A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. On the evening of that first day of the week, even though the disciples had locked the doors of the place where they were because they feared for their lives, Jesus came and stood before them. Peace be with you, he said. And when he had said it, he showed them his hands, and he showed them his side. At the sight of the lord, the disciples rejoiced.
And our lord said to them again, peace be with you. As the father has sent me, so I send you. Then he breathed on them and said, receive the holy spirit. If you forgive men's sins, they are forgiven them. If you hold them bound, they are held bound.
Now it happened on that day that one of the 12, Thomas, the name of the twin, was not there when Jesus came. And the other disciples kept telling him, we have seen the lord. His answer was, I'll never believe it without probing the nail prints in his hands, without putting my finger in the nail marks, and my hand in his side. A week later, the disciples were once again in the room. This time, Thomas was with them.
Despite the locked doors, Jesus came and stood before them. Peace, he said, be with you. And then turning to Thomas, he said to him, take your finger and examine my hands. Put your hand into my side. Do not persist in your unbelief, but believe.
Thomas replied, my lord and my god. Then Jesus said to him, you became a believer because you saw me. Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed. Now our lord performed many other signs as well, signs that are not recorded here, says Saint John. And he did them in the presence of his disciples.
But these now listen. This is what Saint John's saying. But these have been recorded to help you believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of God. So that through this faith, you may have life in his name. And this is the gospel indeed the good news of the lord.
Well, before entering into my well prepared and chosen remarks, I wanna bring to your attention, and I do this perhaps odd nauseam. But please, in these days following Easter, get your New Testament and read the acts of the apostles. Many people haven't even seen the acts of the apostles. Literally, they know about Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John, and perhaps some of the letters of Saint Paul. But the acts of the apostles, what's that?
Well, it's the first, the earliest, the most primitive, the most authentic history we have of the church of Jesus Christ after our lord's death and burial and resurrection. And it's dramatic. It's very easy reading. You could scarcely lay it down. It's better than most bestsellers.
Matter of fact, it's been a pretty good bestseller down for two thousand years, more or less. Another thing to remember is this. It was written, put into writing around sixty two AD, '62, only some thirty years after our lord's resurrection, and its author is Saint Luke. At least that's been that's the traditional attribution. So please, it won't take you long.
Read it as you would your daily newspaper, and not with the same spirit that you read The Washington Post, but read it as you would an ordinary romance. Rome I I say that seriously. Just you say he's he's, gilding the lily. All I say is try it. If you don't like it, don't buy it, says Yacogo.
So the acts of the apostles, in any New Testament, it comes right after the four gospels. Now to get to something serious, my remarks. You have heard today's reading, and you have heard how Saint John records what happened. That the Holy Spirit descended and our Lord said, receive the holy spirit. Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven.
Whose sins you retain, they are retained. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. Now as I said, this is called low Sunday, and it's easy to see why. All you have to do is look at the empty pews here this morning.
We didn't have them last Sunday, at least not as many. And that's you see, that that's perfectly human. That's perfectly natural. We prepared for Easter Sunday, a lot of us did, and most of you people did, with six weeks of Lent. And then in the last week, it begins on Wednesday maybe, but at the latest Thursday evening, and then we have Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and then we go into the vigil of Easter.
Well, you know, when you have a buildup like that, then what follows call of Easter Sunday, the feast of the resurrection, you have really prepared for it. Psychologically, it's a tremendous buildup, and you can't sustain human life on that high level of cloud nine. So there's nothing wrong in calling it low Sunday. Give any meaning you want to low because I can think of a lot. But the point is what's wrong with that?
We are back now to the normal life of being a follower of Jesus Christ. And in only last week, I heard a young graduate student say, who was falling away from his Catholicism, I asked, why don't you follow your Catholicism? He says it's too difficult. What was he thinking it was going to be? What does he think trying to become a PhD in engineering?
What does that mean? Sleeping your day away in a hammock? And so there's nothing wrong in having a letdown. That's not being depressed at all because we'll fly up again. Something else will come along.
