A reading of the holy gospel according to Matthew. A man came up to Jesus and said to him, teacher, what good must I do to possess eternal life? Jesus answered, why do you question me about what is good? There is one who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.
And then the man said, which ones? Jesus replied, you shall not kill. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness.
Honor your father and your mother, and love your neighbor as yourself. The young man said to Jesus, I have kept all of these. What do I need to do further? Jesus said to him, if you seek perfection, go sell your possessions and give to the poor. You will then have treasure in heaven.
After that, come back and follow me. Hearing these words, the young man went away sad for he had many possessions. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. It's very tempting, of course, to talk to speak a few words on a number of ideas which, of course, are suggested by this reading both from Ezekiel and from this excerpt from our lord's life.
Instead, I want to go back to the to the introductory prayer for this mass which is the mass of yesterday. And that is we beg God that we will love him in all things. Now notice this. Not that we will love God and despise things, but the prayer says, we pray to God that we will love him in all things and above all things. Again, not to despise the things, but to love god above all things.
And then this is the line, that we may have joy with him for eternity. Friends, there you have in a one sentence a whole Christian way of life. And if down the centuries, good, honest, sincere, sacrificing Christians have gotten mixed up about some of this, it's a terrible pity. It's a terrible pity. But notice this paragain.
We pray that we will love god in all things. Well, you how often do you see god in things? Persons are things too, you know. A dog is a thing. A tree is a thing.
A little piece of marble is a thing. A running brook is a thing. A meadow is a thing. A couple of horses galloping around having a gay old time on a spring morning or lies yesterday. They couldn't be exuberant enough.
They are things too. And we're praying god that we will love god in all things. Think about this. It isn't that we cut ourselves off of things. It's that we're praying god to love him in all things, and we're praying for this.
And then the next and this is all one sentence. The next thing we say is, and that we will love him above all things. And the reason it's very simple, because it is so frightfully difficult to really love things and to love god in all things and not lose ourselves into things. This is the problem. This is the problem.
You think of parents with their children. Think a husband's love for his wife, a wife's love for her husband. Do they see god in each other? Not all. Not all.
And do they if they do and if they do have a terrific love for each other, do they love God above each other or one another? There was a book published not so long ago by a man named Von Alpin, and it's really the story of his love affair with his wife. That's what it really is. In which when they got married, young college students, they were so deeply and profoundly in love with each other that they agreed to have no children. Why?
Because they were afraid that the child would come between them and lessen their love for each other. This is I don't know whether you've read it. It's called a severe mercy or something like that. It's a pretty interesting story. But the thing is, this is a difficult problem that we pray God to love him in all things.
In other words, we take things to our to ourselves. We embrace them. We love them for themselves or that we see god And then see, even that we can't stop there because if we stop there, we're in trouble. We're in danger. But then we pray again in the very as I say, we go right on and say, and that we may love god above all things.
This is not easy. This is horribly difficult. It's possible. That's why we pray that we can do it. The very fact that we pray means I can't do it alone.
And then that next sentence is the one I wanna stress this morning, that when we see god and love God in all because you can't love him unless you see him in them. You can't love what you don't know. The will follows the intelligence in my book and a lot of other sensible people's books. So you have to know before you can love in any order. And so here, we pray that we may know god, that we may see him in all things, and then love him above all things.
Why? Then we'll continue that prayer that we may have etern or joy with him for eternity. Joy. Now, you know, this is one of the things that's missing in so many people's lives, the absence of joy. And it's it's terribly, saddening that life for so many people is so grim.
Even their religion is grim. They they they you get the impression that they're walking on a tightrope all the time. They're walking on a two by four and there's a huge chasm underneath. And someone's whispering to watch out. Don't you make a misstep.
If you do, wham, you're gone. That's the way some people are living their lives. And and the tightrope they're they're walking, what is this tightrope? Oh, it can be so many things. But one of the big things is what we call security, economic security or what it can be a lot of other things.
I just I don't wanna get into that. But it can be all any number of things. But whatever it is, it takes the joy out of our lives. When to be a Christian, by definition, means to be joyful. It's the joy of the lord which nothing and nobody can take away from you.
One of the miseries of these situations is that talk doesn't do a blessed bit of good by just mere talk. But if we can point to somebody who exemplified this in their daily lives, then we're coming to something a lot better than words. And I ask you to look at a man like Saint Thomas More. You have to get the and I'm not exaggerating this. Believe me, I am not.
