A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Our lord withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Now it happened that a Canaanite woman living in that locality presented herself crying out to Jesus, lord, son of David, have pity on me. My daughter is terribly troubled by a demon. Jesus gave no word of response.
His disciples then came up to him and began to ask him beg him, in fact, get rid of her. She keeps on shouting after us. Our lord replied, my mission is only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Remember, this is over entire inside. Then the woman came forward and did homage to Jesus Jesus with this plea.
Help me, Lord. But he answered, this is a toughie. He answered, it is not right to take the food of sons and daughters and throw it to dogs. Please, lord, the woman insisted, even the dogs eat the leavings that fall from their master's tables. And then in reply, Jesus said, woman, you have great faith.
Your wish will come to pass. At that very moment, the woman's daughter got better, and this is the gospel of the lord. Praise be to lord. I said, this text gives me a lot of trouble, but you can't miss the point that what our lord is saying, don't take no for an answer when you pray. And that's about the best I can make of that.
Now today, in view of current events and some very fond memories, I wanna turn to quite another subject than the curing of the sick, although that may be very true too today. Now it was up it was after our lord's multiplication of loaves and loaves and fish. And at this time now, his our lord is moving up to Jerusalem as and his enemies, the pharisees, are doing their best to entrap him, to snag him in his speech. In other words, to get him in such a position that he will either be guilty of treason to Rome or treason to the law. That's called a dilemma.
So this is what they asked him. They said, lord, is it right to pay taxes to Caesar, to the emperor? Now he he either had to say yes or no. If he said yes, then he would be rejecting the the Israel. If he said no, he'd be rejecting Caesar.
So he'd be in he had been he would would be in very serious trouble either way. So what does our lord do? He says, give me a give me a piece of your money. Give me some money. Give me your coin.
So they give him a coin. And he asked them, whose image is this? And they answered, Caesar. So then our very gently tells him, well, then give to Caesar what belongs to him and give to god what belongs to god. So once again, when his enemies thought they had him really in the crunch of a dilemma, he simply escapes the dilemma.
It goes in between the horns. And that's my text, and that's the main thrust of my well chosen remarks. Our lord is telling us that you give to the state what belongs to the state and to god what belongs to god. But you see, you are one and the same person doing this. And this frightful chasm, this gulf that has been instituted between what we call the state and then religion, that's a nonsensical thing.
Not if you're living an integrated life. You're not half of you belonging to the state, then the other half belonging to the god and religion. How you divide yourself up, I don't know. Descartes tried it. Plato tried it, but it doesn't work.
You're the one and only person, and your devotion to god overlaps to devotion and and obligation to the state, and your your obligation and the state overlaps into your devotion and obligation and responsibility to god almighty. Preparation for today's thoughts, I went back into my files. Boy I wouldn't know what to do without them, and I found a talk of one of the talks I gave at the Naval Academy. The year was 1941, and the last lecture I gave was the December 1941. I don't know whether it was before Pearl Harbor that I gave the last one or afterwards.
And the topic that was given to me to talk about in these lectures was patriotism. And I don't have very much to add to what I said in 1941 to those midshipmen. Now what brings this to mind, of course, I don't have to explain to you is what's happening. And above all, not so much that our young men and young women departing Norfolk Newport News and that little lay a little creek down which which is near Virginia Beach or our marines leaving from North Carolina. What strikes me is practically every night on on the news, we are given some clips of these ships of war pulling out with the with the men on board and the women on board all aligned along the rail.
But what strikes me is what's left on the docks. That's what's been striking me for the last ten days. Here you have mostly women of all ages, mothers, sweethearts, wives, and also mothers with tiny babies in their arms. Remember, if I read the thing straight, the average age of the men and women going out on these ships is between 18 and 22. The ages of those mostly women on the docks who are being left behind, That's about their age.
As you all you've all seen this. Now what strikes me very forcibly is here you have these good people in a terrible crisis of their lives. Because in many instances, in my own experience, I'm not pulling, is the people in the service in this country just kinda forget that they're really in the military. Because, you know, we we have a way of pushing things under the carpet, carpet, but this is coming home to people in a most vivid way. When those cauzers start to drop from the dock or from the ship, one by one splashing into the water, and the ship almost imperceptibly withdraws from that dock.
It's a very different thing from a seven four seven taken off. You see, all our young people today, many of them have not experienced a ship pulling away from a dock. It's a very severe experience when the people you're looking at and dearly love may never be seen again. Now what is their reaction? Well, you've you've you've heard that The commentators go up to this young woman or that young woman.
But what do you think? How and I think some of this is absolutely obscene. Absolutely obscene. That is to talk about invasion of privacy. But anyway, here's what we're being exposed to.