But it's perfectly human. But the thing is, we shouldn't get caught off of our foundations. You can't live on cloud nine all the time. Remember the transfiguration when our lord was up on the when he's when they on the mountain with his three disciples and all this wonderful manifestation takes place. Epiphany.
And what good old what does old Peter say? Let's stay up here. Everybody wants to stay up on cloud nine. It's great up there, but it doesn't last. It doesn't last.
How many people stayed with Christ on Calvary? How many were there of the apostles around the cross? One. And that's the Christian life carrying the cross. Now in today's account, our blessed lord in his appearance, and very likely this was Easter Sunday, the day of the resurrection, that our lord tells his disciples, whatever sins that you forgive, they're forgiven.
But remember, already told them, receive the holy spirit. They don't have that power because they're human beings or because they're holy or because they're they're apostles or because they were fishermen from up in Galilee. It's because they are god's own in a special way. First, receive the holy spirit, then whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven. And whose sins you retain, they're retained.
The power of the keys. Now notice this. While our lord was still among among, he gave them the power to preach, going therefore, heed she all nations. He gave them the power over demons that they could cast out devils. He gave them the power over disease and illness, but he didn't give them power over sin until after his resurrection.
And very likely, it was on the very day of his resurrection, the first day of the week. That's significant. So what I want to talk about this morning is sin, and there's an awful lot you can say about it. But just keep this in mind, and I and don't ever forget this. I said this on the very first day of Lent.
The Christian life is not a journey or a struggle or a warfare to avoid sin. That's not being a Christian. This book never committed a sin in its existence. So if and you you know why that's true? Because sin is a negation, and negatives don't exist.
Keep that in mind. The Christian life is a life of the pursuit of virtue. Now what do we mean by this? Let's get right down to the basics. What do you mean by virtue?
What do you mean by being pursuing holiness? It's very simple. It's simply the sumo of saint Thomas. God, supreme God. Don't ever forget that.
That comes absolutely first, that there is a God who created the universe, who created you individually, you there's no such thing as humanity, you know. And who loved you, and because he loved you he created you. Just recently I heard a mother saying that her little daughter asked her, Why did God make me? And she said, you know, I really couldn't answer that. It's very simple.
He loved that little baby, that person to be God loved from all eternity. All eternity. His knowledge of that baby didn't begin with the baby's conception or birth. Keep these things in mind. I'm not exaggerating in the least.
This is solid Catholic truth. It's love of it's god's love that's brought us here. It's god's love who sent us his son. It's god's love that put him on the cross. My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?
Think of that. That was Jesus Christ, the son of God, speaking from the cross. And why? Because of sin. And what do we mean by sin?
Very simple. God created me out of love, and it's my destiny to go back to God in my life on this earth. How do I do it? By my conduct. That is the conduct for which I'm responsible.
And those actions which lead me back to God are called virtue. Comes with veer, which means strength and power. And those actions which deflect me, push me aside from my goal, which is God, that is what we call sin. Not antisocial conduct, not unpleasantness, not being disagreeable, but sin. Sin brings in God.
The essence of sin is not my actions, but it's the fact that I am deviating from my destiny. I am rejecting my ultimate goal, which is God almighty. And the third part of the suma is Jesus Christ because there, that's how I function. I can't do it on my own. Without me, our lord said, you can do nothing.
And so that's the whole sum of saint Thomas, three huge volumes. God, me, Jesus Christ who helps me to go back to God. And when I fail to do it, then I am deviating. I'm going in. Maybe it's a detour.
It may be worse than a detour, and that is sin. Whether I hurt anybody, whether I hurt myself is irrelevant. You can't measure my obligation to God simply by the consequences in the social community that that my actions may have upon it. Let me give you just one little instance of just read in the last issue of Time magazine, University of Wisconsin has a for the first time a woman president. The interviewer in Time asked her, what is the the biggest problem on your campus?
Well, she you can guess what she answered: Alcoholism. Not a word about the boys and the girls fornicating. There's nothing wrong in taking a drink. There's nothing wrong in using alcohol. That's not sinful at all.
It becomes a sin only when you overdo it. It's the sin of gluttony. But there's no more or less about fornication or adultery. And yet there's not a campus in The United States which isn't loaded with it. It's practically socially acceptable now, and I'm not exaggerating.
