerate it is to exclude her son, and that I say is impossible.
Now the next point I wanna make is a very important basic principle. Because something is abused or misused does not prove against the thing that's being abused or misused. You can take your sterling silver knife and use it as a screwdriver. You can try it, but it doesn't make a good screwdriver. It ruins the silver.
And the purer the silver, the softer it is, and the and the more the destruction. It was Aristotle who said that the destruction of the best is the worst. When you have a mirror, you can have a mirror made out of stainless steel, you can have it made out of plastic, you can then begin with glass, you can have all kinds of backing, and the different kinds of backing will give you a better mirror so that the mirror can go from a very low grade reflecting thing all the way up to something which would say is almost perfect. And what happens as you ascend from the very grubby kind of a mirror all the way up to the best that can be made, what happens? It becomes more sensitive all the time to a thumbprint.
It becomes more sensitive all the time to any kind of a of a disfiguration on the on the glass, because it reflects more truly and more authentically and more accurately. So Aristotle was certainly saying something, among other things, very true, that the destruction of the best is the worst. And because some people may, I should freely admit this, because some people may have a false attitude or exaggerated attitude or what have you. What does that prove or or disprove as regards the position of Mary in the hierarchy of the saints? And the answer is nothing.
Nothing at all. The fact that somebody goes out and buys a bottle of scotch and and drinks it right down as they would water and slops down into the gutter, what does that prove about the authenticity or the worth of the value of good scotch whiskey? All it proves is you've got a drunk on your hand. But you see, it's so easy to make that leap. So easy.
We did it in the Prohibition days. The great demon alcohol, the great devil alcohol, great big pictures of it. You know? Anyway, as regard to and the the final point I wanna make is this. There is practically far as I know, with all of these very popular shrines to Our Lady, and all of them, not the one over at CU, but like Fatima, Lourdes, and there are many others.
There was there's they're up in Canada. All of these shrines which, have a long tradition of very of something wonderful happening there. Not one of them has to be accepted on faith. You can reject every single one of them and not be guilty of heresy. You can renounce and say, I want nothing to do with any of that, and still be an absolutely loyal Catholic.
It's not an article of faith that I believe in Lord, that I believe in Fatima, that I believe in Our Lady of Guadalupe. Not at all. If you want to, fine. If you don't, don't. But when we come to criticizing, we ought to know what we're doing.
There is the point. One final point. This was Cardinal Newman. And this is the nineteenth century. When you had a great, what we call the Oxford movement in England, where you had the this great movement from the from Protestantism or any word you wanna use, it's difficult to give a word, to the high church, to the Roman Catholicism, which Newman made.
Newman made this statement that any place you see, all all these great cathedrals in England had merry chapels. And of course, under Cromwell, they've been destroyed. And and Newman pointed out that in every instance where you had that rise from ball from Protestantism up through high church to to to the Catholic faith, the Anglo Catholic movement, you had a restoration of devotion to Our Lady. In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.