A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Our lord said, woe to you scribes and pharisees, you frauds. Another translation is, you hypocrites. Take your pick. I like hypocrites better because it's more in tune with the rest and other other references to the scribes and the pharisees.
That was their main point. They were hypocrites. You are like whitewashed tombs. Now this is strong language. Keep this in mind.
This is really strong stuff. And this is our lord. And remember, they're they're very likely present when he's saying this. You are like whitewashed tombs, beautiful to look at on the outside, but inside, full of filth and dead men's bones. Thus, you present to view a holy exterior while hypocrisy and evil fill you inside.
Woe to you scribes and pharisees, you hypocrites. You build tombs for the prophets, and you decorate the monuments of the saints. You say, had we lived in our forefathers' time, we would not have joined them in shedding the prophet's blood. Thus, you show that you are the sons of the prophet's murderers. Now it is your turn.
Fill up the vessel measured off by your forefathers, and this is the gospel which means the good news of the lord. Praise to you, sir. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Today, we have, as I've said, the feast of Saint Augustine of Hippo, not the other Saint Augustine. And, yesterday, we had the feast of his mother, Monica.
She died around she died before April and Saint Augustine died, notice, in 04/2030. He lived March to 04/30. That's a long time ago. And notice it's over there in in in Hippo near roughly near Carthage in in Africa, roughly right across from Italy. Now, the first thing about Monica well, there's a lot of first things about that dear lady.
But I just yesterday reread, the ninth book of of Augustine's confessions where he talks about the death of his mother at Ostia. This he became a Christian and was baptized by Saint Ambrose up in Milan, up in the North Of Italy. Now they the mother and son, both sons, are on their way back to Africa. And in order to prepare for the voyage across the sea, they came to Austria, which is down at the Tiber where the Tiber goes into the Mediterranean, just to, to get ready for the voyage. And there she's taken ill, and she's on the point of dying.
And that's where Saint Augustine in his ninth book of the confessions talks about his mother. It's one of the most touching chapters in literature. Notice I didn't say English. It was written in in Latin. The the confessions is one of the great books of the world.
Of course, to say that about it is to bury it 25 miles underground. But some people do read it yet. It is still available. It's highly recommended. Remember, there is no book like that, Saint Augustine's Confessions, until until you have the confession of Jean Jacques Rousseau.
Put that in your pipe and smoke. Nothing like it. Nothing even remotely like it till Jean Jacques Rousseau. His confessions. Now another thing about Monica besides being the mother of Augustine, being a loyal wife, being a persevering person at prayer, she is the first recorded alcoholic.
I don't know whether she's proud of that, but I think it's wonderful. Discovered it when she was a young girl, that she couldn't go down into the cellar and and get her father a a glass of wine without taking a couple of glasses herself for the voyage upstairs. The thing about Augustine is that you practically can't say anything anything about him short of superlatives, and we run out of superlatives. Because just think of this, there is no name in the Catholic church which carries the authority of Saint Augustine. No single person, black nor Greek.
There's nobody to match him. He became the father, the teacher, the doctor doctor of the church Christian church. He was he was taken up by Luther and the Protestants for for a lot of reasons. Saint Saint he's one of the most quoted outside of the bible by Saint Thomas Aquinas. And the main argument against Aquinas in the thirteenth century thirteenth, the rise of the universities, was that he, Thomas, was teaching doctrine contrary to Saint Augustine.
Of course, that wasn't true. It was against the so called Augustinists, that is so called theologians, they've always been a pain in the neck, you know, were had so mutilated Saint Augustine and defended, not Augustine's, but the doctrines they said Augustine had against Saint Thomas. This is a tremendously important question. But the thing I wanna make out from the from from 03/2030, when they when the barbarians, so called, swept down from the North and across the sea and and almost when Augustine was dying, they were about to burn Carthage, is that he is the dominant figure, the dominant teacher, the dominant pastor of the Western church, and there's no doubt about it. There's no christ Catholic theologians so admired among non Catholics, especially the Protestants, as Saint Augustine of Hippo.
Now, of course, having said that, you know, you'd say, well, if he's that important, maybe I ought to read some of his stuff. Well, that's not the way it works. I do recommend his confessions. There you get all kinds of translations, Knox, Fragment, Sr. Rhine, Shreed, Frank Shreed.
These are all very recent relatively recent translations. It is the Confessions is one of the greatest books of Western literature. Now that is a that has nothing to do with religion. Some of the greatest scholars of Saint Augustine are not Catholics, and some of them are not Christians. But he is extremely valuable for other things, a lot of other things.
And so today, when we said that opening prayer that we pray that we have the spirit of Saint Augustine in the Catholic church, folks, it needs it. It needs it desperately. I'm not exaggerating this. Because in many areas of the Catholic I mean, the Catholic church today, they are separating themselves, have separated themselves from much of the tradition, the philosophical tradition, at least, of of an Augustine. For example, the natural law, just to give you a little history.
And so today, as we pray to him, as past, not as future, but as present tense, he is a member of the church triumphant with his mother Monica. Present tense. And if he had the care that he did have plenty of evidence for it, For truth, notice truth, it comes before action. Anybody can do good to the poor. You could be the worst pagan atheist on God's earth and be kind to the poor and fight for peace and all that without at all having any relationship to Jesus Christ.
The point is the church of Jesus Christ is either the church of Jesus Christ or it ain't. It's our obligation to be with that is if we wanna be Christians, which means Christ, we wanna be in his church with his truth, not the truth of some twentieth century theologians, most of whom have come under the criticism and discipline of the church. Remember, most of the theologians, they who are quoted have been have have been or are under the discipline of the church, yet they are quoted as the leading theologians. As I say again, let us look upon Saint Augustine present tense. If he cared for the church of Christ when he was with us as he is still with us, he is still very deeply profoundly concerned with the church of Jesus Christ, which has one goal, not to make this a better world as so many would have it, but to make us better people for our true world, and we call it salvation.
In the name of the father and of the son and the holy spirit. Amen.