A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. When our lord saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside. This would have been on the western side of the lake, somewhere around Capernaum. And then he began to teach the crowds. How blessed are the poor in spirit?
The reign of god belongs to them. Blessed are two are the sorrowing. They shall be consoled. Blessed are the lowly. They shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for holiness, they shall have their fill. Blessed are they who show mercy. Mercy shall be theirs. Blessed are the single hearted for they shall see god. Blessed too, the peacemakers.
They shall be called sons of god. Blessed are those persecuted for the sake of holiness. The reign of god belongs to them. Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of slander against you because of me. That's very important, because of me.
Be glad and rejoice for your reward in heaven is great. Notice, not here. They persecuted the prophets before you in the very same way. And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen.
Saint Paul's letter today touches probably upon the most sensitive, area of our human existence. Notice I said human, not Catholic, not Christian, human. Because this problem of suffering did not begin with the book of Job. Of course, Job presents the problem, but he doesn't give us an answer. It's called a deus ex machina, solution to a problem, which is no solution.
In other words, it's the old problem. Why do good people suffer? Why is there suffering in the world? Why do I get afflicted? And right now, the names of a few of our parishioners come to mind, especially Patricia McNicholas.
And she's only one that I happen to know about. The only word for it, they get clobbered. How do you explain this? What do you do about it? How do you accept it?
How do you live with it? How do you keep on going? I tried to make sense out of nonsense because it looks like the most irrational thing. You see how simple the argument is. If there is a god and if that god is all loving and all powerful and all benevolent, why do we have such a crazy world of in which we do not very often make the trouble that we suffer?
Why? Why? Why? Here's a family, little boy of 10, everything is normal, gets on his bike just before dinner to take a little ride and he's gone. Gone.
Gone. And he is gone, you know. Brentwood, he's gone. Can't even find the bicycle. Why these things?
Now you can say, well, it's all it's all a mess. Sure there's a God, but I can't make any sense out of this. Grit and barren. Well, you could be a stoic, but don't call yourself a Christian. Stoicism was a very respectable kind of philosophy, but it was a philosophy.
It didn't come from god. Now we have the answer here in Saint Paul. It's not an answer we would like. What we are promised by our lord is the cross. We that's what we've got to get straight.
We hear so much of this Marxian utopianism. Remember, utopia means nowhere. Nowhere. That's why Thomas More called his book Utopia. It doesn't exist.
Old man Marx just repeated a lot of the cuff and the moonlight, the moonshot. And but Paul has the answer. Our Lord has the answer, what we read this morning. He doesn't promise that we will get any kind of reward or solace or what the world calls peace in this world. It's not in the books.
He never said it was. He promised us the reverse. But he said, look, you're only living in this world for a while. Your reward is for eternity. Be sensible.
Now, well, the thought I want to leave with you good people is this. The older I see, was brought up on this idea, the opus dei, the work of the lord, what you do every day. It that was hammered into almost literally hammered into us for eight years with the Christian brothers. We lived in the presence of god. We took it for not for granted, but we were reminded of it.
That whatever we're doing on the on playing basketball or in the classroom or smelling off awful stuff in the laboratory or something, that this was some way tied in with God. And we lived in his presence. This was the great overriding atmosphere of the whole Blooming School. It was a Catholic school. A rare thing today, folks.
Now the point is this, what do we do about this? We do what we can and sometimes things work out very well. There's remember, life isn't all terrible. The skies are not always leaden, but there are times when they are. There are times when god seems distant.
And the second chapter of the of the Vatican's, documents, the dogmatic constitution on the church, chapter two is one of the most inspiring pieces in that whole book, two inches thick, where the writers present to the faithful what it means to belong to the royal priesthood of Christ. You are a royal priesthood. They're talking about you, baptized people. How do you exercise that? Priesthood means sacrifice.
How do you exercise it? Through your living daily. Daily living. The things that hit you sharply, sickness, health, bereavement, disappointment, all the things that we are subject to. The whips and the scorns of outrageous fashion.
That we have to see them in the light of Jesus Christ. And if your people want to be everybody wants to be a priest today. They are priests. Read this first letter of Saint Peter chapter two verse nine. You are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people set apart.
They're talking about the baptized people, you. The ministerial priest stands at the altar and offers the you hubris. The congregation is all the congregated around him joining in the sacrifice and offering their lives such as those lives are. And lots of times you say, Lord, I don't want them. I don't like it, but you take it.
You make sense out of it, and then it'll make sense to you. And when the worst comes to the worst, it's some all you can say, Lord, I belong to your mystical body. Take me. So I'm not saying this is a doctrine of consolation, but it's a doctrine of hope. It's a doctrine of reason.
It's a doctrine which gives us a light at the end of the tunnel. It's a doctrine which is set solidly on the most solemn promises of Jesus Christ. I am with you all day, all day, bright ones and the leaden ones. In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.