What is the reaction of these people on the dock? Some of it is bitterness, resentment, and anger, and they take it out on Bush, our president. He they are faced with something here that is dreadful, something that is grievous, that fills them with anxiety, which which can which is, not will, which is changing their life radically, and they change it even more radically. Others, they're kind of neutral. They don't know what to say.
But the most recent one I want to bring out is this. There was a young woman holding a baby in her arms, And they asked her, you know, how she felt and all that sort of thing. And the the sum total, she was very articulate, she wasn't crying, she wasn't bitter, she wasn't angry with anybody. She repeated several times. I'm sure some of you saw it that we have to think positive.
Well, I couldn't agree more. But you can't just think. That's like saying let's be happy. You can't just think. There has to be something thought.
There has to be an object of your thinking. There has to be some kind of a concept going on in your mind or in your brain or wherever these things are in your soul. So I agree. Sure. Let's think positive.
But she didn't tell us what. At no instance where these interviews have been taking place has done any kind even remotely even remotely any kind of an explanation or answer or reason given for this dreadful event in their lives. Because it is a dreadful of dread. Don't minimize it. It sure pierces many a heart, and anybody who thinks knows that this is a cataclysm in many ways in their individual lives.
But here you see that not once in all of these interviews that I've seen or heard is there any suggestion of meeting the question with some kind of a reasonable answer. Any kind of a reasonable answer. Outside of this, dear woman, who said that we must think positive. What positive? What are what are you supposed to think?
Give us a hint. You go back to old man Homer. You go back to Horace. And here, Horace says that it is sweet that can't translate that. It sounds terrible to me, but the best I can do and anyone else has done is, it is sweet and noble to die for one's country.
I quoted that to some high school boys not so long ago, and what was their reaction? Laughter. Laughter. What is all this business about dying for your every single one of those men getting on those ships and every one of the women. They are very much in the way of dying, but so are the people on the docks very much in the way of dying.
They're gonna get in an automobile and leave the docks, and they'll be in more danger than those men and women on the ships. Now how can you how can anyone think of themselves as a reasonable person? Notice, I'm not talking about religion now at all. I'm just talking about common sense. How can they live with themselves face up to these very, very awful, awe inspiring, awful sacrifices they make?
And remember, the people being left may make more sacrifices than the people leave living leaving. How can they live with themselves face up to these without doing one of two things? Closing their minds completely, being like dumb, ignorant sheep, or coming up with some kind of a reasonable answer. An answer that will make sense out of what seems to be the utmost of unreason. What can be what can seem more unreasonable than to take thousands, hundreds of thousands of our best youth and open them to slaughter?
What could be more unreasonable than that? And yet, it's a fact. It's a fact that today is putting tears in thousands of people's eyes. That's turning their future into a great big question mark. Answer?
Now I'm not saying that the pagans and I have a great regard for pagans. You know? But I know what Homer says, and I know what and I know what horror says. And they weren't Christians by a long shot. And yet for some reason, they looked upon patriotism, love of your country, sacrificing for your country.
Homer is very straight. He says, to die in defense of your country. It's from the Iliad. They had that integrated into their lives. The Muslims still have.
They're not afraid of dying because if you die for your country, you go right to the heaven to to the heaven to be with God. Now where does the Christian come in on this? What answer do we give? Because I the majority of those people on those docks, if you ask them, are you a Christian or a non Christian? The majority would be would be Christian if we can believe any of our statistics.
But the point is this, for all of us, we bring Christianity so little into our daily lives. I mean, into the daily lives, parking your car, working your job, your relations with your family, your associates, your choice of work, all of these things. How much does our honest to god Christianity come into those decisions? That that they're strong enough they're strong enough to persuade us through our tears, through our fears, to see the truth, and to do our best to do it. Somebody says you don't know what a man's priorities are until you stand him against a wall to shoot him.
Now I I wanna get you see, the Catholic church has a position on this, a very straight position. Now a number of weeks ago, there's more unity and coherence to my well chosen remarks than you may think. Several weeks ago, I started out by talking about Aquinas the Sumer, and how this huge book, three volumes, boils down to three or four simple sentences. That god made me to come back to him by knowing him, by loving him, by serving him, and I do that through our lord Jesus Christ. It's a whole sumo.
And let me tell you, there it has nothing been produced, at least in the Western world, and I'm sure nothing like it in the East, that can match the integrity of human life that is presented by Thomas Aquinas in that summon. Integrity simply means wholeness, totality. You'd hear a great deal today about holistic medicine, that we mustn't treat a man for a broken arm or a broken nose or for a bad liver. We have to treat John Smith, a man, a human individual. And there you have the picture, and that is the Christian Catholic picture.
I came from God. God wants me to come back to him, and he sent his son to insure it if I do my part. There's the whole picture. And in and in life, in our day in our daily life, in the things that we do to boredom, monotony, things that we'd rather not be doing, things that we do out of duty and responsibility. And because we love God and keep his second commandment to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, we do it.
