A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Today's Wednesday, isn't it? As Jesus and his disciples were making their way along, someone said to Jesus, I will be your follower wherever you go. Jesus said in reply, the foxes have their layers. The birds of the sky have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay even his head.
To another, Jesus said, come after me. The man replied, let me first bury my father. Jesus said to him, let the dead bury their dead. Come away and proclaim the kingdom of God. Yet another said to Jesus, I will be your follower, Lord, but first, let me leave my people at home.
Jesus said to him, whoever puts his hand to the plow but keeps looking back is unfit for the reign of God. 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.
Again, this is not one of the texts that you find on Easter cards, on Christmas cards. You don't find this. This is one of our lord's severe sayings. Now it's very difficult for us to really grasp the impact of what our lord says. Here he's telling a Jew not to go back and bury his father.
Now you think of the book of Tobias, that gives you a picture of the tremendous importance that was given to the obligation of burying the dead. And here's our lord telling a son, let your father alone. Come follow me. This is a hard saying, believe me. And more than one person has had to face up to this explicitly and leave all things, or at least leave everything that they most cherished in this life to follow the call of Jesus Christ.
We call that a vocation. Now the trouble with that word vocation is that we associate it with being a priest, a nun, a brother, or what have you. Vocation simply means a calling. Voco vocare, I called, one of the first Latin verbs you you learn when you're taking that very dead language. We are all called.
There's no there's no ambiguity about that. We are the very fact of baptism, and that's what makes that baptism of font back there so terribly significant that we have the visit that we we see it. It's visible. That by baptism, we are all called to one common goal. We don't have different goals.
We are all called to follow Jesus Christ in this world, to be happy with him forever in the next. You can't say it more simply than that. And yet that's what we are all called. Now, the way we we the way we get there can be different. But there's no difference in the quality of the calling.
That's what I'm trying to make. We are all we all have a vocation. God calls us all to come follow me. Now, if there's one thing that has me very I don't know how to attack it. It's such a an an amorphous thing.
But I since I've been in this parish, which is now since '68, nearly twenty years, I there have been several instances of where young men and women have expressed that there it was not a a woman in this parish, it was elsewhere, to be a nun. They got no support from their Catholic families whatsoever. And and now that's my own experience. I've read it time and again. Remember, anyone who's aware of what's going on in in in our Lord's Church realizes we are we are having a frightful dearth of vocations for the priesthood and for the religious life.
The average age of a priest today is 56. That's the average. We haven't had a single priest from this parish. We have one on the way now, but it's a second career. Jim Murray doing alright so far.
But there is parents don't want their boys and girls to go into what we call religion. Now whether they would say that explicitly, I don't know. But remember, there are many ways of talking and giving impressions and persuading people that you don't put into words. It's a whole attitude. As I said less yesterday, we have lost our supernatural perspective.
I had a baptism Sunday, and I found myself saying the regular things which are which as far as the Catholic faith is concerned, they are true. That baptism is a rebirth. And you say a rebirth into what? Well, what can you say? Well, we try to say the supernatural life, a new way of living, a new destiny, and there were about 25 people present.
I looked around, and I don't think I was making the slightest contact. They had no conception of what I was talking about. Maybe I was wrong. I would be delighted to be wrong, but I don't think so. We have lost the supernatural, and I mean it is in the church.
We are so involved with this world and make it a more comfortable world in eliminating, as we say, the injustices of the world. And plenty of those people saying that are performing acts of injustice themselves. Although they say, well, it's all for a good cause. There's a higher cause and all that, you know. We come back to our blessed lord.
He did not pull any punches. He said you notice, I'm talking about everybody. We are called to follow Christ. And notice how our lord said, even if it's to bury your father, when I call, come after me. That's a that's a hard saying.
And he's he emphasizes it. He gives other examples of it. Don't go home to say even goodbye to your parents. I have been present when a young lady was going into the convent. You think she was going to die.
You thought you thought it was a a funeral. Now I understand human feelings. After all, Christ wept at the tomb of his friend, Lazarus. He wept. Christ cried.
He had feelings. But you see, the point I'm making is is there's no joy coming through the tears. And it's it's such a false impression of what's going on. You think they were losing their child forever. Now you said, now what do you do about this?
I oh, I can I know the words? But how do you change this whole view when you say, I'm in this world because God put me in this world to be happy with him forever in the next. And what happens to me in this world is has value only in so far as it helps me to the next. Now we say that, but when it comes down to the crunch, living it can be cruel. But that's the whole perspective of being a Christian, to follow Christ.
And he calls his shots, and some of them are pretty grievous. He says, come follow me. I don't even know how a place to put my head, but come on, follow me. He doesn't give us certitude. He doesn't make any promises.
The only promise he made was if he if we take up his his cross, we will find it light and his burden sweet. That's the promise he made, and it's been proved time and again. And so let let us what can we do to foster vocations? We've gotta change the atmosphere of life. All I hear from our young people is making money.
I and these are the these are boys and girls going to Catholic schools for the most part. I want a good job. They don't talk about education. It's just getting out of school to get a good job. And school has worth only for getting a good job.
I'm not exaggerating this at all. We have lost our supernatural perspective. Yet, that's what we're in, the supernatural order, not the natural order of a Rousseau or a Comte or a John Stuart Mill or even a John Dewey. God has called us to himself in a whole new order of being, and that should be our sense of value. It's difficult, very difficult, in our own I mean, in my own life, to keep our perspective clear.
As an old priest friend of mine used to say, quid, odd, eternity. When anything went wrong, he would say, what value has this for eternity? So he'd go and have a glass of wine and forget it. He was a good Christian and a wonderful priest. And so, when we listen to our lord's word, let them let us take this he's speaking to me.
He's speaking to you. Not to give up, not to make other people make your sacrifices, but that we follow Jesus Christ. He leads where, in a certain sense, we do not know. But in another sense, we know very well. He's leading us through himself to his heavenly father and our eternity.
In the name of the father, the son, holy spirit. Amen.