A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Mark. Peter was moved to say to Jesus, we have put aside everything to follow you. Jesus answered, I give you my word. There is no one who has given up home, brothers and sisters, mother or father, children or property for my sake and for the gospel who will not receive in this present age a 100 times as many homes, brothers and sisters, mothers, children, and property, and persecution besides. And in the age to come, everlasting life.
Many who are first shall come last, and the last shall come first. 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. Whether we like it or not, and sometimes we don't like it at all.
And my blessed lord never told us that we had to like it. And that is in following him, you make a choice. And it's an exclusive choice in the sense of priorities. And this is very difficult even academically to accept and much harder in practice to work at day in and day out. Because by our very baptism, we either made a choice ourselves, or somebody made it in our name and we're bound to it, because we we renewed it in confirmation, remember, we are called upon to accept Christ and to follow him.
And our blessed lord called all of us to come follow me. Now here is where you have to keep your common sense. Here is where human beings need guidance because it's easy, very easy, to go off the deep end. And I'm not speaking theoretically, it happened. You take in the time of Saint Jerome.
Now remember, he is a he's a Roman, and he operated and flourished from Rome and going around the northern periphery of the Mediterranean Sea, and then on to Jerusalem where he spent the rest of his life, as you know, giving us what is called the Vulgate Bible, the bible in Latin, the Jerome Bible. Now in his day, when someone decided to become a Christian with him, the first thing he said, get rid of all your possessions. Go into seclusion or go out and become a hermit and spend your days praying and singing songs. This is Saint Jerome. I said Jerome.
I didn't say the Catholic church because Rome, the church's head, spoke to Jerome in no uncertain terms. But this was a common expression. In the in the fourth and the fifth century, the the valley of in Egypt was filled with these people who had taken this absolutely literally, had left home, mother, wives, children, and following the lord. See? Abandoning your wife, abandoning your husband, abandoning your children, but following the lord.
Can you make sense out of that? Well, they did it. No. He's trying to make sense because, you see, human beings for the most part are senseless when we're left to our own powers. I am more and more convinced that of that every year I endure this veil of tears with the blue sky above.
We're we're senseless people, and we go to extremes because it's easy. See, we like to have this kind of a proposition. Nothing but. See, that simplifies life. If we only had one commandment to keep, it would be so easy, even five.
But when you have to keep them all, that's the rub. When I have to be just, and when I have to be kind, and when I have to be loving, and when I have to be forgiving, how do I put all this together? I can tell you, left to ourselves, we won't put it together. And I I know that this isn't theory at all. It's been tried down the centuries.
Everybody's tried to put it together without God. And some have done a pretty good job, like, for for example, Plato. But not many. Not many. And none of them in any realistic sense of the word.
They were all half wacky and messed us up. Now our blessed lord is telling us something here. He's doing what he all he's doing is giving you a new interpretation of the first commandment, that god comes first. Not your neighbor and certainly not yourself. God's first.
I am the lord your god and have no other gods along with me. If there's anything that we have to pay tribute to the Jewish people for, it's for their monotheism. And yet in our daily lives, we are polytheists. We set up all kinds of gods and goddesses. It boils down to what controls your choice.
Our blessed lord never never suggested in the slightest that mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, sons and daughters should be disloyal, should abandon their parents. Parents. He never suggested the remotest little bit of that. Oh, I know you can take a sentence and prove anything. You can do that with anything.
The bible says there is no god. It's in the bible. There is no god. Of course, that's part of a quotation, the rest of which goes, says the fool in his heart. So if you wanted if you use a book, you can get anything you want out of a book, And Christ didn't found his church on a book.
Keep that in mind. Christ never wrote a single word as far as we know. He gave us a living tradition. Going therefore, teach ye all nations. Teach them what I've taught you, and I'm with you until the end of the world.
He didn't give them a Xerox copy of his his his 10 commandments or his 10 recommendations or or his rule of life. He gave nothing in writing. Not a thing. So what is our Lord telling us here? He's telling us in graphic, concrete language that his first is first.
And it's not he's not telling you it's you're going to find that company comfortable. Nobody who has accepted Jesus Christ in their daily lives finds it comfortable. You can get more comfortable comfort out of a fifth of scotch, if that's what you're looking for. And Christ never promised us this. But he did say that we had to follow him.
You've got to put him first. You've got to be prepared to renounce the whole world because he's god. He's god. He made the world. He comes absolutely first.
And if he's first, everything else falls into part in its proper place. It's like C. S. Lewis says, it's like the hub of the bicycle. If the spokes are all lined up with the hub, they're going to be lined up with one another.
And any of you who've tried to true a bicycle wheel knows how true this is. If you get your if you get those spokes lined up with the hub, they'll be lined up absolutely with one another. But if you try to line the spokes up with one another, you'll never get a true spinning wheel. Never. It'll go wiggy waggy.
And so this message of our lord this it's not new. Our lord has told this time and again, and he's told us I've come to separate you. Says, I've come to bring the sword. I've come to bring you the cross, but I've come to tell you how to bear all of it with me, and you can't do anything else, I am the lord, your god, Jesus said. In the name of the father, the son, and holy spirit.
Amen.