A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. When Jesus had finished his discourse in the hearing of the people, he entered the city of Capernaum, up in the northwest corner of the lake. A centurion, that is a Roman officer, had a servant whom he held in high esteem, who was at that moment ill, sick to the point of die of dying. When the Roman officer heard that Jesus was about, he sent some Jewish elders. Now notice that.
He didn't send Romans. He sent some Jews out of respect for Jesus who was a Jew. So the Roman, when when he heard about Jesus, sent some Jewish elders to him, asking Jesus to come and save the life of his servant. Upon approaching Jesus, they petitioned him earnestly, that is the Jewish ambassadors. They said to Jesus, this man deserves this favor from you because he loves our people and has even built a synagogue for us.
Jesus set out with them at once. When he was only a short distance from the centurion's house, the man sent his friends to tell Jesus, sir, don't trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you even enter my house. That is why I did not presume to come to you myself. Just give the order, and my servant will be cured. For I too am a man who knows the meaning of authority, having soldiers under my command.
I say to one of them, on your way, and off the man goes. To another, come here, and he comes. To my slave, do this, and he does it. Jesus was amazed on hearing this and turned to the crowd, of course, were Jewish, which was following him and said to them, I tell you, I have never found so much faith among the Israelites. When the deputation returned to the house, they found the servant in perfect health.
And this is the gospel of the lord. Praise to you, lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Today, we are celebrating the feast of saint Robert Bellarmine, Society of Jesus, died about 1621, if my fallible memory hold. But that's roughly about right.
He was among the early disciples of Ignatius. He didn't know Ignatius personally, born in 1592 about. But Charles Bellarmine picked up the pieces of the Reformation. He's the outstanding theologian, following the Council of Trent. He lived about fifty eight years after the Council of Trent, so he had that to work on.
He was only about 21 years old when the council ended. I think it was 63 or 65, something like that. Now, Charles Bellarmine was a man in some ways ahead of his time and in other ways behind his time. Scientifically, he was behind his time. While he had a great admiration from Galileo, he a personal admiration, he was head of the commission which condemned him, and condemned him on the ground that to declare that the earth revolved around the sun was contradictory of Catholic or Christian truth, therefore heretic.
Well, many people remembered Robert Bellarmine chiefly because of his association with Galileo. But, actually, he didn't become a saint for that reason. You don't become a saint because you're a good scientist, or very intelligent, or very energetic or because you're sincere. Those things don't make you a saint. What makes you a saint is is putting into concrete evidence Jesus in your life.
Now and there's nobody can do it for you. That's a personal thing. Let's not get mixed mixed up about it. There's no such thing as collective holiness. There is no such thing as collective spirituality.
There's no such thing as communal religion in any real sense. It's the individual person. As our holy father is so fond of saying, the irreversible human being I mean, the unrepeatable human being. Now what I Charles, Robert Bellarmine was an outstanding man in his time. By that I mean, he was intelligent.
Remember, to be dumb, to be ignorant is not a virtue, even if you're a priest. And intelligence and scholarship doesn't come from the laying on of hands of a bishop. But as I repeat, you don't have to be a scholar, you don't have to be a learned man to be a saint. Those things don't make you a saint. They may help or they may detract.
But the point I'm making is Bellarmine was an intelligent man and he used his intelligence in the service of God and the Church in a very rough period of history. This is subsequent, you see, to Trent. He lived fifty eight years after Trent. This is the picking up the pieces left by Martin Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and all the rest of them. Now, the first thing about him that is notable, he was a great controversialist.
Don't make any bones about that. He was the great authority spokesman for Catholic truth. And in many ways, he was he had to make his own road. I mentioned that in case some of you know much about him because he is a controversial figure in regards to some of his doctors, but he had nothing to lean on. Trent didn't cover the whole waterfront.
