A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. When Jesus heard that John, that's John the Baptist, had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth, that's his home, and went down to live in Capernaum, that's in the Northwest corner of the lake, near the territory of Zebulun and Nepthali, to fulfill what had been said through Isaiah the prophet, land of Zebulun, land of Nepthali, along the sea beyond the Jordan, heathen Galilee, a people living in darkness, has seen a great light. On those who inhabit the land overshadowed by death, light has arisen. From that time on, Jesus began to proclaim this theme, reform your lives.
The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Jesus toured all of Galilee. He taught in their synagogues. Please notice that. He taught in their he didn't set up new churches or anything.
He he went right into the synagogues. He taught in their synagogues, proclaimed the good news of the kingdom, and cured the people of every disease and illness. As a consequence, his reputation traveled the length of Syria. Notice that, Syria. They carried to him all those afflicted with various diseases and wracked with pain.
The possessed, the lunatics, the paralyzed, he cured them all. The great crowds that followed Jesus came from Galilee. Now notice that if you had a map here, this is the whole of what we call the Holy Land. The great crowds that followed Jesus came from Galilee, that's in the North, the 10 cities, that's on the East Of the Jordan, and from Jerusalem, that's in the South, and from Judea, and from across the Jordan. That's the East.
So he had a tremendous following. 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.
When Colby, when Maximilian Colby, the Austrian priest who gave his life, know, for a another prisoner who was doomed to die in Auschwitz, when he gave himself up in the place of that man whom he didn't know at all. And when his clothes were all taken taken off of him, and when he went when he was led down into that dungeon, an underground cell, and when that door clanged on him, how did he feel? That's my introduction to the thought that I had a few chosen words to say yesterday about, and that is the lives of Elizabeth Seton and John Neumann, the Bishop of Philadelphia. Now Neumann died I think 1860, that's pretty close to being correct. And Elizabeth Seton died about 1821.
She was born 1774. He was born a little later than that. Now there's a there's a point I want to make is absolutely it's focused on these on the contrast between these these lies, there are three of them here. Now here's a man Now remember Colby wasn't he was a well known man. He was a publisher.
He had a radio station. He had built up a city. He was a well known character, and he'd also been to Japan, and he was internationally known. Here's a man who was vigorous, who had all kinds of things going for the Lord, who had had a who had a desperate fight with tuberculosis his whole life. In spite of that he did all these things.
Franciscan you know. And here here he's thrown into Auschwitz because he was Colby. Because he was a real threat to the Nazis. And so so he there he is now in the camp. But now his clothes are all taken off of him, he's thrown into this cell where and the doors clang shut, and he's left to starve and to die of thirst.
Now, how do you serve the Lord under those conditions? When that door shut, clanged and banged shut that he knew was never going to open up to him except as he was a corpse, and he had no idea what starving to death and dying of thirst amounted to, he had no conception of that. He'd never done it. Most people who have died of that have never done it before obviously. Even I can see that.
It's early in the morning. What were his thoughts? You talk about a useless life. That's about as useless as you can get to be to be buried alive. Take down Elizabeth Seton since she came first, born about 1774.
When we look back and you say in '16 after she became a Catholic in eighteen o five, she's dead and she died in '21 in 1821. She was a Catholic only sixteen years. Remember, that's all she had, sixteen years for everything she did. And remember, she started out by being thrown out by her family, by being deprived of the necessities of life. She fled to Canada because she thought to be in a Catholic environment.
That's why she went to Canada. She was desperate she had five kids. And the oldest was only about 10. Remember her own family, own friends. And being in being in New York, being the kind of woman she was, there was no job she couldn't make a living.
Nice people. Anyway, she fled to Canada because she felt, well, at least should be in a Catholic atmosphere. And then one thing led to another. The suspicions in Canada, suspicions in Baltimore going to Emmitsburg where Mount Saint Mary's had been founded again by the suspicions. They played a very important role in the early days of the Catholic church in this country.
And this is our own territory. Elizabeth Ann Seton is buried just 40 miles up the road in the beautiful Basilica. Now the point I'm making, we look back and these things are kind of glamorous. They weren't glamorous for her. Five children deprived of the necessities of life and not knowing where she's going to turn, and she flees to a foreign country up there in Canada.
That snow is not fun. You take John Neumann. Here he's a young boy in Prague. Well, didn't live in Prague, but he decided he wanted to be a priest so he went to the seminary in Prague and he did everything he had to do. He did all the theology and the philosophy and he got himself all the he was a very good student and I wanna he was speaking German.
And then when he comes up, when he should have been invited to be ordained, they said, We don't need you. We don't want you. What did he do? Well for some reason he thought he'd become a missionary to The United States, you know, where the Indians and the cowboys were having a lot of fun. So he, on his own, with one suit of clothes, with practically no money, practically no money at all, furthermore, without a single word of English he could speak, he lands in New York.
And what really and without any preparation, no one there to welcome him, he came over here completely on his own as far as I can make out. There was no preparations made. He came over to save the Indians or to save the colons or save somebody over here, I don't know. Anyway, he came over. He he had nothing.
He had the clothes on his back and a few dollars and he's if he had that, somebody some people say he was penniless. So he lands in New York and he could speak German. And they needed a German speaking priest. So the the the bishop of New York, took him and ordained him. One thing leads to another.
