A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Mark. Our lord said to his disciples, be constantly on watch. Stay awake. You do not know when the appointed time will come. It is like a man traveling abroad.
He leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his own task. And he orders the man at the gate to watch with a sharp eye. Look around you. You do not know when the master of the house is coming, whether at dusk, at midnight, when the croc crows, or early dawn. Do not let him come upon you suddenly and catch you asleep.
What I say to you, I say to all, be on guard. And this is the good news of the lord. To every slave, to each one, the master gave the slave his work to do. And this is a slightly different translation from today's gospel. The name of the father and of the son and the holy spirit.
Amen. But what I've given you is much closer to the original Greek. Now the first thing I wanna bring to your attention is this, that what we have read, these five verses, they come at the end of this chapter. And this chapter, and there are only about one sixth or one seventh of the chapter. So what we have is the parable which comes at the end of this chapter.
And what's all the rest of it about, the other six sevenths? It's about the end of the world. It's very unexpected that this text should be used on the first Sunday of Advent in a certain sense. Because about the only idea of Advent here is to is to be on guard, to be alert, to be awake, Don't go to sleep on the job. Now these texts, of course, are are those been chosen by somebody some time ago.
But if you if you recollect over the last three or four Sundays, every single Sunday, this has been the theme. You have a work to do. You have a job to do. Get going. Don't sleep.
Go as go to sleep at the switch. And when you ask him, why is there such I'm sure you're getting sort of tired of it. Why is it why does the church present this theme? Because it's so needed. It's so needed.
If there's anything which afflicts many, many human beings of all ages, it's this question. What is it all about? What what value is is this what I'm doing? It's so monotonous. It's plain drudgery.
It's senseless. It doesn't seem to have any reason behind it. Somebody said, life's a bowl of cherries. What the hell's the use? I read that in Maria Locke monastery in the guest book.
And the guest master said, would you mind translating that for me? He he didn't know the the ignoramus as regards German he was talking to. That light and I knew the man who wrote it. It was a student from Catholic youth, priest. I didn't tell him that either.
But was that was in the guest book just before I signed my elegant name. That life's a bowl of cherries. What the hell is the use? Well, then why not get it over with? And that's exactly what many of our teenagers are doing with a gun or the noose around their neck.
This is frightfully important that this was proved empirically. This was proved empirically by Frankel, the Austrian psychiatrist, that the men and women who survived the camps, Auschwitz and all the rest, they were the ones who had a profound conviction that as bad as life was in those camps, it was worthwhile. And in many instances, when these Jews were separated from their clothing, there was a one of the psalms or a few verses from a psalm written inside. It carried them through. Now we have to have something like that too.
Now we have we have the sacraments, and don't ever underrate them. They are the nourishment that you need to carry your life through and not as now notice the word I'm going to use, to carry your life through joyously. Joyously. No saint ever went to martyrdom without a smile, not figuratively speaking. They didn't go crying and weeping and lamenting and all bemoaning and all the rest of this junk.
Because today, you see, we look upon life as what? Physical life. You have to be thin, thin thighs, look good. If if your eyes start to sag, get a surgeon to bring you, take off ten years. Everything is how you look.
We must be young. We must be youthful. As if as if that was a reality to live for. Now everybody makes some kind of a choice. Remember that you don't have any you you even if you say, I won't make a choice, you have made a choice.
It's like the guy who says, I'm not ever going to be a philosopher. He's already a philosopher when he says that. And so this theme that we have a work to do, there's nothing more pertinent to life than this. When you think how much of life, of our daily lives, I don't care what kind of a job you have, it becomes repetitious. It becomes monotonous.
It becomes boring. And sooner or later, you say, what in the world is this all about? Is it a rat race? Is it a merry-go-round? What in the world is it for?
I am fed up. Well, that is unchristian as anything could be. It's utterly unchristian. And that's the point I wanna make this morning with, very coincidentally, and I'm not I'm not pulling a punch. It's absolutely true.
I got ahold of three different people, one from the last century, one from the last month, and one from last Sunday, on this question. And the first one you've guessed it is Newman. I've referred to him on many occasions on this subject because remember, what Newman if you know anything about Newman's life, what he wrote, he was writing from experience. I mean bitter experience, frustrating experience, boring experience. He was writing from his own life.
He wasn't theorizing from an ivory tower. And I wanna give you just a a word or two from a meditation he wrote on this subject. This is Newman from a meditation. God has created me to do him. Notice that pronoun.
Him some definite service. See, please notice that sentence. Let me repeat it again. God has created me to do him some definite service. Did you notice he didn't say to serve my fellow man, to serve myself, to be fulfilled, and all of this trash?