But he tried he tried to put forth in a very clear light two things. Well, I'll say three things. First of all, the errors of Protestants. Now I use that word not as a synonym for non Catholic. I mean by that Calvinists and and Lutherans.
I'm not talking about England. Secondly, he put forth what he saw to be the truth that these people these men had, and they had a lot of it. They weren't all wrong. He's out he's outstanding for the fact that he tried to understand the Protestant point of view and tried to point out what was solid and wholesome about it, but then he hammered home on what was wrong about it. That's a little distinction we're overlooking today, you know.
But this attitude of his, this very good, sensible, charitable attitude is very pronounced even from the University of Louvain, which at that time, at that time was a bulwark of Catholic truth and Catholic doctrine. It's not that today. And so when we today recall Charles Robert Bellarmine, these are the things we ought to realize, that once again he is one of us. We belong in his company. We didn't come we did not come to be in the sixteenth century.
We are not the children of the reformers. We have a long history. We go back to Nicaea, to Ephesus. We go back to the very first council in Jerusalem. That's the company we keep.
Never forget it. Never forget it. You belong to the church of Jesus Christ, the ecclesia built upon Peter. And Christ said, you will rock. The term tumult will be all around you.
You will be tossed. Many a time, it'll appear you are finished. How often the requiems have been sung for the church of Jesus Christ. And by golly, for some reason, it doesn't die. It comes up and is stronger than ever.
Bellarmine is an outstanding man today, was an outstanding man in his own time, is an example of what we should be. That is intelligent Catholics. Catholics of persuasion, not just following routines. How many of us are challenged in our faith that we have to stand up and say, yes, this is the doctrine I believe in, and I'm ready to die for it. Even if I even as I say that, I'm scared as the dickens.
Have I the guts to do that if I were put on the spot? I've never been challenged. Every argument I've ever had has been philosophical, and that's kind of a game, you know. You move and then I move. I've been through that.
But when you come and say, I belong to Jesus Christ, and I stand for his truth, you're in trouble. You're in great trouble because there's one or two things. Either you're complacent, and that means you're in trouble, very bad trouble, or you are alive, vital. Now I'm not talking about what we call religious experiences. I have no time for that.
That word's being tossed around like nobody's business. A religious experience, and we experience this. That's no test for anything. Nothing. Have I ever experienced the trinity?
Do I expect to experience the trinity? Am I expecting something in my life that happened to Paul when he was struck to the ground and he heard a voice? Is that what I'm looking for? Now remember, there are plenty of people today, I mean serious, honest, god people, who are looking for the truth. This is what they're looking for.
They are not looking for the church of Jesus Christ, which is visible, which isn't which is a human a human institution as far as it's it's as what it's made up of. And this is what Bellarmine pointed out very clearly. See, if there's any if there's any great if you wanna put one big characteristic that separates Protestantism from Catholicism, it's the pact of the visible church. Calvin and Zwingli, Luther, see that it was a community of the faithful. But Christ said, on this rock, I will build my church.
And so as we celebrate this man's feast today well, I'm I'm not saying his mass. This is the mass of the day. But I Bellarmine's an important figure. He represents the quintessence of what a good Catholic should be. Now we can't all be scholars.
You don't have to be scholars. The church is your leader. You don't have to mess around with a lot of books, but you should have the conviction. You should be informed as well as you can be of the doctrine of the church, not of what some church men say, but that what the church teaches. That is what we should try to achieve.
And as we recall, he wasn't canonized till about 1930 or so. And so as today, as we remember Robert Bellarmine, let us pray. Remember, we can pray to him that he will help us because so many of the things he fought against, we are now accepting in the Catholic church. Believe it or not, all in the name of ecumenism, you know, or something rather. So let us today to bring this man what he stood for.
A a man of his time, a man of intelligence, a man of education, a man of charity, a man of sympathy, a man of broad learning and knowledge. These are the things we can bring to Jesus Christ and lay at the foot of his cross, which we have to carry. In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.