A reading of the holy gospel according to Matthew. Jesus, seeing the people crowd around him, gave orders to cross the lake to the other shore. A scribe approached Jesus and said to him, Teacher, wherever you go, I will come after you. Jesus said to the scribe, the foxes have lairs, the birds in the sky have their nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head. Another, a disciple, said to Jesus, Lord, let me go and bury my father first.
But Jesus said to him, Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead. This is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. That last sentence, and it is taken from the lips of our Lord as recounted by St.
Matthew, sounds pretty cruel to us. And here's where we do have to remember a thing or two. It was sounded much more cruel and inhuman and unfeeling and almost blasphemous, almost blasphemous to a Jew of our Lord's time. You think back the book of Job and other texts of the Old Testament where you have a picture given of the enormous importance placed upon the proper burying of the dead, the proper care of the dead. It meant so much that men were willing to jeopardize their very life in giving corpses a proper burial.
We are told, in more than one instance, where men heroically accepted the threat and the penalty of death just to give a dead person proper attention, which meant at least burying him. And here you have Christ telling a disciple who asks him, just wait. Let me delay my following you a little bit. I have to go and bury my father. And Christ says, forget it.
Follow me. Let the dead bury the dead. They are pretty harsh words if you look at it from the point of view and from the circumstances under which they were uttered by our Lord. You see, you hear so much about the loving Christ that people forget that that's only one side of Jesus Christ. The same Christ which is pictured so lovingly, so beneficently, caring for the sinner, forgiving, being so magnanimous, being so generous, going about the hills and the veils of Israel, curing the sick, giving sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf, raising a cripple off their palate, and so on and on.
Oh, this is a gorgeous picture. But how about some very sensible things that Christ said would seem to be so insensitive, such as this one. Telling a son, look, you can't delay following me. The boy doesn't say, have to leave you. I can't bother you because I have to Not at all.
He just wants a delay. Christ says, Nix, no delay. Then you have, of course, the text we had two weeks ago where our blessed Lord speaks about taking up his cross and following him, and laying that down as the only criteria. And just before he said that, the very previous sentence is made up entirely of what he tells his disciples he is going to suffer. And then in the very next sentence he says, Look, this is what you're going to have to do too.
You've got to take up my cross and follow me. Now this is this is pretty stern stuff, believe To be a Christian is not to be a moniker. It is not to be a whimsical person. It is not an idealist. It is not an optimist.
To be a Christian means to follow Jesus Christ. Not just picking up this particular little factor of Christ and calling that the totality of Christianity and forgetting all the rest. It's taking Jesus Christ for all he was and for everything he said. Anyone who tries to be a Christian is going to find his path pretty much a path of thorns. It is not going to be easy.
It is not going to be simple. It is not going to be seeking one's own fulfillment. It is not going to be seeking one's own happiness. These are the things which are on people's lips today. It's gonna be none of those things if you take the cross of Jesus Christ.
And our blessed lord, of all the things he said, this is the one great test where he said, unless you do it, you cannot be my disciple. There are other things involved in being a Christian, but he said, Unless you do this, forget the rest. He said that. And then in this text today, and notice this isn't a parable or a story or a metaphor, this is what Christ is is reported by Saint Matthew to have said to the young man who said, Lord, let spare me a few minutes or a day or so. I have to go and bury my father.
Christ said, no, you do not. Follow me. Let the dead bury the dead. Now I just read yesterday a fancy article out of a book of Catholic theology, that is a publication, in which the author, as you might guess, downgrades the responsibility of commitment. You see, our present holy father has taken a firm stand on two things, among other things, that when a young man says, I'm going to be a priest, and that means I'm going to be a priest until I die, and that means I'm going to be a Sullivan until I die.
That's the way it is today in the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Our Holy Father, one of the first things he did was to make a very plain statement that a young man or an older man who does that, who in full understanding of what he's committing himself to, is committed for life. You don't weasel out of it. And if you do, you're out. And the same thing about matrimony because it's the same argument.
How can anybody take an attitude toward the commitment of a priest to his priesthood for life, and at the same time and say that if it fails to meet his expectations, if he doesn't find fulfillment in it, if he finds that the that he's supposed to that he thinks supposed to do something else, well, then let the man do it and we'll work it out. We'll we'll make some kind of a profit compromise. We'll negotiate. Oh, yes. That's a beautiful word.
How can you take that attitude towards the priest and then tell a young man or a young woman as of Saturday when three times we had couples standing in this altar saying, I take you for my lawful husband. I take you for my lawful wife for life until death does us part. How are you going to say it's good for one but not for the other? And our holy father came out foursquare the stability, the permanence of marriage, and the horrible evil of divorce. And the same way he has taken that same stiff attitude, which some call inhuman, towards men in the priesthood.
Remember, a man coming into priesthood before he ever makes that final commitment, he has put in at least four years and at least has made at least two years of extreme commitment. When I was ordained, we had to write it out in our own hands on two separate occasions in two years that this is what I want, this is what I'm doing, this is what I'm doing of my own free will, and that nobody's pushing me, I'm not doing this under any pressure whatsoever. That's what I call a commitment. And so here we have it. Christ never said following him was going to be a bed of roses.
He never told us to follow our own self. He said, take up my cross and follow me. We're followers. But in doing that, we will find ourselves. Remember, Christ said that if you seek yourself, you're gonna lose yourself.
And if you lose yourself for his sake, you will find yourself. That's what Christ said. Now this doctrine that Christ presents today, that you choose him even over such a solemn obligation as pietas for your father. See, that goes very much against the world's view of things. It is so severe.
It is so unfeeling. It is so cruel. It is so inhuman, you know, on and on and on. Yet Christ said that without any ambiguity, without any ambiguity. There comes a time in many of our lives, not often, but it does come when we have to make choices like this, when some people are going to be greatly saddened by a choice we have to make.
Tears may be shed. We will appear to be a downright scoundrels in the eyes of the world for following Christ. Remember, our Lord said, the world will hate you. And as you know, as I've said many times, Ms. Boba, when the world takes you to its heart, when it throws its arms around you and tells you it loves you, you are wrong.
That is a priori evidence that you're in the wrong nest because Christ said the world will hate you, and so it does. To follow Christ means that you leave and let the dead bury the dead. The name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.