A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Of course, the scene is on Calvary. The people stood there watching, and the leaders kept jeering at Jesus saying, he saved others. Let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, the chosen one. Soldiers also made fun of Jesus, coming forward to offer him their sour wine saying, if you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.
There was a an inscription over Jesus' head on the cross, and the inscription read, this is the king of the Jews. One of the criminals hanging in crucifixion with Jesus blasphemed him saying, aren't you the Messiah? Then save yourself and save us. But the other criminal rebuked him saying, have you no fear of god seeing you are under the same sentence? We deserve it after all.
We are only paying the price for the crimes that we have done. But this man has done nothing wrong. He then said to Jesus, Jesus, remember me when you enter upon your reign into your kingdom. And Jesus replied, I assure you this day you will be with me in paradise. And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord.
One of those criminals, there were two of them, who were executed, were crucified with Jesus. One of them said to Jesus, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And Jesus said to him, truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise. And this is another translation of the same text from Saint Luke. In the name of the father, of the son, and of the holy spirit.
Amen. Notice how our lord goes from the word kingdom because that's the correct word there where they get this rain. I don't know. But our lord does not say you're gonna be with me in my kingdom. He says you're going to be with me in paradise.
As far as I know, as far as I recall, and I emphasize that as far as I recall, this is the only instance where our blessed lord assured anybody that they were that they were going to be in heaven, that they were sure of it. And that's what he tells this command. This day, you're going to be with me in paradise. Not just in paradise, but with me because that is paradise. Today is the last Sunday of the liturgical year.
Next Sunday will be New Year's or liturgical year. It is also the feast of Christ the king. And as I've said, that's not very favorable word today. People don't like the word king. We're all democrats and we're all for democracy, whatever that is.
But Christ is absolute. And we like the picture he may know is this gentle business. Forget it. Read the New Testament. That's all I ask.
Read the New Testament. Of course, he's gentle, but he's a lot of other things besides being gentle. He's just. He can be extremely severe. All he ever talked about was taking up his cross.
That's the kind of a king. He reigned from a cross. So we today are celebrating the kingship, the absoluteness of god almighty in his son, Jesus Christ. And let us not forget it. The universe of god is not a democracy.
Now Saint John has a little bit more to say about this than Saint Luke, so I'm using him. But you see, this title is very important. Pilate's the man who thought it up. He's the one who wrote Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews, and had it up there in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, meaning Aramaic probably. And the chief priest said, oh, no.
Don't write that. Write that he said he was king of the Jews. And Pilate turned to him and said, what I have written, I have written. So there it is, the lord of the universe on the cross, king. What kind of a king?
Well, he's the king, and time if as an absolute pragmatic situation, times proved much more for him than it is proved against him. He's still around. Where's the Roman Empire? Now last Sunday, I spoke obliquely of heaven. I spoke really on on grief.
And that in times of severe grief, what matters is our bringing ourselves to the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ. It's no time to be talking in with a lot of words. It's one that's better to put one arm around the grieving person's shoulder and hold the crucifix in the other and say nothing because that's salvation, the cross. Today, I wanna talk about heaven explicitly. It's our home.
It's our destiny. If we miss it, we've missed everything. Now even if even as I say that, I know this is in in the world in which we live, what we've gone through in the last couple of weeks, and even yet last night. I don't know what the story is in Czechoslovakia right now. But what's going on in the world with thanksgiving coming and now with all the the hellebaloo about Christmas?
Everybody's talking if we if we don't make 50% of our income between now and Christmas, we are almost failing for the year. That's the keynote of the times we're living in. And I'm standing up here and telling you that your destiny is heaven. I'm telling myself my destiny is heaven. Let me tell you that.
I'm not just preaching to you. I'm preaching to me. Because in this world in which we're living, it's a heck of a job to keep our minds and thoughts on heaven. Everything almost is against us. Almost everything.
I mean almost everything. Because even in the holy Roman Catholic church with all this talk of liberation theology, what is it? And they're talking about even Christian Marxism down in South America. You've been reading this in the papers lately, all in regard to El Salvador. How what sense can you make out of a Christian Marxist, a Christian atheist?
And it wasn't Marx who discovered a utopia in this world. Thomas Saint Thomas More wrote a book on it. Sarcastic, of course, and even Plato has something on it. We are living in a world which Satya is telling us that we're everything. I'm the world.
I'm everything. And there's no way we can escape it. We're thrown into a barrel of pitch. And the only way you can come out of it by a is by a miracle, and I mean it, meaning the grace of God. The grace of God.