Now here's a man who was who first of all, his stature was short. He didn't he didn't have a good personal appearance, he didn't know English and never did learn English well. He was a kind of a nondescript guy. You know, one of these repulsive foreigners. And lo and behold, he winds up by being consecrated Bishop of Philadelphia.
Now Philadelphia was a city at that time a little different from what it had been in in our time. We knew Philadelphia as that place between Baltimore and New York. But in his day Philadelphia was the one of the outstanding cities, and the Catholics were aggrieved to have a man who couldn't even speak their language to be their bishop. He was not well received. And let me tell you, after he had been there for a few years there was a strong petition and that he should be resigned not from his not from his sea in Philadelphia, but he should resign from the Episcopal Sea if you please.
That's how that's how he was beloved by his people and by some of his fellow bishops. Fun and games, Now my point is this, I don't want you to miss it. We've got to see our lives in the present tense, and to see that there is our salvation. Now that's not always easily seen. When that door climbed on Colby, it was very difficult to say this is God's will and this is my salvation, and this is where I'm going to to serve God in glory and hallelujahs, and and it's all wonderful, and I'm going to sing they did sing hymns.
They did under his guidance until they couldn't sing anymore. But it's difficult to see God in that when you're starving and to say this is God's will for me. You talk about injustice, he wasn't troubled with any of that. You take and as I say, when we look back on the lives of a woman like Elizabeth Ann Seton, when we look back on the lives of a man like John Neumann, we look back and we romanticize it. We don't see the nitty gritty day in and day out monotonous humdrum, what shall I call it, toil, darkness.
That that oration this morning is a honey did you notice that did you catch that oration about seeing the light in the darkness? Lots of our lives are spent in darkness. I don't mean to say this okay, but we don't see meaning. We don't see significance in what we're doing. And we wish to God that we were doing anything on earth but what we're doing or what we think we have to do.
That's that's that's commonplace. The man who's very successful writing writing novels he wants to write history. The man who can write history he wants to and good at it he wants to write novels. A man who's a good reporter on the paper he wants to write poetry. And so on.
These are just trivial examples. It's difficult to see Jesus Christ in our daily lives, and yet that's what we've got to do. Otherwise, lives. We're losing it. We're losing it.
Now yesterday, I I quoted doctor Germaine Prise, a fellow neighbor that he teaches up at the Mount Saint Mary's. He just published the first volume of his moral theology. You don't see him quoted, you know, by Time and the Washington Post. Yet he is one of the most solid fundamentalist moral theologians we have. He's a married man with four children and a loving wife.
At least I hope she's loving. The name's Janet. Anyway, he's living up the road. He's one of us. I quoted him yesterday on this very point that is the the the sacrificial character of being a layman in the Church of Jesus Christ.
And as he said, if we can see our job as our vocation. Now by job, I mean what's on our doorstep that we that needs doing by me, by me. Not by you or somebody else, or not. If I could change myself, if I could change my geography, if I could change the year of my life, or my year of my death, or my year of my birth, or, you know, it's like I'd only change it and everything would be so lovely. This is dreaming.
This is awful. Because you see, we're losing reality. And what gives meaning to life, what gives light to darkness is Jesus Christ. For me, in the here and the now, in the job I'm doing as I see to be the will of God for me. And that becomes my remember, the word vocation means calling, calling.
So that God almighty is calling me in the job I have to do today. Tomorrow may be very different. I don't know. Tomorrow, I may be run over by a car, be lying in the hospital, half dead. That's my calling.
What am I going to make of it? The door slammed on Kobe, Maximilian Kobe, and he starved to death. I may be dying on that bed because a car hit me. So what? So what?
Notice how that that's a magnificent oration. You know, the the prayers of the masses for Lent and Advent and Epiphany, these are old Roman masses and they've got gusto. None of this wishy washy stuff of that we get into some of these new masses. These are these are old prayers, and they're simple and stirred. The light in the darkness.
That's what we're praying for, and that's what we're called to see. But we've got to see it in our darkness. And if we see it then the darkness to some extent is dissipated. But if we don't see that light at all, it's nothing big but total. It Our lives will lack significance, and that is the thing they cannot afford to be have.
Because any anybody, any psychiatrist or psychologist who's practicing today will tell you this is a basic fault in so many people's lives. They think that their life is not worth living. And this is people who've tried everything. You know, it's not the poor and the derelict that go to psychiatrists and psychologists. There is absolutely no excuse for a Catholic Christian lacking significance of his or her life.
And we have examples of it year after year, day after day with the saints that are paraded before us. The church is saying, at these people. Look how they live. Look how they suffered. Look how they look at the joy and and and the wonderful things they accomplished.
But it was mostly by bread blood, sweat, and tears. Oh, yeah. Blood, sweat, and tears. We look back and say how magnificent. John Neumann, in a few years in Philadelphia, he he multiplied the number of kids in parochial schools by 20.
He had he had constructed over 80 churches, and yet they wanted to kick him out of the episcopacy. Fun and games, We are called to do our job, not to be applauded, not to be patted on the back, but the point I wanna make is that we see Jesus Christ in that dungeon when the door slams on us. He's there with us. In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.