A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. I love this story. It's very good. Jesus upon entering Jericho, that's down by the the lake and I mean, down by the sea and also by the Jordan, passed through the city. It was then in his town, very beautiful place.
There was a man there named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and a very wealthy man. He was trying to see what Jesus was like, but being small of stature, wasn't able to do so because of the crowd. Zacchaeus first then ran on in front and then climbed up a sycamore tree, which was along the route that Jesus was following, in order to get a good look at him. When Jesus came to the spot under the tree, Zacchaeus looked up Jesus looked up and said, Zacchaeus, hurry down.
I want to stay at your house today. Zacchaeus quickly descended and welcomed Jesus with delight into his house. When this was observed, everyone, notice it says everyone, began to murmur. He has gone to a sinner's house as a guest. Remember, the tax collector was a very grievous sinner.
Zacchaeus stood his ground and said to the lord, I give half of my belongings to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone in the least, I pay him back fourfold. That's pretty honest. And Jesus said to Zacchaeus, today, salvation has come to this house for this is what it means to be a son of Abraham. The son of man has come to search out and to save what was lost, sinners.
And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord. May we live the faith that we profess and, trust your promise, oh lord, of eternal life. This is the first prayer of today's mass following the intro. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen.
Last Sunday, I devoted my well chosen remarks, of course. I devoted them to this great problem of reconciling god's power, his love, and his faithfulness to the fact of these terrible catastrophes. And I summarized the whole business. I I dealt with it not as a philosopher, but from a point of view of a Christian facing this problem, and it's a real problem. And I made no promises of solving it.
I only suggested a way of confronting it, of living with it, of making it make sense. Not understanding it, but making it make sense in the whole in the whole drama of being a Christian, which begins with that baptism font back there and ends, at least in this world, with a corpse being brought up here. Because this our the world is not our home. And this business of thinking of Earth as a paradise or that something that we can make that paradise is most whatever else it is, it's unchristian, very unchristian. Our lord said, my kingdom is not of this world.
He said that. Now today, I wanna deal mostly with this idea of faith. And right away, we have to face a very grievous problem. It's a very serious problem because the English language is so horrible in many ways. But this word faith in English has a lot of ambiguities.
It has at least two categories of meaning, and they're very different. The chief meaning since the sixteenth century in Martin Luther is trust. Trust. Confidence. That we are emotionally persuaded, convinced of a person's loyalty, fidelity, trustworthiness, and all of that.
That it's like a little child putting his hand in his father or his his mother's hand. He doesn't ask motives of credibility. Why should I trust this guy? He simply trusts. That's one meaning of it, and that's the meaning I'm going to we're going to use this morning.
But the other meaning is one of belief, one of testimony, one of credibility, the sort of thing that goes on in your law courts where we say, I believe in one god, the father almighty, and so forth. Credo in unum deum. Notice that accusative case. Anyway, I wanna deal with faith as trust, confidence, be persuaded of God's care of me of me. Remember how I quoted that black woman who was put on TV after that horrible catastrophe of October 17 in in San Francisco.
All this good she had lost everything. All she had was the clothes on her back, and she was the most tranquil looking person. You many of you saw it. I'm sure. She said something like this.
It's god's world, and he will look after us. That's putting it right down on the line. But there's a lot more to it. Now since last Sunday, I have I got ahold of a letter, not a letter, but the a copy of the homily that archbishop John Quinn gave the following Sunday after the October 17. He gave it twice.
He gave it in a church down in the Marina area where all or most of the destruction and death took place, and then he gave it in the cathedral. It's a very good a very a very fine homily. He he devoted most of it to a consideration he called it a meditation. He to four pictures that he says are in the museum, the M. H.
De Jong Museum of San Francisco. And these pictures are illustrations from the gospels of Christ dealing with humanity, with us. The fourth one is not from the gospels, but it's a summary, he says, and it's true. It's a the fourth one of these pictures is a summary of the first three, and it's that one that I'm going to emphasize. But let's take a look at the first three.