This man was accused of treason, and treason meant death. Now not just an ordinary decent death by being beheaded or something quick. It meant that you would be hanged until you were almost dead but still alive and conscious, then you would be cut down, then your body would be quartered, that is the arms would be cut off and the legs would be cut off and the you'd be disemboweled and your heart would be plucked out while you were still living. Beautiful, gruesome thought. But this is the truth of the matter.
And when Thomas More went to the tower, this is the penalty that hung over his head. He did not know from one minute to the next that there wouldn't come a thump on the dungeon door, and there you would have a gang of men to take him out and put him through this ordeal. This is what Moore was facing day after day after day. Any minute, this could happen. That's what he was living under.
You talk about a sword of Damocles. His own wife complained, how can you be so joyful in making jokes under these conditions? She was all worried about what was going to happen to the estate, how foolish he was to be going through this ordeal, how silly absurd it was for him, Thomas More, to be sacrificing his family when the whole hierarchy of England had done what he refused to do? Was he better than all the bishops of England? It was one exception.
They gave him a hard time because apparently he was sort of enjoying this situation in the tower. Now this is a matter of record. This isn't drawing on my imagination at all. This is a matter of the life of Moore written by his son-in-law by Roper, and it's also in his own writings which he wrote while he was waiting to be hanged and cut down and quartered. So the word with you, this is not the fusions of some vivid imagination, but here's what it was with Thomas More.
Now what was the secret of this? Was he frightened? Was he scared to death? Of course, was, and he tells us he was. What human being wouldn't be?
And he he had no the whole the whole world was against him. Remember, there were only a handful of men men, Moore and Fisher and the Carthusian monks, and one or two bishops out of the whole hierarchy of England who refused to take the oath of supremacy to Henry the eighth. So he was a lonely soul, and his own family couldn't accept this except perhaps his daughter with whom he had a very close relationship. But he was a lonely man, and he was seemed to be playing the part of a fool, of a clown, of a man full of pride, of a man who had no regard for his loved ones, for his family. This I'm not exaggerating this picture one iota bit, and it's not based on a moving picture.
It's based on the firsthand sources. Now what do you make of it? I make this of it that Moore was just an extraordinary Christian with honest to God Christianity in his heart. That after he had made his peace with God, after he told God how scared he was, he relied on God's help to see him through, and so he was a joyful man even under those conditions. Now to me, this speaks volumes.
Words are fine, but they're only words. But here you have a life, And he's one of us and he's only one. He is only one. I am sure you too have met men and women who have had little, little of all the things that most of us think are so absolutely essential to being joyful. And they've had none of it, and they've had a terrific joy in their hearts.
I remember when I was working in the McCormick Tea Company, and beyond my all of my expectations after I left, it's still in business. But I spent a delightful summer there working down over on Light Street in Baltimore in the factory handling tea without any air conditioning. And there was a woman there, I mentioned this on other occasions, totally blind, totally blind. And all she did was to put those little tin tops on the top of the tin canisters all day long. That's all she did.
The tops were right here, and these things would be moving along on a belt, spaced out, and she had the rhythm of the thing of picking up that top and sticking it on the canister all day long, eight hour a day. There were a lot of well, we were we were a very select group in that tea department, of course. Now, of all of the people who were there, without a doubt, that woman exuded more joy than any of us. And we all knew that she spent most of her time praying, and yet she was joyful. There were a couple men there who were certainly not exactly god fearing citizens, but there was nobody there who did not have the utmost respect for that woman and wouldn't do anything in the world for her.
But the point I wanna make was this this spirit of joy she exuded. And of all the people there, she had the least reason to be joyful, and yet she was the most joyful. How do you figure that out? I'll tell you because she had the joy of Christ in her heart. That's it.
Pure and simple. It wasn't there's no foolishness about this or guesswork. And so when we that prayer, we'll we'll repeat that this week that we pray to god. Notice, we're not going to do it on our own. We can't do anything on our own.
We pray to god to see him in all things, all things, everything, everything. So don't tell me that things are evil if god's in them. And then we pray that we may love god in all those things, and then we pray that we may love god above all things, and then we pray that we may be joyful with it in eternity. Well, let's not wait wait for eternity to be joyful in the lord. The name of the father, the son, and holy spirit.
Amen.