The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. The opening prayer for the mass for the fifteenth Sunday of the year, we've which been repeating these days, have you noticed that sentence? God our father, your light of truth guides us to the way of Christ. Your light of truth guides us to the way of Christ.
In other words, you don't go to Christ through action. You have to know before you can will. And therefore, our lives, if they're going to be directed to God in the way that Christ wants our lives to be directed to God, how do you go about knowing how to do it? You can't ask a more basic question than that. It it it's utterly absurd on any level to ask someone to do something, to give them a final cause, to give them a goal, to give them a terminus, to give them an objective, and then not to inform them how they're going to do it.
That is if they don't know, if they're ignorant of it. You're you're asking the impossible. And if there's anything you can say about god almighty, I think it is that he is not absurd. So if if Christ came and is the son of God, if he established a church, if he brought the message of salvation to man and I cannot pick up the telephone and and talk to him, how do I get a hold of this truth? Because if I can't get a hold of it, it's perfectly useless to me, absolutely Absolutely useless.
Useless, Unless I can get a hold of it. And we pray today that we know the truth in order to be guided by Christ's light to his truth. Today you understand that today that we you know, in church here we talk so glibly about truth. You realize, of course, that in the great segment of the world, truth is rejected on principle. Going back to my dear and late friend William James, a psychologist from Harvard at the beginning of this century, the father of pragmatism in The United States, and a very intelligent man, and a darn good psychologist psychologist for his day.
But he said, don't ask whether something is true, ask what is its cash value. You can't get a better definition of pragmatism than that. P. O. C.
Today, what is the standard of right or wrong? Does it hurt somebody? No. Notice, nothing about me, nothing about God. But does it hurt anybody?
What's wrong with my smoking marijuana? What's wrong with my extramarital intercourse? What's wrong with going around being promiscuous and fornicating every chance you get? What's wrong? I'm not hurting anybody.
Everybody's enjoying it. We all feel so much better afterwards. And to take a few little samples of from the bank. Nobody misses it. Nobody suffers.
What's wrong with it? That's what's in the air today. Just yesterday, listening to some of these great speakers, things aren't either black or white, they're gray. Well, that means we don't know anything about them. Now this is not a windmill.
This is the world you are living in. I've had young high school boys on my boat when we got into a discussion of right or wrong, and they said, who knows what's right or wrong? After all, it's just a gray sister. And they were they were going to Catholic high schools. So I know what I'm talking about.
This is nothing that outside. This is within our own very lives. And and you see, you can't be swimming around in tar without getting some tar on you. I can talk also about a barnyard. So let us realize that the church puts truth above everything.
Because if there's no truth, what follows? I know full well that Thomas A. Kempis in that magnificent book called Following of Christ, which probably no, not probably, which is second only to the bible in Christian in the Christian world, or used to be. I don't know whether people read it anymore or not. But one of the famous sentences in there that Thomas Akembas says makes is this, that it's better to practice humility than to know its definition.
You see, that sounds so plausible, doesn't it? That sounds so reasonable. It sounds so much like a common sense decision. But it's all wrong. Because if you don't know what humility is, how do you know you're practicing Now, in a given instance it may make no difference, you'll simply take it on authority.
But somebody's got to know about humility. And remember, is humility identifying with sacrificing yourself, making yourself out to be the earth, that's you remember the word humility comes from the word humus, meaning ground. Who's going to tell you where the dividing line is between humility and standing up for your rights, or taking a legitimate pride in your work? Is it humility when you ask someone to play the piano and you know they're very competent? And they give you, you know, they say, oh no, I I really I'm too I can't play very well.
And they give you that song and dance, you know. Just to you don't know what's what it's all about. Is that humility? So what is it? See, it's so easy to be misled by what you call common sense.
If if a thing is common, you better watch out for it. Remember, the the Latin word for crowd is vulgus, from which we get the word vulgar. Keep that in mind. And so this prayer the church has always, in spite of tremendous cost, stood up in the last analyses for truth. That decision was made in the sixteenth century when the whole of Northern Europe was lost to the Church because of truth.
Not because of morals or immorality, but because the church said this is the revealed word of God. This is the truth. And if you cannot abide it, get out. Now, people within the church stay in the church and don't get out and become so called voice persons for the Catholic church, internationally famous. The Catholic church has been around a long time.
It speaks with the voice, the living voice. Because if if it is not a contemporary voice, it is worthless to me. I've got to come in contact with it. It's not all that difficult. If we're talking about the Catholic church, not Catholics, but Catholic Catholic church, and what it stands for, and the truth that it delivers, not in its own name, not in the name of some reputable theologian or a disreputable theologian, but what it delivers in the name of its living founder, Jesus Christ.
And that's what matters. What do I care about what doctor so and so says? Who gave him any authority? If you multiply them, what difference does it make? It's just the voice, the human voice, speaking with human knowledge, and so what?
If that's the best they can do, I'd rather go sailing. I need something that connects me with God Almighty because he is my goal, or God's my goal. That's what I absolutely and essentially need. Where there can't be a chance of error, where I can't go wrong. And that's what we have in the living church of Jesus Christ.
Going therefore, teach ye all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, and teaching to observe everything that I have taught you. And behold, I am with you all days even to the consummation, the end of the world. In the name of the father, and the son, and holy spirit. Amen.