A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Our lord said to his disciples, do not let men intimidate you. Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed and nothing hidden that will not become known. What I tell you in darkness, you speak in the light. What you hear in private, proclaim from housetops.
Do not fear those who deprive the body of life but cannot destroy the soul. On the contrary, fear him who can destroy both body and soul in Gehenna, in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for next to nothing? Yet not a single sparrow falls to the ground without your heavenly father's consent. As for you, every hair of your head has been counted.
So do not be afraid of anything. You are worth much more than an entire flock of sparrows. Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will acknowledge before my heavenly father. Whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my father in heaven. And this is the gospel of the lord.
Our cardinal archbishop has asked that the following letter of his with regard to the Peter Pence collection be read on all masses on this weekend. Here is the cardinal's letter. My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, more than ever, the church is being called upon minister to those in need. Our holy father labors day after day to bring the presence of our redeeming lord to those who hunger for him. He carries out his ministry willingly and lovingly, but he can't do it alone.
It depends on us to help him with the financial burdens that come as a result of his extraordinary efforts. The mission of the mission of Jesus given to Peter and his successors, namely to carry the good news of god's love and blessings to all, that message is timeless. Today, our lord's mandate appears overwhelming. As we realize, there are billions of our brothers and sisters who have not heard even the basic teachings of our faith to love god and to love one another. Through his unique mission of pastoral care and evangelization, John Paul brings the message of God's love and care to people throughout the world.
He is one of today's foremost leaders and a strong moral voice for the dignity of the person and the blessings of freedom. The holy father must, of necessity, as things are today, look to us in The United States where we are so abundantly blessed for support, for encouragement in his mission. This year, the annual Peter's Pence collection will be taken up in all parishes of the archdiocese on the weekend of June 26 and the twenty seventh. That's next weekend. In the name of the holy father, I wish to thank you for whatever gift you make to the Peter's Pence collection, and in the meantime, be assured of my prayers for you.
Sincerely in Christ, James Cardinal Hickey, archbishop of Washington. That's the collection that is next weekend for the Peters Pence. Now last Sunday, I spoke on the real presence of our lord and but didn't get far into my prepared, well chosen remarks. They were chosen. I don't know how well.
They were over over chosen. So this is such a tremendous important factor in our lives or should be. If it isn't, something's wrong with us. If we believe there's a god, if we believe he sent his son into the world, if we believe that his son perpetuated his presence among us under the aspects, the phenomena, the appearances of bread and wine, if that is a reality, then can you imagine this the consequences it should have upon my daily life and your daily life? Not in some abstract theologizing about in in academic, philosophical, psychological, metaphysical terms, but in practice.
What do we do about it if that's true? If it's false, why don't we deny it? Why do we do everything we can to eliminate it? It's a horrible imposition if it is not true. But if it is true, how can we escape?
It's having a tremendous effect upon our daily I mean, upon the things that happen to us of any sort, good and bad, anything. It's got to impinge upon our deepest, profoundest living. It should. The truth is it doesn't. But we we can try.
We can try to make the faith that we have alive, invigorated. Not that we're ever going to find an a reasonable, in the sense of philosophical explanation for it, except the explanation that that's the way god wants it. And in many instances, that's all we have. But isn't have do. Do.
We to do under the what aspects, the phenomena, the appearances, the accidents of bread, you have the real presence of his son, body and blood, soul, and divinity. Now my point this morning is this, that it's an act of faith. Now by faith, I don't mean trust. That's Luther. I mean the old scholastic concept of faith, what goes on in your law courts every day that you give an assent, that you accept as true or you accept as false, something on authority.
You don't know what you're sending to is true, absolutely, or reasonably, or by testimony, or by proof, but you do have proof for the credibility source of your faith. That's what that's the Catholic view of faith. It doesn't of course, trust comes with it. But that idea of faith meaning trust, you see, it's so absolutely subjective. And the point I wanna make this morning, come hell or high water is this, that our bending the knee, it is so significant to that white wafer, translucent, is an act of our assent that that is god almighty's son.
You know, I feel almost embarrassed to say that. It's like husbands and wives talking most intimately about their spouse. It's something that goes beyond words, that that is Jesus Christ, the son of Mary, that I bend the knee and actions can speak louder than words. Now I'm sure some of you have either had ex eucharistic experiences or you've known people who say they've had them. I certainly have.
One of them was up at Spring Lake, Jersey one summer. I took two nuns who were fellow who were companion guests to make a visit in that magnificent chapel. That's what it is. Right around that that freshwater lake with the ocean right in view. So we went in, and we made a fifteen minute visit.
