A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. When Jesus and the disciples met in Galilee, Jesus said to them, the son of man is going to be delivered into the hands of men who will put him to death, and he will be raised up on the third day. At these words, the disciples were overwhelmed with grief. In other words, they understood what he was saying. When they entered Capernaum, the collectors of the temple tax approached Peter and said to him, does your master not pay the temple tax?
And Peter replied, of course he does. Then Jesus, on entering the house, asked, without giving him time to speak, what is your opinion, Simon? Do the kings of the world take tax or toll from their own sons or from foreigners? Simon replied, from foreigners. Then Jesus observed, then their sons are exempt.
But for fear of disedifying them, go to the lake, throw in a line, and take out the first fish that you catch. Open its mouth, and you will find there a coin worth twice the temple tax. Take the coin and give it to them for you and for me. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen.
There's almost a certain facetiousness about this wonder that our lord worked today and at least in this episode of his life. Now remember, this follows upon the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. It follows upon Christ walking on the water. It Christ follows upon Peter's experience of thinking he was going to sink and shouted out, Lord, save me. And Christ reached out, saved him.
So this this incident follows upon tremendous events in our Lord's life, and it seems trivial. Here in in one sentence, Christ is telling them that he's going to have to go up to Jerusalem and where he is going to die, where he's going to be executed. And the disciples understand that because they are full of grief. Then very abruptly, we're told about Peter going out and throwing a fishing line into Lake Of Galilee, and pulling in a fish and getting a coin out of his mouth so he can pay the tax in the synagogue. You say this is going from almost from the sublime almost to the ridiculous.
Well, is it? Is it? One thing is perfectly clear here, Christ asserts his immunity to the tax. Notice that. He does not acknowledge that he is bound to pay the tax, because he says the master, the king, who has a son doesn't tax his son.
You tax foreigners, aliens. So Christ said, I don't have to pay the tax. You you can you go you draw your own logical conclusion. Christ was very logical. There's no evidence that he read Aristotle, but he did all right without reading Aristotle.
Then what does he do? He tells Peter to go and get some money. That's what Peter doesn't know exactly what's going to happen. But he does what Christ tells him, and apparently he he makes no remonstrance. Remonstrance.
You almost expect Peter to say, Lord, you're telling me to go down in the lake and catch a fish and get money out of a fish's mouth? Are you are you feeling alright, or has the sun gotten to you? No. Peter just goes apparently, just goes ahead and does what Christ tells him. It's not exactly what I, at least, would have expected of Peter, but that's the way he does it.
And he comes back with a coin. Now here is the punchline. Why did Christ do this? He didn't have to go to all through that rigmarole of going, telling Peter to go down and throw in a fishing line and catch a fish and take the money out of the fish and bring it back. If he was going to perform a miracle of producing money, he could have produced it there.
Tell you open your hand, you'll see some money. And just as easy to put the money in Peter's hand as in the mouth of a fish. But you'll notice that Christ never any miracle he did, there was always something connected with it, some kind of action, some kind of a physical phenomenon attached to what has to be in the last analyses, a wonderful intervention of God, some way or other. Now what's the point to this? Well, Christ tells us, we don't have to guess.
And here is where our blessed lord comes into conflict with a lot that's going on in his own church today. Or could I say it this way, that a lot that's going on in Christ's church today would find itself in conflict with Christ. We have going on a a a dual a dual flow, or influence, or thrust, or action. It's dual, and it's rather contrary. You have a, in one instance, a minimizing externals, of the physical.
That's fine Protestantism. It goes right back to Lutheran and especially to Calvin. Because religion and prayers of the mind, the heart, and the soul. Therefore, candles, lights, altar, precious metals, pictures, colored glass windows, music. Calvin threw them all out because they were physical, they were material, therefore there was something evil about them, and they had nothing to do with the pure worship of God.
And he was right, in a way. In a way. Because none of this stuff is worship. None of it is true religion. It's all an empty husk unless it has the fire of the spirit, and Calvin was right.
But who says it? Who says that it it has to be divorced from the fire of the spirit? Who said that? And who said that man is so perfect that he can give God a perfect immaterial, unphysical religious worship. Who said that?
