A reading of the holy gospel according to Matthew. When Jesus came down from the mountain, great crowds followed him. Suddenly, a leper came forward and did Jesus homage, saying to him, sir, if you will do it, you can cure me. Jesus stretched out his hand and touched the man and said to him, I do will it be cured. Immediately, the man's leprosy disappeared.
Then Jesus said to the man, see to it that you tell no one, but go show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses prescribed. That should be the proof they need. And this is the gospel of the lord. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Have you ever noticed in the course of the New Testament how our blessed Lord dealt with individuals?
There is as far as I recall, there is no record that Jesus cured large numbers of people en masse. There's no nothing in the New Testament, as far as I know, where he stood up and said, My dear people, all of you who are blind, can't hear, who are crippled, who are in any way sick or ill, you are cured. I don't know a single instance of it. All the instances I know are instances. Jesus dealt with humanity individually, one person at a time.
Don't ask me why, I'm really saying that's a fact. There is certainly nothing impossible in supposing that Christ would have stood up before any multitude and said, Look, you good people, anything is wrong with you, forget it. You're okay. You get up and walk. Your ears are open.
You can see the light. You can speak. All of you. There's not a single instance in the New Testament, as far as I recall. It was individual, and the same way about forgiving sin.
There is no instance where Christ gave what you'd call a general absolution. He dealt with humanity, not a humanity. Remember, humanity doesn't exist, except in somebody's thinking. Humanity is an abstraction. Christ dealt with individual human beings.
Go you go and sin no more. Your sins are forgiven. There's nothing in the record which indicates that Christ ever gave a multitude absolution from their sins and told the whole mob to go sin no more. I don't recall a single instance. Christ the Son of God dealt with human beings individually on a one to one basis.
Now it's true, he fed the multitudes, that's true, but I'm talking about these two ideas of cure, curing the body and curing the soul. And remember, our blessed Lord used the first, that is, the physical cures simply, and in most instances, to illustrate or to argue or for some ulterior motive in a special instance, that people may know that I have the power to forgive sins, get up and walk. And very often when he does cure the individual, he says, Your faith has made you whole. And so, let us keep this in mind: There's so much talk today about community that we and then on the other hand, there's so much talk about individuality. We're in a very complex frame of mind about this matter today.
In one instance, we're stressing the individual, and in the next instance, we're stressing his disappearance, you almost can say, in the community or in social order. Of course, as often, and most often at least, truth lies in holding these two things together. That every single individual human being is at once an individual human being and at once a social being. And you cannot divorce these things. You can't say, Well, now I'm acting as an individual, and then turn around and go into another room and put on another hat and say, Now I'm acting as a member of society, now I'm a social being, now I need my fellow human beings.
That is nonsense! But you know the history of thought, the history or development of culture, or any word you want to use to cover this idea, is that one of these aspects of human beings, one of them is either denied or it's neglected. Descartes made us into angels Hobbes made us into nothing but of animals. The truth is, we're both of them simultaneously, all in all, at all times. So the social nature of man cannot be downgraded, cannot be overlooked.
It is true that Christ often said and often went up into the mountain alone to pray. It is true that Christ said, when you pray, go into your chamber and in secret, address your heavenly father. That is certainly true. But it is also true that on the Sabbath, Christ went into the synagogue and took his place there, and he rose and spoke. It is true also that on the fitting occasions, the proper days, Christ appears in the temple of Jerusalem for public worship of God Almighty according to law.
It is true that a man like Pius Staple Lewis when he became a fervent Christian had he didn't like public worship at all. He didn't like going to church, but he recognized that he had to do it. He was part of serving God, and he did it. He was a very faithful church member. And as a high church Episcopalian, he received the sacrament frequently and went to church practically every morning when he was in residence at Oxford or Cambridge.
And so we have a gate. You see, it's so easy to say something is nothing but, like old man Freud did. And like so many people, Descartes says we are nothing but intellects. And Hobbes says we are nothing but highly developed animals, and this keeps on going on and on and on. The Christ is you are a you to me.
I took you from the earth, and I breathed the soul into you. Oh, there you go. There you go. And you don't come up with two things. You come up with one thing, and that's the individual human being.
And that's what Christ addressed himself to. He addressed himself to the individual because the mob is only a collection of individuals. The mass is only a collection of individuals. The proletarian is only a collection of individual human beings. Society exists only as an abstraction based upon the reality of individual human beings.
And your society, your mog, your proletariat, whatever you want to call it, isn't going to be one iota better than individual human beings are better or worse. So we have to hold this together, but I want to come back to this very significant thought, at least it is for me, that our blessed Lord in dealing in his dealings on earth dealt men and women on an individual basis. Your faith has made you whole. Go and sin no more. Your sins are forgiven.
He never stood up before a mass of people and said, my dear friends, your sins are all forgiving, and I absolve you. Never did it once, far died. From the cross, he spoke explicitly of those who were responsible. From the cross, he spoke to his mother and Saint John. And so I've just been reading the life of Saint Teresa of Avila, and now when you read this, you are going to say that this is an exaggerated emphasis upon the individual.
And I agree, it is. It is. But you see, the point is that we are saved individually, not on moms, not as a mom, not as this thing we call society or the community. There is no such reality. The thing is that we go to God individually, and every mystic, every saint realizes that.
Every human being realizes it sooner or later. It's so easy, you know. The other side of this coin is, you know, to use this wonderful phrase, we are all guilty. Society is guilty. Well, you see, if you have an iota of a brain cell working, you will say, This is nonsense.
This is nonsense. Society, what is it? But you see, it's a lovely way of freeing me individually from guilt. Everybody's guilty. Society is guilty.
The public is guilty. But I'm literally wiped clean. See? It's beautiful. And the same way we can cast upon this idea that that we can all be together and be saved en masse.
Forget Jesus Christ came individually to human beings and said, your sins are forgiven. You are cured. You stand up and walk. You go and show yourself to the priest. And that's what we have to do, show ourselves individually before God, but not exclusively as the individual because, again, we have to realize we are social beings.
We are part of the community. Community. In the name of the father, son, and the spirit. Amen.