A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Jesus looked up to heaven and said, I do not pray for my disciples alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their word. That all may be one as you, father, are in me and I am in you. I pray that they may also be one in us, that the world may believe that you sent me.
I have given them the glory you gave me, that they may be one as we are one. I, living in them, and you, living in me, that their unity may be complete. So shall the world know that you sent me and that you love them as you love me. Father, all those you gave me, I would have in my company where I am to see the glory of mine, which is your gift to me because of the love that you bore me before the world began. Just father, the world has not known you, but I have known you.
And these men have known that you sent me. To them, I have revealed your name, and I will continue to reveal it so that your love for me may live on in them, and I may live in them. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. This excerpt from the acts of the apostles and this trial of Paul by the Romans is a very dramatic, spectacular, and somewhat amusing situation.
Because here, get the scene, you see. Here here you have the Jews who have attacked Paul, and Paul is a Jew, remember. Keep this in mind. And the Jews are, some of them, Pharisees, and some of them are Sadducees. Now keeping this in mind also, we and it's something you have to keep reminding of yourself as except for the latest books of the old testament, the idea of immortality is not in the old testament.
There is something about Sheol, and that there is something very confused and very dim about that happening after we die. But the idea of personal individual immortality is not in the old testament until the latest books. Now, at the time of our lord, it was a very hot potato, and it divided the Sadducees and the Pharisees. The Pharisees says there is a life after this, and the Sadducees there is said there is no such thing. And, of course, as you know, this is the great problem of the book of Job.
By and large, in the old testament, retribution was in this life. If you obeyed the law, if you did what God's will, you prospered. Your barns were filled, you had a good family, you had many sons, you prospered, everything was lovely. If you didn't obey the law, you got clobbered. That's that was the old law.
But now at about the time of Christ, there was a strong opinion, persuasion among the pharisees that there was a life after this, that there was some kind of immortality, that angels did exist, and and the spiritual bodies that we call souls. Sadducees said, oh, no. That's ridiculous. So now Paul is brought in, and he's going to be the Romans are going to interview his accusers, and Paul was a very smart man. He would have made a great lawyer today.
He would have been plush. Because you see, he knew all about this. And so what does he do? He raises that question. So lo and behold you, what happens now is that the Sadducees and the Pharisees who were supposed to be attacking him, they now attack each other, and I mean attack.
And so Paul just sits back and watched them fight it out. It's a very amusing scene, Barry. I wanna lay before you this morning something that is absolutely incontrovertible in the New Testament, and that is that our blessed lord taught us individual immortality. He taught us that this life is not our destiny. Time and again, he tells you, you are not of this world.
You have another destiny. You are you are born into this world, and you have to fight it. You have to live your existence in it. But you mustn't surrender to the world because you don't belong here. You are travelers.
And what seems to be very tragic, horrible, severe, unhappy events in your life, they constitute what we call today the cross. And you carry it with Jesus, not in some kind of a confused, indeterminate way that it's all without meaning. Absolutely not. This is a tremendous new insight that Christ gave his followers that nothing is meaningless, that everything in the life of a follower of Jesus has meaning. Not in terms of the wealth and the and the success and the affluence and the good life that you will get in this world.
Christ never promised us that. He said the opposite. But he did promise us that all of these things that which happened to us, which we call tragedies or sorrows or whatever miseries, calamities, death, illness, dying, all of them. It's an awful it's an awful list. Christ said this all has meaning.
All has meaning. Not because you'll get your reward in this life, but because of your eternal reward with God in heaven forever. We forget this. We forget this. We not only forget it, but you know what?
There are so called Christians, I mean Catholics today, who try to tell me that this is not a good idea. That this, you see, has the the horrible odor of doing things for a reward. What's wrong with doing things for a reward? Would you mind telling me? I remember distinctly when with the when our school systems, we went through this whole business that it was wrong, it was demeaning, that it was not up to the level of human dignity to have students work to get prizes.
We went through all of that and we see what's happened. Now, the high the foremost commission that was appointed by the president to study the the terrible situation of our education in The United States Of America told us that of three things, one of them was there should be reward for good works. You see, there's a long story to this, but the point I'm making is whatever you may think, our Lord said this. Live your life in this world, bear what you have to bear in this life, and you'll bear a lot. But bear it not because you're going to have satisfaction in this life.
Your reward will not come in this life. He told us this. It will be in the next. So I ask you, if he said that, if we are Christians, then what in the world is wrong with my living with the aspect of heaven before me? Would you mind telling me if Jesus told me that, and if I say I'm his follower?
Cardinal Newman has some wonderful, wonderful passages on this subject with all his elegance. How we need this view of heaven to keep us alive, to keep us help us to survive in this veil of tears. Out of the depths, I cry to you, oh lord. That's from the old testament, but there's no idea of immortality there. Don't read it.
Some of these liturgical texts, they they are incorrect. I mean, the implications are wrong. So let us let us keep in mind heaven. Let us keep in mind our immortality. Let us keep in mind in the daily humdrum, exciting, boring, monotonous, spectacular, dramatic, adventurous.
Everyday living and everyday life has a little bit of all of this. That all of this has meaning for a Christian who follows Christ because he is destined for heaven. He is immortal. Notice, we don't become immortal by death. You are immortal now.
Now. Now. Just realize who you are. You are citizens not of this world, but of heaven. In the name of the father and the son, holy spirit.
Amen.