A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. You'll notice we've been reading Saint Matthew, you every morning. Of course, you know what I think you ought to do, and that's take the gospel according to Saint Matthew and read it. It'll take you about thirty minutes. Breaking it up from morning to morning like this, you wouldn't do that even with a comic strip, would you?
So, anyway, we are reading this excerpt from Saint Matthew. Our lord said to his disciples, do not think that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets. That's the Old Testament. I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them. This much, I assure you, until heaven and earth pass away and the smallest letter of the law, not the smallest part of a letter, shall be done away with until it all comes true.
That is why whoever breaks the least significant of these commands and teaches others to do so also shall be called least in the kingdom of god. Whoever fulfills and teaches these commands shall be great in the kingdom of god. This is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Well, there's no question of what our lord's trying to tell describes the pharisees, the law of God, and you better well obey it.
And that he has come not to destroy the slightest bit of not the tiniest bit of a letter of the law. He tells us he has come to fulfill the old law. That's the reason in the early church some did wanted to discard the old testament. Well, there's plenty in the Old Testament I can live very happily without. But on the other hand, that's not the way our lord looked at it.
He said, I have come to fulfill it. Now thinking over what I might lay before you good people this morning, I recalled a a book that came out by a good friend of mine, sister Nancy McAuley, lived down here in Stone Ridge. She published it in 1986. And with the help of mister Gallup, you know, the guy, the Gallup poll, she produced a study of 10 archdiocesan high schools, Catholic. 10 Catholic high schools of the archdiocese.
They sent questionnaires to 784, at least the students 784 students filled out the questionnaire. Then they had one hour personal interviews with 84 of those students. The book is called faith without form, whatever that means. Anyway, it's a it's a statistical supposed to be a statistic ala Gallup on the Catholic faith of the seniors in 10 Catholic high schools of the archdiocese of Washington. Well, believe me, as you some of you recall, the book wasn't highly regarded by the educational powers powers of of the the archdiocese.
Archdiocese. Now I don't know whether it's in the book for sure. I didn't have time to look it up or whether she told me this. But in one of their personal interviews with one of these 84 seniors from a Catholic high school, remember, in the fourth year high. And most of them had gone to to Catholic grammar schools, one boy stood up and said, who's god to tell me what to do?
Now this actually happened. Who's god to tell me what to do? Now you contrast that with what we see almost invariably when they wanna show us a shot of Moskos. What do you see them doing? Here they are, the 400 of them, up in the open wild, you might say, between Lebanon and Israel.
Snow living in pup tents under what what pictures do they show you? They show you 400 men on their knees with their heads bent to the ground several times times a day to worship god almighty. Allah. What have we to match that with when you come to god? You see, there are plenty of religious people, so called, who have no conception conception of of god god almighty.
Almighty. Now when I say god almighty, you can just as well say Jesus Christ. But don't put but but there's a tremendous difference here. With our lord, you can grasp it with your imagination. You can have pictures of Christ.
He he suffered, and apparently, he he had some moments of enjoyment. He went to a marriage feast. And when the wine gave out, he he automatically not not automatically. At his mother's suggestion, he produces a heck of a lot more wine after they've drunk their fill. So he must have had a little bit of fun.
We can he was born. He grew he grew up in a little town. He was known as the son of a carpenter. We can identify with Jesus Christ. You cannot identify with god almighty.
It's called anthropomorphism, making god like yourself. But we have gotten away from thinking about god. It's not easy to think about god. It's it's very difficult to think about god. It's easy to think about Jesus Christ.
But the problem there is to is to have an objective objective conception conception of of Christ, Christ, not not your your figment of your imagination. It's all very well to talk about the benevolent loving Christ who who put his hands on the little children and told them to come to him, who cured the sick and all of that. But then look at the cross and don't exclude the cross because that's all he ever promised you, to follow him. That's all he ever promised you, his his cross. Now this conception that god is running the world and that means all that happens.
Just take what happened in the last weekend. A hundred and thirty people dead at least. That wasn't man made. No man made that little bit of a storm. It's one of the worst we've seen.
It's god's doing. So here you have the whole problem of evil, but you can't exclude god. Anything which is is his by being dependent upon him for its very being. You can't exclude god. Of course, man brings a lot of this all himself, but he sure didn't bring that storm last weekend.
The you see, many of us, I mean, all of us right here today, we have we it's it's difficult to think of god because you can't form an image of him without being anthropomorphic. You can't make a single proposition about god which is unifically true even to say he is because the word is has a very different meaning for god than it has for me. He is a being who depends upon nothing but himself. I depend upon him. I'm contingent, his absolute.
Now here's a kid, fourth year high senior, Catholic schools, probably very likely for twelve years who says to the to the one who was interviewing him, who's god to tell me what to do? Can you imagine such ignorance and absurdity? You see, the trouble with most of us so called college graduates, which we call being educated, we're not educated at all. If Newman was right, if theology is the queen of the sciences, then it to behoove us to know something about it. And yet I think that the the strongest motivation, the strongest persuasion I have ever had to to have some glimpse of god came from Saint Thomas and his five ways of proving his existence.
How many Catholics have even read that? Have even read it? Much less studied it. The very word contingent tells you a universe of has a universe of meaning if you know what you're talking about. And yet, a senior high ready to graduate with a Catholic education, we say, says who's God to tell me what to do?
And here you have a man like CS Lewis. He said, man now listen, CS Lewis, he's not a dodo bird. He doesn't go back to Saint Paul. C. S.
Lewis said, man is not created to be free. He is created to reverence God and obey. Doesn't that strike a peculiar note in the world of today when we're all free? It's woman's right to have an abortion. It's I'm free to self fulfillment.
I don't go to church. I don't get anything out of it. I don't pray because I don't get anything out of it. I don't go obey the commandment because they are meaningless. They're ant ant antique.
They belong to the dodober. And this from cath some Catholic theologians who have sustained us existential morality with god out of the picture. And yet Dostoevsky says, if you remove god and immortality, anything is right. There's no he's talking about it right or wrong. If you deny god and immortality, and that's what we are doing as a nation.
You don't see any US troops, the whole company bowing down or bending the knee or getting on door, saying a public prayer, and yet the are doing it day in and day out. Think of this for a minute. Think of it. And yet our every bit of our money says in god we trust. Can you imagine such hypocrisy?
Saint Paul, in his fourteenth chapter to the Romans, put it very, in everything we do, we are gods. We belong to god. Whether I live, Saint Paul says, or whether I die, I belong to him. I belong to him like a slave. Now I know where we've got this free will business.
I I I know that. I'm not denying free will. I'm not telling you how you put all this together either. I know you gotta do that. You can't you cannot exclude God from anything because the word thing in Latin is res and from the word res we get reality.
And if anything that is real, god has a hand in it. We are if we are a being, another word for rez is being. If we are beings, we owe our being to god. I hang from his hand. I dangle.
You cannot agree with a poet that I am master of my fate. In a real sense, I am. See, this is where the trouble comes. In a very real sense, I am. Adam and Eve had the opportunity of saying, yes, I'll eat the blooming apple or I won't eat it.
I don't know what happened there, but something happened. Something surely happened where they had a choice. I have a choice. And in that sense, I am master of my fate, But in another sense, I'm not master of it at all because my very being depends upon god willing me to be. So whether I live or whether I die, as Saint Paul says, I am the lord's.
Or go back to CS Lewis. We are not born to be free. We are born to reverence god and obey and that's what our lord said in different words. In the name of the father, and of the son, and holy spirit. Amen.