A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. As Jesus moved about, he saw a man named Matthew at his post where taxes were collected. Jesus said to him, follow me. Matthew got up at once and followed Jesus. Now it happened that while Jesus was at table in Matthew's house, many tax collectors remember, they were considered sinners.
Many tax collectors and those known as sinners came to join Jesus and his disciples at the meal. Of course, the pharisees saw all of this, and then they complained to our lord's disciples. What reason can the teacher have for eating with tax collectors and those who disregard the law? Because that made you unclean. Overhearing the remarks, Jesus said, people who are in good health don't need a doctor.
Sick people need a doctor. Go and learn the meaning of these words. It is mercy I desire and not sacrifice. I have come to call not the righteous, but sinners. 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. About June 26, archbishop Hickey went to the National Shrine Of The Immaculate Conception expecting to find the congregation of about 500. Well, know 500 people in the Shrine Of The Immaculate Conception is a drop in the bucket.
Well, when that mass began, which was to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the death of Monsignor Escrivard de Bellaguerre, founder of the Opus Dei movement, the church was packed. One estimate put it at 1,800 people. Now this we are, according to The Washington Times, completely astonished, startled, and surprised Archbishop Hickey. He didn't expect it. He welcomed them warmly and was tremendously pleased.
I am choosing those words carefully. And then he expressed his gratification and support of the movement for which they stand. Now I don't want to talk about Opus Dei this morning. I just want to bring it to your attention. And the one thing I do want to emphasize, whatever may be said about Opus Dei for or against it, there's one thing you cannot deny it.
It seeks the personal individual sanctification of every individual man and woman. It doesn't hold up some mythical ideal of a collectivity which becomes somehow or other holy. You see, all of that is nonsense. Nonsense. The only reality to community, the only reality to society, or the only reality to any collectivity of human beings is the individual human being.
When I look out to you this morning, even if even if this church was were completely filled, all I I don't see community. I don't see a congregation. I don't see society. I don't see the state. I see individual men, women, children, and crying babies or hearing them.
Individuals, that's the reality. Point number one. Point number two. Towards the end of June, the bishops of The United States had a meeting in Collegeville, and one of on the agenda was the preparation for the November synod in Rome to reevaluate Vatican II. Now I read the secretary's address to the executive committee, And the great emphasis there was on two things of what the Bishop's Conference in The United States has done.
The first was the encyclical on the atom bomb. Well, you know what that was. That was a bomb. The second one is has not yet fully we've we've had the first edition, and that is on the economic situation. Again, that is being viewed with fear and trembling.
There wasn't a word in there about personal holiness. Not a single word. Now what does the church of Jesus Christ exist for? Ask yourself that. Why are you sitting in those pews this morning?
Why do you commit yourself to a way of life that is very sacrificial? Let's not forget it. Any any I don't say just Catholic. Any Christian in this world of ours, which remember is not pluralistic, it is unitary. And it is atheistic, secularistic, humanistic, positivistic, materialistic, any of these use any of these adjectives, they all apply.
That's the world you're living in. You're a minority in a in a unitary world, and it's you are exceptional. You're kind of freakish because you believe in immortality. You believe in you believe in the soul. You believe in free will.
You believe in virtue. You believe in absolutes. Well, of course, that's not the way the world around you lives and believes at all. And this is my point. Each one of us is called individually.
I often think of our Lord's parable about the flock of sheep. Of course, we're not supposed to think of ourselves as sheep anymore. Of course, Christ did, but we we see we have been liberated. We had the July 4 celebration yesterday, that's Independence Day, you know. Anyway, we are told in that parable that that the shepherd calls his sheep by name.
He doesn't stand up and say, my dear flock, come after me. Now I'm gonna take you out into the pasture to give you some food and drink. No. That good pastor calls his sheep by name individually. That's how God calls you, individually.
I of course, you're a social being. Marriage proves that. The very fact that you're in existence proves that two human beings came together in some kind of an embrace. Of course, we're social beings, but the point is we are basically individuals. And we come into the world alone, and we die alone, and a heck of our life is lived alone, as it should be with god.
That's the point. That's an individual thing. How how much do you hear today of any reference to Thomas A. Kempis, the imitation of Christ? How often do you hear any reference to Saint Francis de Sales, the his book, which he wrote for individual people in the world, Introduction to a Devout Life.
How often do you hear that book referred? No. We we talk about the good society. We talk about liberation theology. We talk about the ideal economic sister situation.
We talk about all these Remember, you can be a saint in any kind of society. You can be a slave and be a saint. You can be a king and be a saint. Don't wait until you have a bank account to turn to God. And yet that's what a good bit of our thinking seems to be today.
All we need to make good Christians is to put a good house over their head and give them hygienic plumbing and good diet and a square acre of land. I'm not exaggerating this. Our focus is getting away from God and me, me. I can't slough over that responsibility. You stand before God.
You are committed. You you accepted the light. You were given the white cloth. You are to carry it. You.
You. You. And so don't look around and say, I'll wait till we change society. If only I had a better situation. If only this were true.
If only that were true. If only my life could be lived. You know, all of this is absurd. The reality is the individual sitting in those pews right now, now. And that's the individual you that is called to the work of the lord.
And the work of the Lord in one single phrase is your salvation, which means your call to be a saint. Now we'll have this brief prayer instead of prayers for the faithful, for the sacred heart.