A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Jesus said, it will go ill with you, Korazaim, and just as ill with you, Bethsaida. If the miracles work in your midst had occurred in Tyre or in Sidon, they would long ago have reformed in sackcloth and ashes. It will go easier on the day of judgment for Tyre and for Sidon than for you. And as for you, Capernaum, are you to be exalted to the skies?
You shall be hurled down to the realm of death. He who hears you, hears me. He who rejects you, rejects me. And he who rejects me, rejects him who sent me. And this is the gospel of the lord.
In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. For the last few mornings, in case you've noticed, I have been stressing our individual responsibilities as human beings to attain salvation. And if we miss that, we have missed everything. And the one thing, there may have been others, but what brought the son of God into this world was my salvation.
Now notice the pronoun my. There's no collectivity to this business. Because even in this morning's reading, when our lord speaks of these cities, Chorazin, and Tyre and Sidon and Beside, notice he says, if they had if they had seen the miracles that you have seen, they would long ago have reformed. Who's the they? Not a city.
A city is nothing. I mean, as far as the people go, except you have individual citizens. And what our lord is saying, look, the citizens of those cities, if they had seen the miracles that you have seen, they would have done they, the people, individually, would put on sackcloth and ashes. No. There's no such thing as a collectivity putting on sackcloth and ashes.
Except in so far as the collectivity represents the individuals putting on sackcloth and ashes. If there's anything that comes out most clearly, irrefutably, is that our lord came for my individual salvation, that I have to be saved. I was a sinner. I am a sinner. I need a savior.
And Jesus Christ came to give me that hope and that salvation if I live with him. And therefore, my life may have all kinds of goals and objectives and good ones, and very good ones. But the thing has to be in the form of a pyramid. In other words, while there are being I may have, and in fact I have to have, And I have to pursue, I have to give my time, my thought, my ingenuity, my labor, my blood, my sweat, my tears. There are many goals in life that I have to work at.
If I'm going to achieve my real ultimate goal, and that's at the apex of the pyramid. One, you cannot, our Lord said, serve two masters. A pyramid can't have two peaks. The question is what is that? What is that?
And that's where my choice comes, because what I have is a struggle to keep myself straight, to give myself as I have to give myself if I'm going to be a follower of Jesus Christ, to many of these very concrete, very immediate, very direct, very, very cultivating, and very attractive things. And maybe they're not so attractive. Making a daily living isn't always attractive. I've got to give myself to those things, and at the same time I have to preserve myself from being a slave to them, of being owned by them. I have only one master, Jesus Christ.
That's the theory. How do you work it out? Now the point I want to make is that that's this is an individual thing, and we've gotten off the track. So much of what we call church activity in itself isn't isn't religious at all. Helping the poor, what's particularly religious about that?
Giving my clothes to those who need clothing, that even the pagans do that. What's religious about it? Unless I see God in it. Oh, that's different. That's different.
Unless I see Christ in it. That's you see this is the difference between philanthropy and charity. And when do we use the word charity today? We use the word philanthropy. He was a great philanthropist.
I'm not downgrading this. Some of the greatest contributions to society, that is to the people collectively, have come from philanthropists, from first honest to God pagans. Well, shouldn't say the pagan, you see, that's derogatory because a pagan believes in God. But they have come from agnostics, from atheists. So the fact that I'm good to a fellow man, the fact that I love my neighbor, what does that prove?
It may simply mean that I'm putting thy neighbor in the place of God. It may mean that I'm putting my children in the place of God. It means that I may be putting my wife or my husband in the place of God. It may mean that I'm putting an education, or social welfare, or social advancement, or a better job in the place of God. In the place of God.
And that's idolatry. Idolatry. You see, it used to be that two of the fundamental works of Christendom, Western Christendom, were The Imitation of Christ, by very likely a campus, and Saint Francis de Sales introduction to a devout life. How often do we even talk about the devout life? No, we talk about getting out and getting in social welfare or feeding the hungry into the Sudan or something.
How often do we talk about individual personal perfection? And yet that's what we're called upon to do. All these other things are going to have religious worth, and so far as they are worthwhile for my salvation. If they contribute to my salvation, good. If they don't, nix.
And who makes that decision? You and I. That's that's our part. That's our part. And it's an individual thing.
We have to pursue the four cardinal virtues. We have to avoid the capital sins. Who is the we? The individual person. Do we work at it?
Do p do we have that sense of daily improving our lives by obedience, by humility, by being thoughtful of God's presence, by being thoughtful of my obligations to my neighbor, of making those things really present in my daily hourly living? Or do I say, well I'm going to a meeting tonight to see about the hunger problem in The Sudan, and do what I want during the day. This is a serious question, very serious. And so and it's the answer comes from you individually, and the answer comes from you individually day by day. That when you wake up and you put your two feet on the floor, you say, my god, I've got you've given me, you have given me another day.
Help me to turn it back to you in a better form than when I began it this morning. It's possible with your grace, and do it every day. Name of the father, son, holy spirit. Amen.