A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Our lord said to his disciples, be on your guard against performing religious acts for people to see. Otherwise, expect no recompense from your heavenly father. When you give alms, for example, do not blow a horn before you in synagogues and the streets like hypocrites looking for applause. You can be sure this much.
They are already repaid. In giving alms, you are not to let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Keep your deeds of mercy secret, and your father who sees in secret will repay you. That, of course, has little to do with IRS, you understand. When you are praying, our lord continue, continue, do not behave like the hypocrites who love to stand and pray in synagogues or on street corners in order to be noticed.
On the contrary, whenever you pray, go to your room, close the door, and pray to your heavenly father in private. Please notice that's in the word of god. That's part of the good news. We don't always have to be in a great mob to pray to god. Did people forget this?
Our lord said, go into your room and close the door and pray to your heavenly father in private. And when you fast, you are not to look glum as the hypocrites do. They change their appearance of their faces so that others may see that they are fasting. I assure you they already repaid. When you fast, see to it that you groom your hair and wash your face.
In that way, no one can see that you are fasting but your father who is hidden. And your father who sees what is hidden will repay you. And this is the gospel of the lord. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen.
See, here we have another instance of these contradictions in the word, the written word of God. Notice, the word of God is not just a book. The word of God existed at least two two generations before we had a book of any sort. Our lord here is telling us one very important thing, whether it's giving alms, whether it's or whether it's praying, that you you must have this as a relationship between you and god. You're not doing it for men or women.
You're not even doing it for yourself. You're doing it for almighty god. Now our lord had noticed, If you just took this text, you would say, well, Christ is telling us there's no such thing as social worship. We shouldn't get together as communities. All we ought to do in the morning instead of getting out of our nice little warm beds and coming to mass is simply to stay in our room and and be sure to close the door.
If you just took this one little text out of context because remember, our blessed lord was a very faithful church goer. He was in the synagogues on the Sabbath. He took his part in social worship. And he says, wherever a few are gathered in my name, I am in their midst. So, again, we're faced not with an either or situation.
We are faced with a both and situation. But the point our lord is making here, whether you're whether you're worshiping god in dee in good deeds, good charity, almsgiving, or praying, the essence of the thing is you and god. You and the almighty. You and divinity. You and divinity.
See, here's where the orientals, the easterners have something on the West. We are far more rational, intellectual, reasoning. Whereas in the East, there's just far more giving yourself. Give that's all to god almighty. Or as the courier of ours said when someone said, what do you do sitting in that church for hours?
Just sitting. And the curio of ours replied, I look at him. He looks at me. See, here again, we have these contradictions. Is worshiping god one of mere passivity, of looking at god and letting god look at me, or is it going out and giving alms, taking care of the poor, and all of that?
Which is it? It's not which is it. It's a both and. You've got to have both of them. Not an either or.
Both and. The contemplatives in your convents. We still have some. You know? We say, well, they are really passive.
Oh, don't you think for a minute. Just just to see what they do in a in a in their regular day's work, and you'll see it isn't just sitting in a pew and looking at him and he looking at me. On the other hand, there has to be in every life a lot of that. I look at him, he looks at me. It's got to be.
And so when we read as we have this morning, remember here again, as I have said many there's some people who shouldn't read a book, as Lewis said, at CS Lewis, because you can get anything you want out of a book. A book is just so much black stuff or red stuff or yellow stuff on parchment or paper or cloth or what have you. There is not every time you read a book, every person who reads something, it's an interpretation, and you can pick and choose. But if you wanna get a message, you have to try to get an overall picture. In other words, you can't say what does Christ say in Saint Matthew in the passage we said this morning and forget all the rest that Christ said about prayer and worship.
Now you as the if you do a little bit of the history of the church, you will know that heresies, that is separating oneself from the church of Jesus Christ by rejecting his truth, comes not because people pick up something false. They pick up something true and then push it to an exaggeration, and that's what becomes false. For example, you take what we have today, that when you pray, go into your room and close the door and pray to your heavenly father in secret. Alright? If you take that literally, you would have no social worship whatsoever.
You would have no community. You'd have no congregation. You would have no church in the sense of a physical organization. Is that what our lord said? Well, just think of all the other things he said.
Thou art Peter on this rock. I'll build my church and all the rest of it. Come follow me and and go into your synagogue. Go in and pray and all of the rest. So the difficulty in being a good Catholic is to be Catholic, to be Orthodox, to be traditional.
Traditional means you hold on to something that's been given to you. And that means that you try to get the totality of it. And that is a difficult thing. It's the same thing about trying to live a virtuous life. If you only had to practice one virtue, it wouldn't be too difficult.
But if you try it to take one of the virtues and push that and forget the others, you're outside the realm. You're outside the realm. You have to come. You have to hold together all the virtues. That's the rub.
You have to hold together the the totality of the truth of Jesus Christ. And here I come back to the same story. Where do you find that sure, secure, unerring guide that will bring you to that totality of truth? Answer, the rock on which our lord built his church, Peter. The name of the father, and of the son, and the holy spirit.
Amen.