A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Our lord said to his disciples, unless your holiness surpasses that of the scribes and the pharisees, remember, they were the top notch. They were the elite of the Jewish culture. You shall not enter the kingdom of god. You have heard the commandment imposed on your forefathers.
You shall not commit murder. Every murderer shall be liable to judgment. What I say to you is, everyone who grows angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment. Any man who uses abusive language toward his brother shall be answerable to the Sanhedrin. And if he holds him in contempt, he risks the fires of Gehenna.
If you bring your gift to the altar and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift at the altar. Go first to be reconciled with your brother and then come back and offer your gift at the altar. Lose no time. Settle with your opponent while you're on your way to court with him. Otherwise, your opponent may hand you over to the judge who will hand you over to the guard who will throw you into prison.
Notice very pragmatic opinion. Then our lords concludes this section. I warn you, you will not be released until you have paid the last penny. And this is the gospel of the lord. Praise be to In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen.
Well, it's good to be back in the pulpit after about six weeks of absence. Sometimes, I wondered whatever get back here again. Somebody said you must be getting at the bottom of the barrel. Well, here I is. I'm reminded in this first week of Lent of a story that I've used, and I think it's a corker, at least for my purpose.
A husband and wife and their young son were at dinner during the first week of Lent and they started talking about Lent. So the father turned to his son and said, son, what are you doing for Lent? So the boy was embarrassed and finally mumbled something like nothing. But then he looked at his parents and said, well, what are you doing for Lent? And the mother replied, your father and I have given up alcohol.
So the kid turned to them again and said, look. I saw you drinking Sherry before dinner. So the father pipes up then, always to the aid of his wife, you see. We have given up hard liquor for Lent. So the kid then turned to his parents and said, fine.
I'll give up hard candy. First thing I want you to notice there is the word god doesn't come in. People say, what are you doing for Lent? You ought to be doing anything for Lent. What's Lent?
You ought to be doing something for God. You see how God is gets out of our lives? We talk about doing things for Lent. That makes no sense. Where the heck is that Lent?
The only thing you can say for doing things for lead is that you're doing something that helps you to get in closer contact with God almighty. And by contact, I I'm not talking about empirical or essential contact. You know me. I have no much I don't have much time for that stuff. This experiential consciousness of God.
Don't depend on it, folks. So that's the first thing to note here. Lent is a nothing unless it is tied into helping you to be closer to Jesus Christ, the son of god. Point two, notice that it's negative. What are you giving up for Lent?
What are you doing without for Lent? What are you sacrificing for Lent? All of it's negative. Virtue cannot be negative. That's the reason I have no time for these people to talk about abstinence from sex.
They don't talk about chastity. There's a total difference between these two things. Even Alcoholics Anonymous recognized that way, way back when it first started. They don't talk about they don't talk about absence from drinking. They don't talk about not drinking.
They talk about sobriety, which a whole new game. It's the same way today we talk about love where we ought to be talking about charity because even the unabridged dictionary tells you that charity is love of neighbor for the sake of god. Whole new ballgame. So that's my second point. It's negative, and virtue has to be positive.
If sir if Saint Bernard of Clairvaux I use this example because it's held up to ridicule today. If Saint Bernard of Clairvaux got up every morning in his monastery, which is before dawn, and plunged into a stream of water nearby even in the coldest of winter, he didn't do it because he enjoyed it or because he was doing it for Lent. He was doing that to to have his whole being invigorated with his consciousness of God's presence, with his consciousness of of of what life's about, of his consciousness of what resolution he needed to follow Jesus Christ as a monk. It's no particular worth in diving into cold water unless you need a bath very badly, then take a long bottle of mister clean. Now the fourth point is conversion.
We hear a heck of a lot about conversion. And almost inevitably, that term emphasizes, focuses upon our past as if we were all a bunch of the most heinous kind of sinners. Of course, we have an Ignatius. Take Saint Paul. You don't have to go be back beyond that.
Take Saint Francis of Assisi. Oh, you could count them any on them who had real conversions, who were men of the world, who were very galant, who were good warriors, but who were men of the world in every sense of the word. And then suddenly something happens, Saint Saint Augustine. Something happens and we say they are converted. Notice, what are they converted to?
The word conversion is as ambiguous as the word change. Not million not a million years ago, I heard a very distinguished, he thinks he is anyway, participant on a TV show who says, I love change and I don't care whether it's for better or for worse. Can you imagine anything more absurd than for a reasonable person to say such a crazy thing? We live in a Heraclitus world. Everything is changed, old man Heraclitus said, even before Plato.
That's the world. If you don't know what to do, change it. You see how absurd that is? That is if you're not sure you're on the right way, take another way even if it leads you around a three a 180 degree turn. The most important thing about conversion isn't what you're from, it's what you're converting to.
Even my dear and late friend Thomas Aquinas says that the that the most important cause of the four causes is what? The final cause, the goal. If you're out there playing a football game, the goal is putting the ball through the goal. I don't remember one well, won't go into that. When I got mixed up, didn't know where my goal was.
So this is so simple. But you think for yourself, when people talk about conversion, what do they tell you that you're converting to? Well, the answer of the Christian is you're turn you're turning back. It isn't so much that that the good people in these pews are a bunch of them, a multitude of heinous sinners. It's it's the god's honest truth that there is no single creature, there is no single human being that doesn't need to turn back to god.
You cannot overdo it. And if you do it extremely well, you're a saint. And if you fail to do it at all, you're lost. It's that simple. But you see, the people don't think we use words and we don't know what in the heck.
We never stop to ask what do they mean. That's where the logical positivists come in and the deconstructions. They had a lot of reason for for their positions, believe me, even old man Wittgenstein. And so take to heart, Lent's a most important time. But its importance is not in what you give up, it's in what you do for god.
Part virtue cannot be negative. I mean, virtue yes. Virtue cannot be negative anymore than you can have a reality that is evil. These two things go together. And the second point is that god has got to be kept in your lives, and the whole point of Lent is to bring him into your lives more effectively.
Effectively. How does God affect your decisions? How does it affect your attitude towards a guy you don't wanna even say good morning to? To the woman who you who's been talking behind your back and and and spreading all kinds of rumors, how do you treat that lady that you're meeting every day? Do you have in mind thy will be done?
Quid vulteis, what does god want me to do? Or do you say, I need revenge. I want her fired. I'm talking from an experience no more than twenty four hours old. I want justice.
Well, when I hear that, you know, I know what they're saying. I want revenge. Quit full day is what does god want me to do? We could talk all you want about physical physical mortification. The hardest thing on god's earth is to say thy will, oh god, be done.
Try it out the next time you're in trouble. And when everything you want is not coming your way and you say thy will be done, Try it. Try it. And yet that's what our whole life has to be about. Not my will, but thine be done.
That's positive. That's virtue. That's bringing god into your daily life. And if god isn't in your daily life, then where is he? You have shut him out.
Not that he is any less there, but you are a whole lot less with him. In the name of the father and of the son and the holy spirit. Amen.