A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Our lord moved about within Galilee. Galilee is up in the North, of course, North up by the lake area. And, of course, Judea is in the South, and Jerusalem was up on the mountain down there. Keep that in mind.
So Jesus was moving about within Galilee up around the lake area, Capernaum and so forth. He had decided not to travel to Judea, that is down to Jerusalem or up to Jerusalem because some of the Jews were looking for a chance to kill him, and he knew it. And people knew it too, public knowledge. The Jewish feast of booths drew near, and once his brothers had gone up to the festival, he too went up. That is he went up from Galilee to the the capital.
That's we why we say up to Jerusalem. But as in secret, he didn't go up with them and not for everybody to see. Now some of the people in Jerusalem remarked, is this not the one that they want to kill? Here he is speaking in public, and they don't say a word about it. Perhaps even the authorities have decided that this is the Messiah.
It's a very significant sentence. Still, we know where this man is from, but when the Messiah comes, no one is supposed to know his origins. See, this isn't supposed to be the people speaking, whoever they are. Now at the this Jesus who was teaching in the temple cried out and said, so you do know me, and you know my origins? It's a question.
The truth is I have not come of myself. I was sent by one who has the right to send, and him you do not know. I know him because it is from him that I come. He sent me. At this, they tried to seize him, but no one laid a finger on him because his hour had not yet come.
And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. As we are edging into the great feast of the resurrection of our lord, Notice I didn't talk about paschal mysteries. I'm talking about a fact because if it's not a fact, then let's go bowling or go fishing or do something serious because it's either a historical fact or it ain't.
And the difference between those two things is a contradiction, and one of them has to be true. And everything that's worthwhile in life and in eternity depends on which one is true. It's that simple here. I'm not exaggerating it. If you sit back and just think a little bit, you'll see that this is absolutely true.
The Christ did not rise from the dead. Forget it. Saint Paul said he could not have said it more simply and blatantly. If Christ be not risen from the dead, your faith is in vain. But if he did rise from the dead, if it's a fact, that's perfect past tense of the verb to be, if he did, then we better take note of it because it changed the world or should have changed the world.
And in many ways, it did change the world. If just imagine this. Just from an empirical point of view, if somebody on the first Easter Sunday in Jerusalem or in Rome or in Constantinople or in Carthage had said four hundred years from now, this whole Roman Empire will be Christian. They will be following this man. Some will be even giving his their lives up for this man who's supposed to come out of a broken tomb, you would have been left to scorn because they would have said, look at the cross.
You know, if he had been god, he wouldn't let that happen to him. And their thinking is right. The trouble is they're thinking as human beings only. Only. Now the point I wanna make this morning is this.
As I have said many times, one of the greatest enemies of religion is religion, is religiosity. We can get lost in a lot of details with the best of intentions, the best of effort, and forget the reality. When they were building the the National Shrine Of The Immaculate Conception on the campus of the Catholic University of America, which had been in the building from the day I came there in 1928. It was a big hole in the ground with a very lovely crypt in 1928. And I saw these men who were doing the building of that church.
It didn't spring out of the ground, you know, by somebody waving a hand. It was put up brick by brick, and somebody put it up brick by brick. And day after day, as I saw that going up, rising up slowly but surely, the thought struck me, how many of those men are aware of what they're doing? Now I know you've heard this, but it's a very it's not a simile. It's a fact.
How many mothers and fathers in the throes of being a good father and a good mother have time to think, literally, have time to think of what it is to be a mother or a father. They're so engrossed in what they're having to do for the kids. But you see, unless we take time, time, unless we understand what we're about, are we acting rationally? Of course, we're not. We're acting almost as machines.
You press a button and you get an effect. The kid needs food, so I give it him the food. The the the engine needs oil, so I give him oil give it oil. See how it works? Now all this there's a lot of about religion.
I know that. And after eight weeks down in Cartagena and seeing those thousands of people day in and day out and wondering how many of them ever give a they all, I guess, would profess to be Christians. Fundamentalism is making a big inroads down there. You know? How many of them give a thought to god?
Ash Wednesday came and everybody in the hotel wanted to know if I was gonna give them ashes. When I said mass on Sunday, I had eight or 10 people. See? Now who's doing are they doing any thinking? Here you have some kind of a phenomenon going on in Virginia.
Everybody gets hot and bothered about it. Who cares? What's that got to do with god almighty whether a statute has water on it or whatever? I don't know what's going on. I I was in god's country or some place.
But you see how it works. Remember, you today's gospel is extremely important. Our lord said, I know where I'm from. Now the next most important question is, I know where I'm going? You gotta be at you as old lady Blinken said, you have when you're in a tough this was in the crisis of the civil war.
He says, if you know where you are and if you know where you're going, you have a chance of getting there. But if you don't know where you are or if you don't know where you're going, what chance have you of getting any place? Because if you're not on course, going to where you ought to be going, then the faster you go off course, the worse it gets. The more concentrated, the more sacrificial you are, the more dedicated you are, the worse it is if you're off course. If you're off course.
So the thing about life is that we know where we're from, who made you, and that old Baltimore catechism in the second question said, god made me. God. It doesn't tell you how he did it. He doesn't tell you how long it took. He doesn't tell you where it happened.
It only says, don't be a dummy. You know where you came from. You see, we used to give that to our youngest little children. Can any question He be more important than that? Yes.
There is a more important question because it's the final cause, and it is the more important one. Where are you going? What's life all about? And the old Baltimore catechisms had the answer to that. Why did God make you?
God, it didn't talk about anything else. To know him, to love him, to serve him in this world, to be happy with him in the next. Notice that pronoun there. Could anything more be profound? Could anything more be intellectually satisfying or psychologically satisfying or practically satisfying?
I mean practically in the daily buying and selling of bread and a pair of shoes. And that's what we used to feed the opening minds of our young Catholics. Of course, we gave that up. Naturally, of course. I don't say we, but by and large, it was given up.
So we today have to listen to this gospel this morning. There is a god, and that god became man. And that man who is god, one person, two natures, suffered and died and rose from the dead to tell me where I came from, to tell me where I'm going, and above all, not only to tell me how to get where I deserve and must go, he showed me the way and told me he would be with me the whole show. In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.