In the name of the father, and of the son, and the holy spirit. Amen. As I warned you at the beginning of this mass, you will hear more about Saint Leo the Great. He died in 460, became pope in 440. And notice Saint Augustine of Hippo crossed the sea, died in 430.
So their lives overlapped, just to give yourself a historical orientation. Now, the thing about Leo the thirteenth Saint Leo the great, also Leo the thirteenth. But Saint Leo the great was try remember, this is in the fifth century When you were having the East, Constantinople trying to break away on its own. When you had all kinds of turbulence up in Northern Europe. When you had in Italy a great deal of rivalry, autonomy, and conflict.
In doctrine, in liturgy, in Canon Law, and all the rest. So what Leo the great point of Leo was trying to bring the church of Jesus Christ back to some kind of unity. And we have a great number we have sermons of his covering the whole liturgical year for example. And I would say preaching was one of his great great attributes. The great work of his life, not the only one, but the great work.
Now, I want to bring out this morning, you'll probably continue your snoozing, but I just happened to read very recently a little paragraph from Flannery O'Connor. Flannery O'Connor died in about 1960, think. Anyway, she is one of the absolute first rank storytellers of our century. She her her works have just been put in the American library, which is about as high and prestigious a thing as can happen. The day, almost the day that that she got word her first book was to be published.
She was told she had lupus. And in those days that meant calling in the embalmer, the mortician. She knew it. So, she spent the next about the next twenty years of her life facing death every day. She knew it was going to happen, her father died of it.
Today it wouldn't happen, but it did then. So everything she wrote or every day of her life was under the very definite cloud of that today may be the day. Now, she wrote the following in a letter that I just happened to read about a week ago. This is a letter that she wrote. The creative action of the Christian's life is to prepare for his death in Christ.
Not just for death, but for death in Christ. The whole of life is a preparation of a Christian for dying in Christ. Then notice, it is a continuous action in which this world's goods, everything you have in this world, are used to the fullest. You don't minimize, you use them to the fullest. Both positive gifts and passive diminishments.
Now that word diminishment comes from Thayarde Jardin. And by diminishment, he means and what Flannery means, all these things that we call the rough side of life. Illness, death, loss of jobs, failure of your health, trouble in the family, all of these things. They are life's diminishments. And we don't think enough about that to realize that there's where we are our priests.
That that is the sacrifice that we are making every day. And they're just as worthwhile or maybe more than worthwhile than all the good things that happened to us, you know. That's a hard thing to understand. Very few people pray for life's diminishments. We want increases.
Now listen to what this passage from a sermon. Now here's a man who was writing in the fifth century. And I'm reading a translation of his Latin in Garrard Park in 1988. Now, listen to this. This could come right out of Vatican two.
For everybody regenerated in Christ are made kings by the sign of the cross. They are consecrated priests by the oil of the Holy Spirit. So that beyond the special service of our ministry as priests, all spiritual and mature Christians know that they are a royal race and are sharing in the office of the priesthood of Jesus Christ. Now listen, for what is more king like than to find yourself ruler over your body after having surrendered your soul to God. And what is more priestly than the promise the Lord a pure conscience and to offer him in love unblemished victims on the altar of one's own heart.
That was written in the fifth century. That could have been That's more contemporary than Vatican two. You know, this is what makes me just simply roll back in my chair and laugh. You'd think that the this idea the priesthood of the faith have been discovered just about twenty years ago. Did you hear what I just read?
That's from Leo the Great, died in 460. Now there's where we want to have our faith. Not in some upstart theologian living around, traipsing around giving lectures, and being quoted by this Washington Post in time as an internationally known theologian. We want to have our faith on solid rock because you're playing with eternity folks. You're playing with your life in this world.
You know, the thought often strikes me. When you get on a bus, ride the metro, get moving with people. When you think of the side that the difference in the kind of life that are even a lukewarm Catholic is, I said even a lukewarm Catholic. And compared with a person who does not have an honest to God conviction about God and immortality. The difference in their lives.
Even the lukewarm Catholic will go to confession at what they used to and say, I miss mass. They feel they've done wrong. They feel they have an obligation to worship God. Think of the sacrifices that that Catholic parents make and plenty of other good Christians make to give their kids what they hope is a Catholic education. Lord knows where you can find it.
But that's what parents would like and the sacrifices they make where their next door neighbor sending their kids over to public school and having a gay old time, paying off the mortgage of the house, having two cars. There's a tremendous So that if we of our faith is built on a house of sand, and you're making these sacrifices in this life and it's all a big huge joke. We are the worst of men, and I'm not the first one to say that. On the other hand, if there just happens to be the God, and if there just happens to be the truth that his son became man in our flesh, And if it just happens to be true that he founded a church to show us the way, the truth, and the light, and also the light. And if it's also true that they crucified him, that's what the world did to him then, and that's what the world does to his followers today.
Never forget it. When the world ceases to persecute the Catholic church, the one to two things that happened. The church has ceased to be the church of Jesus Christ, or the world has become part of the church of Jesus Christ. And then you ought to ask the Washington Post where it stands, Time Magazine, Vogue, Our Lady's Home Journal, The New Yorker. They represent the world.
These things happen to be true. And that man they thought they executed on the cross rose from the dead. But if he didn't, they lose your faith. They Forget it. Go out and play pool or do something worthwhile.
But if he did, if it's true he rose from the dead, and all these other things are true, then lies a very different cup of tea, believe me. And then it's worthwhile to offer your diminishments on the altar of your heart. As Saint Leo the great said, The name of the father, the son, holy spirit. Amen.