A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Once on a Sabbath, Jesus walked through a field of standing grain was ready to be harvested. That's, of course, his wheat. His disciples felt hungry, so they began to pull off the heads of the wheat and to eat them. And notice this was the Sabbath.
When the pharisees saw this, they said to Jesus, look. Your disciples are doing what is not permitted on the Sabbath. Jesus replied, have you not read what David did when he and his men were hungry? How he entered God's house and ate the holy bread, a thing forbidden to him and to his men or to anybody else except the priests. Have you not read in the law how the priests on temple duty can break the Sabbath rest without incurring guilt?
I assure you, there is something greater than the temple here. If you understood the meaning of the text, it is mercy that I desire and not sacrifice. You would not have condemned these innocent men. The son of man is indeed the lord of the Sabbath, and this is the gospel of the lord. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit.
Amen. Some time ago, the New Yorker ran a series of articles written by one person, a Jewish woman, who of course had separated herself from her Judaism. Of course it's in New York, who followed with the permission of the community, a community of extremely orthodox Jews up in around Brooklyn. Sorry I can't give you the technical name, but they are the most orthodox of the orthodox coming out of Hungary. One of the things that struck me, it's a long series of it, I'm sure it'll be a book, was the fidelity, the heroic sacrifice that these Jews, men and women in this community, made for the most minutiae of rules and regulations, regulations having to do with the way an orthodox Jew lives.
There were hundreds and hundreds of these rules, hundreds and hundreds of them, and they're all treated with the utmost solemnity and honesty and integrity. When they say your house must be cleaned before the feast, they would go through it with a vacuum and go through it again with a vacuum, and then they would go through it again with a magnifying glass. Now, the author, she didn't accept any of this. As I say, she had separated herself from her Judaism. But you have to treat people who who takes religion that seriously with respect.
But, there's always that but, but here is an instance of where of an illustration of what I said yesterday, that religion can be the enemy of religion. You can get so lost in the minutiae of observance that you forget what you're observing. Now any Jew would be the first one to tell you what the first law of God is. I presume so anyway, and that's a fair presumption. I am the Lord your God and you know the rest.
That's from the old testament. They knew that as well as I do. But now you see it, as I've said another occasion, how do you implement that? How do you show God you love him? How do you put God first?
How do you do that in practice? You just can't say within the warmth of your electric blanket, Oh God, I love you, I put you first. You've got to get on your feet and get going, you have to live. How do you put God first? Well, you see, as I say, when you look at this, no matter how silly some of these observances are, and they are, You can't call them silly when you see the sincerity, the honesty, and the purpose behind it.
But, there's that but again, they can become obstacles. They can become walls between me and God. Now here's an instance. First of all, God gave man 10 commandments, and one of them is you've got to love the first one is you have to love God. Now, at least give him one day a week, and you will do no work on that day.
Fine. Now, what is work? Well, getting getting your horses or oxen out of the stable and putting them in a plow and going out and plowing a field, obviously that's work. But how about putting your hand on the plow in the stable? That was condemned.
That was one of these regulations. Hundreds of these. Hundreds. I mean, I can't give you the exact figure, but there is an exact figure. You were forbidden to put your hand on the plow.
If you did that on the Sabbath, you were unclean. Why? Because the argument is this way. God said you must not work on the Sabbath or give me the Sabbath. You mustn't work.
Plowing is work. Therefore, you must not plow. Therefore, you must not put yourself in the immediate danger of plowing like putting your hand on the plow. You see the logic of the thing? And you see where logic can lead you to absurdities.
Now here it is the Sabbath, and the apostles are walking I'm sure you've done this when well, July and August are the months. You're walking through a field on a hot summer day, the wheat is all dry and you pull your hand pull it like this over the head, and you come out with a handful of wheat, and you eat it with the dust and everything. Now you see, you must not work on the Sabbath. Harvesting is work. Pulling off those grains of wheat is harvesting.