You see, we've lost our sense of the supernatural. We've excluded God from our lives. I mean, I'm not I mean, as a nation. And you'll say, here's exaggerating. I am not exaggerating.
Then I have a couple quotations here from the holy fathers, but let me give you one that that just came to my mind now. In 1908, a good friend of mine, sister Nancy McAuley, with the help of George Gallop, initiated a study of 10 c high schools, Catholic high schools, in and around Washington. 1980. Took her six six years to do the study. She calls it faith without form or the the the beliefs of our Catholic youth.
The beliefs of our Catholic youth. So with Gallup's help, Dean Ho from Catholic Youth, they initiated a study from 10 Catholic high schools, all just the senior classes. They sent 784 questionnaires and got most of them back. And then they had 80, one hour or more personal interviews with 80 students picked at random from these Catholic high schools. Now I do not want to make a whole lot of what I'm going to conclude this part with, but it is terribly significant that in one because the I I am very skeptical about this Gallup poll business, you know, that's Andy Greeley and Company, the social scientists.
But I take very seriously those 80 interviews, and that's what most of the book is about, which he published in 1986. That is, these personal interviews. In one of these interviews, they she was the interviewer was talking to a these are all senior high schools from one of our Catholic high schools in this area, one of the 10. They start to talk about sin, and this young man spoke up and said, who is God to tell me what to do? What do you think of that?
Who is God to tell me what to do? I can just see that 17 year old young man saying that to me. Great stuff, isn't it? I don't say that's typical, but it happened. It happened.
We are living in an age, you call it secular humanism or anything you want, where we don't place god in our life at all. I mean, as a nation. This is explicit. Now now we're being told we can have a morality without god. That's been tried.
Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill dimension only two. Just two. That's been tried time and time again, and it won't work. You can't tell me what I must do without telling me why I must do it. And if there's no God to tell me what to do, forget it.
Forget it. Because all you're going to be reduced to is some kind of legalism based on human law. I didn't mean to get into this at all. I must conclude. But the point I wanna make is this, that there is a god.
He created you individually, and he created you and brought you into existence to come back to him. And you do it by good conduct which we call virtue. And when you slip from virtue into conduct which deflects you from your goal, then you are dealing with the contrary which is called vice or sin. And the only way you can repair it is not through yourself, but through your divine lord Jesus Christ. And the main thing about sin is not your feeling of guilt.
It's not how it affects your society. It's It's not what it does to your reputation or to your health. What matters is that sin tears you away from your destiny, which is God almighty. Take God out of the picture, and let's go bowling or do something worthwhile. And so sin, just as Low Sunday, doesn't compare with the grandeur in any way you wanna look at it with Easter Sunday.
Nevertheless, low Sunday is our regular Christian life. And while Easter Sunday brings many people to church, many people to confession, many people to communion, many people to to reinforce their resolve to lead a good Christian Catholic life. It's easy to slip back. And the way we come back to our lord is the way he gave us to do it, and that's the sacrament of penance. The sacrament of penance.
When I came here in 1968, we heard confessions here before every single morning mass. We heard confessions Saturday afternoon and Saturday evening. One person went to confession yesterday afternoon. What's happened? Well, I'm that's what I meant to go into, and I have a fine document here.
But the thing is we're not going to confess because we've lost a sense of sin. That is as a people. There's no question about it. And we've lost and and and back of that, that's not the main thing. The main thing we have lost are sense of God.
And now I may quote Pius the twelfth, John Paul the second, and a very recent study made and and and declared by our cardinal colonel over in Rome. There's no question about it. We have lost our sense of God. And I must weigh my as a Christian, as a Catholic, I must weigh my conduct in terms of God. Nothing less will do.
And I must I must evaluate my deviations in terms of what it does what my deviations do to me separating me from God. And the answer to that problem is being human, we need to come back because we're going to fall. And we come back to the sacrament of penance. Receive the holy spirit. Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven, and that includes guilt.
But whose sins you retain, they are returned. Our lord's own words, heed them. In the name of the father, the son, and holy spirit. Amen.