A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. I haven't forgotten the alleluia, but I forgot my glasses. I'm trying to do with dime store glasses. So praise the lord. As our lord entered the temple, he began ejecting.
He was throwing out the traitors, saying to them, scripture has it that my house is meant for a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves. Jesus was teaching in the temple area from day to day. The chief priests and scribes, meanwhile, were looking to find a way to destroy him as the leaders of the people, but they had no idea of how to do it because they were afraid of the people. For indeed, the entire populace was listening to him and hanging on his every word. And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord.
Praise be to lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. While entertaining myself last evening by the delicious menu of the TV programs, on one of the commentaries of the day, yesterday was thanksgiving, you couple of people and, you know, they're interviewing the Hoyt Beloy, the populace, and several of them this is this is par for the course. It's just I'm just saying it happened last night, but it's every time we have a holiday, it happens.
A couple of people, several people came on and to say they were thanking God for his benefits and all that kind of thing, and then they said how guilty when we sit down and have all these comforts and luxuries, and so many people in the world are going without and are hungry. Now notice that word guilty. I hear it every holiday we have. You hear it on other occasions. I've had in preparation a few well chosen words on the virtue of magnificence.
I haven't gotten around to it yet because every time I think I got it, something happens to keep me away from it. It's going on now for five weeks, but I'm going to give that homily sooner or later. There is a virtue of magnificence. And Saint Thomas Aquinas, that's my late friend, Saint Thomas Aquinas treats that virtue of magnificence with the same amplitude, there's a whole question on it, the same seriousness as he treats prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, of which we hear a heck of a lot about. When did you hear a sermon on the virtue of magnificence?
And remember, the essence of the virtuous life is not to be virtuous in one virtue. Anybody can do that. The best thugs have done that. To be anybody can practice one virtue if you exclude all the others. The virtuous life means you practice them all insofar as you can.
And one of those virtues is the virtue of magnificence. And magnificence means to do great things. I don't think I've ever been to a or been part of a wedding which had a certain amount of dignity, formality, beauty, and amplitude. Amplitude, bigness, bridesmaids, groom, you know the works, that somebody doesn't pipe up and say, this is such a waste. And right away, I think of Judas.
He's the one who complained when somebody came and paid the final services to Jesus Christ. And old man Judas says, how much better it would have been if we'd have taken this money that you're wasting on ointment and given it to the poor. And our lord said, you have the poor always with you, but me, you do not always have. Now I don't know exactly where this attitude begins. It's not Christian.
It's not Catholic. We are not going to solve the hunger or the homeless problems of the world. Let me hasten to say right away, if somebody like a mother Teresa or a saint Francis of Assisi wants to give their life entirely to poverty, go ahead and do it. They have the blessing of church and the almighty god, but they are their heroic souls. Remember, our blessed lord didn't do it.
Just think of the times that he broke bread and had meals with with people in the New Testament. See how often he did it on the curbside with the homeless. Where this idea comes from, I don't know. But it's with us. And I'm not at all making any criticism of the people who have this idea, but you see, it takes the joy out of what should be a joyous occasion.
Just because when I drive down to Galesville, I have to go through three cemeteries plus a funeral parlor, and there's always a fresh grave, that doesn't mean I'm not going to enjoy the day because I'm going to die. Now we have to come back to a Catholic view that I'm I'm going I know there's a profound question here about this whole business of poverty. I know that. Blood has been shed over it. But we have to keep our thinkers, our brains in place.
And if we're going to be Catholic Christians, there's nothing much better we could do than to follow Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ was not excluded from joining in joyous occasions. Notice it. His public life begins with a marriage feast to Canaan, where he, after they had drunk all their wine remember, it wasn't that they started with too little wine. That would have been absolutely unthinkable.
To run out of wine, to run out of food on a celebration like a marriage would have been absolutely tragic for a family. So they'd had plenty of wine to drink, but lo and behold, the stuff runs out. And the very first public miracle of our blessed lord is is creating a lot more wine of a very superior kind, if you please. And so it is our blessed lord time and again. We are told where he joined and had dinner with this publican who was a sinner, but nevertheless was a big occasion, a big meal.
He celebrated the different occasions. He went up to Jerusalem from all the feasts. They were joyous occasions. Think of the number of parables where he brings in the poor. And remember, our blessed lord never uttered a single explicit statement about changing the social state of affairs.
He said, my kingdom is not of this world. But of course, we're trying to prove him wrong, following Marx and so forth. So we have an El Salvador. And so let us realize that the Christian life has its joys. It's not a killjoy religion.
There's nothing wrong in coming up and having a good time, having a good celebration, having a pleasant, gay, happy occasion, bringing your friends in to celebrate when you've lost something or when you've found something or on any old occasion. There's always some reason to celebrate something. And there's no reason on God's earth for any killjoy coming in there and saying, well, how can we be this way when so many people are without that way? Our blessed Lord never gave us a commandment of that. All Christ ever said was to be his follower.
All you have to do is to take but you have to do this. You can't escape it. It's his one criteria to follow you, to being his, to pick up his cross daily and walk in his footsteps. That's all he asks, but that's everything. In the name of the father, of the son, and the holy spirit.
Amen.