A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. The scribes and Pharisees said to Jesus, John's disciples fast frequently and offer prayers. The disciples of the Pharisees do likewise. Yours, on the contrary, eat and drink freely. Jesus replied, can you make guests of the groom fast while the groom is still with them?
But when the days come that the groom is removed from their midst, they will surely fast in those days. Jesus then proposed to them this figure. No one tears a piece from a new coat to patch an old coat. If he does, he will only tear the new coat, and the piece taken from it will not match the old. Moreover, no one pours new wine into old wineskins.
If he tries to do it, the new wine will burst the old skins. The wine will spill out. Even the skins will be lost. New wine should be poured into fresh skins. No one after drinking old wine wants new wine.
He says, I find the old wine better, and this is the gospel of the lord. Praise you, lord Jesus Christ. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. There's much in that reading which bears comment. Look how down to earth our blessed lord is talking about matching cloth.
You think he was a seamstress, and he certainly knew a thing or two about wine. But I wanna take up the theme of Saint Augustine in Monaco. Now Augustine died in April, but it's not about Augustine I want to talk, just the theme. Because about a hundred years later, Gregory the great was born. Now Gregory died around June, a little more than that, but think of it in about a hundred years after after Augustine died, Gregory the great was born.
Now we celebrated his feast yesterday. See, we passed these things over without thinking about them. The Catholic church is a present tense thing. Now the reason I'm all wound up about this is that if you've been listening to the news on certain channels or even if you haven't, if you've reading the papers or almost anything you're doing these days, if you have your eyes and your ears open, you cannot escape the fact that the holy father is going to come to The United States at September 10 in Miami, that there's been great opposition from the Jews, that secondly, and above all, from dissidents in the Catholic church who want little of the holy father. They don't want him.
They talk about a new church, that the church is for the people. He should listen to us, and this is especially the gays talking. Only last night, it was very, very pitiful. Of course, it it it doesn't present the position of the church clearly at all, let me tell you, because the Catholic church has the simple position of our lord Jesus Christ. You love the sinner, but you hate his sin.
Of course, the modern mind, having no sense of logic, can't make that distinction. But I wanna come back to the fact that these people are talking about a new church. Who wants to belong to a new church? We wanna belong to the church of Jesus Christ, which didn't start with Luther or Calvin or Zwingli. That's our only reason for calling ourselves Christians is that we follow in the footsteps of Christ.
Of course, that's logic. And if it's logical, it's wrong in the modern mind because the and I'm not exaggerating this in the least. We must follow our feelings, feelings. And I feel good in my sexuality of being a practicing homosexual. That's what we're told.
Therefore, the church must modify its law as if the church could change that law, that there is a certain morality right in human nature and in the nature of god's creation that we call the world. The world didn't come to be simply by some kind of a a mindless development, that's a myth. That was exploded in the nineteenth century, John Stuart Mill, and the rest of them. So if there is some kind of a law of nature and every time you get in an airplane, every time you drive your car, you are signing your signature that there is a law of nature. We call them physical laws.
Well, if there's a destiny for this world, if there's a destiny for men and women, then there is a law which binds them to that destiny. That's the simple fact. You can't escape it. And for these good people to try to identify homosexuality and not eating meat on Friday, it shows the most grievous, abysmal, confusion. These are not in the same category at all.
There's nothing wrong in eating meat anytime, but there's something essentially wrong and unnatural about a practicing homosexual. Now the point I wanna make this morning is this. These people are talking about a new church of this doctor Luther, for example. She says, why why they don't throw her out is beyond me. Yet she'll be teaching in a Catholic college run by the Jesuits next semester.
Here's a woman who who who doesn't accept practically any doctrine of the Catholic church and says she was she wants to begin a new church. But on the other hand, it's better to infiltrate what we have to take it over. Now I'm not exaggerating this. This is just just in yesterday's paper or the day before. At least the paper I read.
What I want to bring home is to be a Catholic means to have a a continuing continuing link with Jesus Christ through his rock of Peter. And that is why I wanna bring in Gregory the great this morning whose feast was yesterday. And I'm going to read just a brief briefly from a letter. It's his own letter. This was from our Breviary.
He says, anyone he calls himself a watchman as being the pope. He came out of a monastery. He was a monk. He says anyone appointed to be a watchman for the people, for the people, must stand on a height for all his life to help them by his foresight. How hard it is for me to say this.
Now this is a man who died in 06/2010. He is one of us. We wanna be one with him if we are to be a follower of Jesus Christ in the church of Jesus Christ. He says, how hard it is for me to say this, for by these very words, I denounce myself. I cannot preach with any competence.
And yet insofar as I do succeed, still I myself do not live my life according to my preaching. A very humble man. Since I have assumed the burden, however, of pastoral care, my mind can no longer be collected. It is concerned with so many matters. Now think of this with relative to your own life and what I've said so often.
How you are in the world, you've got to use the world, yet you must rise above the world and not be of the world. It's a tremendous job. So listen to what Gregory says. I am forced to consider the affairs of the church and of the monasteries. I must weigh the lives and the acts of individuals.
Charlie Kern. I am responsible for the concerns of our citizens. He was, of course, the the reigning monarch of Rome. I remember, this is this is the fifth century. I am responsible for the concerns of our citizens.
I must worry listen. I must worry about the invasion of roving bands of barbarians. Remember, when Augustine was dying, the vandals were at the city gates. And beware of the wolves who lie in wait for my flock. They come from within the fold.
I must become an administrator, lest the religious go in want. I must put up with certain robbers, put up with them, you tolerate them, without losing patience. And at times, I must deal with them with all charity. With my mind divided now listen how true this is of our personal life. This is Gregory writing in the fifth century.
With my mind divided and torn to pieces by so many problems, how can I meditate or preach wholeheartedly? It is so opposite today. Our holy father is going to face some real problems. If you wanna know what he's going to face, go back and read what happened to him in Holland when he visited that a few years ago. It's gonna happen here.
But don't let your confidence and your faith be shaken. You've got to come back to the truth. Why are you sitting in these pews this morning? Why? Why are you here at a mass?
What is the mass? Is it just a communion rite, a coming together as our doctor divine says? She likes the music. She likes the homilies. She likes the community spirit.
She gets solace. Is that why you're here? Or are you here because you say the mass is a sacrifice? Vatican two says that the heart and the soul of Christian worship is the sacrifice of the mass. Notice, it didn't say Eucharist.
It doesn't say communion. It says the sacrifice of the mass because it's by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross that we are saved, and that's what the church exists for, salvation, not in this world, in the next. And so if you think these times are troubled, let not your heart be disturbed. Remember that. Christ said on this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
It will be turbulent. The little old ship, the bark of Peter, will be will be swaying all around on its anchor. It'll it'll be tossed around as if in the very next minute it will be lost, but it has not been lost. It's been declared dead many times. But here it is in 1987.
USA, let not your heart be troubled nor let it be disturbed. Our lord said, I am with you until the end of time. In the name of the father and the son, holy spirit, amen.