The first picture, the archbishop said, has to do with our lord at the grave of Lazarus. We all know that picture, but we don't think about it enough. Our blessed lord came to the tomb of Lazarus and to be with the sisters of the dead man. He knew what he was going to do. It's even it we even have a foretaste of it in the whole narrative.
He's standing before the tomb. He knows he's gonna give back Lazarus to his sisters. He knows he's gonna bring Lazarus out of the tomb, and yet god almighty. Remember that in Jesus Christ is one person, and that person is god. God almighty standing there at the tomb, knowing what he's going to do, but seeing the sorrow, grief of Lazarus' sisters and his friends, we are told Jesus wept.
Some some have said that is the most beautiful phrase sentence in the whole gospels. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. But it's very significant emotions of sorrow and grief are perfectly compatible with with belief in God and trust in God and the hope of eternity and all the rest. There is nothing to be ashamed of in tears.
Read Homer. So our blessed lord, the archbishop pointed out, our blessed lord is one of us in our griefs. Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus. The second picture, the archbishop says, has to do with Calvary. Our blessed lord is hanging upon the cross, and closest to the cross are the Roman soldiers who crucified him, and there also is his mother and some other women and John.
And our lord looks down and speaks to his mother, behold your son. And then he speaks to John, behold your mother. Archbishop Quinn interprets that as Mary sharing in human suffering. Remember, she is 100% human in every way, and I'm the first one to insist that she knew a lot of what was going on on Calvary. I know there's a lot of controversy about that, but a lot of it is just moonshine as CS Lewis would say.
Mary was for a lot of good reasons, we can assume that she knew, not perfectly, but that she had some conception conception of what was going on. But at the same time, she knew what pain and suffering was. And as a mother, she knew what what her son was going through. It isn't that she despaired. Remember Christ said, my god.
My god. Why have you abandoned me? Remember those words that Christ felt abandoned on the abandoned even by his heavenly father. Can we expect anything better when we're in the dumps? Anyway, archbishop Quinn said, here we have our blessed mother who is a a complete sharer, participant in our griefs, and that is certainly true.
Mother, dolla, Rosa, sorrowful mother. Then the archbishop said there's a third picture in this museum. The that these are all taken from the gospels, of course, and that is the the upper room. Our blessed lord is as far as the apostles, as of as far as the people assembled in that room knew, the whole business was over. All their expectations of what Jesus was supposed to do and what how the world was to be changed, it was all kaput, finished.
And there they are scared to death of what is going to happen to them because they were known followers of Jesus. And we are told that they were there behind securely locked doors. And then Jesus appears in their midst. And the first thing he says to them is, peace be with you. His first words, peace be with you.
And then he tells them about the holy spirit and that the holy spirit will come upon them and they then they will have strength. Is that the way it worked? It surely did. Here you have a handful of people scared to death, confused, without understanding of what it was all about, their all their sacrifices, what given up. Remember, they left everything to follow Jesus, that it was all for nothing.
And then Jesus Jesus appears and says, my peace be with you. And the holy ghost descends upon them. They fling open the doors, and they go out, and they preach Jesus crucified from the temple. And the the whole archbishop Quinn says, there's the third point, that we have the holy spirit confirmation to give us the strength of the good counselor. So we have Jesus pictured then as a a very much of a participant in our griefs and our sorrows.
We have Mary, the mother of sorrows with us, and here we have the promise and the actuality of the holy spirit that is in comes to us in the sacrament. That doesn't explain the catastrophe. That doesn't explain evil, but it tells us how we can deal with it as Christians. Not as blind people, not that and and certainly not that we understand everything about it, but certainly that we have the trust in Jesus Christ's promise and that we're trying to live the faith that we profess. Then comes the fourth picture, which our spishop Quinn says is not from the gospels, but it summarizes the other three.
And this is his story. That during the second world war, a Catholic chaplain was taken prisoner by the enemy. He doesn't mention who the enemy was. He was he was tortured, beaten, and left dying in his cell. And then with his own blood, he he wrote on the prison cell, in eternal.
I have hoped in you, o god, and you will never let me down. That's my translation. You will never let me down. And then he died. That's all the I have no other details.
