06/07/26 May They Be One

1:42 Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ. I'd like you to have a seat. so um uh today to have kind of a kind of a hard word um especially on such a great uh feast day i just there's something that's just been really um weighing really really heavily on my heart for quite a while but before we get there let's talk about the roman empire because why not it's on our minds everyone all the guys we're thinking about this all the time well so so back in the holy roman empire there was a guy it was back in like 361 362 uh ad his name's julian he was the emperor, Julian the emperor. He became known as Julian the apostate. At one point he was Christian and then he decided he was opposed to Christianity. And so one of the things that he wanted to do is he didn't just want to suppress Christianity. He wanted to end it, but he wanted to end it by setting up a pagan version of Christianity. And so he just, he invented something. He just Basically, he saw that the Catholic Church had bishops and priests who were striving to live moral lives, and so he did what he could to reestablish the pagan priesthood.

2:49 And he called them to try to be as virtuous as the Catholic bishops and Catholic priests were trying to be. He saw that Christians took an opportunity to care for people other than themselves. In fact, Julian famously complained. He said that Christians were so annoying because they were caring not only for their own poor, but for the pagan poor as well. And so what Julian did is he instructed pagan temples that they should provide food for the poor. They should provide care for strangers and support the needy. Julian also saw that Catholic worship, right, Sunday Mass, wasn't merely based on habit or custom, just something they did. But for Catholics, it was a personal investment in prayer to God. And so what Julian tried to do is he tried to renew temple attendance by offering sacrifices via his own new pagan form of worship. Ultimately, Julian's efforts failed. A couple of reasons.

3:41 One of the reasons might be because he only was emperor for two years and didn't have a lot of time. Another reason is because paganism is logically contradictory. And there's no—he wanted pagans to be as charitable as Christians, but there's no basis in paganism to care about anyone other than yourself. And so there's no basis for this. But I think ultimately his efforts failed because of this, because he tried to build a Christ-looking church without Christ. that he tried to have people who looked like Jesus without Jesus. After all, Christianity is the whole point of it. It's centered on the person of Jesus and our personal and covenantal relationship with God. That's the whole point. All Julian could offer was a philosophy. All he could offer was ritual and encouragement to do better. He could command people to be generous, but he couldn't create that love in the heart that happens when you've encountered the God who loves you.

4:39 Ultimately, of course, Julian just tried to build his own version. And that's the problem. That he took what he liked about Christianity and he discarded what he didn't like. But as we said, you can't have Christianity without Christ. Yet at the same time, I think we can do this too. I think sometimes just in our lives, we can find something that we like, something that's true, something that's good, and then something that strikes us as incredible. And we're like, oh, this is incredible. Let's do that. Like, this looks great. Let's do that. And even if we do it unconsciously, even if we do it unknowingly, we can find ourselves imitating something that actually is good, but we miss out on something essential.

5:20 So today, if you know this, today is the Feast of Corpus Christi. And so what that means is today is the Feast of the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus. This is what Jesus has given us in the Eucharist. Jesus has given us himself in the Eucharist. Jesus was telling the truth. In today's gospel, Jesus was telling the truth when he said he would give us his flesh to eat and blood to drink. And then he actually gave us himself the last supper, right? When he is with his apostles and he takes bread and wine and says, take this all of you and eat of it. This is my body. Take this all of you and drink of it. This is my blood. We know this, right? This Corpus Christi, that every mass, Jesus is truly and substantially present with us. It's incredible, incredible. maybe the most incredible gift. In fact, St. John Vianney once said this. He's a saint, parish priest. He said, there is nothing so great as the Eucharist. If God had something better to give us, he would have given it to us.

6:15 It is his greatest gift. And I think there's something powerful that happens when we discover this. Like for Catholics, when they discover that the mass really is Jesus, like this is what happened to me. I've told this story a thousand times. When I was 16, I realized, oh my gosh, the Eucharist really is Jesus. what I've been going to Mass my whole life, I did not realize that was God loving me. That's really him. I talked to a woman this last spring. She's 40 years old. She's now 50 something. But she said, how was it that I had to be 40 years old until I realized Jesus was truly present in the Eucharist? I was like, well, me too. I was 16, whatever, learning curve. But there's that sense of what happens when Catholics realize this, they fall in love with Jesus all over again. When non-Catholic Christians realize this, I mean, when they realize John 6, here is Jesus. He was not lying. He was not talking about a symbol when he said, this is my body.

