In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Our Lady, Virgin Most Faithful, St. Joseph.
Our patron saints and guardian angels.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
This gospel passage this morning has a certain allegorical or symbolical meaning to it.
Because the church, one of the ancient drawings of the church, symbols of the church, was a boat with a net over it.
Symbolizing the church, of course, the bark of Peter.
And the net, you know, making the great catch of fish, has always been seen as a symbol of the church.
It has brought in, you know, all these great number of people, like a net that goes thrown out and brings in a large catch.
And of course, one of the earliest symbols of a Christian was a fish.
Also reminds us of this gospel, like the great number of fish that Peter caught in his net at the command of the Lord.
And even in the fact that our Lord had already fish and bread on the seashore.
And the loaves and fishes, you might say, reminds us of his, when he multiplied the loaves and fishes as a precursor to the Eucharist.
When he would, you know, multiply himself under the appearance of bread and wine.
So this passage shows very much the importance of the Eucharist.
In feeding the church.
Our Lord feeds the church with his very self.
And that the command of our Lord, the church has been going out throughout the ages, bringing in these large number of fish.
You know, that we celebrate this year with Pope Benedict.
Pope Emeritus has called this a year of faith.
And it's called the doorway of faith.
Because faith is a doorway.
It's an entrance into these mysteries.
It's an entrance.
It's an entrance.
It's an entrance.
It's an entrance into, in order to encounter Jesus, you have to have the gift of faith.
Recently, someone told me that one of their children belonged to a Catholic youth group.
And their child was the only one in this Catholic youth group that accepted and believed the church's teaching about the immorality or the unacceptability of same-sex marriage.
And I'm sorry.
But I'm saying to myself, where are the priests at?
Why aren't they doing their job as a shepherd and telling these children, you know, it's not like you can just accept any opinion out there you want and consider yourself still being a Catholic.
You know, faith is an entrance into the Eucharist, too.
If you don't have Catholic faith, you can't receive the Eucharist.
And that doesn't just mean that you deny the Trinity or you deny Jesus' real presence in the Blessed Sacrament.
That you can't come to the Eucharist.
That you can't come to communion.
If you deny one article of the faith or one teaching of the faith, and obviously the moral teachings are just as important as the quote-unquote intellectual ones, then you can't come to the Eucharist.
And these children have to understand that this is not an opinion of the church.
You know, you can take whatever CBS or ABC or CNN tells you about same-sex marriage, and then there's the opinion of the church.
No, it doesn't.
It doesn't work that way.
And they have to be under, these children need to be catechized that this is not something that they can just, you know, oh, you know, I take whatever the world tells me about same-sex marriage and it's just as valid as what the church says.
You can't come to the Eucharist if you believe that somehow same-sex marriage is valid and it is okay.
You know, that's why.
That's why the church is even saying to these politicians, you know, it's not just abortion, but if you teach, if you hold a position publicly and support a position publicly, which is contradictory to the teaching of the church, and you aid and abet it, you can't come to communion.
Because you're not Catholic.
That's the whole point of it.
To receive communion means you have to be communion with Christ.
That means both mind and heart.
You're not in the net.
You know, our Lord even says,
at the end of the world, he's going to come and take the net and he's going to throw what is junk out, what is not good fish, and he's going to keep what is good and keep it in the net.
The rest he's going to throw out.
If you don't have Catholic faith, you're not one of the fish.
You're not what you profess to be.
You're like trying to be a scorpion trying to be a snake.
Or a snake trying to be a pig.
You know, when the Lord comes, he's looking for fish.
He's not going to find.
He doesn't want seashells.
He doesn't want crabs.
He wants the real thing.
And if priests are just, I don't know what they're doing, but if they have a youth group in their parish and they don't know what their youth are believing,
and they're believing what the world tells them is true,
instead of knowing what the church teaches is the wisdom of God,
and the wisdom of the eternal world,
and the wisdom of Christ,
then there's something not right.
There's something not being done.
Someone's not doing their job.
Someone's asleep at the wheel.
And we need to make sure that our Catholic faithful understand
that if they come to the table of the Lord,
they have to have and believe everything
that Christ believed and taught.
And it's not, you know, this cafeteria Catholicism.
If you deny one article,
if you don't want something that's on the menu that the church serves,
well, you can't come and eat.
That's the way it is.
And that's why faith is an entrance.
It's a doorway.
Because without that faith, you can't come in.
You can't enter into it.
That's the way that you encounter Christ,
is through the gift of faith.
And that faith is not determined.
It's not determined by the faithful.
It's determined by Christ,
as to what you must hold and believe.
And he's given that authority to his disciples.
He who hears you hears me.
And if you don't accept the faith,
you know, he says, preach it.
They don't accept it.
If they accept it, they're going to be saved.
If they reject it, they will be condemned.
That's a hard message, but that's what has to be taught.
That's what has to be preached.
Otherwise, we're preaching something,
but it isn't the faith.
You know, this is where we have to realize
that if you're in the net,
you have to be following all the teachings of the church.
We can't pick and choose.
And the church is quite clear about its position
and its teaching regarding the immorality
of homosexual acts and the immorality of abortion
and the immorality of contraception.
If someone is,
you know, using contraception,
they can't present themselves to the Eucharist
because they're not just using contraception,
but they're also sinning against the faith.
If they believe that, oh,
I don't care what the church teaches,
then they don't have Catholic faith.
They don't believe what Christ has taught.
Let us pray, especially in this Octave of Easter,
where we celebrate the gift of faith,
that those who come into the church
are truly coming into the Catholic church,
that they have been properly catechized
and actually do believe everything.
It's not, you know, when you, even if you don't know,
one of the things you make as an act of faith
is that I believe all that the church teaches.
And even if I don't know everything that the church teaches,
if I've made known to me what the church teaches,
I accept that.
It's not, well, I'll think about it.
No, it doesn't work that way.
You have to, you have to make an ascent.
Belief is more than faith.
Belief is more than just knowing.
Belief means I take it to heart and I put it into practice.
This is where we have to realize that creeds lead to deeds.
And if you don't believe that the church teaches,
then you're not gonna live the way
the church wants you to live.
You're not living a life of Christ.
It's pretty obvious.
We can see that so clearly today,
where people who do not believe in the creed
and they're contradicting it by their very lives.
In the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit, amen.