Ergo, it's worked and therefore forbidden. See how it goes? Now, you have to distinguish between what's behind this and what it what the thing is. But this illustrates beautifully what I've said time and again, that we can be so religious, and by that I mean religious observances, that we forget what we're observing. It's like many years ago when I went down to Indian Head to help out the priest had a heart attack, and I went down to help out over Holy Week, and I met an old priest down at Indian Head, you know, down in the Potomac.
And he he was an old man, and he'd come down there years before. And he told me that on one Christmas day he got a sick call out into the swamps. And he went out there and he found a lot of the children, the black children, shooting off fireworks. And they were having a great time shooting off fireworks on December 25. He said, what are you doing this for?
They didn't know. It was December 25, so they were shooting off fireworks. See, all connection between that and Christmas and the nativity and the birth of Christ, our redeemer, and all that, gone. That can happen to us. We can forget God in trying to serve him, and that's a pity.
That is a grave, grievous pity. Because what we're doing then, we're we're we're dealing with shells. We're dealing with, as as as Lewis would say, moonshine. I call it the froth on the beard. Because this is not the reality of religion.
The reality of religion is giving myself, my mind, my heart, my soul, all that I am to God. Not to getting down on my knees or hearing music and all that stuff. Giving it to God. Well, that's fine. How do you give yourself to God?
That's the question. And people answer it in different ways. But the most erroneous thing can happen is that I lose myself in the giving and forget God. I can become so devoted to being a good parent that I forget that I'm doing it for God, not for my kids. I can forget that being loyal to my employer, to my wife, to my husband, to whatever.
I can forget that the essential basis of my loyalty is God. Third person third, I mean, to this triangle, me, neighbor, and God. We can forget it. We say, why did God make you? Because I keep coming to back to this the second question of the old Penny Baltimore Catechism.
Why did God make you? And let me tell you, no philosopher that who has put a foot on this earth has ever faced a more serious question and failed to give an answer. Because no philosopher has ever given an answer to that question that is satisfactory. It's in the Penny Catechism of Baltimore. Why did God make you?
To know Him, to love Him, to serve Notice that pronoun Him, Him, Him, Him. And it's easy to forget it. A young couple comes up here to be married. They they're they're completely entranced with each other. That's what the way it should be.
That's that's absolutely right, they should be. In many ways they shouldn't see anything else but each other for at that moment. But you don't build a life on that, you know. You don't build a marriage on that with I do business. A marriage is built on every day saying I do, where there's a third party to the triad.
Marriage is a troika, God, husband and wife. And so it goes, we can forget God in trying to serve him. That's the pity of it. And so we need to be brought back. We're human, there's nothing wrong about this.
If I'm a good bricklayer, I can't be thinking of a million things when I'm trying to lay a good course of bricks. I've got to give my mind, my heart, my soul to laying the darn bricks. Otherwise, I won't be a good bricklayer, and I can't serve God unless I'm doing my job. I owe that to my employer. I owe that to my art.
I owe that to myself, to my own integrity. We all know that. But the thing is I have to be brought back once in a while to realize, what am I really doing this for? In the last in the ultimate sense. For a paycheck?
Of course. For the support of my family? Of course. For my satisfaction? Of course.
Maybe, of course. Is there anything more? I hope so, because none of those things is enough, and people are trying it day in day out. All you have to do is read Dear Abby. And so, let us come back to this very serious question.
What is life all about? What am I living for? What am I trying to be do good or be whatever. I don't care what it is. What what's it all about?
Is there an answer? Or is life just a joke? As I read over at Maria Locke, in the guest book, life's a bowl of cherries, what the hell's the use? Turned out I knew the man well, he's a fellow student at Catholic youth. So let's get this straight.
God is God. I'm his servant and his creature, and my first relationship is to him. And if I'm lined up with him, then all else will be lined up. If I'm not lined up with him, then I may be lined up with something, but it'll be all wrong. Name of the father, son, the holy spirit.
Amen.