 God cannot be God for us unless we let God be our God. That seems to me to be the clear message that we heard from the first reading. That clearly there was no way in which God's people were going to beat Sennacherim and the Assyrians unless they relied completely on God. It had to be a matter of complete trust and the prophet makes it very, the narrative makes it very, very clear. That was only because they were willing to let God in the driver's seat, let God take the wheel that they ultimately won the battle. And we know that's true probably from our own personal experience. And if we haven't learned it yet, give it time. Ultimately, everything's going to fall apart unless we trust in God. But when we trust in God, amazing things happen. And the saints all bear witness to this. They didn't learn it overnight. There are a few stories of instant conversions but many, many times we know the stories of the saints. It took them time. You look at the life of Saint Augustine, look at the life of Saint Ignatius of Loyola and you can go right down the line. All of the saints entered into this kind of little battle between me and God. But it's not such a bad thing. I don't think God wants us to hold back on that. I think sometimes the problem is not that we pray too much but that we don't pray enough. We don't expect God to be all that God can be. So our prayers are kind of tiny. And we pray for little things. And as was said this morning in Caroline's talk, God may have so much more to give to us than we expect. We may think we've come to a point in which we've kind of reached that level of appreciation. But maybe that's not where God wants to leave us. Maybe God wants to leave us beyond. So we shouldn't be surprised that the Lord challenges us a little bit. Now the Gospel today, we're at the end of the sermon on the Mount. We're kind of winding down chapter 7. And we have some logia here. They don't seem to fit together immediately. But Matthew thought they were too important to leave out. These may well have been things that Jesus said more than once. They certainly would have impressed him because he felt they were important enough to put here. So he tries to weave them into his structure. And at first, at least at my first glance, they didn't kind of seem to fit the sermon on the Mount. But as you look a little closer to them, you see, maybe they're balancing things out a little bit, balancing what we heard out. Yesterday we heard about judgment. Do not judge because with what judgment you judge, I'll be judged. And right after that we see, well, do not give what is holy to the dogs or throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under foot and turn interior to pieces. Where did that come from? And we know all about the Semitic use of the expression, dogs and swine. And it's usually referring to pagans, to non-Jews, to people that are out of the fold. But I don't think it could really mean that because right at the end of Matthew's Gospel, it's very clear that the apostolic mission is to go forth and preach the Gospel to everyone. So it couldn't be that Jesus is contradicting himself and saying, just keep it to yourself. But it seems as though he's not telling us to give up our judgment entirely, either, or at least our discretion that while it's not up for us to judge what is in somebody's soul, perhaps even our own. And we might be much better off leaving the judgment to God on ourselves because we may be harsher, you know, as Father Dave said, on ourselves and God might be. God is so full of mercy. And we're going to see in a few minutes that that really is the measure that the Lord judges us by, you know. Due to others, whatever you would have them do to you, you know. Is it going to be justice or is it going to be mercy? What do we expect from God? Do we expect mere justice? I don't think so. I think we want a little break, you know. Oh Lord, I'm trying but, you know, no matter how hard I try, it's not enough. So please Lord, skid the wheels a little bit to heaven. You know, take away some of the obstacles that maybe I don't even see that are, I'm kind of clinging to. We want God to judge us with mercy. So what the Lord is asking us to do is if that's the way we want to be judged with mercy, then we have to be willing to do that with one another. To judge with mercy. And finally, enter through the narrow gate for the gate is wide and the road broad. This is the two ways, you know. You see a lot about that in ancient philosophy as well too, not just in the Hebrew Scriptures and this narrow gate. What's that all about? And I think if you put all of these three pericopes together, these three logia together, that you find where they do come together. You know, Jesus is talking about this pearl. Do not throw your pearls to swine. What is that pearl of great price? Well, it is a pearl of great price. It's the price that Jesus paid for forgiving us. Yesterday I think it was Brother Dave that mentioned from