You're not gonna pull yourselves up by your bootstraps. We're not living a which is god centered. We're not living in a world which says this world is just the just the the laborious part of our eternal immortal happiness with god in heaven, that's not the world we're living in. We're living in a world that rejects god. We're living in a world which rejects immortality.
We're living in a world which rejects Jesus Christ. That's what we're living in. And instead, we are told, bow down and worship your god because we all have gods. When you take out Jesus Christ and his holy father and the holy ghost, what have you left? See, this is what Marxism did.
You had a world in his time which had rejected god. It was very atheistic in his world. He rejected his Judaism. He wanted no parts of it. So what do you put in your place?
You put in its place what is real, what is concrete, what is here, what is what is tangible, what I can get a hold of, brings me satisfaction, and which, as Marx saw it, would eliminate poverty, crimes, everything. It's utopia. Remember that definition of utopia is nowhere. Nowhere. And within the last six weeks, right up to this very minute, the disenchantment of Marxist socialism is being written in huge letters and in the crumbling wall of Berlin.
As I say, the last news I got last night was in Czechoslovakia, and remember that a majority of people there are good solid Catholics. Think how Catholicism has played its role in Poland and now in Czechoslovakia. It's all started in Poland with very fervent Catholics who had not given up on the concept that heaven is my home. Heaven is my home, and I go to it through our lord Jesus Christ in the living body of his church. The first thing I wanna say about heaven is this, we've got to be single-minded.
That's our lord said that. You cannot serve two masters. You can't do it. Either you'll hate the one and love the other, or you will love the one and hate the other. A Christian has to be single-minded.
Heaven is our home. The little baby back there at that font. I never I I don't do enough baptism. They're never routine to me like funerals. They they they're they're very special events.
When you take that little baby born with the love of a man and a woman, then and you say with this act, this pouring of water and saying a few words, that this this thing is transformed, transformed, we say. And instead now of being a citizen of this world, it is now god's own child with a destiny with him forever in eternity. That's the words we use. And we put a little white garment on it, and we had to say we say carry this garment through your life. Carry it through your life on solid.
We say take this candle. Be a light. Be a bearer of the light, a Lucifer. And the mother and the father are standing there. This is their in the very real sense, their creation.
And here is something they have brought into being with a creative act of god for eternity. For and we're telling that right at the within a few hours or days or weeks of the baby's birth. Look, kid. You are not of this world. You are destined for heaven.
Live up to it. Carry this garment unsullied. Bear the light of truth. You can't love what you don't know. And we say, how can we do that?
How can I live a whole life? And we're overwhelmed with a thought, being a Catholic Christian is not easy. Good heavens. No. It is not something that's gonna send you off overjoyed emotionally on a high.
If that's what you want, go out with the drugs, go out with your alcohol, or anything else in the sex. You're not going to get it out of Jesus Christ and the promise of heaven because heaven is not of that stuff. Believe me. When I think of when when you face life, even the next day, and that is from today, which you shouldn't do, as I try to say, it it it it's overwhelming sometimes. You say, how can I possibly get through this?
This week ahead of me, I cannot do it. I was just reading Time Magazine, the last issue, and it has a long article in there on the coach of Notre Dame's football team, Lou Holtz. And Lou Holtz was trying to make some kind of a thing, national championship. I don't know what it was. Anyway, the question was how is he how is he going to win all of these games?
So according to Time, the last issue, worth reading, Holt is supposed to have said this, I don't think I can we can win every game. Just the next one. Just the next one. You know, this is trite. What's a Alcoholics Anonymous?
A day at a time. What did Horace say? Carpe diem. Get a hold of, seize, grasp, embrace the day. This day, not tomorrow, and certainly not yesterday.
Today, carpe diem. Get a hold of this day and live it to the full. What did Jesus Christ say with when he was asked to teach us how to pray? You know, some people say, I don't know how to pray. You got that's an absolutely normal question, and the answer's been around for a few thousand years.
Christ told us how to pray. He gave us the lord's prayer. It's perfect. What else would you expect from the son of God? So don't tell me you don't know how to pray.
That means you don't know the Lord's Prayer. What did Christ say? Give us this day our daily bread. I don't think I can win every game, just the next one. That's all you're asked to do.
As mother Teresa says, you're not asked to be a success. You are asked to persevere. How do you persevere? By thinking in terms of years and months and weeks? No.
Carpe diem, this day. That's all you that's the reality. That's being a good existentialist. That's the reality. Yesterday's past, that is not a reality.
