When you read the Gospel accounts , its clear that Jesus spent a lot of time among sinners. As a matter of fact, He seems to prefer to be with sinners as opposed to the so-called righteous. His twelve apostles are a good example. One of them, Matthew, a tax collector, was a great sinner. He was a traitor to the Jewish people, a thief, and a quisling. He had sold out to the Romans. Many of the apostles were fishermen. And, in Jesus’ day, if you wanted to look for the least pious Jews on the face of the earth, you would go to fishermen. They had a reputation. Kind of the truck drivers of their day. If He had twelve apostles today, it would be six truck drivers. No slight against them. There certainly wouldn’t be many priests or bishops. Well, there would be actually, in the sinner argument. Mary Magdelen, a great friend and disciple of Jesus, was a prostitute. By the way, her feast day is tomorrow. On the other hand, the time He spent with the so-called righteous people, He spent criticizing and castigating them, the Pharisees, who were the leaders of the people in terms of religion, and indeed the leaders of the Jewish people, period. And he was constantly battling them. What did he call them – "a nest of vipers," "you hypocrites." He says, "You whitewash the outside of the tomb and inside everything is rotten." That’s what got Him killed, that kind of talk.

Well, that doesn’t mean, of course, that Jesus accepted sin. Jesus hated sin. Look at what it did to him. But that’s not His biggest problem with sin. The biggest problem with sin is what it does to us. Because He loves us so dearly, he wants us to be with Him for eternity. And He knows that if we choose sin, we choose not to be with Him for eternity. If you study the scripture, and I’d like to do this one day, I think after I retire. (The current actual retirement age for priests in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe is 102. I’m looking forward to that.) What I’d like to do is study about who in the Bible speaks most about hell. I already know the answer -- it’s Jesus. More than any prophet or any writer, Jesus gave more hell and brimstone sermons than anyone else. In the long version of this Gospel today, He goes on to talk about the eternal fire of hell, where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Jesus warned people of hell, because its real. And there are people there. He warned them because He didn’t want them to go to hell. The scriptures tell us "the wages of sin is death."

Now, He hated sin, but He loved the sinner. And He challenged them because He loved them. In Matthew 18, we’ll hear this in about a month or five weeks, He says, "If your brother sins against you, go and tell his faults between you and him alone." Let me repeat that, because people come to me all the time and talk about the faults of their husband or wife or brother. It says here, "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his faults between you and him alone." So, please don’t come and see me. "If he listens to you, you have won over your brother. If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, then tell the church." Then come see me. "If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector." And then, 2 Thessalonians says that "Anyone refusing to obey what we say, note that man and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed. But do not look on him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother." Hate the sin, love the sinner.

And the scripture today talks about weeding out sin. And the parable that Jesus selected gives us the imagery of the wheat field, where someone, the enemy, Satan, has sowed weeds. And scripture scholars talk about a weed that looks just like wheat. It’s known as the Bearded Darnell, also known as Fools Weed. And it grows among the weeds. You can’t pull it out or you’ll destroy the crop, so farmers take in the whole crop and at that point the Bearded Darnell is destroyed. And Jesus is using this parable to tell us, "Look, I don’t weed out sinners, I wait till the Judgment. Don’t you dare weed out sinners from your midst." We never kick anyone out of the church, if you will. We don’t say, "You’re no longer part of us." Because that’s weeding out. And if we do that, we may weed out ourselves, if we go after sinners.

Several years ago I was in Knock. Knock is a little town. The word in Irish means "hill." It’s in county Mayo, where I believe, Our Lady appeared to 30 or 40 peasants in the middle 1800’s. She always chooses poor people to show herself to. There were no poorer people than one would find at Knock. As a matter of fact, county Mayo is so poor that among the Irish if someone says, "Where are you from?" You will say, "I’m from Mayo, God help me." Seriously, that’s how they say it. And if you say, "Well, where is her husband from?" "He’s from Mayo, God help him." It’s that poor. Actually, it’s not poor today. The Irish are now wealthy, and that’s why they’re sinning so much. I was at Knock hearing confessions. It’s a pilgrimage sight. I was there about a week, and I heard confessions morning, afternoon, and night. And it almost killed me. At the end of the day, I’d go back to my little priest room, and I was just weighed down with the sins of humanity. And I kept thinking, "My goodness, how messed up are we? How much trouble we get into." I heard sins of adultery, and fornication and murder. Betrayal, infidelity, theft. Everything under God’s sun. From young and old alike. But towards the end of the week, that depression kind of lifted from me and I realized how much God loves us. How He loves us sinners. In spite of all the evil in the world, these people came and had faith and confessed their sins, and at least for a little while were once again clean in God’s eyes. God’s justice is His mercy, and His mercy is His justice. Think about that. His justice is His mercy; His mercy is His justice. And He’s patient with us. And His patience is directed towards our salvation.

I like the expression that "The church is not a shrine for saints, but a shelter for sinners." Sometimes people say, "Well I don’t go to church. You people are a bunch of hypocrites. You go to church, you spend your hour, you sing your songs. You go home and sin again." And everyone says that "Well, there’s room for you too, you know." And I think that to some degree we’re all hypocrites. Does anyone here live the perfect life? That they know they’re called to? So we profess faith in Jesus. We believe in His commandments, but we continue to sin. Saint Paul was like that, even after his conversion. He says, "The good I wish to do, I do not do. The evil I wish to avoid, I do." There’s something wrong with that. The theologians call it concupiscence. It’s a big word that means a tendency toward sin. We know its true because we know ourselves. A Christian writer, Charles Clayton Morrison, says, "The church is a society of sinners. It is the only society in the world whose membership is based on a single qualification, that the candidate be unworthy of membership." And that includes you, and me.

The other day, one of our wonderful parishioners handed me a little poem, and I think it fits here. I’m going to read it to you. It’s called "Surprise!"

Which reminds me of a story. This couple didn’t get along well. And he died. Got to heaven’s gates, and he said "Thank God I made it." Peter said, "Not so fast. You have to spell a word to get in here." He said, "What’s the word?" And he said, "Love." And he said, "Watch this – L-O-V-E." So Peter says, "Come one in." About fifteen years later, his wife died. And Peter was on the gate that day, again, but you can’t smoke at the gates of heaven, all these new laws. And he was having a smoke and he asked Murphy to guard the gate. And who shows up, but herself, his wife. "What are you doing here?" "What are you doing here?" "Well, at least I made it," she said. He says, "Not so fast. Before you come in here you have to spell a word." She says, "What is that word?" He said, "Chrysanthemum." Ah, that Murphy.

You know, all this talk about sin. In the end it’s not about sin at all. It’s about His mercy. Look at that crucifix. I’m getting to like that crucifix. I didn’t like it at first. I thought it was ugly. Someone said, "You know, Father, the crucifixion was ugly." And I’m getting to like that. Look at that crucifix. If you were the only person ever to have lived, He would have done that for you. So much does He love you. And that’s why we don’t sin. Not because we’re afraid of hell, but primarily because we love Him and we don’t want to hurt Him.

Let me finish with a prayer. It’s a prayer to Saint Mary Magdelen, the patroness of sinners, our patroness. If you would please bow your heads.

And we ask this through Christ, Our Lord. Amen.