that story in the Scripture about the paralytic man and he says your sins are forgiven. And then Jesus says, well, which is easier to say, you know, arise and walk or your sins are forgiven. But, you know, so that you may know the Son of power. Son of God has the power to forgive sins. I say to you, rise and walk. I don't know about you, but to me, I always used to think that, oh, it's so easy to forgive. That's the easy part. The real tough part is the physical miracle, you know? But think a minute. Is it so easy to forgive? I mean, if I bop you on the head, I'm not close enough to bop anybody on the head. But if I bop you on the head real hard, you're going to say ouch, right? And what if I said, oh, I was just kidding, please forgive me, you know? And you probably would, because I'm a bishop, you know, but maybe not the guy next to you. But if I say, well, I'm sorry, it didn't really mean to hurt you like, really, yes, sure. And so you're going to say, I forgive you, but you see, you have to bite down twice. You still have the pain. You still have the pain. So not only do you have to forgive me for giving you the pain, but you have to forgive me for the justice that really I deserve. And that's to hit me right back. So you have to let me off the hook twice. And of course, that's exactly what Jesus does. He lets us off the hook twice. Not only does he forgive us our sins and all humanity our sins on that cross, but he pays the price for those sins. He takes, you know, C.S. Lewis has famously said, he took upon himself the punishment that we deserve so that we would have the reward that he deserved. And that's the nature of forgiveness. It's such a precious gift. And it is a gift. It is a gift. Our faith is a gift. God's goodness is a gift. Our mercy is a gift. And I think that is that one thing that St. Matthew, through the words of Jesus, or I should say Jesus through the words of Matthew, is reminding us of not to take the gift for granted. And it is indeed a narrow gate, it seems, because the wide path is sort of the path of, well, what everybody's doing, and that's not going to get us to heaven if we do what everybody else is doing. Maybe this is a bit of a caution against what we sometimes call cultural Catholicism, you know, that if we just sort of follow the rules that's enough. And I guess it is, in a way, because God is so generous that if we basically follow the commandments, it probably will be enough because he's going to help us so much more than what we do. But I think in the time of the, certainly in the audience that Matthew was preaching to the Jewish Christians, they would have been very, very familiar with, there were very good Jews around at that time. And they really were striving very, very hard to follow the law. No question about that. You know, sometimes the Pharisees get a bad rap, you know, and they may have been a little scrupulous. They were having a tough time trying to follow 623 laws and not knowing which one was more important. So they had a tough time, but they were really trying. They were trying so hard to be good people, you know, and it wasn't working for them. They were still getting into problems. And there was that kind of sense that, well, if I really, you know, if I really follow everything and try to do everything right, and somehow or other, you know, I will be saved. And Jesus is kind of challenging that. You know, and what is he challenging it with? Well, it's the whole point, really, of the Sermon on the Mount, isn't it? That Jesus is replacing the law, or I should say, Jesus is concentrating the whole meaning and focus of the law on himself. Reminding them and us that our faith is ultimately not about a what, but about a who. And that who is that loving, forgiving God that we see incarnate in Jesus, we see it expressed so beautifully in the attitudes. You know, some people call them the B attitudes, right? That Jesus is telling us that we don't have to wait until tomorrow to live as though we already were in heaven. Because that's who Jesus is. Jesus is heaven. Where Jesus is, heaven is. And if we keep our gaze focused on Jesus and let him be the Lord of our life, let him be at the driver's seat of our personal car, you know, our lives, let him take the wheel that we have already the way to heaven, because he is the way, the truth and the life. He is heaven itself on earth, incarnate. And now as we approach this Holy Eucharist and it is a Holy Eucharist because it's more than our words, it's more than how beautifully we sing or how reverently we celebrate as important as that is because the host deserves that honor. We are never closer to heaven on earth as Pope St. John Paul II reminded us than when we are here in the Eucharistic presence of Jesus. There's only one Jesus. The same Jesus that the saints behold in heaven right now is the same Jesus that we have here personally present on our altar. We're united to them. We're united to him. Never closer to heaven than now.