A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. When Elizabeth's time for delivery arrived, of course, that's his mother. She gave birth to a son. That's John the Baptist. Elizabeth's neighbors and relatives upon hearing that the lord had extended his mercy to her, rejoice.
When they were assembled for the circumcision of the child on the eighth day, they wanted to call him after his father, Zachariah. But at this, his mother intervened, saying, no. He is to be called John. Well, her relatives and friends pointed out to her, none of your relatives has this name. And then using signs, they asked the father.
Of course, he had been struck dumb, you know, the vision in the temple. They asked the father what he wished his son to be called. John asked for a writing table and wrote these words. His name is John. Everybody was astonished at this, and at that very moment, his mouth was opened, his tongue loosed, and he began to praise god.
Fear descended upon everybody in the neighborhood and all throughout the hill country of Judea where these happenings began to be recounted to the last detail. Please notice that. And everybody who heard these stories kept them in their hearts saying, what will this child turn out to be? Or was not the hand of the lord upon him? The child grew and matured in spirit, and he lived in the desert until the day when he made his public appearance in Israel, in Judea.
And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord. John the Baptist was a prisoner of Herod at this time because he had accused Herod of acting grievously immorally but trying to marry his brother's wife. That's the well known indoor sport of adultery. So John sent two of his disciples to Jesus. This is after John had baptized Jesus.
So John sent two disciples to ask Jesus who he was. Are you the messiah, or are we to look for somebody else? Here's my text for the day. Take it from Saint Matthew. And our our lord replied to Saint John the Baptist emissaries.
Here's what our lord said. What did you go out into the desert to see? A reed shaken by the wind, a man clothed in soft garments. Those wearing soft garments are in palaces. What did you go out into the desert to see?
A prophet? Yes. I tell you, and much more than a prophet. There has not appeared among men, born of women, of greater than John the Baptist. That's what our lord said.
The name of the father and of the son and the holy spirit, amen. And truly, Saint John the Baptist, not Saint John the Apostle, is an extraordinary man. He's an extraordinary man in the first part of Saint Luke. He's referred to in the epistles of Saint Paul. Remember that.
When Paul starts wandering around the Mediterranean, he finds disciples of Saint John the Baptist. Now I have to review a little bit of this because Saint John's a frightfully important person. Parts some parts of the world, it's it's the great feast of the day of the year. It's a very extraordinary thing that the feast day of a saint replaces a Sunday mass, and that's what this feast of Saint John's doing today. I'm wearing white vestments.
It's not the the mass of the day. It's the mass of Saint John the Baptist. Well, look how it all begins. His father Zacharias is a priest. He goes into the into the temple in Jerusalem to fulfill his duty, and he has some kind of a vision.
He's an old man, a really old man. Everybody knows his wife is a very good woman, but she's been sterile all her life, and now she's well beyond the childbearing age. And lo and behold, you get some kind of a message. I don't know what sees an angel or something. Anyway, he gets a message that he's going to become a father, that his wife Elizabeth in her old age and she who was sterile is going to have a baby and is going to be a son.
Notice not just a baby, but a the the sex is forecast. Then we're told when when the angel appears to Mary at the feast of the annunciation, when Mary says, how is this going to how am I going to be a mother and and a virgin at the same time? And the angel replies, well, you know what it is. The holy ghost will overshadow you and so forth. And then the angel notice what a motive of credibility this is.
Elizabeth is is down near Jerusalem in the southern part of what we call the Holy Land. This is happening up in the northern part near the lake. And the angel says, your cousin Elizabeth, who was sterile and in her old age, has conceived and is going to be be a mother to a baby boy. And what does Mary do? She starts traveling all the way from the North and very likely on foot all the way to the South Of Israel to be with her cousin Elizabeth.
And when she gets there, what we're told, we're told that the baby lived in Elizabeth's womb, the joy of meeting his savior who was in in the womb of the blessed mother. These events are absolutely extraordinary. And notice what the what the what the evangelist says today, that these events were made known all through the countryside. See, these are the famous paragraphs from Saint Luke, the infancy narrative, which has been subjected to all kinds of criticism. But notice that the the evangelist says everybody knows about this.
