A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Jesus said to his disciples, mark well, the parable of the sower. The seed along the path is the man who hears the message about god's reign without understanding understanding it. It. The evil one approaches him to steal away what was sown in his mind.
The seed that fell on patches of rock is the man who hears the message and at first receives it with joy. But he has no roots, so he lasts only for a time. When some setback or persecution involving the message occurs, he soon falters. What was sown among briars is the man who hears the message, but then worldly anxiety and the lure of money, choke it off, kill it. Such a one produces nothing.
But what was sown on good soil is the man who hears the message and takes it to heart. He it is who bears a yield of a 100 or 60 or thirtyfold. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen.
Probably, the most difficult thing about being a Christian is to be consistently Christian. Consistently Christian in good days and in bad days. I suppose that's true of other important relationships in life, I think immediately of marriage. There's no marriage that doesn't have its peaks of joy, happiness, pleasure, you know, rejoicing, jubilation, and there's no marriage that doesn't have its troughs. You can't have a wave without a crest and a trough.
You can't have a mountain without a peak and a valley. And being emotional creatures, being being human beings, being what we are, very much almost dominated by our feelings, emotions, by the dinner we had, by someone saying good morning or not saying good morning. You know, all of these things, we are, in many instances, profoundly affected by these things. Let's face it. We're not creatures of reason.
As I said, Newman said, it's almost a definition of man to say he is an unrational animal. Almost. But we we have to cling very tightly to the little bit left. But let's this is the way we are. You take a morning like this, anything can happen.
When I was in the seminary, we used to talk about Friday as being fish, fog, and Friday. What I call a suicidal day. We are very much creatures, you know, of the times, even of the temperature and of the weather. The hard part when it comes to being a creature or being being anything in this life that's important is consistency. Consistency.
You think of the problem of being a parent. Being a father, but not a parent, of course, I know all about bringing up children, naturally. You know, you get that by ordination. But the thing that very much worries me is is not the big problems like alcoholism. I was going to say lack of money, but you know, I don't know a single marriage that broke up because of poverty.
I don't know a single one. I said, I don't know. I'm I'm not saying it didn't, but I don't I've never had the experience. I haven't had the experience of a marriage breaking up because of ill health of one of the other partners. Matter of fact, I've seen I would say heroic instances, and one comes to mind right now in present tense.
It's inconsistency that so often is a damaging element in human relations. And the problem of being consistent applies to our relationships with god. That's why I admire so much the Benedict ine rule. Goes all the way back to Saint Benedict, sixth century. But it shows and maybe farther back.
We're not too sure whether he wrote it or not. He had something to do with it. We call it the rule of Saint Benedict, and practically every religious order founded since his time has some relationship to to it. It. What it was its common sense.
You take I've heard now I've stayed a lot of well, good many. I've been in most of their big monasteries, and not just for an afternoon visit to listen to vespers. I spent six weeks in one of them. Now you hear people criticize, for example, their reading at meals. You say, well, that's that's not the way.
After all, human beings living together should converse. We should have conviviality. Well, now you try living. You've you've seen the cartoons, haven't you, of the of the loving mother and father and I mean, the husband and wife sitting at the breakfast table, and all you can see of him is the newspaper. Yet those very same people will criticize the Benedictines for having reading and meals.
Why? You try living three hundred and sixty five days plus an extra day in leap year, meeting the same people three times a day, same man on your right, same man on your left, the same ugly face in front of you, day after day who slobbers over his soup maybe, swishes around the coffee, you know, all of these things. Enormous things, aren't they? These are these are great things, aren't they? Yet this is the stuff life is made of.
Common sense says you're going to be bored. So what's the answer? Improve your mind during your eating. So we have reading at meals. In the seminary we used we had the reading in the seminary.
I don't know whether they have it anymore or not, but it's a very practical thing. Any one of you have lived. You experience this in your own home. This dead silence that falls over a dining room table at times. Some people watch the clock.
There's certain times of the day when it's supposed to happen, you know. So but being a Christian, you see, it means consistency. We're not on the cloud nine one day and down in hell the next. Yet that's the way many of our lives are lived. And much of and not much, but every life has a peak and a trough at times in it.
And I mean high peaks and deep troughs, deep ones. And I'm not merely speaking of death. Death, of course, is a hard thing to bear for the most part, but there are worse things than death. And that's where we come into conflict. Now soon as whenever I read this text, remember visiting the old Gallinger Hospital.
That's when they had the big rooms and they had four rows of beds, and I happened I was simply there to help the chaplain. But the point is I met a young, well, she was about 18, I guess, who was in some kind of a home here in town, and who'd gotten gotten her hand caught in a mangle and kind of crushed the fingers. What I thought, you know, at when hearing this story, I thought she'd be pretty downhearted, but she wasn't downhearted at all. She said, I I'm praying, and she says, I'll be out of here next week, and I'm going to meet my boyfriend. Of course, I began to see the light, you see.
So I came the next week, and who's there but this same young woman? And is she bitter? I no sooner got into that huge room than she shouts at me about God and God being cruel and bitter and there's no use praying. Of course, what happened was just before she was supposed released to meet her boyfriend that she was looking forward to, the doctor said we have to break the hand all over again. It's not right.
So she couldn't meet the boyfriend. So all her faith in God goes out of the window. All her confidence in prayer, gone out of the window. All the joy of living, gone out of the window because she couldn't meet her boyfriend. Now I this is a fact.
I am not criticizing that poor girl at all. She was an orphan, had her hand mangled in a mangle. It was rough and tough, but I never will forget. I'm not exaggerating this at all. Because when she took over, all the other women in this huge rooms, you know, it was dead silence.
And there's, you know, there's nothing all you do then is listen. But some woman in the far corner, she lifted up her this was in the old Gallinger Hospital, you know, the one that's now the general district general. And this woman said, don't listen to a word you're saying, father. I guess she was hoping to think I'm gonna lose my faith. You know?
Anyway, she said, don't listen to a word you're saying. She says, I'm an old woman, and I have lived a long life, and I know that god helps me me through the troubles. No. I'm not exaggerating this. This happened, and this is typical of life.
And let me tell you, it's typical of you and of me. Just I keep coming back to this. Look at Christ in the Garden Of Gethsemane. We say that Christ accepted his sacrifice freely. That is true.
Freely. But let me tell you, with the utmost utmost reluctance, reluctance, utmost utmost reluctance. Reluctance, I'm talking about Christ, the son of god. He couldn't understand it completely. He begged his heavenly father to be relieved and sweated blood.
When did you sweat blood last? He sweated blood. He didn't wanna go through with his passion and the crucifixion. Oh, he accepted it freely because the bottom line is, not my will, but thine be done. After all, God is the master.
In the name of the father, the son, and holy spirit. Amen.