The name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit. Amen. This is the last day before we begin the solemn tribuum, the last three days of holy week. The thought I'd like to leave with you is expressed in the Responsorial Psalm. And it says, you who seek God, may your hearts be merry.
May you who seek God, may your hearts be merry. The word was scarcely used it anymore, except for Merry Christmas. We don't know what that means. But there's more sadness around at Christmas than there is merriment, I think. But anyway, here's what the here's what the psalmist says, those who seek God, may your hearts be merry, not downcast, not laboring in darkness and clouds of despond, not forlorn and faint and stark.
The words from Newman. But we are to be merry in seeking God. That means, you can't be merry if you lack trust. By trust now, I don't mean faith, I mean confidence. The outgoing of our whole self.
We surrender ourselves. Let go, let God. Easy to stay, but you'll never have the merriment of a Thomas More unless you know how to let go and let God. Now, I never can use that word Mary, m e r r y, without thinking of Saint Thomas More. And that man's life, the more you read about it, the more you get in actual contact with the man.
He wasn't he wasn't perfectly He was He had all the weaknesses of the humanist, Erasmus and all the rest of them. But the thing is, the more you come to know him in the reality of his life, the more you regard and respect him. And the more you can say, this is a man I hope to God I can be like. I don't have any inclination to be a Saint Peter Claver. I don't want to be a Saint Peter Claver or Saint Francis of Assisi.
There's nothing there, but I don't to say nothing, but I don't hold them up as somebody I'd want to imitate. But when you hold up Saint Thomas More, there's someone you can say, if I can be like him, I know I have it made. And this isn't because of somebody wrote a play about it recently, more or less recently. You know, Saint Thomas More wasn't always as popular as he is now. He was almost a forgotten man.
Because he did not stand for some of the great principles that Henry VIII and his successor stood for, they were more than willing to have him forgotten. Remember, he stood up against the divine right of kings. You don't want that kind of business around when you're trying to run a country by your own hands. But I've just read during the last few weeks the life of Saint Thomas More by Roper. Now, Roper was his son-in-law, William Roper.
He married Moore's daughter Margaret, May. And it's the most authentic first hand account we have of Morris. Read it three or four times. It's not a long thing. But the man that comes through, his idea of the church.
Remember, he lived before the council of Trent. He lost his head in 1535, just after John Fisher and the Carthusian monks. And remember, in the all of England, Fisher was the only bishop who refused to take the oath of supremacy, and more than the Carthusian monks were almost alone in refusing to take that oath of supremacy, meaning that Henry VIII was head of the church. Every single Bishop of England took the oath except John Fisher. Yet it was more.
So, I can't do it. I cannot do it. And there was no Remember there was no formal declaration at that time of the Pope's supremacy. So, this man, it all comes back to that word Mary. And as I've said, beginning with the sixteenth century and what we call the reformation, the Protestant Reformation, we lost that merriment, which was so much part of being a Christian.
It disappeared almost at once. Of course, it reached its radar with the Puritans in England. But, from the very beginning, when you have such theories of as as predestination with only the salvation of the elect, when you have a conception of a human being that almost wants to reject his body and the physical, that wants to treat him almost as a disembodied spirit and an intellect alone. All of these things, they are inhuman. And so, as we go into this season of Lent, it is not going in there with with a as if we were going into a funeral parlor.
We have a savior. We have been saved. Perfect past tense. This is something, you know, we don't get a hold of. And when we're sure of that, then our hearts can be merry.
Let go, let God. Because there can't be much merriment in a person's heart if all he can look at is the image of himself in a mirror. If all we have to depend on is ourselves, it ain't much folks. There are times that we we feel strong because we are strong. There are times that we can dominate because we can dominate at times.
But the baby starts crawling on all fours, and if we live long enough, we wind up by crawling on all fours when we don't do much domination. And so, as we head into this this last great period of Lent, It is not a period of despair. Just think of this, somehow of course, this matter of Judas always intrigues me. It's tremendous. Because remember, only one disciple was with Jesus on Calvary.
Where were the rest of them? What did they do? And when you come to Peter, I maintain I can make a very good case out of it. He was much worse than Judas. Because Judas is a very mysterious person.
But why did he do this? What did he what did he hope to gain from it? Why did he betray Jesus? Why did he take the initiative and go to the to the leaders of the people and said, look, give me some money, I'll hand him over to you. Why did he do that?
I mean, had some reasons. Just remember that there was only one disciple that stuck with Jesus, and even he left him for a while, they all left him. Jesus was abandoned. The only people around him were those who were hollering out, crucify him. Let his blood be upon us and upon our children.
Judas wasn't alone in betraying Jesus Christ. All the disciples left him in the garden, and only one was on Calvary by the cross and his blessed mother. So, there's there's something there for us to realize. And the point that we realize this is not a this is not a this is not a fact for despair. This is a fact of that the way it was.
That the foundation of the church was upon these weak human beings. Every all but one abandoned their Lord and master. Which is what we do with by sin. But remember, it was up on them that Christ church was built, not upon Judas. He was a suicide.
He gave up. And if Judas if Judas is looked upon now as one who was probably lost for all we know, it wasn't because of his sin, it was because of his despair. His lack of merriment. He did not know what it was to be merry in the Lord. Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.