A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Jesus journeyed through towns and villages preaching and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of god. The 12 accompanied him and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and of other illnesses. Mary, called to Magdalene, from whom seven devils had gone out. Joanna, the wife of Herod Stewart, and Susanna, and many others who were assisting them, that is the disciples in our lord, out of their means.
In other words, they were paying the bills. And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. Today, we have this feast of the Korean martyrs, and their canonization is so recent that they're at least in my library, I had very little resource material.
And I must say, looking using what I have, I learned a lot. You know, I was almost totally ignorant of this, that in the nineteenth century, three Frenchmen from Paris, a bishop and two priests, were sent by the Foreign Mission and the were allowed of and certainly the no Christians. And if a Christian dared come in, he was liable to the penalty of execution. So that's what happened to these three Frenchmen plus over a 100 other Koreans. Among them, the first native priests, father Kim.
His name is head of the group in our martyrology today, father Kim Tae Gon. Now this group of whom we have the names and we have the ages, the ages range from 13 to 79. You had a bishop, you had three priests, you had married men, you had married women, you had widowers, you had widows, you had adolescents, you have had young virgins, young married, you name it. Men and women, old and young, thousands of them, thousands. But today, we are specifically honoring a 100 and some of them.
The number varies depending on how many of you put in there. Now, for the last twenty four hours, this has been very much on my mind for some reason. Because you can't help comparing it and asking yourself, what would happen to the holy Catholic church in Garrett Park and our parishioners, including little old me, if we were put to this test? Where would we stand? Now these people, they not only faced death, they faced torture, they faced beheading, they faced all kinds of insults, the women were raped.
It was a met an awful situation, and and they're numbered in thousands, thousands, who died for Christ. Now today, today, you can get enthusiastic support, and I'm speaking of the here and the now, Garrett Park. You can get enthusiastic re support for such things as helping the poor, the homeless. Look what happened in Wichita. Now look.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not against that. That's wonderful. But how many people today are willing to sacrifice anything for what we call truth? Try it.
Try it. I've been there. I know. Because today we say, well, now look. That's academic.
That's a matter of semantics. What what matters is that we live in peace and have be our our And hours, And over the phone, a lady who's a Catholic who's about to become a grandmother is all elated. Of course, the father and the mother of the baby happen to be are not married, but she thinks it's just wonderful. And this is a practicing Catholic. This is the world we're living in, folks.
Don't you ever miss it. I think it was yesterday I referred to the tar barrel. See, today, with this great destructionism from this guy, Lem Daman, and so forth, that's that's ripe in our schools. Remember, it's ripe. It's it's it's there.
It's virulent. It's spreading. Where we say there that there's no such thing as truth. Even if there was a thing as truth, we couldn't communicate it. And if we could communicate it, nobody else would understand as we're saying it anyway.
Now the I this is not fiction. This is the reality of the present moment. There are no absolutes. Look at all this talk about natural law. It's a it's a it's the issue is really, is there a god, and who's running the show?
Just look at just today, ask your associates how they react to that little boy being struck by lightning yesterday, the football player. One stroke of lightning where ordinarily you would have several 100. One stroke hit that one boy, blew his helmet off, blew his shoe off, and sent him into a into intensive care, And I think my latest report is he's still living. See what see the reaction you get. They'll say, oh, god had no hand in that.
Oh, no. And that's ridiculous. If this is god's world, if Jesus Christ was serious when he said not a hair falls from your head, without your father, heavenly father's consent. If Jesus meant what he said, what do you make out of the boy being hit with lightning? What do you make of the book of Job?
Well, of course, people don't wanna read the book of Job these days. But this is the world we're living in. How many of us of course, let me tell you right away. None of us would stand up on our own. But let me tell you something else.
Plenty will stand up with the grace of God. They will. It's always been that way. Because as without me, our lord said, you can do nothing. Christ and the word nothing means no thing.
And so when I think of these thousands of Corinthians in the last century, goes from about '36 to '67. When I think of them laying down their life for academic theoretical truth, for semantics, if you please, imagine the problems of translating English or French into into an oriental language. But they died for truth. Every martyr died for truth. That's the whole essence of being a martyr.
Not that you were good to the poor or that you took care of the homeless, but because you were a witness to God's truth in his church. And today, we're told by great people, after all, we were all the same. We're all God's children. It makes no difference. Let's just all be happy and go out and have a drink.
The only the the only thing makes sense there is the last part. And so I'm wearing red vestments because these are testimony to these people. And remember, when you talk about the thousands of Koreas, you're not even touching the surface of the men and women, young and old, rich and poor, sick and well, who gave their lives for the truth that Jesus Christ is the son of god and that he established his church on earth to speak until the end of time with his voice. In the name of the father, and the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.