In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Well, believe me, some, Lotus, not all, some of the Jews living in our lord's time asked for signs. And plenty of people today ask for signs in order to believe. And in many instances that I personally know about and am frightened by, people are much more moved, although I understand it, they are much more moved by some phenomenon than they are by the pursuit of truth, which of course in many instances is very unemotional. You see, you can recite the creed and not feel a tremor of any kind of passion.
It saying the apostle's creed doesn't make you sit the end of the bench in all kinds of excitement. There's nothing thrilling about saying the Creed. And yet people, old and young, rich and poor, royal and the most ignoble, have laid their lives down for it. Well, there's no use trying to change people, and there's no use trying to change the world too much. The only thing we can change is ourselves, you know, in any real practical sense.
And I recently read a book on anger, written by some psychologist. I don't mean to downgrade it, but I mean it's written by a competent authority. And sentence the very first sentence in that book says we are creatures of our emotions. And believe me, in fact and ordinarily, we are. We don't follow our heads.
Saint Paul says, I see the good and I prove it, and I do the opposite. That's how rational we are. Newman said, Cardinal Newman said, it's almost a definition of a human being to say that we are irrational animals. Irrational animals. And Newman wasn't far wrong.
If there's anybody in the second half of the nineteenth century, and I include men like the great and illustrious Freud who knew the human heart, it was John Henry Cardinal Newman. Of course, no one reads him anymore. But he's still worth reading, please. If you wanna know something about human beings, if you wanna know something about truth, if you wanna know something about the Catholic religion. But anyway, to come back to this matter, we too want signs because a sign is impressive.
Let's face it. Let's face it. We are, for the most part, not people. Somebody said logic only exists exists in books. And it's true.
One of the greatest speeches ever made was by by Edmund Burke on the reconciliation of the American colonies. When he got finished, the House of Commons was completely empty. Nobody stood stayed to listen to it. If they had stayed, they might we might still have been in the same role as Canada. So let's face this situation.
We are very ambivalent beings. We are we can't escape a certain amount of confusion in our lives. We can't. The problem is what do we put first? There's the point, and our blessed Lord faces that today.
He did plenty of signs and wonders in his life. But are we supposed to live with the expectation of that kind of thing? And let me tell you what sign can can can take place that is going to be absolutely convincing. Because even our lord's resurrection is still being is a matter of controversy. There is nothing that can happen that is not susceptible to more than one interpretation as regards causality.
So if you even if you had all the as Newman says, why didn't Christ appear to to great multitudes of people? Well, if he had, you know what we would say? Oh, it was merely an instance of mob psychology. Anything could happen with a crowd. Anybody can see visions.
All you need is a little bit of good scotch or maybe have a very upset stomach. So what does honest to god religion come down to? How you feel about it? Whether you like it or not? Whether it conforms to your very comfortable way of life?
Is that what we want? Does it fulfill me? What do I get out of it? Oh, that's the question. That's the question.
How many young boys and girls I've had on my boat? I said, do you go to mass? No. Why don't I why don't you? Because I don't get anything out of it.
Fine. You go to God simply to get something out, like you go to your table to to eat your post toasties. This is the keynote of the day. I'm not exaggerating this at all. Just ask people why their marriages break up because I'm not fulfilled.
Why do priests have so many priests? They're not doing it now so much. But we went through a terrific wave of desertions desertions from the priesthood because these great men were not being fulfilled. You hear and you still hear this garbage. That's all it is.
Are we gonna live our life on that kind of thing? Many people do. And remember, I'm talking about myself. We are all inclined to this. We're not above it.
We're not above it at all. We're making a big mistake if we think we are, because we are extremely complex beings, and God knows that. Our blessed Lord knows that he was one of us. Remember that. He was one of us.
And if you talk about personal conflicts, if you talk about the peace of Christ and having the back of your pretty little head tranquility, think of Jesus in the Garden Of Gethsemane. Stay there a few minutes. Look at the son of God going through his agony. In conflict, he was in tremendous conflict. He begged God to be freed of what he saw he had to suffer.
On the cross, do you ever think of those words of Christ to his heavenly father? My god, my god, why have you abandoned me? Mean, that they're terrific. And human beings, you meet so many do you pray anymore? No.
I don't pray anymore. Why don't you pray anymore? Oh, I don't get anything out of it. You know, I just don't feel that God is there. So you you don't pray anymore?
No. That well well, fine. Go out and have a drink. Go out and play tennis. Do something worthwhile.
Is that our concept of religion? We're pulled to it. We're pulled to it. Look at all the emphasis today upon rites, r I t e s, within in our liturgy. Just think of it.
As if religion consisted in just singing something properly, kneeling properly, or saying the right words. Someone you come out of a church and say, that was a beautiful liturgy. Well, you come out of the Kennedy Institute or the Kennedy Center down there and say, That was a beautiful opera. Sure. Sure.
Of course, it's easy. Religion is of the mind, the heart, and the soul. You can't get away from this. You can't fool God. I can't fool God.
I can play games, but I'm not getting away with it, you know. I ask for signs. I want to be a reborn Christian. I want to have all that fine emotion, and I don't get it. So I don't go to church anymore on Sunday.
I don't get anything out of it. I am speaking from personal experience. We've got to come back to some realities. Our blessed lord said, you asked for a sign? Well, your ancestors had signs.
I rose from the dead. Is that a sign or isn't it? I was born of a virgin girl. Is that a sign? And to think of god becoming man, is that a sign?
So let us put ourselves with Jesus Christ. He has given us signs. We have all the motives of credibility in the world. We are not asked to be absurd. We are not asked to be irrational.
We are not asked to be crazy nuts or fanatics. As Chesterton said, a mystery is not a muddle. We are asked to be followers of Jesus Christ, the son of god. The name of the father and the son and the holy spirit, amen.