Tomorrow's not here. That certainly isn't a morality a reality. What is real? The present tense, even not just today, but this moment. This is the really part of the success of alcoholics and condiments.
Don't think of being being without a drink a whole day, just this moment. Grab the telephone. Carpe dia. I don't think I we we win all the games, just the next one. That's all god asked of us, but it's everything.
It's everything. I delved a bit into some of the writings of Saint Thomas to see what he had to say about heaven. I'm just gonna rattle off a few things, but what I want you to notice is this. There's not a single negative in there. Avoidance of pain, no sorrow, no death.
Listen. Much of this is familiar. Union with god. That's the real heart of it. Union with god.
And if you don't know him in this world, if you have no love for him in this world, what are you going to have for him in the next? Perfect praise as the first obligation of worship. All desires, completely satisfied. And then he quotes Saint Augustine, Lord, you've made us ourself you've made us for yourself, and our hearts will not be at rest until they rest in you. I get a kick out of that.
Here's Saint Thomas writing in the sixteenth century. I'm quoting him in the in our century, and he's quoting Saint Augustine from the fourth. We be that's the company we keep. Augustine, Jesus Christ, Aquinas. Then he says, we possess god completely.
They're they're very strong words. This was that we we possess, that we have god completely. That is completely in the sense of my capacity. And I remember an old teacher, my father Ho. The way he had we were talking about Shelley and the ode to the Skylark and how he I'll never forget this this white haired man standing in that classroom and saying, look, the capacity you have for the love of god in eternity is being determined by what you're how you love God in time.
Keep it in mind. You can't put a gallon of water into a pint can. There's a capacity. Call it potential. Aquinas goes on.
He says, everything that is delightful, everything that is joyous. You know the text from our blessed lord, Saint Paul. They are used at every funeral. The point is we shouldn't wait for a funeral to get a hold of these texts and to bring them home to us, that we are living destined for heaven. Don't ask where you're wandering around.
Don't ask what is my life for? What is this job doing? What is what is the meaning of it all? You have these answers. You have them.
And don't live as if you were confused and wandering loose. You are anchored to the truth of Jesus Christ. It was nowhere more simply and clearly expressed than in 1885 in the neighboring city of Baltimore in the third plenary council of Baltimore when they put together what is known and now with more respect than it used to have the Baltimore catechism. The sixth question of of the of number one catechism, the sixth question is, why did God make you? Just think what's in that question.
You didn't you of course, the love of a man and a woman had a lot to do with your coming into being. Never forget it. But you are more than that. You are a creation, a unique creation of God because you are immortal. Heaven is your home.
Never has it been better expressed when the answer was given, god, made me notice how that's expressed. No. Nothing is being brought home right to me. Why did god make you? And the answer is god made me.
To know him, notice knowledge first. To know him, to love him, that means to want him, to desire him, and to serve him in this world. Now notice that. You're to serve god in this world, not to be relaxed, not to be passive, not to watch the show, not to be in the bleachers. You are to serve god and so to be happy with him forever in eternity.
No philosopher has ever matched that. Read your Plato. Read your Socrates. Read Kant. Read them all.
See what they come up with to match that in the simplicity of the language and in the absolutely comprehensiveness of it. The a whole philosophy of life is there simply as it could be ever expressed. I don't care and it can be put in any language. It was a work of genius. I want to conclude with a few words from Cardinal Newman.
I know you're not supposed to quote, but I don't apologize for quoting from Newman. He was he knew he could certainly handle language a little better than I can, and he was far more close to being what a preacher ought to be. He wrote this is before he became a Catholic in the sense of going over Rome. He was preaching from Saint Mary's Church in Oxford where CS Lewis also delivered some sermons. Now I quote, Let us rouse ourselves before notice today is the last day of the liturgical year.
Let us rouse ourselves before it is too late. Let us understand that love of heaven, that means desiring it, wanting it, is the only way to heaven. Sight will not move us. Else, why did Judas persist in his covetousness in the very presence of Christ? Why did Satan fall when he was a bright archangel?
Nor will reason subdue us. Else, why the gospel to the Greeks was foolish feelings convert us. For there is one who heareth the word and with joy receiveth it and yet has no roots and endures for only a while. Nor will self interest prevail upon us, or the rich man would have been more prudent and would have recollected that this very night his soul might be required of him. Let us pray to Jesus who has prepared for them that love him such good things as past man's understanding to pour into our hearts such love towards his, that loving him above all things, we may obtain his promises which exceed in heaven all that we can desire.
May it be so. In the name of the father and of the son and the holy spirit. Amen.