A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Jesus said to his disciples, to you who hear me, I say, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and, pray for those who maltreat you. When someone slaps you on one sheet, turn and give him the other. When someone takes your coat, let him have your shirt as well. Give to all who beg from you.
When a man takes what is yours, don't demand it back. Do to others what you would have them do to you. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to yourself? Even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, how can you claim any credit for that?
Sinners do as much. If you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what merit is there in it for yourself? Even sinners lend to sinners expecting to be repaid in full. Love your enemy and do good. Lend without expecting repayment.
Then will your recompense be great. You will rightly be called sons of the most high, since he himself is good to the ungrateful and even to the wicked. Be compassionate as your father is compassionate. Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.
Pardon, and you shall be pardoned. Give and it shall be given to you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over. For the measure that you measure with will be measured back to yourself. 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. If you take what we've read today, which follows yesterday's reading of the beatitudes, we are being given a code of life which set let us put it this way, creates considerable trouble. Because how are we to take this? Let me recall another phrase of our blessed Lord.
Don't throw your pearls before swine. Christ said that. He also said to his disciples when he was sending them out, he said, Look, go in, go all go out, go into all the villages and towns and and preach the good news. And and, you know, and went on and said, eat what they put before you and so forth. But then he said, if they won't listen to you, leave that town and shake its very dust off your feet.
Now, as I've said, here you're getting into this very difficult area of what today we call social justice or any of these words you want to use, having to do with the way we live with one another, how we handle money, what we call property, all of this kind of business. This is a very cloudy area. And down the centuries, all kinds of experiments have been made. They weren't called experiments. Because you see, great the great sin of many of these great champions, of one or the other of our Lord's sayings, notice what I said, Where people pick out certain sentences or certain statements or certain suggestions of our blessed Lord, and then they push them to the rugged crush.
This has happened down the centuries, year, century after century. And time and again the church has stepped in and said, that is wrong. And they'll say, well, you find it in the bible. You can find anything you want in the bible. It's a book.
It's not only a book, it's a library. It's a collection of books. And no book speaks for itself. No book speaks for itself. And for the most part, we're dealing with translations which are not the word of God.
Never forget that. It's what somebody says is the word of God. When Billy Graham holds up his bible and says that's the word of God, it is not. It's an English translation that somebody thinks they see in the Greek or the Hebrew. Now so we're coming back to this very this is a very practical thing, as I said many times.
Almost every century we have seen people who have taken certain aspects of our blessed lord's statements. Did he say it? Yes. He said it. Then they run it ragged because they forget everything else.
Everything else. If you wanna be a follower of Christ, go sell everything you have. Leave your family. Leave your wife. Leave your husband.
Leave your kids. Go out into the Nile Valley, put on sackcloth and ashes, and sing psalms. You think that's a fiction? It is not. In the time of Saint Jerome and Saint Augustine, the Nile Valley was filled with these people, filled with thousands and thousands of them.
Saint Jerome himself was was part of it. Saint Augustine almost went out there himself. Now I'm not condemning them. I'm only saying what they you see, what happens to these people is they not only say, That's what I want to do, they say, That's what you should do. You should do.
And that's a very different thing. If I wanna take vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, the church says fine. And the church gives me my bless gives it its blessing. And we haven't hit we've had men and women down the centuries who have made these sacrifices. But you see, there's that's one thing.
But for me to say, I'm going to take these dollars, and I and and you can't be saved unless you take them, them, and you all must take them, or one or two or three or whatever, then the church of Jesus Christ says, you're wrong. You're wrong. That is not the doctrine of Jesus Christ. And the church has stepped in these century after century and said this. The church does not propose in itself a social doctrine.
All it is is voicing the teachings of Jesus Christ. And he never gave us one, except implicitly. Now, today we are celebrating the feast of Saint John Christom. For most people that is just a word. It means nothing.
Nothing at all. And yet, I don't know whether you'll follow this, but I have been watching the news coming from Canada, the reception of our Holy Father up there, and how there's such great, well, distress up there over certain teachings of the church having to do with celibacy of the priesthood, having to do with divorce with remarriage, having to do with contraception and abortion, having to do with divorce, and having above all to do with women in the priesthood. And the churches have lost in some instances 60%, according to the figures, of the people sitting in the pews. And they had on they gave us the picture of one fine lady on, you know, one of these interviews on the street, in which she says, we have come to think for ourselves. You see, I thought the whole idea of being a Christian was to think with Christ.
That's my impression. Not to think for myself, but to think with Jesus Christ. And his voice is is his voice heard today? Is it or isn't it? And if it isn't, forget it.
Let's have a drink or play or go bowling or something useful. But if there is a voice of Jesus Christ in the world today, then I wanna hear it. Because as far as I'm concerned, all I hear around me is a rabble, and I know whereof I speak. I've tried it. How many people today who are talking about the church and what they want and what they don't have any conception of what the Church of Jesus Christ is?
It didn't come in the twentieth century. It didn't start in the sixteenth with Trent. We have them here today. I'm wearing white vestments and we're honoring and memorializing a great saint who was called the Golden notice it's Greek. Remember the beginnings of Christ Church were Greek, not Latin, Greek.
And Saint John Chrysostom is one of the most prominent. What was his life? He died in around April. He lived flourished in the fourth century. Antioch Of Syria.
What was his life? He defended the truth of Jesus Christ and the Church of Jesus Christ, and what did he get for it? Persecution to the very end. He was a minority voice. A minority.
When Saint Augustine came back from Italy and went over to Hippo, where in the course of which time he had leaving Milan, he had become a Christian and a Catholic, he his was a minority voice in the whole of Northern Africa. The Donatists were in power. They only they had practically every church. His voice stood up alone as the voice of Christ's church. How many sitting in those pews know a thing about Donatists today?
Yet most of us know something about Saint Augustine of Hippo and his confessions and his mother, Monica. Let us realize that we belong to the church of Jesus Christ. And our one aim should be, what is Christ's doctrine? What is his truth? And where do I find it?
In the thinking of contemporary theologians, going out on the street and ask men and women what they think? Is that where I find it? Where do I find it? These voices speaking up with so much confidence. Where where how do they know what they're saying is true?
What is the proof? Where's the evidence? Tell me. Have they had a private revelation? Take all this business in South And Central America over liberation theology.
Where do they how do they know? It's the epistemological question. And unless you can tell me this is centered in Jesus Christ, I could care less what they say. To me, they're just another book. They're just nothing as they're just something as ephemeral as the Washington Post.
No better and no worse. And I want something a lot better than that when I'm pinning my chariot to the the steed of eternity. In the name of the father, and the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.