A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Jesus crossed the Sea Of Galilee to the shore of Tiberias. A vast crowd kept following him because they saw the signs that he was performing for the sick. He was curing the sick. Jesus then went up to the Mountain and sat down there with his disciples.
The Jewish feast of Passover was near. When Jesus looked up and caught sight of a vast crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, where shall we buy bread for all these people to eat? He knew well what he intended to do, but he asked this to test Philip's response. Well, Philip answered, not even with two hundred days wages could we buy bread enough to give each of these people even a mouthful. One of our Lord's disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to Jesus, there's a boy here who has five barley loaves and a couple of dried fish.
But what good is that for such a multitude? Jesus said, get the people to sit down. Even though the men numbered about 5,000, there was plenty of grass for all of them to find a place on the ground. Jesus then took the bread, the loaves of bread, gave thanks, and passed the bread around to those reclining on the grass. He did the same thing with the dried fish as much as they wanted.
When they all had had enough, Jesus said to his disciples, gather up the crusts that are left over so that nothing will go to waste. At this, the disciples gathered 12 baskets full of pieces left over by those who had been fed with the five barley loaves. When the people saw this sign that Jesus had performed, they began to say, this is undoubtedly the prophet who is to come into the world. At that, Jesus realized that they would come and carry him off a force to make him king. So he fled back to the mountain alone.
And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. The feast of Saint John the Baptist de la Salle has very special meaning for me. Had it not been for Saint John the Baptist de la Salle and for the Christian brothers and for a school that they founded about the days of the civil war in that little old town called Ellicott City, which is now, I'm told, an antique shop, I would not be standing in this pulpit today, that is for sure. Because I never will forget that when I was in the third or the fourth grade when my family moved to Ellicott City, I met a boy there who went to Rock Hill College and he asked me if I wanted to go.
Well, of course I wanted to go because it was this big college up there on top of the hill looking down on the valley. I had not the slightest idea of how it was going to be done. I had and my parents I didn't even consult them, and I was only in the third or the fourth grade, remember. So this young man, one summer evening, took me up to the college to meet the president. Now I'm not I'm not glamorizing this.
This is the way it happened. I'll even I even remember the man's name was brother Pius. And he and brother Alwyn, I remember him because I was with these men for seven or eight years. They were sitting out under a big tree in front of the college. And here I'm only about the fourth grade and I'm coming up and asking them to take me into their school.
I hadn't even talked to told my parents about it. I got in. I stayed with him seven years or eight, probably eight. Now he founded schools that We Catholics today are terribly mixed up about this matter of why the church runs schools and universities. Remember, the church was founded by Jesus Christ to help people save their lives and their souls to go to heaven.
That's putting it as simply as I could put it. It's it's not a welfare organization. It's not an educational organization. It's not a competitor with the NEA. It's it's not a competitor with social work.
It's not a competitor with the arts, the crafts. It's the the Catholic church has one purpose. Going therefore, teach ye all nations, baptizing them, and teach them everything that I have commanded you. Our Lord never suggested that he was founding a church to make this a better world. Now Newman Newman took up this question at the end of the nineteenth century, and he dealt with it absolutely and completely and entirely, but people don't read Newman anymore.
The church exists to bring people to heaven, and that's not done in any collective sense. It's done one by one by one. We each are born individually, and we each die individually. The good shepherd knows his sheep by name by name. And as Newman pointed out, if the church of Jesus Christ is involved in education, if it is involved in art, if it is involved, as we today would say, social work and welfare or charity.
If it's involved in any of these things, if it's involved in running a newspaper, if it's involved in running a cemetery, the only justification for the Catholic church being in any of them is that in some way, these activities further or hasten people's salvation. When I say this, and I'm being emphatic, because we are so mixed up about all this business about the obligation of Catholics to run schools in the middle center of the city and all kinds of things. The point is that when the when the bishops of The United States founded the Catholic Christian and Catholic truth. Truth. See, this is forgotten.
This is forgotten. In many instances, we've handed over our schools and con and universities to the world, to sectors. Someone said you go to a state university to fight for your faith, and you go to a Catholic university to lose it. And that that sounds cynical, but there's a lot of truth in it. I'm I tell you, I'm speaking from a lot of experience.
So let's get it straight. If we're have a school over there, it's because we want that school to serve the purpose that Jesus Christ found in his church, to bring people to heaven. That's our goal. Why did god make you? The second question of the Baltimore Catechism.
He made me to know him, to love him, serve him in this world, to be happy with him in the next. And if the Catholic church is involved in education as it has been, if we have a Saint Ignatius Loyola, if we have a Saint John the Baptist de la Salle or a Pharaoh or a Saint Thomas Aquinas or an Albert the Great or Saint Bonaventure, if we have these men and if the notice, these are all saints that I've mentioned. It isn't because they were educators. It's because they were disciples of Jesus Christ who felt education was necessary. Education was supposed to be the carrier of Christian Catholic truth.
And that had to be preserved in a world remember, this is about LaSalle died in about 1720 or 1719. It was a world which was which wasn't exactly sympathetic towards Christian truth. Of course, that's all changed now. You understand the world is very sympathetic with Catholic truth today. You all know that.
And so today, as we pay homage to Saint John the Baptist tell us out as an educator, remember, before he was an educator, he was a man who wanted to be a saint and to help others likewise. In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.