A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. On the evening because this is the description of the what happened on Pentecost. On the evening of that first day of the week, even though the disciples had locked the doors of the room where they were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood before them. Peace, he said, be with you. And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.
At the sight of the lord, the disciples rejoice. Peace be with you, Jesus said again. As the father has sent me, so I sent you. Then he breathed on them and said, receive the holy spirit. If you forgive men's sins, they are forgiven them.
If you hold them bound, they are held bound. And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. This text is taken from the second letter of Saint John, and it's it's only one chapter. It's a very brief letter.
But I think these words are very significant. These this is the second letter of of Saint John. He wrote three. Anyone who is so progressive that he does not remain rooted in the teaching of Christ does not have god. While everyone who remains rooted in his teaching has both the father and the son.
As I say, that's taken from the second letter of Saint John. Now right away, I wanna bring because here, two questions. You know, if we have a a brain cell working, now we read this. What do we make of it? At least two questions come up right away.
Where is the teaching? How do I get a hold of it? You can't avoid the question. We're living in the twentieth century, I think. And this was written in the first.
And Christ died at about thirty three AD. So if this if you take this statement as the word of god, of our lord Jesus Christ that's supposed to be, then you have to ask those questions. Because it says unless you're rooted in my teaching, you're lost. So it behooves me. I love that word.
It behooves me to get a hold of the roots, to get a hold of the teaching of Jesus Christ in the twentieth century, June 1992. And I speak especially to the young people. This isn't a matter of how I feel about it, how comfortable I am with it, whether it does me good or exalts or whether I'm enthusiastic, and above all, whether I'm moved by it. What matters is, am I rooted in it? And that's the question I wanna answer this morning because it's a frightfully important question today.
Because right in the holy Roman Catholic church, we have various answers to this. And one answer is, don't look at god. Don't look at objective history. Don't look at documents. Look within you.
What are you comfortable with? You know, religion just like taking a shot of scotch or bourbon or going to the movies or hearing good music. You know, it keeps us civilized. That's within the church. Now I wanna bring in two more texts right away because these texts, as far as the words go, no one denies them.
You can't say that they're interpolations or that the Greek is unclear or or all of this stuff. There's difference of interpretation. But as far as the disciples, and he says straightforward to Peter, thou art the rock. He was called Simon. Thou art the rock.
And on this rock, I will build my church, ecclesia. And ecclesia, whatever else it means, it means some kind of a formal association. No one denies it. Knows a little Greek. You can't deny it.
So our blessed lord is speaking on this rock. And notice he says, patriots, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And then we have that other extremely strong text which brings out a very strong point. This text of Peter brings out the idea of a church, an organization, a formal organization that's going to god, the son of god, Jesus Christ, is going to build on a man named Simon who hence forth will be called the rock. The second text brings out another idea which is denied today right in the Holy Roman Catholic Church.
Brings out the idea going our lord just before his resurrection. I mean, his ascension after the resurrection. He says, going therefore to he's talking to his disciples, not to the whole crowd. He's to his 12. Going therefore, teach you all nations.
First, baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and the holy spirit and teaching them everything I have commanded you. That's past tense. In other words, our lord is saying, look. You go out and you teach. You baptize, and you teach them what I have taught you.
Notice what I have taught you. There's a corpus. There's a body. There's a doctrine. There's a there's authoritative teaching.
Don't go out and teach them what you think. Don't teach don't go out teaching what the anthropologists think. Don't go out and teach them what theologians think. You go out and teach what I have commanded you. And these texts, you can't escape them.
Now as I say, they're all you can you can variously interpret them. But what do they say for any common sense person? There's no difficulties of language here as far as the words go or grammar or syntax. None. Or authenticity.
So what do you make of that? And if you admit, see, for one second that Christ meant what he says and that Christ is god, he doesn't ask the impossible. And if he says he's going to establish a church that's going to endure, then the question is, we ask, where is that church? Because if I can find it, there I know where to put my roots. There's where I know where I wanna be planted.
There's where I will bloom as a flower of god with his grace. Well, first, what's the common sense view? What does history tell you? Look around you. There are plenty of churches that say that they go back that they are Christian.
One of the most successful I just saw last week over in Largo, a huge magnificent building, very striking. Someone told me, did you see all those empty fields? They're filled every Sunday, and it's called simply evangelical, meaning gospel. But where did they get this book they call the gospels? It's in English.
Did Christ speak English? See, people don't ask questions anymore. They don't because they're going for comfort, and Christ never promised us that. Never forget it. People are going to religion today because many of them are desperate, because they're finding consolation.
They're finding hope. And believe me, I'm not downgrading this. Don't don't miss that. I'm not downgrading it. All I'm saying is it's not the church of Jesus Christ.
First of all, when did it start? Christ goes back at least two thousand years. Nobody denies that at all today. The historical Christ is an is actual fact. So if Christ says you've gotta be rooted in me, you've gotta be rooted in something that goes back to Christ.
You see, this is as plain straight logic. Of course, the people, they throw out logic. They say it's mere semantics because logic is deadly. Logic means if you take a stand on this, you have to agree to this. And you don't want to agree to this.
