A reading of the holy gospel according to Matthew. Jesus said to his disciples, if your brother should commit some wrong against you, go and point out his fault, but keep it between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. If he does not listen, however, summon another so that every case may stand on the word of two or three witnesses. If he ignores them, refer it to the church.
If he ignores even the church, then treat him as you would a gentile or a tax collector. I assure you, whatever you declare bound on earth shall be held bound in heaven, the world. The you, if two of you join your voices on earth to pray for anything whatsoever, it shall be granted you by my father in heaven. Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in their midst. And this is the gospel of the lord.
The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. Much of the readings, speaking from my point of view, my understanding which is very poor, of the prophets leaves me confused. However, the gist of what they're saying is is usually very clear Because the message is simply one of God telling his people what to do, and they're either doing it or not doing it. And if they do it, they get praised and rewarded.
And if they refuse, if they disobey God, they get clobbered. And the prophet Ezekiel, from these readings we are having these mornings, brings that out. Now, today, in our times, the great word is not obedience to anything. The great word is freedom. Freedom.
In everything. So that today, and I'm not throwing stones, we have more and more an attitude that when it comes to questions of the good life of doing what we say is God's will, we look to psychologists. They'll tell us what to do. They tell us how we get there. Tell us what we should do, how we should react.
And if you doubt what I'm saying, you can verify it in practically any book of moral theology by Catholic authors you want to read. For the most part, it's easy to get an impression, notice those words, an impression that God has never told us what to do. That what we have to do is sift out a developmental psychology, that we have to consult the learned and internationally known theologians, the professional, not bishops but internationally known scholars. That we must go to biblical scholars to find out what the bible tells us in order to find out what Jesus said, and then after we think we know what he said, then we begin analyzing that and we come up with heaven knows what. How how seldom you find people asking this simple honest to God question, what does God want me to do?
What is God's mind on this subject? Did he or did he not make a revelation to man? Now, if he did, if there's a God in heaven or wherever heaven is, if if man is his creature and if God is not a crackpot, in other words, that there's purposeful activity even with the divinity which we consider rational and the mark of an intelligent person. So if God be this, then all of creation has an end, has a very definite purpose. We call it teleology.
That's another naughty word today. And so we in so many instances, are neglecting all of this, rejecting it in behalf of what? Freedom. Because you see, as soon as you admit that man has a destiny, then he's bound to that destiny. He's bound to it, if you admit he has it.
And so as Lewis said, it's not a for a Christian, it is not a question of freedom, it is a question of obedience. You don't hear that often today, but that was the way he looked at it. And how else can you look at this thing? Can a tree refuse to grow in its normal, natural way? Can the whole of nature outside of man behave according to what we used to call laws of nature, which today have been many instances rejected?
But there's we still act that way. We still get on a seven forty seven jet thinking that the laws of nature aren't going to be reversed during our flight, and that's a pretty good admission that there's something working beyond chance and coincidence. And so once you admit that that creation has a goal, has a purpose, that God is not just acting facetiously, then you have to admit that the creatures are involved with that goal and that purpose. It's inescapable. Now how about man?
Where does he fit into this? Is he gonna be totally accept a total exception to this all of nature or not? Now, see, when we come to this matter of freedom, we should be a little bit careful. The horse has no freedom in the sense in which we we call the freedom of the will, of choice. Neither does the dog, the cat, or the tree, or the plant, or or anything else that is devoid of a spiritual nature.
There's no such there's no use the even thinking of freedom of the will. And let's not get mixed up with words. We're talking about a person's ability to make a decision as an autonomous thing on his own, that he is not predetermined, that he is not forced into it by his physical nature, by the material forces of and circumstances of life, that everything about him can press him and he can still make up his mind himself. I emphasize the word can, whether he does it or not something else. Now when you come to this very insensitive question then, here if you admit that man has this goal, that life has a purpose and a meaning, And I here again, I don't wanna get involved in with with technical words.
