A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. On leaving the house. Jesus sat down by the side of the lake. But such great crowds gathered around him that he went out and took his seat in a boat while the crowd stood along the shore. Jesus addressed them at length but in parables, speaking in this fashion.
One day, a farmer went out sowing. Part of what he sowed landed on a footpath where the birds came and ate it up. Part of the seed fell on rocky ground where it had little soil. The seed sprouted at once since the soil had no depth. But when the sun came up and scorched it, it began to wither for lack of roots.
Again, part of the seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked it. Finally, part of it landed on good soil, and yielded grain a 100 or 60 or 30 fold. Let everyone heed what he hears. And this is the gospel of the lord. Praise to you, lord.
In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. This parable has problems of just what it's all about. But what we read of it today is very clear, and it has special application, of course, to this great and very mysterious problem of faith. We're told, and I certainly believe it, and of course, it's a doctrine of the church, that faith is a gift. God gives it to us.
We can't earn it. We can't do anything to merit it. It's given to us freely. That much is perfectly clear. But I often think of this as follows.
If my, godfather wants to give me a handsome check on my birthday or on the anniversary of my baptism when he had the honor of becoming my godfather, He can give me a the handsome check. I don't earn it. I haven't merit it. I haven't done anything to get it. It's a pure gift from him.
He may have all kinds of reasons for giving it, but as far as I'm concerned, it's a free gift. But, what do I do with it? He doesn't control that, because I have this little faculty called free will. I can take the check and light a cigarette with it. Being a very precocious young boy, I was smoking at a tender age, you see.
Or I can take it and go out and buy a lot of candy, or I can buy a red wagon, or I can do anything with it. I can go and put it in the bank to get interest, so that when I go to college I'll have something to buy my lunches with. It's about all it'll be worth, you see, about ten years or so. Anyway, the point I'm making is, the gift is freely given. But what do I do with it?
I can even turn my back on it. Say, I don't want your gift. Take it. It bothers me. It gets in my way.
And this seems to me to be part of the answer, not the whole answer, but part of the answer to this great mystery of of faith. Now, one of the of course, some famous examples come to mind, Cardinal Newman. Why did it take him so long to see the light as regards Rome? But I repeat, with Newman, it was not a question of dogma. It was not a question of of a new doctrine.
It was a question of knowing where the heart and the core of the Catholic church is. On the other hand, you take a man like CS Lewis. Everybody who knows a little bit about Lewis wonders how in the world he stopped short of becoming a Catholic. Well, I don't know. I don't know the answer to that.
But I know this, if faith is a gift that is freely given, the person to who gets it has a lot to do with how he acts upon it. That I'm sure of. Perfectly sure of. Perfectly sure of. We can turn our back on a gift.
Just because because someone gives us something doesn't mean we accept it. Sometimes we shouldn't accept it. Or we can accept it and be very gracious about it, and do nothing with it. What do people do with all the gifts they get on their at their wedding time? The point I'm making is, we have a lot.
I mean, the individual human being has a lot to do with what they do with the grace of God. A lot to do with it. Because believe me, when God invites us in some way or other to himself, as soon as we become aware of that invitation, even when we have a suspicion of it, we are in trouble. We're in trouble. Our lord said, I have come not to bring peace but the sword.
I have come not to bring peace but division. And then he goes on to say, I'll set mother against daughter, daughter against mother-in-law, son against father, and and how your parents will will even put you to death. Christ said that. And in many instances, even aside from religion, when a human being sees the truth and makes up his or her mind to follow the truth as they see it, they're in trouble. And maybe deep trouble, maybe deep trouble.
Because as soon as you take a stand on anything, soon as you take a stand on anything, you stand in opposition to its contraries and its contradictories. This is old aristotelic logic, but you can't escape it. You can't escape it. If you say, I I love the lord, I will follow his law, I will live my life daily as well as I can according to his law, then what happens to you when you're living in a secularistic, materialistic, atheistic society? Where do you stand?
You're in a vice. That's where you are. And that's exactly where you could expect to be. Christ said you would be there. So that what we do with the gift of faith can well, it it can change the whole picture of the situation.
And I'm not going to go into any details, but the thing is plenty of people see the truth, or they have a suspicion of the truth, or they have reason to think it is true. But then they say, if I decide, if I go along with that, here's what's going to happen. Bing, bing, bing, bing. And they may not be wrong at all. Look what happened to Cardinal Newman when he, at last, turned to Rome.
He was nearly thrown out of the Catholic church. It was only Leo the thirteenth that rescued him and made him a cardinal. And so let me tell you, when people say, about having this thing called faith and that it's a gift and all that, of course it is. But believe me, we have our contribution to make. Our personal contribution.
Now you'll say, how do you put these two things together? I have said time and again, I do not know. It's been the problem down the ages, down the centuries. It's it's a problem that's always been with us. That is what seems to be a conflict between god's predestination, the providence of god, god's gift to man, and then this little faculty that human beings have called free will, a measure of self determination.
How do you put the two together? I say, I don't know. I only know that's the way it is. And in many instances, they're in conflict. Because when they're not in conflict, and the closer they come together, the closer you have become a saint.
Name of the father, and the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.