Salve, Regina, Mater Misericordiae.
The readings today are from the Common of Doctors.
That is the reading from the second letter of St. Paul to Timothy and the reading from
St. Matthew's Gospel.
And we use the Common of Doctors today because in the traditional rite we celebrate the memorial
or the feast of St. Pete the Venerable who lived in the 7th and 8th century and who was
a great saint.
He was a great historian of the English people.
He lived in a monastery from a very young age in England and there he spent all of his
time studying the scriptures and the fathers of the church, transcribing the scriptures
and recording the history of England, translating the scriptures into Latin from the original
languages.
He dedicated his whole life to this.
He was the tutor of other monks, teaching them to also be scribes and scholars of scripture
and of the fathers of the church.
He's famous again for his history of the English people, his recording of their history and
of their conversion and of the Christian faith being spread throughout all of England.
He is the only English Doctor of the church.
the church that has been declared so by the church. But we read from St. Paul about the
duty of Peter, who was a bishop, to teach in season and out of season, to approve,
entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine. And for those who have been entrusted with
the transmission of the faith, whether it be priests, bishops, monks, in the case of
St. Bede, or parents, catechists, or anyone who has an opportunity to witness to the faith,
this in a sense is our duty. It is a more immediate, direct, and critical duty of priests
and bishops, but nevertheless we all can take to heart the admonition of St. Paul and that
of our Lord.
That we should be the salt of the earth and the light of the world, and that we should
burn brightly before men. Now, our Lord is not saying that we should club people over
the head with the faith, but he is saying that we should be honest Christians, honest
Catholics.
And if we really believed what we professed to believe, we would want others to believe
it, and we would be willing to lay down our life for what we believe in, as St. Paul was
willing to lay down his life for what he believed. He said to St. Timothy, but be thou vigilant,
labor in all things, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill thy ministry, be sober,
for I am even now ready to be sacrificed, and the time of my dissolution is at hand.
So, St. Paul is, in a sense, handing the torch off to St. Timothy and telling him to follow
a standard of teaching and of behavior, one which he himself had followed and which ultimately
had led him to his own dissolution, his own imprisonment, and ultimately his death.
So, in a sense, he's trying to hold Timothy to the standard of behavior that should be
obligatory for a bishop, and he's telling him also to expect that you will have to suffer
for all of this. Why? Because something was true then that is also true today.
For there shall be a time when they will not endure sound doctrine,
but according to their own desires they will heap to themselves.
teachers having itchy ears and will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth but will be
turned unto fables and isn't that true especially today when people try to find teachers and
pundits and people in the media to tell them what they want to hear they want to hear peace peace
when in fact all around us is war and and death the culture of death and again talk about
some kind of reconciliation or or coexistence between the culture of death and the culture
of life is a lie because the only kind of coexistence there can be is when good
people become silent about what is wrong. That's the only way that the pro-abortion
movement and the pro-life movement can coexist is if the pro-lifers become silent about those
who are dying. And that will be the common ground because both the dead are silent and
those who allow people to be killed are silent. That's the only kind of common ground that
can exist. So St. Paul was telling St. Timothy that he would not be popular because he spoke
the truth because there would be a time when people would not want to hear it. And that time
is today. And we have to continue to persevere. St. Bede persevered. His desire was to make sure
that the
scriptures were available to be studied, that accurate translations were available to his
brethren, and that they had the writings of the fathers of the church all around them.
It's interesting, St. Paul says to Timothy, preach the word in season, out of season,
reprove and treat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine, in all patience and doctrine.
We have to persevere in our handing on of the faith in a world that doesn't want to hear it.
We can't become angry or discouraged or just quit. We have to be patient. We have to
continue to persevere, and we can't back down from the truth. We have to hand on
the doctrine. We have to hand on the teaching of the church, not just some kind of amorphous
feeling about religion, but what the church actually teaches, the scriptures and the
teachings.
The teaching of the church. And so men like St. Bede spent their whole life making sure
that we would have accurate translations of the scriptures, and that the teachings of the
fathers would not be lost. And maybe people right now don't want to hear it, but we have to continue
saying what is true. We have to continue to distinguish and to make the truth clear and not
allow
other people to make the truth clear.
I'm just wondering how very sophisticated arguments from people with a lot of letters
after their names tell us that we don't know what we're talking about and that we really
should not be offended when the most pro-abortion president ever should go to a Catholic University
and lecture us on tolerance and on decent behavior and on what it means to work as a
work in a pluralistic democracy. What he's telling us is that we should not follow the
counsel of St. Paul to Timothy to reprove, entreat, and rebuke, and to make sure that
we're speaking the truth when people are looking for teachers that will tell them what they
want to hear, when they have itching ears and turn away their hearing from all the truth
but turn themselves to fables, turn themselves to lies. So with the saints, with St. Paul,
St. Timothy, and St. Bede, let us be persevering in our commitment to the truth and to charitably,
patiently, but in sound doctrine, handing on that truth to our brothers and sisters
who deserve not lies but the truth, even if they don't want to hear the truth.
What they deserve is the truth. They don't deserve lies, even if that's what they want
to hear. So in Christ, may we have the strength to do that every day of our life.
May we have the strength to do that every day of our life.