A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Our lord said, woe to you scribes and pharisees, you frauds. You shut the doors of the kingdom of god in men's faces, neither entering it yourself nor admitting those who are trying to get in. Woe to you, scribes and pharisees, you frauds. You travel over sea and land to make a single convert.
But once he is converted, you make a devil of him twice as wicked as yourself. Remember, he's speaking to the Heupel. He's speaking to the to the elite, to the aristocracy of the of the Jewish people face to face. And this is pretty strong stuff. You can't you understand why they didn't exactly love Jesus Christ, many of the pharisees and the scribes.
He goes on to notice, he says, and once you have converted him, you make a devil of him twice as wicked as yourself. That's hard to take, you know. Then our lord continues. It is an evil day for you. Blind guides, and the only thing that opens your eyes is truth.
You declare notice our lord's gonna give them examples. You declare, if a man swears by the temple, it means nothing. But if he swears by the gold of the temple, then he is obligated. Blind fools, which is more important, the gold or the temple which makes the gold sacred? Again, you declare, if a man swears by the altar, it means nothing.
But if he swears by the gift on the altar, he is obligated. How blind you are. Which is more important, the offering or the altar which makes the offering sacred? The man who swears by the altar is swearing by it and by everything on on it. It.
The man who swears by the temple is swearing by it and by him who dwells in it. The man who swears by heaven is swearing by god's throne and by him who is seated on that throne. And this is the gospel of the lord. This are the readings for the day is not not of the feast. The feast of the queenship of Mary does not have to my surprise and astonishment does not have a proper reading.
The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. As we sang that hallelujah verse, where we ask god to do his will, to hear his voice, Great. I was just overwhelmed with a lot of stuff. First of all, this is the most important thing in life is to hear his voice. We call it vocation, a calling.
Now the first thing that comes to my mind, as usual, is a question. I think in questions because I know the problems more than I know the answers. How do you know his voice? When do you hear it? What do you expect?
And yet it's of the most vital importance that you do god's will, that you follow his calling, that you hear his voice, the pronoun his. How do you do this? You going around with an ear trumpet trying to get those wisps out of the thin air on a mountaintop when you're all alone and have a fifth of scotch beside you or a good meal or just got engaged to be married or just been married or made your first holy communion? You know what I'm saying? You're on cloud nine.
What happens on cloud nine is very suspect because it ain't life. It's not reality. It's cloud nine, a cloud. You know how an airplane gets through a cloud? It's a lot of water, more or less.
It's not even good water. What do we mean when we talk about hearing his word? What do we mean? Well, as far as I can see, after a misspent eighty two years is this, duty, d u t y, duty. Now I had the honor of a wedding Saturday, and I said something that I could tell by my audience with whom I had great and close rapport that they were a little astonished.
The bride and groom were here, you know, and it was all it was a beautiful wedding. Everything went smoothly except the organ didn't work, so we put that with a raquiesque card in pate. But we got along just fine. And I turned to the bride and groom and said of course, I was talking to the people in the pews. They of course, they don't know what I was saying.
You know? And we had a good congregation. It's a one time, you know, that you get some people who've never been in church for about two years. So I turned to them and said, look. You are not making a commitment of yourself to each other.
Well, you could have heard a pin drop then because everybody talks about commitment. No. We live together without this holy without any ceremony because we are committed to each other. We're committed to a lot of things, more or less. So I said we are you are not committed to each other.
Ultimately or primarily none. Notice those two adverbs. Because you are individually committed to god first, individually. It's all it's alright to talk about this oneness of marriage, but you don't cease to be an individual before god almighty. Our lord said, you're one of one flesh.
We have that ceremony, the candles. We have the idea of the music coming from the strings of the violin. We have the idea of a troika for marriage. These are all good figures of speech, and they all tell us something. But the truth is, when you get married, you you stand committed as you were committed on the day of your baptism to God.
First, last, and always. And if if married people or unmarried people or semi married people, if they adhere to their commitment to god, they're gonna be committed to each other because that's what they're going to do in that wedding ceremony. They are going to commit themselves to each other. But that commitment is a very fragile thing, believe me, if it is does not rest upon that individual commitment to god as being individually responsible to god, not to man even at your husband or your wife, your mother-in-law, your father-in-law, your son, or your daughter. It's that simple.
Do you hear his voice? See, some people and I'm not talking in theory. There's so much talk about this charismatic. I have great respect for it. I do.
But many people have entirely a false impression of what it means to hear god's voice. They are actually listening for the voice because some people get it. And I met plenty of them over in Saint Elizabeth's or over in Spring Grove. Neither of those institutions are dedicated to those who are mentally healthy. What do we mean when we're saying, listen.
Hear his voice. What are you doing? What do you expect? How how does it operate in the daily nitty gritty affairs of life? I'll tell you how it operates.
Duty, your personal responsibility, your commitments that you made before God and before man. And I'm not talking just about marriage. Did I if I did not love duty more, how I I would love you less. That's not very good quotation, but you get the point. This is so solid.
It is so simple that god made me to know him, to love him, to serve him in this world, to be happy with him in the next. How do you serve him? How? I mean, you gotta answer that question. And you serve god by answering his calling, by listening to his voice.
And where do you hear that voice? By the commitments and responsibilities that you have in one and they're all cornered. They are not on the same level, not at all, But their the word duty covers them all. You have a duty by contract. You have a duty by natural law.
You have a duty by church law. You have a duty because of commitments of a religious sort which were made in baptism, which surpasses all these other duties. We're surrounded with duties. People don't even wanna hear the word duty. What we hear today is the word right.
Right. My rights. Does anybody ask themselves that if there's a right, somebody's got a duty or an obligation? And if you have a right to something, you may have a corresponding duty for the very same reason that you have the right. Of course, people don't think about they don't think about the just ask.
The next person talks about right, just simply say, what do you mean by right? R I g h t. Because some of them won't won't know what you're talking about if you say w r I t e. You see, we are a literate nation. And so I ask plead with you.
God's word is that is not so mysterious. The trouble is it's not always welcome. It's not always welcome. It isn't something that we always wanna rush out and embrace. And when you start thinking that way, just think of our blessed lord in Gethsemane.
And you're no better than Jesus Christ, the son of god. That I will take my stand on, and few will convert it. And what happened to him in Gethsemane? Did he want to do god's will in the sense of being enthusiastically embracing it? Far from it.
He sweat blood. He begged his father to be freed of doing his duty. What is the clincher? Not my will, but thine be done. It's that simple.
Duty. Because in many instances, it's the what we would most and least want to do is duty. We don't have to hunt for it, generally. It's usually right on our threshold, right at our feet, but we don't want it. We don't wanna see it.
And don't be surprised. That's human. Matter of fact, it's divine because Jesus Christ knew all about duty, and he was the son of god. In the name of the father, and the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.