A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Jesus said to his disciples, disciples, be on your guard with respect to others. They will hail you into court. They will flog you in their synagogues. You will be brought to trial before rulers and kings to give witness before them and before the Gentiles on my account.
When they hand you over, do not worry about what you will say or how you will say it. When that hour comes, you will be given what you are to say. You yourselves will not be the speakers. The spirit of your father will be speaking in you. Brother will hand over brother to death and the father hand over his child to death.
Children will turn against parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by everyone on account of me. But whoever holds out till the end will escape death. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen.
I have yet to find this passage from Saint Matthew on a Christmas card. And, when you read this, coming the morning after church, the the church. This feast church church. Where it does. To And remind us that when we accept Jesus Christ and we call ourselves Christians, when we celebrate to his birthday and bend a knee in adoration of that child as truly god, which we do, at least we go through the motions, let us remind ourselves of what we're committing ourselves to.
This is the story of being a Christian, and you don't have to think in simply in terms of a of a Colgate. This is for all of us. And when you read this, it's absolutely blood curdling that fathers will hand over their kids, children will hand over their parents to be be to be executed, brother will hand over brother. This is awful stuff. It's absolutely.
And yet did Jesus say it? He sure did. And the of course, the important word there is on account of me. Because there has been no end of suffering in this world. And there's a there seems to be almost a tendency in some people to to attract it, or even to pursue it.
Freud made a good bit of that. But the fact is, the important significant the important point here, the significant point is not the suffering itself, but it's on account of me. As I've said many times, when the world takes you to its heart, beware. You're on the wrong track. Because our lord said, the world will hate you, and it will persecute you and it will kill you on account of me.
So when that world takes you to heart, beware. Now, there's just one little thought here I want to be with you all. And it's this, if I can find it. It says, remember, it's our lord speaking. He said, when they hand you over, don't worry about what you will say or how you will say it.
When that hour comes, in other words, when our hour of trial and stress and crisis comes, you will be given what you are to say. You won't be the speakers. It will be I speaking through you. To me, that's extremely encouraging. There is a bright ray of hope that when when we're called upon as we are in many ways called upon to do if we are following Christ, remember, we are not resting on our own powers.
There's the point. Don't think you can do it alone. Don't be scared of the future. You're not called upon to face the future. All you're called upon is to face today, the 12/26/1983, not '84.
And and when we say the lord's prayer, remember what we say there. Give us this day our daily bread. Not yesterday's, not tomorrow's, not next week's, not next month's, not a whole bakery full of bread but only for the day. When the when the chosen people treats it across the Sinai Peninsula, they got their food, the manna and the quail, for one day only. If they took it if they took too much, it just disappeared.
And so our great hope, our great consolation is not looking within ourselves, it's looking at the born newborn babe of a virgin named Mary, who God himself came down to be. That baby we salute as God. Not just something holding God, not just something encompassing God, not just some kind of a great consequence or effective God, but that baby is God. Because there's only one person in the in that child that Mary produced. Just one person.
That person is Jesus Christ, and that person is divine, the second person of the blessed trinity. And that is our hope. So when we're when we get carbon, when we get when we get in to the corner, when the world seems to press us, when we don't know what to do or how we're going to do it, get out of the driver's seat and let God take over. In the name of the father, the son, and holy spirit. Amen.