Because that's what it is if it is not centered on god almighty. On god almighty. We are put here not to serve our neighbor. God made me to know him, to love him, and to serve him in this life. Nobody has that's an inspired sentence that came out of the the the council of Baltimore on on that first Baltimore catechism.
That is a whole philosophy of life there if you can only grasp it. We're not here to serve myself. We are not here to serve my neighbor. We are here to serve God almighty. He taught we are slaves.
You know what say? These translations don't like to use the word slave, but the word in the Greek is slave, doulos. We're the slaves of God. We're even worse than that. He made us.
We we dangle from his very little tiny finger with the tiniest thread. We are contingent beings. And the main thing about life is to serve God. I don't know how many young people have come to me and said, I don't know what in the world to do. I don't know what I'm supposed to do.
And, you know, they're floundering around, or as they say, I'm trying to find myself. So they take the summer off in 10 bar in Ocean City to find themselves. I'm not exaggerating. That was my nephew. Literally.
I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding. He's a Catholic, born a Catholic. Not one time in my 84, pretty pretty pretty close to 85, unfortunately. Not once has anybody ever come to me and said, what does god want me to do?
Not not a single time. You see, in some way or other, we have gotten away from that. Almost as soon as I could hold a book, the Christian brothers gave me Saint Francis de Sales, an introduction to a devout life. How I well, I'm not gonna ask you, but I would like to ask how many in this congregation has even seen that book. We've gotten away from it, and there's nothing that is the most practical guide to a spiritual life I've ever seen.
And it's so simple. All that Frank says de Sales said, look. If you're a whatever job you have, whatever rank in society you have, you have a job to do, so do it to the best of your ability. I'm not exactly it's that that simple. But somehow we have gotten away from these things.
We are born to be the slaves of God to do his will, and we will do it. We can't miss doing it. That's the point I wanna make that I made last time. We can't miss doing his will. And don't ask me how I put all this together, but that is the that is the the God's honest truth.
Because God's running the world, and we're not going to run it contrary to him. Even our even our sins, even sins can contribute as I'm going to bring out if I can beat that clock. So that that so I want Newman has a lot. I couldn't he has a lot on this subject because he is talking from his own experience. When he left offered Oxford, he left almost everything and went into an alien country.
He he left a a a comfortable life with law Newman made a tremendous thing about friends hips and friends. He left that all. Even his own family. To go over to these Roman Catholics was like going to an alien country. So what he was writing from a life experience, but he puts it, god has put me here to do a work.
So let me let me see through my sickness. Let me see through my misery. Disappointment with a job. Let me see through the disappointment I may have in my children or in myself or in my boss or what have you. Let me see through the boredom of repetitious day in and day out jobs which seem to become so monotonous and and so meaningless.
If only life had a meaning, people say. And that is the secret of living, that life has a meaning in this tiniest detail, not in some abstract way, but in this person who crosses my path and gives me a jolt and I don't like even the sight of him or the thought of him, there's where I'm serving god. Now the second is from last Sunday's New York Times. Robert Coles has gotten out another book. He gets a book out of a week, practically.
Anyway, this is the third volume of that wonderful series on children. The first two had to do with their political and their moral life. This third volume has to do with their spiritual life. And he quotes a little 10 year old girl named Mary. Mary.
I wanna give you her own very word. You know, his these works are based upon his interviews with children. And this was in the New York Times for last Sunday. It's called the spiritual life of children. And as I say, this little girl was interviewed.
10 years old 10 year old girl. She was speaking of her future. Here's what I'm quoting it directly. I don't want to waste my time here on Earth. Think of all the people that the Lord hasn't sent here.
When you're put here, it's for a reason. The lord wants you to do something. If you don't know what, then you've got to try to find out what. You may make mistakes, but he'll lead you in your direction. You have trust in him, and you keep turning to him.
That's from a 10 year old girl. And I just happened to find in my files a a paragraph from John Paul the second when he was visiting Edinburgh in in 1987, talking to the young people of Scotland. And it's amazing what he said. He said to them, speaking English, he said, it isn't important what you do, what your natural inclinations are. The important thing is that you do it to serve God.
That isn't that a curious parallel? I'm giving you almost his direct straight words. And the reason is it's so god awfully true. God awfully true. I mean, awesomely true that we are put here not to do my will, not to accomplish what I think I ought to accomplish, but to serve god and to accomplish what he wants me to do.
And brothers and sisters, that may be a heap big difference from what I want. As CS Lewis says, when you say that God loves me, you better be careful because God does love you. And just think of what a good, loyal, intelligent, well informed owner of a good dog, how he treats that dog. Poor little dog can't do anything with on his own. He's tethered, he's fed food he doesn't want, he can't go around in garbage pails.