7:07 I always say that one thing happens when those people who are not Catholic, who love Jesus, find out about the Eucharist, is they become Catholic. Then you realize that the only place you will ever find the Eucharist is the Catholic Church. You become Catholic. But this is the hard thing. Because there's something I've encountered recently. There's something that I've run into recently is Christians who love Jesus, who are not Catholic, who become absolutely convinced that Jesus meant what he said in John 6.

7:42 In fact, I've come across really popular Protestant teachers and Protestant preachers and pastors who've said, this is incredible. Jesus didn't say anything about a symbol. This is really him. And then they say this thing, they say, oh my gosh, that's what we do in our congregation. Guys, you guys, Jesus is really present. That's what we're doing on Sunday at our services. And this is the thing that's so grieve. So this is the thing that grieves my heart. When someone discovers the truth of Jesus in the Eucharist, and some of our Protestant brothers and sisters say, oh yeah, that's what we do.

8:28 And I don't know how to say this in a way that doesn't sound arrogant or triumphalistic, but there's a part of me that thinks it would be better if they were completely ignorant of the real presence, rather than knowing that Jesus was serious in today's gospel, and then making the mistake of thinking that he's present in their communion. because it's not true. it's like if you go back to the Old Testament, if you go back to the book of Exodus, here's God who has delivered his people from slavery in Egypt, right? And they got through the Red Sea and they're in the wilderness. And remember, God has saved them. He's revealed his name to them. He's revealed his heart to them. Moses goes up the mountain. Meanwhile, back in camp, what do they do? They fashion the golden calf and they start worshiping the golden calf. I remember when I was younger, I used to think like, this is bizarre.

9:22 This is just so bonkers. that God just saved them and now they're turning to a false god. I didn't realize until I went back and reread this. As the people of Israel were gathering around that golden calf, they didn't think they were worshiping a different god. In fact, they said this. They said, this, oh Israel, this is the Lord God who saved you. It was a case of mistaken identity. They didn't think they were turning to a false god. They didn't think they were turning to a different god. They just got his identity wrong. but what they were offering was corrupted worship.

9:57 Maybe a better example is the divided kingdom. If you know anything about history of Israel, is that, so you have the 12 tribes of Israel, right? And they're united under David. David makes it to one kingdom and then they're united under Solomon. And so they're united under David, under Solomon. And then Solomon has a son named Rehoboam and under Rehoboam, the kingdom splits. So there's two kingdoms, two tribes in the South, Benjamin and Judah. That's another Rehoboam. But there's another man, Jeroboam, who is leading the 10 tribes in the north. So in the north, it's the kingdom of Israel. In the south, it's the kingdom of Judah. And here's the interesting thing. What Jeroboam did is he knew this. He knew that if he didn't do something, all those tribes in the north, every three times a year, they would go to Jerusalem to worship in the temple. Because if you were Jewish, you knew that the only place you could offer sacrifice, the only place you could worship the Lord God was in the temple in Jerusalem. And so Jeroboam didn't want his people going from the north to the south. Because if they did, what would happen is if they went from the north to the south, if they went and they went back to the temple three times a year, they would realize we're not meant to be divided.

10:54 They would realize we're supposed to be united. And so he did something ingenious. Jeroboam created new places for worship. He created Dan in the north and Bethel in the south. Created these other temples on high places. He created a new calendar for feasts. No need to go to Jerusalem for the Passover. We have other feasts. Jeroboam even created a new priesthood. Remember in the Old Testament, only men of the tribe of Levi could offer the sacrifice. Jeroboam just created a new priesthood and eliminated all this. And then what did he do? He said, guys, in the north, this is the worship the Lord God is asking for. And the result was God's people remained divided and they never came back.

11:46 Here's a question. Can you see how that is analogous to how we're living right now in Christianity? Not like Julian the Apostate. I don't think that Julian was intentionally trying to end Christianity. I don't think our brothers and sisters in Christ are, I don't think they're mimicking what we're doing at the Mass to destroy us. Not at all. I think they might simply be mistaken.

12:08 I think they might simply just not know that they don't realize that, yes, Jesus said the word, the words, my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink, but then he also gave the command to certain men to do this in memory of me. That Jesus established a new covenant priesthood. He established the New Testament priesthood. And the early church, this is crazy, the early church recognized this, right? If you look at any of the early church documents, all of them are saying that Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist, but also all of them are saying, not everyone, not anyone can offer the Eucharist. They have to be validly ordained priests. In fact, all the earliest creeds we have, proclaim this. I mean, so in high school, in college, I dated the daughter of a Lutheran pastor. And sometimes I go to church with them after mass and they would stand up and we'd say the same creed. I'm like, wow, we say the same Apostles' Creed.

