The Virgin Most Faithful, St. Joseph, our patron saints and garden angels,
in the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Spirit.
In the first reading we hear about Solomon, who we heard yesterday how wise he was
that even the Queen of Sheba came to him to learn of his great wisdom
and how Israel was blessed because of his wisdom and the good virtues that he had.
But we see at the end of his life, Solomon, because of maybe lust,
took so many wives, even became kind of indiscriminate and took even pagan wives
and had so many wives that he started to try to,
please them all, even allowing them to introduce their pagan gods
and their worship of the pagan gods on the hillsides around Jerusalem.
And as we know that their worship involved,
especially the one that mentions our Moloch, involved human sacrifice.
So obviously it was a great scandal and a great departure from the faith
of the Israelites when our Lord, the God,
expected Solomon to be the one to uphold the true faith of the Jews
and not to do anything to water it down or to introduce pagan worship.
But because of his sins, God is going to punish him,
not him directly, but later on his son who will follow him.
And Lord, God is keeping his covenant,
maybe with Solomon, mostly because of David, his father.
He's not going to punish Solomon directly, but indirectly through his son.
And we look at this and we think, well, we can look at what is happening
maybe in our own world today, that God in the Old Testament
told the Israelites not to associate with pagans because of the danger of,
instead of their faith enlightening the pagans,
that they would become evangelized by the pagans around them
and that they would start adopting pagan ways.
And we can look at the Catholics today who are to be lights to the nation around them,
to be a good example, and how in many ways the culture has instead evangelized Catholics
and to fit in or to, they've seen the, you might say, all the false,
glitter, you might say, of the secular culture and they have abandoned the gospel
because, well, it takes much more strength.
It takes much more virtue to practice the gospel.
And it's easier to live, you might say, a pagan lifestyle or a secular lifestyle
because we make gods into our own image and likeness.
And that is pretty much what is the false worship of the 21st century
and of the 20th century is, it's self-worship.
And people have made themselves their god.
They pamper themselves and, you might say, offer incense to themselves
by making sure that they have a comfortable life.
They have all the gadgets, they have all the amenities of a comfortable life,
entertainment and everything.
Because it's the worship of self.
And even atheists are not atheists.
They don't, it's not that they don't believe in a god.
They believe that they are, they believe that they are god.
And you cannot have anyone without, you might say, worshipping a higher being.
They have to worship something because we're made to acknowledge some supreme being in our life.
And with atheists, as even,
the brother of Christopher Hitchens, the famous atheist evangelist of the last, you know,
early part of this century who passed away recently,
his brother said, it's not, Christopher doesn't believe in no god.
He believes he is his own god.
That's the god he worships.
And so this is what the church is facing today,
is that there are many people who,
who have to realize that they are not god.
They have to get this rude awakening.
You know, it shouldn't be that hard, you would think.
But when you start to drink in the drug, you might say, of self-worship,
it's kind of hard to get taken off the addiction and go through withdrawal symptoms.
But the lady, the woman in the gospel today had what is necessary for someone to come to faith.
She had humility.
She realized that she was not even a believer or she was not a Jew.
So she didn't have the the benefit of hearing all the revelation of the Old Testament.
But she obviously had faith because she had the humility that is necessary for faith.
She believed that Jesus had something that he could do for her,
which she could not do for her own daughter.
So when our Lord,
said that rather seems a very harsh statement to her that,
you know, let the children be fed first,
but it's not right to take the food of children and throw it to the dogs.
Well, Lord was doing that mainly to elicit, to draw out from her what he already knew.
She had that humility of heart and that you might see the seed of faith already in her.
He wanted to draw that out that she would say she,
she didn't give a proud response or say,
well, you know,
you should do it for me because of whatever she said.
You know, she recognized that,
well, if I am a dog,
then that's true.
But even dogs get crumbs.
And so would you give me this for for the sake of my child,
you know?
And so our Lord says to her that before saying this,
you may go.
Because of this humility that she exhibited,
our Lord gave her this gift of freeing her child from the demon.
She did not,
you know,
the believers,
those who should have had faith in Christ were accusing him of freeing people from the demons by demons.
But this lady didn't have all that.
You know,
she had enough faith to realize that Christ was good.
He could do something for her.
And she recognized that in a certain sense that goodness and didn't attribute she didn't sin against the Holy Spirit in attributing good to evil.
She just recognized that in humility that she if she was a dog and that she could receive even scraps from the master.
And so with that kind of humility,
that,
we need to also have in our world today that people,
if they're really going to get off of the self worship,
have to realize that they are not God.
And maybe that's what will eventually happen is God's going to remove all the all the things that we worship in this self worship,
the comforts,
the amenities,
the self indulgence.
That will be the way in which man will have to realize that.
They need they need God.
And they're not it.
And this is what we must pray for.
And this is what we must do in our society as evangelists that we shouldn't be evangelized by the culture as Pope Francis is encouraging us that we have a message which is far more important.
We have the true joy of the gospel,
which is not pleasure.
Pleasure is,
you know what the world offers,
which is passing is momentary.
But the joy of the gospel is that which remains.
It's a certain might say satisfaction of the heart.
The heart's longing is that kind of joy that only the gospel can provide.
What the all the only what the world offers is momentary delights,
which are most of the cases are,
uh,
uh,
soon passing.
But they can't offer the joy that only Christ can give so that Christians,
especially Catholics,
because we have this great gift of the faith that we should be on the offensive.
We should be those who are seeing that people who are,
of course,
on the self addiction of self worship when they come down from there from their high and realize that it was only a,
a fool's foolish and an NA and a disguise that we hopefully can offer them,
uh,
the true answers to what they're looking for and help them to find the,
the truth and the gospel,
the good news that only the church has to offer to mankind in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Thank you.