Therefore, you don't take a stand. That's the world we're living in. It's a world. Now the thing I wanna bring out is this. Today in the Catholic church, there's a strong I would say it's the stronger movement.
The stronger move. Remember, the so called tradition is as as Monsignor Ren says, we're on the outside knocking on the door. Keep that in mind. We're not the majority. Put down Davidson.
If you look at that new brand new Catholic church, it's Calvinistic from the from the cellar to the dome. We have to know what we are about if we're worshiping god. If we say, I want to go to him, and if this text has any meaning unless you be rooted in my teaching. Notice, not in my feeling. And Christ never promised us that to come to him, to worship him, to love him, to sacrifice for him as you people are doing right here in those pews this morning.
He never asked us to do any of these things because they would make us comfortable, because they would keep us civilized, because they would keep us culturally on the right path, because they would keep us civilized, because they would make life easier. Christ never said the slightest word about any of such junk. All that Christ promised us was the cross. The cross. That's all he promised us.
But he said, if you follow me and if you take up my cross, you will find it sweet and light. But you better be rooted in Christ and not in some kind of experiential feeling. Remember, feeling the emotions, the sentiments, they are as as flexible, as fragile as the last meal you ate or the last drink you took or the last bit of fun you had or the last bit of little tiny joy you had. They are utmost fleeting things. Is that where you're to be rooted?
Just listen. I'm watching that clock because there's so much to be said on this. I'm I'm way beyond my text already. But the thing is this. Last week, we had the feast of Saint Boniface.
Now Boniface is a missionary to to the Germans. As you he he died in July. At that time, Germany was a very, you know, tremendous hodgepodge of all kinds of principalities and kingdoms and everything. Anyway, Boniface was an Englishman. He went from England over there in the eighth century to try to restore the faith.
And in a letter to a friend of his, he wrote we wrote it we read it in his in the office last for his feast day. He says, remember that the church of Christ is a is a great ship, but it's on the ocean. And he says it is our responsibility to steer its course. Now any of you who've had any little experience with boating, this is a terrifically strong figure. Because if you're not on course, if you're not on the right course, then all your strength, all your power, all your sacrifices, everything that you're given to the wrong course in going fast on it is taking you away from your goal.
And notice, Boniface has in mind the idea of the ship being remember, he came from England, and now he's he's over in Germany. He knew what this English Channel was. He knew what it was to be tossed about in a great ship. But he says steer the course. Not that you're not going to be tossed around, not that they're not going to be casualties, but steer the course of the church of Jesus Christ on that vast ocean because it will be in many, many a turbulence, many a turbulence.
And we're in a dreadful one now. The see, you are acquainted with what's happened to catechetics. You are acquainted with what's been dished out to our young people, a lot of emotional stuff and moonshine. They don't wanna hear about doctrine. They don't wanna hear about religious formulas.
They don't wanna hear about the saints. All they wanna hear about is what is experientially satisfactory to me. A doctrineless commitment to what? To what? To what?
Now the point I wanna make as this simply as I can is this. This idea, which some of the liberals or the dissenters tell us, this is all in black and white, that in the beginning, the the church of Jesus Christ did not have a did not have formulas. There was no state state creed. See, some people reject reject or saying the creed. They don't like us to say the creed because they're that's committing yourself to dogmas, to formulas.
Some priests omit it at mass right today. I've been there. So we're told that we we that in the primitive church, it was just an amorphous, a nebulous, you know, an undefined sort of thing where you commit yourself to this or you don't, you know, all wobbly. Let me quote you just one man. He's not a Catholic.
He's a professor at Oxford University. Just a plain good god fearing historian. He wrote a book called The Early Creeds of the Church published in 1972. And there, this man, after years of research on documentary evidence, paper or whatever, he he brings up in dispute evidence that from the very beginning, the church of Jesus Christ was a church of a very distinctive, defined, clear doctrine. And that on this first Pentecost, when the disciples were infused with the holy spirit, when they threw open the doors, rushed out to the temple area, and began to preach the good news of Jesus Christ, they taught a definite doctrine.
They taught what Christ had commanded them. And as he points out, we have documentary evidence of the creeds in the early church. Documentary. Anybody can go and look at it. But, of course, if you don't wanna know anything, you don't look for for any proof or evidence.
So let us not make any this idea that the church's doctrine should be an amorphous, un unformulated, undefined, indistinct, unclear. That's a lot of garbage. It never was until the twentieth century of our lord. It is now. Now I have to anyway, let's jump to the conclusion.
What I wanna point out is this, in conclusion. The doctrine of the of the Czech Catholic church is not uncertain. It's not uncertain. Our lord said, you better be you better be planted and rooted in my teaching. Where is that teaching today?
Of the church, not of theologians, not of catechists, not of directors of religious education. Where is that teaching of Jesus Christ? Because everything depends on your getting a hold of it and get I mean, finding it and then getting to know it. It isn't enough to find it. It's a matter of assimilating it.
This is not easy. Learning is not easy, in spite of some of our crazy educators. Learning is not always fun. It's hard work. It may even mean sacrifice.
After all, as Saint Boniface says, there have been men and women who shed their blood for the teaching of Christ, for the teaching of Christ. In the name of the father, and the son, and the spirit. Amen.