A reading from the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Now this is a direct immediate consequential reading from yesterday's reading. And remember we had that commandment where our Lord says, you have heard an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I tell you, when a person strikes you, turn your other cheek. If anyone wants to go to the law court with you, or ask you for your shirt, well, don't try not to go to the law court and give him your shirt, but give him your coat as well.
Now this continues right after that. And then Jesus Jesus continued to his disciples. You have heard the commandment, you shall love your countryman, but hate your enemy. That, of course, is a direct quotation from the Old Testament. My command to you is love your enemies.
Pray for your persecutors. If you do this, this will prove that you are sons of your heavenly father. For his son rises on the bad as well as upon the good. He reigns on the just as well as upon the unjust. If you love those who love you, what merit is there in that?
Do not tax collectors do as much? And if you greet your brothers only, what is so praiseworthy about that? Don't pagans do as much? In a word, you must be perfected as your heavenly father is perfect. And this is the gospel 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. We do not hear these days very much about our lord's teaching along these lines. First of all, when you read this and the preceding reading, one thing you cannot possibly avoid is that Christ is talking to each human being personally.
Personally. Not to the community, not to society, not to man and women in some collectivity. I don't care what name you give it, whether it be in a small group of the family or a larger group. I don't care what you call it. Christ is talking to human beings individually because that's the only place where you have holiness.
It's the only place where you have sanctity. It's the only place where you have acts of will and of love and of hate. But you see, today we talk about community. We talk about society. Society is guilty.
We are all guilty. I just read it yesterday again. In regard to that decree decision of the Supreme Court about the first the last hired first fired or however you want to express it, this thing came up again by the head of the ANSCP. That society has been guilty in the past, therefore society should pay not. What's this thing we're talking about as society?
Where is it? Except in individual human beings. And notice Christ notice what he says. You are not called to mediocrity. You are not called just to get across the line.
You are not called upon to to perfect in yourself a minimal state of holiness. Notice, let's not be afraid of that word. Christ used it. And what I've often said, what's good enough for him is good enough for me. That's humility, isn't it?
But Christ says, be ye perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. And that you is you individually. But today, you see, we like to shuffle this off to society, to to the community, to to living togetherness, all this togetherness business. Now remember, we are social beings. It's crazy to try to escape from our social commitments, and it's ridiculous.
It's absurd, it's suicidal. Suicidal to try to live an isolated life. You will part you will just simply dry up and die. Most human beings have come into this world because of two other human beings who for at least a moment or so loved each other. So we are born in a sense of society.
Of society. But they're individuals, you see, who gave me birth. And this is something we've got to get through our heads because we're living in a world which rejects this, which tries to tell me that I'm just a I'm just part of a big system. And what I do doesn't really matter. It's the system that matters.
Now, of course, the system matters, but it only matters in so far as you have individual human beings who constitute it, who make it up, who create it. And without those human beings, it is simply nothing except a thought in somebody's mind and a word on a printed page, which can vary with the thousands of languages in the universe, in our world. Now, our blessed lord's message today must be taken you see, this is one continuous discourse. And as I said yesterday, you can take what our lord said yesterday, carry it to extremes, take it out of context, and you come up with rank, rank absurdities. You have to take yesterdays with the daydreams as part of the same discourse.
Now what is Christ telling us here? He's telling us that we've got to love our neighbor. Love him. Love him. That's what Christ is saying.
Now, how do you express that love? That's another question. Here's where the here's where you get into the into the realm of debate. Because all we can do is do the best we can under certain circumstances. Because when when I say our blessed lord is telling us here about love and using extreme examples, nevertheless, in a given situation, you have to remember that in addition to the virtue of charity, you have prudence and you have justice and you have fortitude.
And you cannot have one virtue without another. Even old man Cicero knew that. And that's where the trouble comes. But what our blessed Lord here now remember that text on the Old Testament is misleading because there are texts and I've I've spent a good bit of time on this. In the Old Testament, there are texts where we are where the Jews were told to love their enemies.
See, it all depends which book of the Old Testament you read. Again, take it out of context. Take a little bit here and a little bit there and you get anything you want. You know, you I'm sure you've heard of this, but whole speeches, whole speeches have been concocted by electronic devices of men like Kennedy who have and every single word that you hear is Kennedy's word. And yet he never he never had anything to do with that speech.
It's concocted. They take a bit of this tape and a bit of this tape put them together, and you come out with a speech. Did Kennedy say that? He sure said every word of it. Yes.
But how about the speech? And so this when you go to the bible, remember the bible is a library of books. It's not a single book. It's not a single argument. It's a it's a collection of books.
And so chronology comes in. Oh, well, there's no he's going into it. But we want to come back to this what our Lord is saying, you've got to love your neighbor as you love yourself, and you have to love God above everything. That's that's what Christ is saying. And you can't escape this.
I don't care whatever else we do, however whatever we do in life, whatever we don't do in life, whatever successes we have, whatever tragedies we have, you cannot escape those two commandments. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, with thy whole mind, with everything you are. And you have to love your neighbor as you love yourself. Yourself. And most of us have a pretty good love for ourselves.
Although as I've gotten older I begin to wonder that if people really do love themselves. Because we do so many things which are absolutely contradictory of our welfare. But of course, we all know that. So our what our blessed lord is giving us here is severe examples of how important it is to love. But I hasten to add, and I'm sure he would not object to my adding it, that you have to take all of these virtues and you just can't go overwhelmingly for this thing called love.
That's what men like doctor Joseph Fletcher do with their situation ethics. You've got to keep all the virtue. And if God is love, god is also justice. God is also the beautiful. God is also the true and the just and the prudent.
And that's what we are called upon to be ourselves. You cannot escape it. It only takes one little hole. Well, this this figure of speech doesn't have much meaning anymore, but in days of the inner tube you could have a beautiful inner tube. If there was just one tiny little prick in that inner tube, the tire was flat.
The rest of the tube was beautiful. One tiny little hole. And that's the way it is with these virtues. You've got and Cicero and he has a lot of stuff on this. But the you've got to hold them all together, and this is the problem, to hold them together.
But the first one is love of God, love of neighbor as I love myself. That's a big order. But remember, in our Lord's own words, that command of his is inescapable. In the name of the father, of the son, holy spirit. Amen.