And we came out. There were two of these nuns. This is before they threw off the habit. They said, father, we don't believe Jesus is present in that tabernacle. I said, mess there this morning.
I had consecrated the host who was in the tabernacle, some of them. I said, why don't you believe that? Because we don't feel his presence. Well, of course, when they and they both said it. I felt like saying, sister, the time has come for us to put on Bailey suits and go swimming because this is beyond argument.
But this this actually happened. I'm not exaggerating. It was much more emphatic than I'm giving it to you. Then there was my friend Paul Collins who became a well, he died claiming to be a priest in the Anglican church. He too felt that he had had a had a century, an empirical experiential experience of Christ president.
Therefore, his Anglican orders were valid. Yeah. I'm just giving you two instances. I have nothing to say about people who have had what they think are Eucharistic experiences because I've seen the consequences. Some of them have been absolutely miraculous.
It's lives around. I'm not denying that this has taken place. I'm only saying that it's beyond me to know what's authentic and not authentic, but above all, I'm absolutely sure that it is not the norm. It's not we have what we have a right to expect. It's not what we should lay our lives on the line for.
It's not what we should try to live with. And above all, it's not what we should hold up as a standard of my of my faith, of my allegiance, of my love, of my dedication to Christ in the Eucharist. Not at all. The best and the worst I can say about feelings, sentiment, emotions, these persuasions that we have for god knows what reason is that they are untrust worthy. They do not hold up.
They they are beyond analyses. It is not the way Jesus wants it to be ordinarily, and that's enough for me. I'm an ordinary person. So let us lay on that for that that that when we that there's nothing that you do in this life which is so best of so rest upon faith as the this act of faith that you make in that Eucharist. And therefore, it is of the absolute necessity if you're reasonable, if you're sensible, if you wanna pass on your faith to your kids, if you want to invigorate your own faith, is to know why you believe and what you believe and where you got it.
That you can ask and pray god that you get some answers because the answers are there for anybody to see. As I said last Sunday, there's nothing in the New Testament clearer than the real presence of Jesus Christ. In Saint John chapter six, our lord promises it. The the the three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Each one of us gives the account of the last supper.
Saint Paul, his first letter to the Corinthians, he uses the guy the presence of Christ in the Eucharist as his most forceful argument against their immoralities in Corinth. So even in in the earliest days of the church, the the idea of god's real presence in the Eucharist was accepted, not debated, accepted. It was accepted so much that Paul could say to those Corinthians, look at you people. Here you are, the tabernacles of God's son, and look how you're treating that tabernacle. You're worse than the pagans because you know better.
And in the primitive church, the Eucharist comes off right straight from the beginning. And so it is right down the centuries until the sixteenth when Luther comes on the scene with Calvin's, Wimbledon, Thawne, and all the rest. Even Luther did not reject the real presence, but he was the only one. And remember, Protestantism followed Presbyterianism, Calvinism, not Lutheranism. Keep that in mind.
And we're back to it. Many of our Catholic churches now are Calvinistic churches. Take Davidsonville. Saint Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century, on his what he had found out, learned from the metaphysics of Aristotle, build up a whole system of philosophy. And he applied that system to the Eucharist and he came up with this conception of transubstantiation, that that the substance of the bread, the substance of the wine is changed into the real presence, the body and blood of Christ.
The phenomena, as we call it today, as he would call it the accidents, they don't change. Wine has its alcoholic content. It has its usual effects. The bread tastes and looks and smells like bread. They're the accidents.
Is is thing senses. It's beyond experience. It's beyond sensation and that feeling and emotion. It is something that I say to god, I believe. I believe.
And Aquinas said it, and let me tell you it. The strangest thing, even in our most official books of prayer, you don't find his prayer of the adorote often enough, which is a summary of the whole theology of the Eucharist where he says very succinctly, sight, touch, taste, indeed is each deceived. The ear alone is to be believed. You can't say it any simpler than that. Now where do you get that faith?
Christ lives in his church. You get it from his church, from the magisterium of the church, not from these self acclaimed theologians. Be they as popular as, I was gonna say Madonna, but I won't say it, you understand. I wasn't referring to the blessed mother exactly either. They may be intelligent men, but who gave them the authority to speak for the Catholic church?
Can you tell me that? Why do Catholics accept them? It's enough to read them to say, I think that's fine. What they say seems sensible. Maybe it's true.
Maybe it's true. Possibly it's true. Is that what you're going to base your faith on? That a hunk of bread is god because a says so or a runner or any of the rest of them? That's not very sensible, is it?
