A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. One of the guests at a party said to Jesus, happy is he who eats bread in the kingdom of god. Our lord replied, a man was giving a large dinner and he invited many At dinnertime, he sent his servants to those who were invited, come along, everything is ready. But the invited people began to excuse themselves one and all. The first one said to the servant, I have bought some land and must go out and look at it.
Please excuse me. Another one of those invited said, I have bought five yoke of oxen and I have to go out to test them. Please hold me excused. Third man said, I just got married and so I cannot come. The servant, returning to his master, reported all of this.
The master of the house got angry at the account that he he got from his servant. So he said to him, go out quickly into the streets, into the alleys of the town, and bring in the poor and the blind and the crippled and the lame. The servant reported back after after some time, your orders have all been carried out, my lord, and there's still room. The master then said to his servant, go out into the highways and along the hedgerows and force them to come in. I want my house to be full, but I tell you, not one of those invited shall even taste a morsel of my dinner.
And that is the gospel. The good news of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. Well, that that reading from Saint Luke certainly does invite a number of comments.
But in view of what happened two weeks ago yesterday in the stock market, I wanna refer to a single little sentence from Saint Paul talking, writing to the Romans. Saint Paul says, you heard it once this morning, we, though many, are one body in Christ. Now here's the punchline. An individually members, one of another. We are one body in Christ and individually members one of another.
Now I've just spent about two weeks of trying to read carefully certain documents from Vatican II. One on the constitution of the church and the other one on the church in the modern world, meaning our contemporary world. Now the big issue is how do you reconcile. In fact, man as an individual and man as a social being. That's putting in the abstract language, which Saint Paul is putting in very concrete terms.
How do you put these together? Because so often they act against each other. And yet as Christians, as Catholics, we're bound to try to hold them together. And the answer in the the basic answer to this you remember, we're talking about matrimony. That's a society.
What holds a husband and wife together? Well, with today, it's nothing's holding them together because half of them are splitting. Why are they splitting? Because there's nothing holding them together. They got married because they couldn't think they could live without each other.
Of course, that passes with a honeymoon. Then they discover they can't live with each other. Now remember what the when Christ was asked, what is the greatest commandment? You know what he said. He didn't say love your neighbor.
That would be John Stuart Mill. He didn't say love yourself, that would be plain egotism. A lot better than loving your neighbor, of course, more satisfactory. If you have a choice, why should I love my neighbor over myself? But Christ said, love God.
Love God. And when our Lord said that, he he's quoting from the Old Testament. Remember, it's nothing new. That's taken from Leviticus and from Exodus. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, with thy whole soul, with thy whole mind, with all that you are.
And that is the first and the greatest commandment, not love of neighbor, of community, of social life, and all that nonsense. It's god, And God is no nonsense. He makes sense because it makes no sense for you to tell me I have to prefer my neighbor to myself. That's ridiculous unless you can give me a very good reason for doing it. And what is the reason if there's no god involved?
And Dostoevsky was he saw this very clearly. It was the theme of all his later books. That if there's no god, don't tell me I have to love my neighbor. The answer to why I have to love my neighbor is exactly the same answer why I have to love myself. Because love of self comes after love of God, and neighbors in third place.
Because our lord when he quotes from the Old Testament, our lord then continues, and love your neighbor as you love yourself. So self love becomes the standard of loving neighbor, but the ultimate love is the love of God. And that's the bond that holds me to my neighbor, whether I like him or not, in many instances repulsing. And that's not the issue. You're not asked to love your neighbor because he's lovable, because many of us are not lovable all the time, except if you can see Jesus Christ in your neighbor.
And that's a whole new ballgame. That's a whole new ballgame. Altruism is for the birds. Even decent birds are have sense enough not to buy that kind of fluff. But when you tell me I have to love my neighbor because I see Jesus Christ in that neighbor, then you're telling me something.
That makes sense. Now maybe maybe maybe that's all a myth. Well, it it may be a myth, but it's a consistent myth. It's a myth that makes sense. But if it just happens that Jesus Christ is the son of god, and if it just happens that there is a god, then this makes complete and total sense.
And anything else makes no sense or nonsense. Now if you think I'm waxing enthusiastic about this, of course, you're absolutely right. Because this is the motive of the day. And I said there's a tie up between what Saint Paul is saying. I don't know whether he foresaw the crash of the market, but whether he did or not, we had one, you know, two weeks ago.
And a lot of people are looking at their bank accounts to see what isn't there. And notice what Saint Paul says again. He says, we, though many, are one body in Christ. He doesn't say because I'm a community or because I love my neighbor or because I love chickens. He says because we are one body in Christ, now here's the point, and individually members one of another.
In other words, we don't dissolve or lose our individuality. We have to hold to these two great truths that I'm an individual and I'm a social being. As I say that stock that crash two weeks ago brought home one important point that these two that these two documents from Vatican two stress that the world today has become a very small integrated world. Because the way the stock market opened in Japan, which opens before New York, in some instances, last week, gave the key to what the stock market in New York was going to do, and that's over in Tokyo. Twenty years ago, this would have been absolutely unthinkable.
Who cares what happens in Tokyo? You don't hear anything about it for a while. And yet here, what was happening here was already being determined to some extent in Tokyo. If you wanna know how closely the world is bound together, there was to me a prime example of it, absolutely hitting you between the eyes because people were asking themselves not what's happening on the New York exchange, but they were listening to their TVs and their radios, what's happening in Tokyo as if it was next door. Now this is the world we're living, and the whole tendency today is to it's a very contradictory world because in some ways, we are we have exaggerated the individual.
On the other hand, in many instances, the individual has been subjugated to this idea of being a community person. As if it as if there was something very special in in being community minded unless you bring in God and his son Jesus Christ. Where in all the pagan world up until unless they're unless they have a dab of Christianity, where do you find any social welfare in the pagan world? It didn't exist because nobody thought about it. Today, in some instances, we can't get enough of it.
And so here this this thing struck me terrifically that that we are one body in Christ and individually members one of another. You don't lose your individuality. And then Saint Paul goes on to say that everybody should try to function according to his abilities and not to try to be to be something that you are not. If you're a teacher, be a good teacher. If you're a good exhorter, be a good exhorter.
If you're going to give alms, give it generously. Be an alms giver. So he says that everybody has their job and do it. And don't be looking over the fence and thinking that the grass is greener. Only dumb horses do that, and they get their necks all scratched up from barbed wire.
This is a very important sense. And as I say, the problem is to hold this together. And don't think of this as something in the abstract. Think of this in the community where you live, whether it be your family, the workplace, your school, whatever. You are part of a little society.
You don't if you think of yourself in terms of being part of the world society, of which indeed you are, it doesn't come home to us. But the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ has to be brought home in the society in where I am living. And there we come face to face with the problem. I'm an individual. I'm responsible to God.
I stand before God alone. I stand before God and say, God, I am not worthy. I have to play the role of a Saint Thomas. And at the same time, I have to realize that my life has an impact upon other people, and they have an impact upon me. And we have to live together.
Why? Because a Christian says we are individually one in the body of Christ, the mystical body of Jesus Christ. In the name of the father, of the son, and of holy spirit. Amen.