They're not so technical. But the thing is if you admit that we have a purpose in life under god, then there's no freedom as far as our trying to achieve it. Well, then where is this freedom we're talking about? It's the freedom of choosing it. Not in the sense that we that's I'd like to take that back because we are not choosing that goal.
It's been it's a part of our very nature. And I'm not speaking in the supernatural order now at all. But what I'm saying for the natural order certainly does have meaning for the supernatural. A fortiori has it. And so when you say that I have a destiny, a goal, a purpose, a reason for living, I have no choice about that.
It's part and parcel of my very being. If there is a measure of freedom, it's simply in my ability to accept or reject that. I can act against it, purposely act against it. I can see the good, I can approve the good, and I can say the hell with it. I can do it.
And Saint Paul put it in almost those words. And he is not the first one. As I've quoted many times, you have the ancient Latin poet. He said, I see the good and approve it and do the opposite. Saint Paul said, the good that I would, I do not, and the evil that I would not, that I do.
Now I realize that here we're in this terribly deep water of how this can be, how I can make those bum choices, And that's another question. But the point is the freedom of will, of choice, of option, has to do simply with this, not with my choice of purpose or goal. That I cannot escape. I can't escape it. All I can do is either to accept it or reject it.
That's the measure of freedom I have, and that's a lot of freedom. That is a that is a large measure of autonomy. That of all creation think of the third book third chapter of Daniel. How Daniel goes into the you know, that rhapsody of that all nature praises God, and then he goes down the lakes and the fishes and the sea and the beasts of the field and the trees and the sky and the thunderstorms, you know, the whole caboodle. And now man alone can stand up and say, I won't do it.
He can do that. How that can be, how it can come about, how it can actually happen, I think it can happen. In other words, what I'm saying, I think there can be mortal sin. How this can happen, that's another question. But that it can happen, I have no doubt.
Because if you if you claim freedom for a human being, then you have to admit he can go one of two ways. There has to be at least that much of a choice. And therefore, the very essence of freedom is that possibility that we can see the good and approve it and do the opposite. And so when we talk about freedom today, let's not divorce it from a certain amount of obedience. Lewis had a great measure of truth in there that the that the whole essence of a Christian isn't freedom, but it's obedience to God almighty.
And our freedom consists in our extremely hazardous responsibility of seeing the good, good, of of approving approving the the good, good, and of doing it. Because the freedom, truest freedom, is not in doing evil. You don't prove yourself free in breaking the law. You prove yourself free in obeying the law much more than in destroying it. And so when we read these prophets, let's not get into an idea that that this stuff is all obsolete, that it is all gone, that I can't understand what they're talking about anyway and it's a lot of guff.
Take my word, they just look at it this way. Much of the Old Testament has endured as literature, not because it's the word of God or any such stuff as that, but that it is why is it literature? Because it reveals the human heart. That's why it is. That's why we read it in all the languages of the world.
It doesn't lose its impact by translation. It may be diminished, but it doesn't lose it entirely. And so let us not miss the message that comes through. God is god. He is all powerful.
He is almighty. He is the creator, and man is his creature just like every horse, dog, and sparrow of the sky and every hair of your head. We are all god's creatures. And if we're creatures, it means we that's the perfect passive participle that we have been created, created for something. And in the existential fact of my existence, I have no choice about that purpose or goal.
There's no choice there. I have no options. It's it's a part of my very existence. My only choice is how I react to it. There is the freedom.
Do how do I accept it? How do I recognize it? How do I try to see it? How do I listen? How do I respond?
To whom and to what? That is an important question that must be answered. God can speak to me personally. I admit the possibility. I don't think it's normal.
Then then how do I come in contact with god's command? How do I know what I am for, what my existence is destined for? How do I how am I to know this? Has he told me? If he has, where is it?
Whose obligation is it to find out? And so we pray that we do find out, that we do not behave as so often the chosen people. Notice the chosen people, the history of a people, beloved of God, favored in every way, is a history of risings and of fallings, of seeing the good and approving it and doing the opposite, of listening to God on one day and going and worshiping Baal on the next, and then coming back repentant. In the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit. Amen.