How John's father was struck dumb, how when the baby was circumcised, he gained his feet just because he said the boy's name is John. These events are extraordinary. Everybody knows about them. And yet we're told by these great ejiges that, well, you know, it's some kind of a myth. Well, believe me, you take it or you leave it.
You can't take and pick and choose. I I choose to accept it. Now as I say, John was extraordinary in his in his conception and in his birth and in his life. We're told that he left home and lived in the desert. That's all we know about it.
But, certainly, it's it's as some kind of a voice of god who is very well known, very well known when our lord comes on the scene who baptizes Jesus in the Jordan. And it's the same John, the baptizer, who stands up to the mighty Herod, who was a lot he thought a lot more of himself than what he really was. As he found out, he is the one who a a a long voice stood up and told the mighty Herod, what you're doing is absolutely evil, marrying trying to marry your brother's wife. And what happened? John paid for it with his head.
Her you know, the story of Herodias. That was the the lady's name. And her daughter Salome, Oscar Wilde wrote a very famous play on this subject called Salome. It's a wonderful play, and it's a very strong tribute to Saint John the Baptist. But, of course, it became notorious because of the the day the dance of the seven veils of Salome.
But it's a lot the play is a lot more than just the the the dance of Salome. Believe me. Read it. Here's a lone voice who stood up against Herod who was thought himself almost Caesar. He acted that way, and he paid the penalty for it.
He didn't get away with it. Herod thought he was thought himself a great shot, you know. He thought he was almost independent of Rome. That was a mistake. Herod, first of all, was very curious about John.
Very he so that John must have been a very prominent person. Secondly, he was afraid of him. He was superstitious. He didn't know what to make of John. It wasn't his idea to behead him.
That was Herodias' idea because the dear lady didn't like what Saint John said about her pseudo marriage with Herod. So here is John, a lone voice, standing up against the representative of mighty Rome and telling what he was doing was absolutely wrong. It was adultery. He paid for it with his head. Now so today, we salute this man.
But notice, part of that text is this. While our lord says I don't have it here, but the rest of that text is this. Our lord said, no man born of woman is greater than John the Baptist but then our lord immediately adds but the least in the kingdom of god is greater than he. That's worth thinking about. Now I want to briefly to apply the example of Saint John to our lives, to our not too much well, yes, to our lives.
But first, I wanna call attention to remind you of a great man who followed in the footsteps of Saint John the Baptist. One of them. There have been a multitude, many of them anonymous men and women who have stood up and were counted, whose name was called, and who paid for defending the truth of god with their lives. Don't ever forget it. It's a multitude, Most of them anonymous, but some of them not.
But for the most part, forgotten. In many instances, Salome is remembered more than Saint John the Baptist. After all, Wilde called his place Salome, not John the Baptist. This is the pity of the thing, but this is the human nature. It's the way we work.
Look at the headlines of your paper. And that's the great Thomas More, Saint Thomas More of the sixteenth century. He was almost a lone voice in England, Catholic England remember, with Saint John Fisher. John Fisher was the only bishop who stood up against Henry the eighth out of the whole hierarchy of England. The only bishop, and he paid for it with his life.
And Saint Thomas More, the first layman who was a chancellor of England, who was one of the princes of the Renaissance, the great author the great author of Utopia, the father of a great family who gave his daughters a marvelous education, who's way ahead of his time in every way, who stood up to Henry the eighth, not merely because of a marriage, but because of who was head of Christ's church, the king of England or the pope. That was the choice. And and Thomas More said the pope and paid for it with his head. Don't forget it. Fisher and Moore did not go along with the times.
They did not go along with the current. They were disturbers of the peace. Now I wanna bring in a contemporary. Cardinal O'Connor of New York, a man who has stood up and is taking a lot of flack. He's not alone.