Even Schiller Beck's own father was ashamed of it. I want the best authority, and and they and the only one I know, I must believe is the church of Jesus Christ and what it teaches. That's what we call the magisterium. And our whole our our Cardinal Hickey recently sent a letter to pastors and the principals of schools that the only thing to be taught in our parochial schools is what has the approval of the magisterium of the church. Not sell some self made person, man or woman, because here we have a lot of women with degrees in theology.
And so is the word of the church, the living voice of Christ, and that church speaks emphatically. You can all the history before the sixties, there was no serious break. Orthodox, Russian, Greek, they accept the real presence. Just imagine what that means to the whole world in numbers. And I two weeks ago, and I'm going back in Fermi, trend came out very clearly, and it it it had to communicate.
It had to use words, and it used the philosophy, the ontology or metaphysics of Saint Thomas. But as I said last Sunday, you don't have to be a Thomas to be a good Catholic. Saint Augustine was no Thomas. Scotus was no Thomas. But until you throw out his metaphysics, what are you going to put in its place?
Some of these theories that these later contemporary theologians have put up that do not hold water, that are not consistent with any system of philosophy? Are you going to be simply the cafeteria Cathies, the Smogersborn Cathie, picking and choosing what you like because it makes you feel good, because it's culturally accepted and all that mishwashed? Or are you going to be hard nosed and say, show me, tell me, but I want it on the best of authority, the infallibility of the magisterium of the church, scripture, tradition, the teaching of the church, the practice of the holy Roman Catholic church. I compared Trent. I compared Vatican two, and then I I read in in the new Catholic the catechism of the Catholic church, which, of course, we still don't have in it.
And you're not gonna have it very soon either because the translation's finished. You have to start a whole new one. And, there is no difference. No difference. Let me just read what I found from the what I wanna stress is this, leaving all these texts aside.
Council of Trent, Vatican two, and sacrosanctum concilium, that is the constitution on the sacred liturgy. And now the the let me call it the new catechism. That is the one that's succeeding Trent. They all agree about the real presence. They all they all invoke the philosophical transubstantiation theory.
But here is the order in which they put the significance of the Eucharist, the real present, all of them without exception. First, it's a sacrifice. Now please notice the first significance, it's the sacrifice, and they call it mass. Bad as my French is, I know what the word for mass is in French, and that's in the catechism. The second, that the Eucharist is a memorial.
Christ said that. How can you deny it? Then thirdly, it's a sacred banquet. And you know what has happened now in the Catholic church in many, many instances? It's the in thing.
It's just the reverse. To talk about the suit Eucharist exclusively as a banquet and a memorial. I mean exclusively ignore the mass, the Eucharist as sacrifice. Don't even mention it. In many of these newer churches, you can't find the the the sacrament reserved or you have to hunt for it and then find it.
I'm not exaggerating this. This is what is happening in the Catholic church today. That's the reason this is such a frightfully important issue for your daily lives. I mean, daily lives with all their its ups and its downs, its ins and its outs, its sufferings, its tragedies, its failures, and its good things, its joys, where we can sing the hallelujahs. But they're also the Dies Irae part two.
And that's the teaching of the church I'm giving you that you find in Trent, that you find in Vatican two in that constitution. I have the numbers here before me and then in this newest catechism. And believe me, the new catechism deals with the Eucharist extensively from articles thirteen twenty two to fourteen nineteen. And it's simply beautiful with plenty of references to scripture and to counsels and all of that. That's I'm talking about your motives of credibility.
I'm not talking about the explanation of a mystery. But as my old friend Chesterton says, a mystery is not a muddle. In other words, it's not a contradiction in terms. Of course, the Eucharist is a mystery. Of course, the sacrifice of the mass is a notice they don't use the word celebration and all those synonyms.
They talk about sacrifice of the mass, which, of course, today isn't used. We say he celebrated the Eucharist. That is so cute. When you're talking about Calvary and god's son on the cross. Don't be afraid to say it because it's either true or false.
It's it got Jesus Christ either was either he meant what he said when he told us about the Eucharist, either he's the son of God, or as C. S. Lewis says, he is the worst liar who and hypocrite who ever walked the face of the earth. You good people have made a choice. Be joyous in your choice, glorified in your choice, love your choice, learn something about it.
You can't know it. There's a lot to know. It it will it won't give you the faith, that's a gift, but it will enrich what you have. And don't forget to put it into action. The sign of the cross, the genuflection, and you come into church to the tabernacle in a church where you can find it.
Here you can find it. It's visible. It's apps has absolute priority under the cross. You can't get a better combination. May that war enrich and inflame your faith and make it active in your daily lives.
Make it evident. In the name of the father, and the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.