Well, know who said it, Calvin, but Christ never said it. Christ never said it. Christ never downgraded the material, the body, the senses, never. What did he say? He said, what goes into a man's mouth does not make him vile.
It's what comes out of his heart. So on the one hand in the church today, you have an echo of the sixteenth century of eliminating all this all the panoply of worship as being unnecessary, un unessential. I give you a very good instance. I came into Annapolis after a week on the bay and there was a young high school boy with me, so we prepared to go to Saint Mary's for Emmaus, and he looked like a bum. I said, aren't you going to put on some decent clothes?
He said, God doesn't bother about how I'm dressed. He sees my heart. Well, you can't argue with that in a way, in a way, because I can argue with it plenty. Now on and the just the opposite, or I'll give you another instance. A few years ago, a priest came up to offer mass in a camp on the other side of the Potomac, and he offered mass on the porch of the camp in a t shirt and shorts, which I thought was very nice in becoming.
You know, it makes the ceremony so so elaborate. So here you have that one one thrust. Now on the other hand, you have just the opposite, which is almost Pelagianism. We make so much of ceremonies, so much of the the religious accoutrements, that we can lose ourselves in those things. Music, words, ritual, all ceremonies, lights, all of this stuff.
You can just you can make so much of it that you think that this is the essence of worship. That if I just don't do this in the right particular way, that's who says how I'm supposed to do it? Well, I don't know, a couple men get together, somebody writes an article, if this is the way it goes, that loses its efficacy. We have lost in this on this thrust, we have lost the basic Catholic truth that the sacraments work of their own efficacy. It's not the it's not what I do, it's it's not the the virtue of the minister, it's the sacrament that does the job.
The the man who bapt the man or woman who baptizes a baby can be the can be the greatest villain that ever walked the earth, but the sacrament is valid. The priest standing at the altar may be a first rate villain, but as long as it's validly ordained, he can offer the holy sacrifice of the mass, and it's valid whether he uses vestments or what color vestments or the size of the vestments or any of the rest of it. So you have then, right now, in the church, you have these opposing influences. One minimizes the externals, and the other one makes them almost almost essential, almost essential. And we're getting more and more in that direction, and it's it's just outright Pelagianism, that what Saint Augustine handled in the fourth century.
What does our Lord have to say about this? If we're Christians, let's go back to Christ. You can't do much better than that, can you? Our Lord says that the slave isn't any better than his master. And if we call ourselves Christians, let's follow Christ.
What does Christ invariably do? He always respects the externals of worship, always. He goes, he he was very, very careful in observing all the main feasts of the Jewish year. He went up to Jerusalem. There was only one temple.
Remember, there is no temple today in in in Judaism. There is no priesthood that is actual, and there is no sacrifice. Just remember that from the time of Titus. But our blessed Lord was most careful, most careful in observing the externals of religion. And don't you think he knew that externals are not the essence of religion?
But he respected it. Why did he do it? Because first of all, Christ was a perfect man. His human nature was absolutely complete. He was no less human than any of us, except for our weaknesses.
And Christ therefore is giving his zeal of approval to man worshiping, not a soul worshiping, and not a mere pig worshiping, worshiping, or a goat, or a hog, or a horse. It's man who bows his knees before God and says, my Lord and my God, not an angel, and not an animal or a tree or something inanimate. It's a human being, and we're a fearful mixture. Fearful mixture. Awesome mixture.
Awesome. Awesome. It's a mixture. We can act like angels, and we can act worse than the inanimate objects we call material reality. We can go the whole gamut.
It's all within our realm of activity. That's what creates the problem. And when you minimize any of these aspects, you are negating the reality of man. And when you negate that reality, you are in trouble. And believe me, two thousand well, it's more than that, twenty five hundred years proves that, prove it.
Going all the way back to Plato. And so we can look to Christ. Let us realize the importance of externals. Let us realize the importance of coming to church on Sunday decently dressed. Let us realize the importance of when we come into church of bending a knee because we believe in the real presence of Jesus and the blessed sacrament.
Let us realize the importance of using words and formularies because sometimes nothing else will come to our deadened mind. Let us be no better than Jesus Christ, who appreciated and put his seal of approval on the externals of religion. Name of the father, the son, the holy spirit. Amen.