Not that we enjoy it. God never said I would enjoy it. He never said to enjoy it. He never promised us to enjoy it. All that our lord said, echoing his father is do it even if you sweat blood.
And Christ sweat blood. Christ sweat turned to blood. He did not wanna die on the cross. This is severe stuff. The Christian life is severe.
And if we are called upon to give our lives and I'm not talking about just the men and the women who are going over to Saudi Arabia. I'm talking about the people left on the docks, as well as those people who are going to enact an engagement, as it will soon be. What do they think? Is this the end of life? Is the man or the woman who dies, is that the end?
Is it a great tragedy or what? What do you make of it? How do you how do you put this into your in the totality of your life? Are you going to say that all this baby that is born today is forced to be fodder for somebody shooting at him tomorrow or blasting with some nuclear weapons or some chemicals? No Christian can say that.
Every Christian. I don't care what their denomination is. Every Christian has to say, I came from god. I have to go back to god, and god has given me a work to do. And it may not be of my choosing because if I'm a Christian, I wanna do god's word.
Thy will be done is the lord's prayer. Mary at the annunciation, thy will be done. At the marriage feast of Cana, these are her last words in the New Testament. When she turned to the servants and said, whatever he tells you, do them. Now here's the here is the what a very simple little argument I wanna lay for you.
And this is any if any attitude can be proposed as being representative of the Catholic teaching on this subject, which involves war and peace and the legitimacy of a war, it is as follows. Is that patriotism is a very precious virtue. Benedict the fifteenth said it's allied with religion, and of course it is. Let me show you the integrity, the the holism, the the way Thomas Aquinas looks at our whole self. He doesn't talk about patriotism.
He talks about piety. Well, pieties in in in our in America today is in the same class as chastity. People think of piety as some frivolous little kind of picture that some dumb artist wobbled on or put on the wall. But he talks about pietas, and in in the old Romans, that was the supreme virtue, and it it belongs to justice. This virtue that is called piety means our relationship to some agent, to some factor, to some entity that has a great deal to do with our being in existence, keeping us in existence, and then bringing us to our development as a full human being.
Notice, it isn't we're not devoted and born for a certain single work. We're voted to to become all that I can be. Matter of fact, that's one of the advertisements before the recruiting of the army, I think, right now. Be all you can be. Now the that breaks down then into three agencies or factors or entities.
You certainly didn't make yourself. You came from god. He gave you your being. And moreover, you depend upon him at all times. We are completely contingent upon God's creative act for our ever bit existence.
We're not the alarm clock that was wound up and then left running. Oh, no. That's not a Christian view at all. That's one of your modern philosophers. God created me, but he keeps me in being.
And I, therefore, owe him love, respect, and service. We call that religion. Religion. The second aspect of piety means that I came into this world by parents. And parents have a great deal to do with my coming into being, how I develop, how I'm reared, what kind of education I get.
In other words, they they exercise a tremendous influence on what I become to the potentialities that I have, and that's called filial piety. Filial piety. The obligation of love and service to my parents. Third factor, the third agency, the third entity is the one to whom I also owe. Not my coming into being, but my rearing, my education, again, my development as a totality of potentialities to be all I can be.
And that's what we call my country, patria. Not the state, not a particular government, but my native land, my country. And that's the obligation, obligation of love and of service to my country we call patriotism. It's not jingoism. It's not chauvinism.
It's not sentimentality. It's not flag waving. It's an honest to goodness, honest to god vision of my life, of my destiny, that I have to fulfill my destiny by practicing virtue, and that I have an obligation to god, to my parents, and to my country. One is religion, one is filial piety, and the other is patriotism, a gorgeous, beautiful word which is scarcely ever used today. Because in many instances, it translates not into patriotism, but into a vice of hatred or greed or pride or lust or something like that.
That is not love of country. Hating somebody doesn't make you love your country. And so what I'm try what I've tried to bring is that in any Christian view of life, where we come from God, we go back to God, we go back by the way, the work that he has given us to do. It may be not of our choosing, but it is not a tragedy. It's an opportunity.
Now I have quoted Newman, and I cannot improve on it. I'm going to conclude with what he has to say, not about patriotism, but about what we have to do with our lives, but which makes patriotism sensible, reasonable, intelligible. And what it demands of us is not unreasonable. It is not irrational. It is in accord with god's plan for me.
Now listen. This is taken from a it's why while he before he became a a Catholic. He says, everyone who breathes, everyone who breathes has a mission, has a work to do. God gains to need every one of us to labor for himself. There's the key.
What I do is not too important. It's why I do it, the ultimate, the absolute. Each has his mission, and that means you've been sent, not to indulge his passions, not to make money, not to get a name in this world, not to save himself trouble, not to follow his bent, not to be selfish and self willed, but to do what god puts on him and her to do, and it's possible with his grace. In the name of the father, and the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.