A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Our lord, seeing the people crowd and crush around him, gave orders to cross the lake. Of course, this is up in the north, Lake Genesaret, Lake Of Galilee, to cross the lake to the other shore. A scribe came up to him and said, teacher, wherever you go, I will come after you. Jesus said to him, the foxes have layers.
The birds in the sky have their nests. But the son of man has nowhere to lay his head. Then another disciple came up to him and said to Jesus, Lord, let me go and bury my father first. But Jesus said to him, follow me, and let the dead bury their dead. And this is the gospel of the lord.
In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Yesterday, I had a great experience. I baptized a baby. That's one in six months, so I'm not overdoing it. In my whole career, I I I had very few baptisms so that whenever it happens, it's a big thing for me.
Because, you see, we don't realize what baptism is. Now I you see, I'm not asking anyone to believe it. I'm only saying what it pretends to be in the Christian church. And it's a it's a wonderfully dramatic, what shall I call, action tremendously. Even even if you even if you're just a plain pardon me.
Even if you are a genius in this in the writing of stories or in in producing moving pictures or plays, it's extremely dramatic. In a in a way, it's a of the whole of of our Catholic faith, of our Christian faith. Because remember, this is one of one of the sacraments where all so called Christians agree. No, no, no Christian that I know of has rejected baptism. Because after all, our heart said it so plainly, unless you're baptized, you won't have the faith.
Going therefore teach you all nations, baptizing, and so forth. Now the point that struck me yesterday, in that service we of course, the the baptism takes about a half a minute, but the baby will hold still long enough. If not, you have to use get them over the head or something to quiet them down a bit. But it's a whole summation. We go back to Genesis.
We go back to the to the fall of written of sin. We go back to the promise of the redeemer. We go back to to Christ. We go back to his life. We go back to his church.
This is all contained in the in the ceremony of baptism. It's tremendous. The creation, the fall, the redemption, and how all all of this going back who knows how many centuries or millennium. Who knows? I don't know.
And here all of that is funneled now into this tiny little baby, two weeks old, just a handful of flesh squirming a bit or asleep if it's been properly fed. It's it's tremendous. Now yesterday, there was a gentleman there who was extremely keen on what was going on. He even took notes. Then he wanted to take out a copy of the service.
I don't know who he was. He was a friend of the baby. Anyway, he's a friend of the parents of the baby. But he was very much struck with what what we were doing. See, even if you don't believe it, it's pretty dramatic stuff.
You know? And if you believe it, it's more than dramatic. More than dramatic. Dramatic. Because I've said this many times, but every time it drives home to me, hits me like a sledgehammer.
That here's this little baby, barely two weeks old in this case of yesterday, and we're we're saying, look, kid. Take this light, take this white garment, and keep it until you die. And when you die, may you be be may may you be as innocent as you are today, and may the lord accept your notice, here we're standing. Everybody's standing. Everybody's it's a joyful occasion.
It's not like a funeral. It's a joyful occasion. There and there is a joy, and there should be. Absolutely. It's a it's a gorgeous it's a kind of being absolutely happy that from the love of a man and a woman, you have a new human being.
Now if any of you have seen a birth, you'll know that that's a pretty dramatic thing when a baby comes into this world, into the physical and outside world. It's pretty dramatic. And yet, what we're doing here with the eyes of faith is far more dramatic than any physical birth. After all, every cat and dog is born. There's nothing so great being born in this in another sense, it's tremendous, even the birth of a cat.
But here we're talking about this little baby, born, tiny, very much loved and all of that. And now we're saying that this child be is a victim of the fall, and we're going to do something here that will rectify it. We are going to reinstate. We are going to transform. Remember, I resent like the dickens.
You can put other words in my mouth because they are they are the words I mean, and you know them very well, I hope. Here, we are talking in terms of faith. We are talking not in terms of an initiation. I resent that. Baptism is no initiation.
You can be a Mason. You can be a a Phi Beta Kappa or a Psi Psi Beta Alpha or anything you want and be initiated. This is not an initiation. This is a transformation. If it if baptism means anything, it means that you start out with something on a perfectly natural level, and when you're finished in a few minutes, here you have a being transformed.
Transformed. You all remember your biology when you talk about metamorphoses? Here is an example of a much worse than much more much more immense and splendid than the metamorphosis of a fraud. We don't think enough about this. I mean, just as either to accept or reject it.
But, you see, if you accept it, why in the world don't we act more appropriately? This is my this is my did you hear this gospel this morning? Did you hear what what our lord said? Remember, he's talking to Jews. Talking to Jews.
And one of these Jewish young men or older men, I don't know, says, Lord, let me don't call me now. I can't come with you right now. I've gotta go home and bury my father. My father do you do you remember the book of Job? Do you know how important burying your dead is and was to the Jews?
And this man is talking about his father, his father, not just any old person. And what does our lord say today? Did you hear what Christ said? Let the dead bury their dead. You come after me.
This is tremendous stuff. You see, I remember, I'm not talking to I'm talking to little old me about this. We don't realize who we are. We don't realize what we're about. Christ has got to be absolutely first.
He's made that perfectly clear, perfectly clear. You cannot have other gods before you. You've got to put me first and above all and my teaching. Remember Saint John, when he when our Christ said, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you cannot be my follower. He's talking to Jews who absolutely abhorred cannibalism, and they left him.
They they they couldn't take it. They couldn't swallow. As they said, who can believe such stuff? And then Christ turned to his disciples and said, are you gonna go along? Are you gonna go too?
He was willing to let the whole kaboodle go. His truth. Now how does that enter into our lives? Are we as radically Christian as we ought to be or as we pretend to be? Does it show in our daily lives?
I'm not talking around getting up on a soapbox and preaching. That is not the point. The pale point is much worse than that, much more worse than that. It's living it. It's living the Christian life.
And you think of Saint Paul, how almost all of his letters are written to Christians, to primitive Christians who knew the apostles, who knew the disciples, who knew Saint Paul personally, who had his own private revelation, and how he had a right back to him saying, you guys, won't you straighten up? Come on. You are Christians. You are the way you're living, it's a disgrace. You're violating the blood and the body of Christ.
So the point I'm making is there's no reason for us to be disgraced because we're not as good as we ought to be. The main thing is, are we trying? Are we persevering? As mother Teresa said, God doesn't ask us to be successful, he asks us to be persevering. Pick yourself up and try again, day after day.
Not yesterday and certainly not tomorrow, now, the present tense. And so this we ought to go back and read that ceremony of baptism once and once and say this applies to me, to my life, and to my dying. As far as the church goes and as far as any thinking person understands perfectly, there's not a heck of a lot of time between birth and dying. You know? Even if you live to be 103, that's not much in the life of a star, and we're all called upon to be stars.
In the name of the father, the son, holy spirit. Amen.