13:02 At the end, we'd say, we believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church. And I'd be like, you guys, you say Catholic? And they're like, yeah, but we mean lowercase c Catholic. Okay, Catholic mean universal. I'm like, but you also, here's the problem. You also say apostolic. What does that mean? Now, we as Catholics, we can say apostolic. Why? Because we can trace our current bishops and priests all the way back to the apostles in an unbroken chain. This is why we can be confident that what we do at Mass truly is the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus. Why? Because those apostles laid hands on men who laid hands on men, who laid hands on men, all the way down to this very moment.

13:43 We believe that the church is apostolic, which is why I need to clarify that I said the only place you can find the Eucharist is in the Catholic Church, but also in the Orthodox Church. Why? Because Orthodox is also, they can also trace their ordination all the way back to the apostles. And that's why this situation I'm pointing out today, this thing I'm talking about today is not coming from a place of better than, but it's coming from a place of grief. Because we're divided as Christians. and every one of us should be grieved at that fact, but I think for the most part, we're totally fine with it. Like, right, for the most part, I think we're like, okay, variety, we have variety of Christianity. It's a great variety of spice of life. It's great there's so many flavors of Christianity, but when, I tell this to our students every single Sunday Mass, but when Jesus gave us the Eucharist, he begged his Father that we would not be divided.

14:42 And we are. He begged his father that we would be one, and we're not. And that doesn't bother us. But it bothers me. And again, again, not because anyone's trying to be like Julian the Apostate, but because I think this, I think some of our separated brethren are like the Samaritan woman at the well. Remember, the Samaritans were part of the Northern Kingdom. The Samaritans were part of that Northern Kingdom. They're meant to be Jewish. They're meant to be part of the covenant people. But because of what Jeroboam had done, they didn't know what the real priesthood looked like. They didn't know what real worship looked like. They didn't know who God really, really was. But they thought they were doing the right thing. Remember John chapter 4, Jesus meets that woman at the well. She even says this to Jesus. She says, well, we worship here, but you Jews believe that Jerusalem is the only place where you can worship. Remember, they're part of that divided people.

15:38 they thought they were doing the right thing but they weren't they were not offering God the worship that he had commanded but they just didn't know it and I imagine that that I imagine that that broke the Lord's heart and this is the last thing I imagine that how we are right now also breaks the Lord's heart.

16:06 After all, he prayed that we wouldn't be divided and we are. He prayed that we would be one and we aren't. But we could be. Like we actually, we could be. You say, well, that seems impossible. Think of how impossible it would seem to the Samaritans and the Jews that their divisions can be overcome. There's centuries of division. And yet, what does Jesus say? Jesus said, well, the days are coming when you'll worship God in spirit and in truth. And in the proclamation of the gospel, not only Jews, but also Samaritans and Gentiles and the whole world were brought together in the worship of the mass. What Jesus said in John chapter four to the Samaritan woman, the days are coming when you'll worship God in spirit and truth, they happened and they happened for 1,500 years.

16:59 Every person who belonged to Jesus came to the mass and God was worshiped by every Christian in spirit and in truth. Jesus made something that seemed completely impossible possible. And I believe that he can do that again. I believe that God can unite his people again. that every baptized Christian is a member of God's holy people. We're just separated.

17:29 But we can be united again. We can be. But it will take a couple things. First, it will take a miracle. It will take God's intervention. But we know this. We know that God actually wants it. Why? Because God at one point begged God that we'd be one.

17:50 The second thing is, it will take our desiring it. I think if we're indifferent to the plea of Jesus that we be one, then it's possible that God's desire may be stopped in this generation in the same way that it's been stopped in the previous 500 years. Here's what I believe. I believe that if we desire it, if we pray for it, asking the Father to give us a heart like his Son, a heart that begs for unity, a heart that prays for unity, a heart that... He's like Jesus.

18:30 Then who knows what God will do. perhaps, maybe even in this generation, God will take what was once divided, God will take what was once united, but what is divided, and make us one again.

18:52 Imagine, in our generation, every Christian, once again, at one altar with one sacrifice and one Eucharist.