A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. After the Magi had left, the angel of the lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph with this command, get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you otherwise. Herod is searching for the child to destroy him. Joseph got up and took the child and his mother and left that night for Egypt.
He stayed there until the death of Herod to fulfill what the lord had said through the prophets. Out of Egypt, I have called my son. Once Herod realized that he had been deceived by the astrologers, the that's the Magi, of course, he became furious. He ordered the massacre of all the boys, two years old and under in Bethlehem and in its environs, making his calculations on the basis of the date he had learned from the astrologers. What was said through Jeremiah the prophet was then fulfilled.
A cry was heard at Ramah, sobbing and loud lamentation. Rachel, bewailing her children. No comfort for her since they are no more. And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord. Praise to you, lord Jesus Christ.
The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. It takes courage to do what the church does in this week following Christmas. The first day after Christmas, we have the feast of Saint Stephen Martyr. Today, we have the feast of the holy innocents.
These children, innocent children, who were slaughtered at the whim of Herod. Notice, he was way outside of the Roman law in doing this. But anyway, he did it. Tomorrow, we have another martyr, Saint Thomas of Becket. And all of this right as we still have the decorations of Christmas.
The church is giving us a message. The church exists to give us a message. The church exists to bring us the good news of Jesus Christ, and that good news is our salvation, not our comfort in this world. Not to make the the the life here better, to make this a more a a as we say, perfect. You hear that phrase all the as how can something be more perfect if it's perfect?
Anyway, we do double superlatives, you know. We'll have triple superlatives pretty soon. We've got to keep our orientation. What is it? What what is religion all about?
Just yesterday, and I this is the truth. I read in some little journal someplace about money. It was something about the new year. And it said all the things money can buy. And here the last sentence was striking.
It said money can buy religion, but it can't buy salvation. You see the difference? Religion in itself can be a hindrance to salvation. And by religion, we mean going through the rituals, the forms, the externals, of what we call religious acts. They can really be they they can be they can become so commonplace, so accepted that the the significance behind them is lost, or at least it's not nearly as foremost as it should be.
What in the world is life all about? This summer, I had some young boys. I well, were they were late elementary school boys. And one of those boys, time and again during the day we were sailing on the bay, kept asking me, why did God create me? Well, all all I could answer is, well, because he loved you.
That didn't satisfy because it didn't mean anything. What does it mean to me to say god loves me, therefore, god created me? Or Saint John says, remember, you may love god, but god loved you first. Well, of course, you could say the proof of the pudding is in the eating. And since God created me ergo, he did it because he loves me.
He couldn't do it for himself because he he doesn't need anything. So that we've got to come back to some of these honest to god basic truths. I told you I read that book called The Pink Rose by Eiko. Now I'm reading another one on the same century, the fourteenth century by Dukenbach, and it's called The Calamitous Century. Well, here you find the same thing.
People are are absorbed in a lot of religious so called religious practices. But where is the honest to god religion? Now the church is doing her level best to keep us on course, not to save us from the battle, not to make life easy, not to make being a Christian comfortable. There's nothing comfortable in a certain sense about being a Christian. Never forget it.
After all, I think we're safe in saying Christ was possibly a Christian. Look where I put him. And the idea of the Christian journey being a warfare, that's not something I discovered yesterday. It's a battle, and anyone who tries it knows it is a battle. And remember, you don't escape it by running into a monastery or becoming a contemplative or putting yourself on top of a pillar because you're taking it all with you.
And so the message the church is giving us is we don't miss it. And now as I say you say this is a terribly pessimistic view of life and of Christianity. It is nothing of the sort. It is nothing of the sort. Because if all we have is this life and to live for this life, tell me how can a person face up to it when they get clobbered as they do.
And why shouldn't they end it all? If that's all life is, is what it offers, then we are in bad shape, and there that's pessimism. That is pessimism with all due regard to Nietzsche and company. But there's no there's not no pessimism about Christianity. Because while we say it is a battle, it is a warfare, it is not easy to pick up Christ's cross and follow him.
Remember, that's the only condition he ever gave for being being his follower, that you take up your cross daily and follow him. This is the church's doctrine, but it is not a doctrine of joy of of sadness, of regret, of forlorn despair and lost hope. It is none of those things. It's a it's a religion of faith in Jesus Christ and his love for me. Love.
Most of us are willing to admit that we didn't create ourselves. Most of us think we had mothers. Most mothers are aware that they did not create the person. We are individual creations of Jesus Christ, of god almighty. And so let us get the message at church.
It's a message of joy. It's a message of accepting life. It's a message of meaning in life. There's the important thing. Many people are destroyed not by what happens to, but because it seems so utterly meaningless.
Meaningless. If there be a god, how could this happen to me? If there be a god, how could these innocent babies be slaughtered? Where is the justice? Read the brothers Karamazov in there.
There there there are some passage in there which are the most dramatic things I've ever read on this problem of the innocent suffering. It is and what answer can we give? In some instances, instances, we can't give an answer. We can respond. There's a huge difference.
We can respond with an act of faith in a just and a benevolent and all loving god. And that's where our faith rests, and that's where our hope rests. And those two things rest on love because faith and hope will both disappear once we have the reality of eternity in our hands. Only love will remain. And it was love that put us here, and it is love of Jesus Christ speaking to each one of us through his church, through the visible, concrete, tangible church with all its defects.
It's a human institution in a certain sense. It's in the hands of human beings, and some of them are not perfect. But that's how it is, and that's our hope. That's our joy. That's what gives us strength to support life.
Not that we're going to understand it completely, but it is not meaningless. It is not absurd. It is not cause for despair. It is simply absolutely an urgent cry for increased faith and hope and above all, Remember, you may think you love god, but he first loved you. In the name of the father, of the son, holy spirit.
Amen.