A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. This is the very beginning of his gospel. This is his introduction. Many Luke begins, many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events which have been fulfilled in our midst precisely as those events were transmitted to us by the original eyewitnesses and ministers of the word. Now please notice that if that isn't a straightforward statement of purpose, I've never heard it.
Then he continues, I too have carefully notice, Luke was not an eyewitness. So he says, I too have carefully traced the whole sequence of events from the beginning and have decided to set it all down in writing for you, Theophilus, so that your excellency may see how reliable the instruction was that you received. Now there's a big leap. That's the introduction in the first paragraph of his gospel. This continues on to we pick it up now in chapter four of Saint Luke.
Jesus then returned in the power of the spirit to Galilee. He's just been baptized down the Jordan, which was down around Jerusalem or rather down the southern part of the river. So now our lord has returned in the power of the spirit to Galilee. It's up north, west of the lake. And his reputation spread throughout that region.
Jesus was teaching in their synagogues, and everybody shouted his praise. He came to Nazareth where he had been reared, where he grew up. And entering the synagogue on the Sabbath, as he was in the habit of doing, please notice that, He stood up to do the reading. When the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him, he unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written, the spirit of the lord is upon me. Therefore, he has anointed me.
He has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and even release to prisoners to announce a year of favor from the lord. That's all a quotation from the prophet Isaiah. Now this is Luke speaking. Then our lord rolling up the scroll, gave it back to the assistant and sat down. Everybody in the synagogue had their eyes fixed fixed on him.
And then Jesus began saying to them, today, this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing. And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord. The text I wanna begin with is that what I the text I want to end with. And if you don't remember anything else on this troublesome morning, congratulations for making it. Hope you get home safe.
Take it easy. I hope you will remember this text of Saint Paul because there is nothing let's let me rephrase that. Even the most atheistic critic critics of our society, USA, they tell us that the great malaise, the great causes of depression in our our country, USA, is so many people find their lives meaningless, purposeless. So here are the words of Saint Paul. Remember, he's talking to the Corinthians.
Now keep in mind where Corinth was. It was the city between the two two the East and the West where all well, maybe not all, but a great deal of the shipping was was carried over the Isthmus. It was a hard, materialistic, rip roaring seaport, uniting the bridges that were between the East and the West, the or in the Oxenate. And he then these were the Corinthians, and these are the letters, the first and the second letters of Paul to the and keep to the Corinthians. So when when you read that, remember who his audience was.
These were hardheaded Gentiles who had become Christians against all the the luxury, the sensuality, the all of that kind of thing to become Christians. Today, of course, we have all of the first and little of the second as a nation. Now here is the text. We are Paul is talking to these hard headed Corinthians. He said, we do not lose heart.
We do not lose heart. The burdens that we bear in this life, they will we we for them, we will bear the weight of glory. That's a marvelous phrase. For what we put up daily in this life, we will earn. I noticed that word earn is and the Greek is perfectly clear.
We have something to do with our salvation. We will earn the weight of glory. The weight of glory. Saint Lucius Lewis has a whole essay on that. We set our sight on what is unseen.
For we walk by faith, not by sight. Now there's the key For we Christians in the midst of our lives, which are burdened, if not in some instances, totally involved in suffering and death. And Paul is telling these good serious Corinthians who have backslided, we walk by faith and not by what we see. And that's what our lives come down to. We face suffering and dying.
And all the rest of the little crises and the tragedies and the catastrophes that all come in between, we face it. It it's inescapable. How do we face it? The point of a Christian is that even our worst suffering, when we're lying unconscious in a dying state, my life is purposeful. That life has a meaning.
The question is, what meaning has it? There is the rub. John Stuart Millen, when he was about to commit suicide, he had his great revelation, whatever you wanna call it. He was a good god fearing atheist. Remember?
And his great revelation was that that made everything reasonable, that made all of life sensible because it gave reason and purpose to it was to serve my fellow man, altruism. And that now remember, if every human being was of a caliber of John Stuart Mill, that kind of nonsense might work. Because, obviously, the question is, why should I prefer anybody to little old me? Tell me why. And unless you can answer that question, let's go bowling or do something central.
But, anyway, it was that great revelation that gave meaning to his life. He was only he was only in his late teens. So what is this thing? Now last Sunday, I invoked the which was to me an astonishing fact of how The United the the New York Times for January 8 reprinted reprinted an editorial from The Wall Street Journal for December 12. Now I have something further to add to that since last Sunday.
I've got more information. The the New York Times did not publish it. The Wall Street Journal bought the page as an advertisement. The Wall Street Journal bought paid for that as an a full page advertisement in the New York Times for January 8 and published it. And it wasn't the man who wrote the article.
