Trinity VIII
S1. Matthew's July 29, 2007 All Saints July 29, 2007

The Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ is timeless and universal and it knows no boundaries of time or place. It is as relevant today as it was when Our Lord first proclaimed it in Palestine, and its appropriateness to the present day is often striking.
Today's Gospel comes from St. Matthew, and in it Our Lord warns us to beware of false prophets. We hear Him again teaching and preaching in what we know as the Sermon on the Mount. He has just said that the way to Him is straight and narrow, and that many will not find it but will go astray through the broad and easy gate of life. Our Lord then warns us to beware of false prophets, whom we shall know by their fruits. There is no doubt that we are beset today by a plethora of false prophets,preaching diversity, inclusion, tolerance, understanding, whose fruits we can see at every turn. Our Lord tells us that corrupt trees bring forth evil fruit. When a political leader states that although he may be personally opposed to a morally wrong action on the part of government, he will still vote for it, that is evil fruit. When the revealed truths of God
as clearly expressed through Holy Scripture, reason, and tradition are flouted and ignored by those who claim they are acting in His name, they are wolves wearing sheep's clothing, and that is evil fruit.

Our Lord was not an advocate of understanding when the law of God was broken. He chased the money changers from the temple with a whip of cords, rather than shrugging His shoulders and saying, "That's all right - they're really not harming any
one". God was not an advocate of tolerance, oflive and let live, when he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone. If you have any doubts about that, read the nineteenth chapter of Genesis. Our Lord was not practicing inclusiveness when He said that many are called, but few are chosen. Diversity was not among the words used by Almighty God when He gave Moses the first commandment, saying "I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods before Me". The Gospels tell us that the sheep shall be separated from the goats, and that, as we heard today, not every one that says to Him "Lord, Lord" shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

The love of God for His creation is boundless, but He is also a perfectly just God, who will mete out to each soul exactly that which he deserves. The poet Dante got that pretty much right, placing in the lowermost circles of hell those who were responsible for the damnation ofthe souls of others, who led them away from God's law and love. The shepherds who are wolves in sheep's clothing will be judged just as corrupt trees are hewn down and cast into the fire. By their fruits ye shall know them. Do not confuse forgiveness of the repentant sinner with tolerance of the sin. God will forgive those who acknowledge their wrongdoing and come to Him with a sorrowful and contrite heart. He will not overlook transgressions committed in the name of inclusiveness, where there is not a shred of sorrow or repentance. Not knowing what is right is no excuse, either, especially for one who professes to be a Christian. God's law is not debatable or negotiable. There are Ten Commandments, each and every one of which must be obeyed. Jesus Christ did not say that if you believed at least a part of what He said it would be all right, and everything will be warm and fuzzy. It seems we have to say over and over again that what is right or wrong does not depend upon person, place, or time, or any whim of man's.

The most skilled of all of the false prophets, of course, is Satan himself, the great deceiver and enemy of God. How pleased he must be with his efforts, especially in recent years, as he strives to bring down the Church that Our Lord established as the means in this life to man's salvation. We know that he will fail in the end; that as Our Lord has told us, the gates of hell will not prevail against His Church, but it is still disturbing and distressing to see Satan's successes, transient and temporary though they may be.
We can be grateful that we worship God in a church which refuses to yield to false prophets; that adheres firmly to the faith that has been proclaimed unashamedly and openly for millennia; that doesn't shift and change in response to the desires of the
world; that doesn't genuflect to the false prophets of humanism. We cling firmly to the word of God, not the changing vagaries and whims of men, but striving to the best of our ability to hold firm1y to the faith of the Apostles and the Fathers of the Church, as
revealed to us in Holy Scripture and understood by reason and tradition. St. Vincent of Lerins stated the issue clearly as early as the fifth century, that we are to believe that which was always and everywhere believed by all people. We are blessed us with godly Bishops who are the direct successors of Jesus' twelve apostles, who are not concerned with being relevant, contemporary, or tolerant but rather with being true to the Christian faith.

It takes courage to be a Christian; sometimes a great deal of courage, to look those around us squarely in the eye, and say "That's wrong". It takes courage, when we are labeled as narrow-minded and mean-spirited. We are called intolerant of the variety of
human behavior, and the wrongs that are done are really not their fault, and besides, the Resurrection and all that stuff is just a metaphor, a way of teaching, that probably didn't really happen anyway. That courage, however, is what God expects of us as we aclmowledge Him in our lives - for if we do not acknowledge Him, He has told us that He surely will not acknowledge us. It is that courage that sustains martyrs tortured and killed for their belief in God. It is that courage that strengthens those who must face a world gone awry, filled with wolves in sheep's clothing, who claim they are doing the work of God while leading men away from Him. False prophets indeed; we know them by their fruits, and we know that the way to the Kingdom of Heaven is to do the will of Our Father in Heaven, not that of our fellow man.