A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Our lord began to reproach the towns where most of his miracles had been performed with their failure to reform. It will go ill with you, Chorazin, our lord said, and just as ill with you, Bethsaida. If the miracles worked in you had taken place in Tyre or Sidon, they would have reformed in sackcloth and ashes long ago. I assure you, it will go easier for Tyre and Sidon than for you on the day of judgment.
As for you, Capernaum, that was a very a city very closely identified with our lord's life. As for you, Capernaum, are you to be exalted to the skies? You shall go down to the realm of death. If the miracles worked in you had taken place in Sodom, it would be standing today. I assure you, it will be easier for Sodom than for you on the day of judgment.
And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. First, our holy father is in the hospital as you know. He went in for some tests and has been discovered that he has some kind of a growth in the intestine. So I ask you to remember him in your prayers.
Now I don't know whether this will mean anything to you at all, but it means a lot to me. Here I am asking a congregation on a weekday morning in in a in a very well known municipality known as Garrett Park worldwide, of course. We are a very highly diversified group right here. And I'm asking you to pray for a Polish gentleman who happens to be now taking the place of Saint Peter in Rome, And we take him to be as head of the universal Catholic church, the one and only. And then here, I'm talking I brought up a somebody by the name of Katarina Teika with her.
Well, that doesn't sound like Polish. It doesn't sound like English or French or German or any respectable language. Now you see, to be a Catholic means to be universal. But what the heck do you mean by that being universal? You can't spread yourself all over the globe.
Or can you? Or can you? Supposing you took those words for the next two or three days, you spent them in the library looking up who Katharina is, looking up who this Polish gentleman in Rome is who claims to be a successor of Saint Peter. That's an can you imagine anything as crazy as that? Then here in Garrett Park, we're praying for him as a successor of Peter who was a chosen follower of Jesus Christ, who we say quite commonly, well, he was the son of God.
Everybody knows that. And I'm asking you to pray for him, and here we are commemorating this this Indian girl who died when she was only about 25, had practically lost her sight, was an orphan, and and was ill, died in 1680. If you spent your a few days looking up those those just those names, I haven't been able to do it. I am so ignorant of our own country that I know a heck of a lot more about Greek history than I know about in Canada in 1680. When we sit in these pews, when we come together as Catholic individuals, persons before our lord in the blessed sacrament and we say this is my lord and my god, do you ever sit down quiet and say, what am I doing?
What is the significance of this? It's terrific. It's awesome. I had dinner very recently with a very fine couple, one of whom is Catholic and one is Methodist. I grew up in a town that was Methodist, but the person who was the Methodist that had no idea where Methodism came from.
They knew something about Wesley. Well, you say, who was Wesley? Well, he was the brother of the other Wesley. Well, who were the Wesley boys? Well, you know, they were some Englishmen who broke off from the church of England.
Well, who's the church of England? What's the what we call it the Anglican church or the Episcopal church in The United States. What is that? Where did it come from? Well, you say that went back to Henry the eighth, and, you know, he didn't break from Catholicism.
Elizabeth did that, of course. And you say, what do you mean they broke? Well, then you say, well, you know, Calvin came in from Geneva and then came down to Scotland. And, oh, you say, so they we we started in the sixteenth century. Is that what you're telling me?
Or the seventeenth? That's what I'm saying. Well, then where did we start? Well, you go back to dear old Peter, the rock. Now these are indisputable facts.
You can't avoid them. You you could just go into any bookstore and no. Not any book. But any decent college bookstore, and you can get summaries of what I've just said. There's no dispute about it at all.
There may be a dispute about who Peter was or whether he came to Rome or whether our lord meant what he said when he said you're a rock. Of course, you can. Can. But notice you're assuming that there's a text to talk about. You're assuming that there is a tradition of Peter in Rome.
How did how did it begin? Who who created it? Then you say in 1680, a a a virgin girl, an Indian, who pied who had she was only 22 or 23 when she pledged her her life to chastity, to virginity. Well, that meant she was pledging her life to a life of poverty. If you didn't have a husband, who's gonna look after you?
And the answer was nobody. Furthermore, she became a Christian of all things under the influence of a couple wonderful Jesuit missionaries. Think how they've been trashing Columbia. Think how they trash the Canadian missionaries. And then this this she had a Christian mother.
And as I say, she nearly lost her sight. She nearly died of the plague so that when she became Christian and tried to live a Christian life among among her own tribe, it was impossible. They practically ostracized her because of her association with the missionaries and because of her Christian ideals. You see, we have this great vision of the wonderful native natural American, the last of the Mohicans. And then now here's the point I wanna make with you.
This girl, this Indian girl, just three years or four years before she died, on the advice of one of the missionaries said, you cannot lead your Christian life here. You've got to go where and and be associated in a society, in an environment which will help you. I'm not sure he used the word. The poor man didn't know English. He only spoke French.
But we can forgive everybody for everything. So what did she do? She walked 200 miles to get into a Christian community where she could let her life with Christ flourish. And there's where she was received her communion and and died within three years. A dedicated virgin.
Now I'm not explaining this. Don't ever think for a minute. This is mysterious stuff. But the point I'm making is what she did under the most adverse circumstances to be what she wanted to be. See, today how often do you hear anything today about the occasions of sin?
I could give you very lured reports in the last two or three days from the papers. We would needn't go into it, but it's frightful. But to put for a human being to put themselves in an adverse situation and expect that they're gonna come out of it literally white is absolutely ridiculous. It's absurd. And you you know what I'm talking about.
If you don't, it's alright. Proves your innocence. So what I'm saying is to be a Christian is not to have a tranquil, peaceful life. That is nonsense. To be a Christian is to be a warrior, a milas.
Of course, our a lot of liberal Catholics don't like you to say that. But we are soldiers of Christ. Old Erasmus did said that. We are soldiers. And we know we all of us vicariously or in our own persons know what it is to be a soldier.
Think of the all the men out who went out and women who went out into the gulf. Is that tranquility? It means following Christ, and it means being supported by Christ. He said, I will be with you. He said, if you take up your cross, it's gonna be a burden.
It's gonna be a heck of a mess. And if you'd known English, you probably would have used stronger language. But, unfortunately, he didn't know English either, poor man. So that's what it means to be a Christian. It means to be following Christ.
And that means you have to work at it, to persevere at it, to use common sense. You can't push throw yourself into a as I did once in the bay, put your throw jump overboard into a bunch of oil and think you're gonna come out without any oil sticking to your hide. We environment is terrifically important. It's so important that we have some of the extremists telling us environment is everything. We're just products of the environment.
We common sense says that's nonsense. But environment is terrifically important. Abs it can be determining in many ways. And so as we today celebrate this feast of the virgin Katharina, take a with it, the Mohawk Indian Virgin. Let us apply it to our lives.
Don't ask what we what we could be if the circumstances were better. If we can change circumstances for the better, change them. Tootsuite. The sooner, the better. But in many instances, we have to learn to live with them and to rise above them.
We are supernatural beings. We are followers baptized in the blood of Jesus Christ. In the name of the father, and the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.