It's certainly recalled Maximilian Kobe in Auschwitz, where to the very last Kolbe landed. He outlived all the rest. As matter of fact, they had to they had to execute him by injecting some poison. And up to the very last, he was singing psalms and helping the others to have faith in Jesus Christ for whom they were dying. Now here is this priest in absolute aloneness.
See, all all the talk that I hear today about this business, about community and society and all that, remember, we come into this world alone, but but we have mothers and fathers. But we come alone naked, And that's how we leave the world, and that's how we stand before god. You with a name and individual. You are the one who has to say, I have believed in you. I have hoped in you.
I, you alone, society can't make an act of faith. Community can't make an act of faith. Only the communicants can make an act of faith. It's the only reality. Communities are an idea, a thought.
So we stand alone. Not that we can't not that we don't get assistance from other people, but there are plenty of times when there's nobody around to give us assistance. There wasn't any a bad body around to help Maximilian Kobe. There wasn't anybody around to help this tortured priest. He died in darkness and solitariness, that's the way a lot of us die.
That's why we have the last rites where Jesus speaks for me when I can no longer think or speak. And the priest wrote those words in his blood. And to me this is mine. I don't impose this upon the good archbishop. To me, that's significant because we write those words with our lives, with our blood.
Blood is a sign of life, usually, in some ways. We write those words with our life. In the opening, as I say, in the first prayer today, we say that we that let our faith be shown in works. And Saint James says, without good works, your faith is dead. Of course, Luther tossed that out, called it the straw epistle because he didn't agree with his ideas of faith.
But we know that faith without good works is dead, and the first good work is to say to god, I believe in god. And that means I accept his promises. I I'm the only one who can do that for me. Nobody people can help me. Society can help me.
The church can help me, but I'm the only one who can say credo. I believe. And believe means hope. I'm telling you, I'm using the word belief here now in the sense of trust, of confidence. In you, O Lord, I have had confidence.
I will not be disappointed. You will not let me down. You will not let me down. Down. And that is the Christian's answer to this matter of well, it's the answer to evil.
That's what it boils down to. But this disaster remember, October 17 was really on the heels of this terrible tornado hurricane Hugo that came in from the East, and people are still suffering from both and plenty are still suffering from Hugo and will and will. Some lives have been destroyed. Whether they can be built up again, I don't know. Written with his own blood in that dark cell.
And believe me, folks, it it a lot it does this doesn't happen a lot in our lives, but it it happens and can happen sometimes. Only once did Maximilian Kobe go into that cell. Only once did this priest fall a victim to the his captors and was tortured and left to die. Only once. Some lives do not have to face a calamity or what seems to be an utter catastrophe, but plenty of people do face it.
Plenty of people do suffer it. And how do they confront it? As I've said many times, you don't get off the hook by saying god has nothing to do with it, that it's nature. That's baloney. That's ridiculous.
That's kids talk. If you believe in god and if you believe that God is running the world, in other words, that the world is contingent, you cannot exclude God from them. You have to admit that God is all good, all loving, and all powerful. And yet in some way, he allows these horrible things to happen. Dostoevsky has pages on this.
It's the classical source and especially the suffering of innocent children. You can't eliminate god from this. So we've got to look at it, and in the last analysis, we have to say, my lord and my god, I believe help thou my unbelief. Belief. But remember, you can't even say that, much less act upon it, without the holy spirit strengthening you.
Strengthening you. We are confirmed in that sacrament. That's what happens, and we are promised that. We are not that we are going to understand, not that we can give a fine philosophical explanation, that we can ration, although there's plenty to be said on this. But when it when it comes down to the nitty gritty basic fact is that it is a mystery.
But it is, as Chesterton said, a mystery is not a muddle. There is no reason for us to be confused because I don't completely understand. There's practically nothing in this world I completely understand, not even how the typewriter work that I wrote this thing on. So understanding is one thing. Acceptance is another.
And our blessed lord never promised us a full information. He doesn't demand that we understand. All that he asks is that we accept, that we stand up and say, my lord and my god. Even when the going gets toughest, when the night is darkest, even with Christ on the cross when I say, my lord and my god, why have you abandoned me? I still believe.
In the name of the father, and the son, and holy spirit. Amen.