The poor little dog has a dog's life, but his master loves the dog. He yanks him back from the garbage pail. He gives him a diet that keeps his coat sleek, keeps his teeth in place. You know? Lewis develops this.
Now the third man is a a jailbird. A jailbird from Alabama. I don't know his name except that he's a prisoner, and apparently, he's been there for life. And he wrote a I don't know how many of you know, an international magazine called thirty days. I would like to know that every single person in this parish gets it, reads it, memorizes it from page one to the end.
It's a wonderful magazine. It takes you out of your little tiny nest and gives you a view of the what's going on in the world and issues which are worthy of your intelligence intelligence and of your worthy and also worthy of your argumentation. It's called thirty days. It comes out in Italian. It's translated into four or five languages.
Father Fessio, a Jesuit, is the editor of the English edition. A prisoner from Alabama wrote to Fessio some time ago and asked him if he couldn't get somebody to give him a subscription to thirty days. So Fessio put a little square block in one of the one of the issues. In the last issue, the issue for November of thirty days, Fessio prints a letter from the Alabama jailbird. He thanks father Fessio.
He says he got many replies, and especially he got a reply from an Irishman from Chicago, a printer, makes his living as a printer, not a rich man. And that this Irishman has practically adopted the jailbird. Because what Fessio want I mean, what the what the prisoner wanted was that he would he he wanted to use the the magazine thirty days in teaching catechism to some of the prisoners. It's all he wanted it for. He was conducting catechetics to the prisoners that wanted to to become Catholics or who just wanted to to to attend.
And he want he thought this magazine would help him. Oh, boy. When I saw that, I said, there there's a a good a good jailbird. He knows what he's doing. He knows more than what he's doing than a lot of people outside the jail.
So he not only got a subscription from this Irishman from Chicago, so you see some good comes out of Chicago. And but this Irishman practically adopted him. And more than that, he became a cooperator in this man's work for Catholicism and the and Catholic truth and faith in the jail of Alabama. He gave he he sent him videos, audios. He he started and helped him to build up a Catholic library of philosophy and theology.
He sent him brown scapulars. He sent him rosaries whenever they were needed. And, also, this Irishman from Chicago, the printer, made a holy hour before the tabernacle once a week for those prisoners. Now what I wanna bring home is this. I'm going to give you the conclusion, and I'll use it again.
It was it was my last line, which, you know, always should be a punch line. But this man at the end of the letter writes as follows. He says he he says that he says, I I I committed vile things. I deserved what I got. I deserved what I got.
You see, he became this prisoner became a Catholic only after he he came into the the jail. But he says his concluded conclusion of his letter was this, I have learned that prison isn't such a bad place to go to heaven from. And that's what I want you to remember, that prison is not a bad place to go to heaven from. That's the punch line. Because the fact that this guy, this jailbird, it could it must have been he he all he just says is that he committed vile crimes.
He'd had a very bad childhood, very bad. I don't know what he was when he came to jail, but he became a Catholic and a very fervent Catholic. He learned to love God. He learned to have a new concept of the word father. He had he got a new concept of the word family.
And so he says that he learned in jail that jail is not a bad place to go to heaven from, and neither is this life a bad place to go to heaven from. And how do you do this? How do you do this? Just look look at the facts here. Here, this Irishman, he's a good, honest you've got a a practicing Catholic in Chicago.
He reads a magazine. He gets in touch with this man in Alabama. And his life has changed. I mean, the man the Irishman in in in Chicago and the the man in in the jail, here he finds a cooperator in his work in the prison of of Alabama. Isn't this marvelous?
How could this jailbird have foreseen all of this when he committed his crime and was sentenced? As he says in the letter, if the judge who gave me this sentence to punish me could see what it's done for me, he probably wouldn't have sent me to jail. What do you think of that? God is running the show. Never forget it.
I don't know how to put these things to that. That God saves me and I save myself. You've gotta put those two things together somehow. I don't know how to do it. But the point is that's the truth.
And how do we do it? By knowing and loving and serving God in this world. And how do you serve him? Not through your imagination, not by looking at greener pastures, not by saying if only at 31 I had done that, if only at 27 I had done that, if only I hadn't done that. Nonsense.
You've done it. You live in the here and now. Notice it's present tense. We're here to know god, not in the future tense, not in the past tense. To know him, to love him, to serve him.
It's all present tense because that's the only reality you have is the here and the now. And it's in the here and the now which is transformed by god's grace. As that jailbird did, you learn new a new meaning for father, You learn a new meaning for family, and you know, I hope and pray, you have a new meaning to live with God and to serve God first and and yourself and your neighbor with God. That spells salvation. In the name of the father, and the son, and holy spirit.
Amen.