A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. The tax collectors and sinners, of course, was synonymous, were all gathered together around to hear Jesus, at which the pharisees and the scribes murmured, complained. This man, they said, welcomes sinners and even eats with them. Then Jesus addressed this parable to them. Who among you, if he has a 100 sheep and loses one of them, does not leave the 99 in the wasteland and follow the lost one until he finds it.
And when he finds it, he puts it on his shoulders in jubilation. Once arrived at home, he invites in his friends and his neighbors and says to them, rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep. I tell you, there will likewise be more joy in heaven over one repentant sinner than over 99 righteous people who have no need to repent. What woman, if she has 10 silver pieces and loses one of them, does not light a lamp and sweep the house in diligent search until she has found it? And when she finds it, she calls in her friends and her neighbors to say, rejoice with me.
I have found the silver piece that I lost. I tell you, there will be the same kind of joy before the angels of god over one repentant sinner. And this is the gospel and indeed the good news of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. There's a phrase you hear today quite often, and it drives me up the wall.
It goes as follows. That is being judgmental. We mustn't be judgmental. In other words, we mustn't we mustn't make judgments. Well, if you never make a judgment, you never speak the truth.
Of course, you never speak error either. You don't speak anything. Because if you don't make a judgment, you haven't said anything. You see how absurd we are today? And you hear this all the time in print and in speech.
Don't be judgmental. That's being judgmental. People like the extra marital intercourse and all the rest of it. The gay people and all this stuff. Yes.
Oh, we mustn't be judgmental. What are these people talking about? Because that's a judgment that they're making. And as I say, if you never make a judgment, you never make a stand and you never say anything. Never.
You don't say anything with a question. You don't say anything with an exclamation mark. You don't say anything with an imperative. It's only when you make a judgment that you have truth or falsehood. So if you're never judgmental, you're never going to say anything worth anybody's attention, including your own.
And some people love to hear themselves, including me. What do you make of this nonsense today? Well, it's not all nonsense. There's truth in that. And boy, do we have it today.
Take what Saint Paul is saying, don't look down on your brother. In other words, what he's saying is don't judge your brother. And our lord, here he is associating with tax collectors and sinners and his good friends, the scribes, the pharisees who are very good people who wouldn't be caught dead associating with with the sinners and with the tax collectors. He tells us that there'd be greater joy in heaven over one sinner than over 99 just. It looks like it might be well for us to be first rate sinners to have a lot of rejoicing in heaven, doing God a favor.
But that's what Christ said. He said it. Now what do you make of this? Well, you come back to some very important distinction. Because I say adultery is our atrocious sin, because I say homosexuality in practice is a heinous sin, because I say injustice, stealing, lying, killing, maiming, that these are sins, and I will keep saying they are sins till I die, does not in the least imply any approval or disapproval of the sinner.
Because I'm not talking about the sinner. I'm talking about his sin. And there's a huge distinction here, a distinction which the world around you has completely lost, completely lost. Because as soon as you open your mouth to say that's wrong, unmarried people living together without marriage, it's wrong. It's either fornication or adultery.
Just, oh, that's awful. That's judgmental. You mustn't be judgmental. I haven't said a word about anybody. My judgment is about a certain mode of conduct, not about persons at all.
Whether they're great sinners or not, I don't know. I have no obligation of knowing. I have no responsibility of knowing. I have a very definite obligation not to judge my brother. But I sure can judge what he does.
I come back to my dear old psychiatrist friend who told me the story of I've used this many times, but it's so clear. And it came from a practicing psychiatrist. He was and his son, as every father and son do every night, were washing and drying the dishes. And the little kid drops one of the cups and it goes smashes to pieces. And he looks up at his father and says, Daddy, you think I'm a bad boy, don't you?
Now I got this straight from the man, from his father. So he said, I looked down and said, No son, you're not a bad boy, but you did a bad thing. And you see the tremendous difference between these two. Now I know you can't have sin without a sinner. I know that.
But you remember, the fact that somebody does the action of sin does not imply automatically, ipso facto, that he's guilty or that he's responsible. Think of that poor woman up in Delaware years ago. She came out of her house to go shopping in the morning and with a thousand things on her mind, she looks around her car parked in the driveway, hops, hops in, puts it in reverse and runs over her baby. So she goes back in the house and shoots herself. So there just just recently, I was called in an emergency situation to receive a man into the church.
He'd he had been he had wanted to be a Catholic for forty some years, but he felt he was unworthy. Unworthy because he was a sinner. You see how mixed up we are about Jesus Christ and the church. But we're mixed up about a lot of things, and you're living in a mixed up world. But does that mean that you're supposed to be mixed up and confused?
Just this past week, I met a young man, eight years in a parochial school, four years in a Catholic high school. Now he tells me, there's no such thing as a right and wrong. There's nothing but opinion. And he says it with the assurance of a Plato over not I was gonna say or of a Socrates, but Socrates wasn't sure of anything. Now this is the world where people are they're so confused.
They don't have the ability to think. They don't have the mental training of making distinctions between what a person does and the person. I have any number of people come to me and say, well Christ Christ wasn't against a little bit of extramarital intercourse. Look how he treated the woman taken in adultery. Well, all I say is go and read the text.
There's not a single suggestion there that Christ approved of great deal of love in it as we are told today. Well, we love each other and God will understand. That is the most consoling philosophy I've ever heard. It's coming late in my life, unfortunately. Now this is the world you're living.
Get your thinking straight. Christ loved sinners. He hated sin. And when the church stands up and says it is wrong to commit adultery, that it's a grievous sin, it is wrong to be unjust, it is an evil thing to lie, and it is always wrong and evil to lie, the church is saying what it has to say. It's speaking with the truth of Jesus Christ that there is a truth in this world and that that truth is knewable because God wanted it to be known because he sent his son into the world to tell us.
And so it's one thing to hold up an ideal and to praise those who try and to to follow it and to condemn without any condition, actions which are contrary and contradictory of it, while at the same time as Christ did, taking the sinner to heart. The sinner, not the sin. And so we we come back again to the difficulty of being a good honest to God Christian and Catholic. We so we have to hold the two bulldogs together, and they're fighting. They're both are going in opposite directions.
When you say don't be judgmental, of course, there's a great there's a huge truth in that. But what are you being judgmental about? It's like this thing, you know, people say, well, you know, I'm I don't go to any church, but, you know, I believe in God. And, you know, I follow I follow the good rule or however they express it. And I say, what it is it?
Well, he said they say, you know, doing unto others. They don't even complete the sentence. Doing unto others what? What others? Because in in the actuality of life, you've gotta complete the sentence.
In the actuality of life, you don't have sin without sinners, without people, human beings. And so there there's a tremendous lesson in today's both these readings. Our blessed lord came to save sinners. Never forget it. There you know, there are plenty of good Catholics who are scandalized when the church reaches out and buries with pomp and circumstance some well known sinner, as they say.
I could give you, you know, plenty of instances of it. They're scandalized as if the church existed for saints. And so when Saint Paul says, don't judge your brother. When our Lord uses that wonderful expression about them, don't try to condemn other people when you take out of the mode out of your own eye first. All of these things, he that we have to do this and we have to apply it in our daily lives, not to condemn people, persons.
But on the other hand, we can be judgmental if our judgments are based on the truth of Jesus Christ and not mere opinion of men. We come back to our blessed Lord. I am the way, the truth, and the life. In the name of the father, of the son, and of spirit. Amen.