The man who wrote the article was Daniel Henninger, a New York Catholic. The man who insisted that it be put into the New York Times at the expense of the Wall Street Journal was the was the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, Peter Kahn. What do you see? This all adds up. This makes this the thing more astonishing still.
It was not just the result of some crackpot editorial writer who may may have had too many martinis that night or something. This had the backing of the publisher who said it was so good, we'll put it in the New York Times. And I wanna tell you again that the reaction of it to the in The Wall Street Journal has been extremely positive, and they said totally positive. And many, many other papers have asked for hat the right to hat to reprint it. Now as you I I could only briefly point out what the gist of that was, but the gist of of Daniel Henninger's editorial was this.
He gave point, point, point of where we have come in twenty five years of the sexual revolution. And it's a sad, sad story. Very sad. And finally, in in in the end of it, he writes that he says that he, that is Henninger, decided it was time to speak up because in an era when advice of therapists is often preferred to that of ministers and priests, a lot of people are intimidated into keeping their mouths shut about the old fashioned notion of sin. Sin.
Now there as you know, at the bottom in the whole page in the New York Times, they had the editorial, 900 words in the whole page. Then at the bottom in great big letters, we had this statement. When was the last time that you had a good conversation about sin? Now I wanna continue that, have a follow-up. I'm all for that was a great editorial, and it's hit a lot of people who would never think of reading anything in a Catholic paper or in any other religious paper.
Remember, it's not only Catholics who have a strong conviction of sin. You can't escape sin in the New Testament, not to mention the old. It's mentioned at least 44 times. And remember, when we're talking about sin, we're talking about guilt, responsibility, and punishment or hell. Keep all that in mind.
But having said that, as I just intimated last Sunday, and we must never forget this, sin is a negative. Sin is the privation of a do good. Sin is the expresses the absence in the moral order of a certain motive the absence of the certain moral order of actions that we ought to be doing. Notice that word ought there. It's not merely a negation.
It's the privation. Something that ought to be in my actions, something is not there that ought to be there. So that sin is a negative thing. As I said they said, this pulpit never committed adultery or fornication. It never stole or lied or killed.
So but we don't talk about this pulpit as being very holy. Now the point I wanna make today is this, that life has a meaning, and it's not negative. Our blessed lord didn't come to establish a mere negative. He never said that the purpose of life, the ultimate goal of life, and the same with the Old Testament, is to avoid sin. Of course, if we're going to follow Christ, if we're going to try to line our lives up with almighty God's law and will, we will try to avoid sin.
But what is our purpose of life? It's not running away from anything. It's running towards something. And this is the most important thing to get into our heads. Life is a positive thing.
We are running towards something. And by running, it may be in a semi conscious state in desperate pain so that even the thought of god is repugnant. Don't ever think that it's very easy to think of a benevolent god when you're suffering or when you're seeing other people who are perfectly innocent suffering. Think of husbands and wives that they are who are seeing their kids suffering privation because they can't find a job. That kind of suffering is worse than doing it yourself.
Where is the meaning of this all? Now without a doubt, our blessed lord came to be our redeemer, to be our savior, to save us from sin. No question about that. But when you turn to my old favorite document, that little old Baltimore catechism, what's the second question? Why did god make you?
If you can answer that question, then you have given meaning to your life and you can answer it. Now notice that answer. God made me. Me. I'm an individual creation of God.
To know him, to love him, to serve him. Is there anything negative there? To know him, knowledge, to serve him, to keep his commandments, and to love him, whatever that means. Think of Saint Paul, definition of love. That's what it means to have a savior.
Because our blessed lord not only gave us meaning to life, he showed us how to do it. In other words, we can't fail. He never said you wouldn't have your cross, that you wouldn't suffer and die. He never said anything like that. He said just the reverse.
But he said, look. If you take up my cross or take up your cross and follow me with my cross, you'll find it sweet and light. Now I know that translation is terrible, but I can't improve on it because it does say dulce in the Latin. Now as usual, I'm running out. I want want to say something about Viktor Frankl and his his wonderful book on man's search for meaning.
But I do want to quote something that one of you sent to me last week, which really put me on the line for this humbly. And this comes from a man by the name of Irving Kristol, k r I s t o l. He is a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute here in Washington. And this is from The The Washington Times for January 3. And this is the concluding paragraph of a long article on the anti cultural threats from within our nation.
This is his concluding sentence of the last paragraph. This is Christal writing. This isn't a minister or a tomist or some of that elk. This is just a plain good god fearing writer, fellow of the American Enterprise Institute. Crystal says, it this is the last sentence.
We saw a long article in in the Washington Times, January 3. It is crucial to the lives of all human beings at all times that they encounter a world that has a transcendent meaning, meaning a meaning that goes above the world, that's not of the world, above the world, in which the human experience makes sense. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is more dehumanizing, more certain to generate a crisis than experiencing one's life in a meaningless event in a meaningless world.