A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Jesus said to his disciples, people will manhandle and persecute you, summoning you to synagogues and to prisons, bringing you to trial before kings and before governors, and all of this because of my name. You will be brought to give witness on account of it. I bid you resolve not to worry about your defense ahead of time, for I will give you words and I will give you wisdom which none of your adversaries can take exception to or even contradict. You will be delivered up.
Now listen. This is our lord speaking. And think of this in terms of this wishy washy business of peace and love that we'll hear so much about for the next endless eternity till Christmas. You will be delivered up even by your parents, brothers, relatives, and friends, and some of you will be put to death. You won't see that on any Christmas card.
All will hate you because of me, yet not a hair of your head will be harmed. By patient endurance, you will save your lives, and this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. As I read that text, which is blood chilling, it is blood chilling if you take it serious. And since we we state that we are Christians, that we follow Jesus Christ, and we say he's to the son of God, I presume we will take this rather seriously.
I mean, that's a presumption. And as I read that, there's just one figure came into my vivid imagination, and that was Kobe, Maximilian Kolbe. Think of these words now in conjunction. Our Lord said, not a hair of your head will be not a hair of your head will be harmed. And most of us lose a couple every day, meaning more than couple.
And he said, you will be saved. Nothing will happen to you. Then you think of Colby naked, down in that dungeon of death, being starved to death. No one did anything to kill him until the very end. He just starved to death and thirsted to death.
Where did he save his life? Not a hair of your head's going to be harmed? Look at Colby, ye gods. So what's our lord talking about? Is he telling us that he will lies or what?
This is serious business. You see, the thing that impresses me as I wander around the base of this globe is that Christians don't take their Christianity seriously. In a sense, none of us do. Because in a sense, we cannot afford to do it. It's awe inspiring.
It's frightening if you're human. And as I say, give yourself the benefit of the doubt and say I'm human. You know, that's about the least we can say for ourselves. But we are human, and that's saying a lot. And when when you talk to a human being in these terms, you're talking nonsense if you're on a mere human level.
Mere human level. Just very recently, I heard of a teacher in a Catholic school teaching his Catholic students saying that the the purpose of life is to save your neighbor, and it's wrong to say that you're working for your own salvation. That happened recently in a Catholic school. And one of the students says, that's not the way I was taught, and the teacher says, you were wrong. What I would love for these students is to say, where did you get that idea that we live simply for our fellow man?
Where does that idea come from? That's absolutely nothing but altruism, philanthropy. And you don't even have to be a first class pagan to believe that. John Stuart Mill was a complete, good, God fearing atheist, and he was about as altruistic as any altruistic man could be altruistic. And there've been plenty of good serious people who've been altruists, and not even good pagan.
Remember, a pagan believes in God. So to tell me that the aim of my life is simply to serve my fellow man, whether it's true or false, I don't know. Okay. From a point of view of debate. But it isn't Catholic doctrine.
The Catholic doctrine says, why did God make you? Why did he do it? Well, someone in the first book of Genesis, it says, god god was sorry that he created Adam and Eve, and we've given him ever a lot of evidence for it. But the thing is, there's an answer to that. Why did god make you?
And there's nothing in there about my neighbor at all. There's nothing in there about myself at all, in a sense. There's everything in there about God, that God made me for himself. It's the only end that that God can operate on as an as a as a final cause. Anything else would be be would be beneath his dignity.
That's just plain common philosophy. And the answer is God made me to know him, to love him, and to serve him. Notice that word serving him in this life, and so to be happy with him in the next. That's what we're taught, and that is Catholic doctrine. Now whether you like it or not, that is Catholic doctrine.
And I know where it comes from. It comes from the holy Roman Catholic church. And to say otherwise is simply to contradict it. No. As I say, you may like it or you may reject it, but that to say that that is not the Catholic doctrine is absurd.
And to tell me that my life is supposed to be dedicated exclusively to my neighbor, and I'm not to be working to save my soul or what we call salvation. Whatever you may think of, it is not Catholic doctrine. And if it is, I would like to see the evidence for it. Notice what our lord said. Notice this.
There have been plenty of men and women, really good, sincere, sacrificing men and women, who have given up their lives freely for all kinds of causes. For all kinds of causes. There is no end of martyrs martyrs in the history of the human race. So there's nothing very special about that. There's nothing very special about about suffering for a cause.
Do you do you realize this always comes to my mind. Do you realize the plain, honest to God suffering that a good athlete goes through to achieve what? Think of what the the young men and the young women in the recent Olympics. Do any of you have a personal knowledge of what some of them went through to get where they got that day? You talk about suffering, I mean downright painful suffering on a long year in and year out process.
I've met some of these people, not that they got to the Olympics, but that they had Olympic hopes, and I know what they were going through. Saint Paul talks about this. He he he refers time and again to the athlete running, and how that athlete trains, and how they do sacrifice themselves and put themselves through a ringer. Paul doesn't use the word ringer. I don't think they had them in his day.
We have to spin dry today, you know. So the point I'm making is that there's nothing very unusual about suffering and sacrifice, even giving up your life. I'm not downgrading this. It was Cicero who says, I quote the Latin because the English sounds almost like a candy store. It is good and sweet to die for one's country.
Hate to quote it, but I I don't know any better translation. That's that word, But the thing is, even Cicero recognized that. Even Plato and Aristotle recognized that. Even even Homer recognizes that. The point that our Lord is making is himself, that you're doing it for me, for my name.
Notice, for my name. Because many a man and many a woman laid down their lives simply for the name Jesus Christ. Just for the name. And we are called upon to be Christians. And our lord says, if you do this, you're going to suffer.
You're going to be persecuted. Even your parents are going to persecute you. Hey. Remember, this was a Jew talking to Jews. And yet he says, not a hair of your head will be harmed.
How do you put this together? How? Only as Jesus can put it together. Jesus asks you to rise above your humanity. We call that the supernatural life of grace, which came with baptism.
You don't hear anything about that these days. The supernatural life, that it is something it's just an absolute transformation. Absolute transformation. That's the reason I resent this idea of calling baptism a rite of initiation. That's the way you become a Mason, or a KFC, or you join a sorority, or a fraternity.
Baptism is a transformation. It's the butterfly coming out of a caterpillar, the frog coming from a tadpole. We used to call that in biology complete metamorphosis. Fancy Greek words are simply a complete change. That's all it means, metamorphosis.
That's what our lord is telling us. And we have to make an act of faith on it because he's asking us not to live our lives as human beings. He's asking us to live our lives as his sons and his daughters in his world, which he said is not of this world. In the name of the father, the son, and holy spirit. Amen.