In the name of the father, of the son, and of the holy spirit. Amen. There is a text in the opening prayer of this mass which we repeat quite often. It's something it goes like this. Strengthen and fortify me, o lord, in my weakness.
In my weakness. As I read those lines this morning, I thought of two men, both martyrs and now both saints. Saint Thomas More and Saint John Fisher. Now, both of these men, of course, suffered death for their convictions. And at different times, completely separately.
And both of them, of course, were renowned at this time of their lives for being a very holy and close to the Lord and so forth. And yet, when each of them approached the scaffold where they were to be executed, both of them were beheaded. Each of them begged the bystanders to pray for them. That their courage would not fail. And somebody objected to This is recorded history, this isn't myth.
Somebody objected to John Fisher, why is why are you asking us to pray for you now after you've gone through all you've gone through? Fisher said, in the last second I'm afraid of my weakness. Somehow or other, today we are ashamed of being weak. We talk about God being generous to sinners, but we don't apply it to ourselves. Because when I come to Christ and have to say, Lord, I'm a real mess.
I'm a real good for nothing sinner. I lose confidence. I lose confidence. I don't believe Jesus is as loving and as fortifying as I say is, or as he claimed to be, and proved himself to be. I just don't believe it, apparently.
Why is it today that you have so many Christians who get who suffer such guilt? I'm talking about real guilt now. I'm not not talking about the fictional stuff. I'm not talking about people who are sick and need a doctor. I'm talking about people who have honest to God guilt because they are responsible for heinous things.
And that's all of us. Let's not forget this. This is just a matter of degree. And yet, the time when the crunch comes, when we need a savior and need it desperately, somehow we don't have that faith to look up at Jesus Christ and his cross and say, my Lord and my God. I'm a mess, but you saved me.
You see, I don't know, maybe we don't like to admit how really weak we are. This was the great strong point of Luther and Calvin and Company. Remember that. This was the point they made, and they made it correctly. That by myself, I can do nothing.
Now we say this, we've all said this. I say it, you say it, but do we honest to God mean it? Do it. That of myself I can't do anything. Do I really?
Do I have a prayer? Now if I do, if I really have a conviction about that, It isn't that I will lose fear. It isn't that I will cease to have compunction. It isn't that I will cease to know for sure and be aware of my weakness. The point is this, they are not the things that I should be emphasizing.
You know, all of this stuff is introspective. Blessed Lord says, look at me. He says, don't look within yourself. Who are you? What are you?
What do you find within yourself? Look at me. Look at the cross. Read my life. You see we don't get this into our stomachs.
As we say today we don't have a gut reaction to it. So much of it is words, and we need Christ most when we are weakest. We need Christ most when I am most afflicted. I mean afflicted with guilt. That's when I need Christ most.
Guilt is absolutely destructive. Absolutely destructive. Get you nowhere except to hell where Christ brings us to heaven. That's it. I'm These are This is We all agree to what I'm saying.
You've heard this time and again, but we don't live it. Because remember, to be a Christian is to be joyful in Jesus Christ and his cross. In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit. Amen.