Archbishop Mahoney, Los Angeles, and the new bishop of Brooklyn have stood up with him. Cardinal, bishop Vaughn too, and I suppose other bishops, not all, not by name. Now on the fourteenth of this month, cardinal O'Connor wrote 14 pages, 12 pages in the Catholic New Yorker on this matter of abortion. And in the course of that of those pages, he had this to say, and I'm quoting. This is the this is the sentence or sentences which which brought down the wrath of the New York Times.
Regarding Catholic politicians facing excommunication, cardinal O'Connor said, where Catholics are perceived not only as treating church teaching on abortion with contempt, how? By helping multiply abortions, by advocating legislation supporting abortion, or by making funds available for abortion, bishops may decide that for the common good, such Catholics must be warned that they are at risk of excommunication. If such actions persist, bishops may consider excommunication the only option that has caused the wrath of of many many people, including some within the holy Roman Catholic church. Now the following Sunday, last Sunday, seventeenth, the New York Times have it had an editorial. I have it right here.
Been reading it several times during the past week. It's a good editorial. But if you wanna see what we call an illustration of secular humanism, read that editorial. First of all, they pay tribute to to the cardinal, this a la Washington Post. They pay tribute to his being so courteous and so soft spoken, and they don't like the tough language that he used in in these in this paper that he had in the Catholic New Yorker.
They they found it very abrasive, and they found they had to draw this conclusion. I'm running out of time. So here is what they concluded. They concluded that his attitude is divisive, that it's tearing apart the truce of tolerance that permits America's pluralistic democracy to work. And so it it the the final sentence is this, stop imperative.
Stop leaning on Catholic public officials now working to heal, not divide the rest of society. Now that's a perfectly consistent conclusion for the times to make on their philosophy of life. They don't have a theology, of course. Perfectly consistent. But it's dead wrong if you're a Christian and above all a Catholic Christian.
Dead wrong. How do I know it's dead wrong? Because Christ said so. Let me read you what our lord says on this matter of being divisive. Saint Thomas More was divisive.
John Fisher was divisive. Joan of Arc was divisive. Mugridge is divisive, and so is O'Connor divisive. And so are each and every one of you divisive if you take if you take your position with Jesus Christ against the world. Because Christ said, I am not of the world.
Don't you ever forget it. If you're with the world, how can you be with Christ if Christ said, I am not with the world? Tell me how you do it. And there comes a time when you don't negotiate, when you have to lay your head on the block. And as I say that, it puts puts fear in my blood and in my brain.
Believe me. Who knows what I will do if I'm put to the crutch? I can only look to the grace of God, but I know what I ought to do. I will do what those great martyrs who did Dionysius of Rome, for example, Polycarp, or even the saint or many another saint who laid down their life for what they believed. What else can you do if you take your place with Jesus Christ?
And if there's such a thing as truth? And this was acknowledged last night on the McLaughlin group. I don't I don't know which one of the men said it. But in response to this matter of O'Connor's statement about escommunication, he said, if the Catholic church holds abortion to be murder, as it does, if it considers it an absolutely immoral thing, as it does, then it's perfectly right in the action that Cardinal took. Now that's common sense speaking.
Of course, that's logical. I mean, you mustn't be logical in this world, of course. That's being Aristotelian. So let me read you what Christ says about this matter of being divisive. Christ said, I have come to bring peace.
He said it many times. But he also said, I have come not to bring peace. Now listen. You must not this is from Saint Matthew chapter 10 verse 11 34. I'm sorry.
You must not think that I have come to bring peace on Earth. Put that on your Christmas card, January. I have come not to bring peace. He repeats it. But the sword.
I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother. He's speaking to Jews whose family ties were of the tightest. Where disrespect to your parents was almost blasphemy. I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a son's wife against her mother-in-law, and a man will find his enemies under his own roof. No man is worthy of me who cares more for father or mother than for me.
No man is worthy of me who cares more for son or daughter. No man is worthy of me who does not take up his cross and walk in my footsteps. Here is the promise of our lord. Here is the promise that brought more to the block and fisher to the scaffold. By gaining his life, a man will lose it.
By losing his life for my sake, he will gain it. In the name of the father, and of the son, and holy spirit. Amen.