One Lord, One World, No. 10 of 16 No. 10 of 16

The Lord of the world, Lord of the world, During the next half hour, the National Broadcasting Company and its affiliated independent stations have made their facilities available to the National Council of Catholic Men as a public service for the presentation of the Catholic Alps. For the glory of the world, the glory of the world, the glory of the world. Today the Catholic hour celebrates its 14th year on the air. We ask your prayers that this radio hour may ever become a more and more perfect means of spreading light, hope, and inspiration among its listeners. On today's program, the right Reverend Monciniar Fulton J. Sheen will deliver the 10th in a series of sixteen addresses under the general title, One Lord One World. The choir of the Church of the Blessed Sacrament, New York City, under the direction of war and folly will provide appropriate music. One Lord One World. Since March 2nd, 1930, when the Catholic hour was broadcast for the first time, its programs have been given under the patronage of the Blessed Mother of our Lord. It is only fitting then that this anniversary broadcast should open with a hymn to our Lady. A well-loved Ave Maria by Bach in the setting of Guno. A well-loved Ave Maria by Bach in the setting of Guno. Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! I beg your pardon. Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! The right Reverend Montsenior Fulton J. Sheen now addresses the Catholic Our Audience. Montsenior Sheen has entitled today's talk, the second word to the cross, a word to sinners. Montsenior Sheen. There are two ways of coming to God through their preservation of innocence and through the loss of it. Some have come to God because they were good, like Mary who was full of grace, like Joseph the just man, like Nathaniel in whom there was no guile, or like John the Baptist, the greatest man ever born of woman. But others have come to God who were bad, like the young man of the Jerusalem's possessive devils, like Magdalene, out of whose corrupt soul the Lord cast seven devils, and like the thief at the right who spoke the second word to the cross. The world loves the mediocre. The world hates the very good and the very bad. The good are reproached to the mediocre, and the evil are a disturbance. That is why Christ was crucified with thieves. This is His true position. Jesus among the worthless ones. During His life He was accused of eating and drinking with sinners, and now they accuse Him of dying with them. Here is the supreme instance of the right man in the right place. Christ among the bandits. The Redeemer in the midst of the unredeemed, the physician among the lepers, where God does not work through culture but through grace. Christ as God showed that we become great not because of what we are, but because of what He gives. God in His infinite wisdom is reached deep into the lower layers of humanity and picked out of its vregs to worthless derelicks, and He used one of them as the escort of His eternal son. At the beginning of the crucifixion both the use cursed and blaspheme the Savior. Sadly the soul of one of them, the thief at the right, lighted by fires from that central cross turned to a king who was being mocked, and asked to be one of His subjects, for He said, lords, remember me, when thou shalt come into thy kingdom. Lord, He called Him Lord. A real king is so easy to approach. Remember me. There was a touch of humor and asking God to remember. God had remembered Him before He was born. That is why He was immortal. God had been following His souls down the corridor of time, and now this pursued us to pursue her to remember. When thou shalt come into thy kingdom, how did the thief know He had a kingdom? Maybe the crown of thorns spoke of a diadem, the crucifixion of a coronation, the nails of a scepter, and a blood of royal purple. We can never judge people by the way they are dressed. So prayer to God is ever unanswered, and so from the central cross there fleshed back, this day thou shalt be with me in paradise. This day evil has its hour, but God has his day. Thou, he calleth his sheep by name. This was the foundation of Christian democracy, the value of a person, the soul of an outcast is of such value that the eternal word addresses him and the second person singular, thou. Shalt be with me in paradise. I wonder why he said in paradise. To be with him is paradise. The marbon calvary asked him to come down from the cross, and the thief asked to be taken up. The masses would have believed if he preached a religion without a cross, but the thief found his faith by hanging on across. This is the supreme instance of one bringing good out of evil. It is doubtful if the thief would have found goodness otherwise. Why is it that this thief found salvation? It can only be because the capacity for conversion is greater in the really wicked than in the self-satisfied and complacent. The very emptiness of souls of the sinners is in itself an occasion for receiving the compassion of God. Self-discoust is the beginning of conversion, for it marks the death of pride. May it not be that the conversion of the good thief is the key to the conversion of the modern world. One will return to God in this world, not just because they are good, but because they recognize that they are evil. In this modern day men will come to God through evil rather than through goodness, or shall we say, they will come to God through the devil. Countless how the instances mentioned in the gospel of those who came to God after Satan was driven out of their souls. The French Revolutionist Sarel predicted that the basic problem of the twentieth century would be the problem of evil. And everyone knows this is the century of evil and insanity. The nineteenth century foreshadowed this in one of its most outstanding writers, Dostoyevsky the Russian, who believed that the world would be saved after it had passed from anti-Christ to Christ. In English philosopher, in our own day, makes this typical modern approach of finding God in the very midst of evil. None of the explanations given by his contemporaries concerning evil are satisfactory to him. The socialist explanation of evil in terms of economic inequality and injustice he rejects. Reapply he says, for if poverty is the root of all evil, then money must be the source of all virtue. And then he rejects the psychological explanation of evil, which attributes evil to suppressed desires and twart its sex libidoes, all of which according to the modern mind could be abolished by popularizing aesthetics and by extending the blessings of the machine and the ballad. He asks himself, was no rich man ever cruel, was no unrepressed man ever tyrannical, was no self-expressive child selfish, evil is not merely a byproduct of unfavorable circumstances. It is so widespread and so deep-seated that one can only conclude that that which religion has taught his true, namely that evil is endemic in the heart of man. And that it is. It is in our blood, it flows through our veins, it gives life to the brain when it thinks evil, it energizes the will when it kills, it fires the muscles when it drops bombs, and it persecutes the prayerful. The face of that evil which is endemic in the human heart, this truth finally emerges. To overcome evil we must begin to recognize that it is evil. And there is no hope for the world until we do recognize sin as sin. There is hope for those who are deaf and who want to hear. For the lame who want to walk. There is hope for the disease to acknowledge the need of a physician. And there is hope for a sinner who recognizes the need of a redeemer. The thief at the right conquered evil just that way. By admitting his emptiness of soul he called upon God to save him. It is only one thing in the world that is worse than sin. That is denying that we are sinners. There is the tragedy of the world in which we live. It denies sin. Never before in the history of the world was there so much evil and never before sold it will consciousness of it. We blame everyone except ourselves. Talk to a modern man about recognizing and reconciling his soul with God and this is what he will say to you. What have I ever done to him? I leave him alone. Why shouldn't he let me alone? Why does the modern man say this? Well for the very same reason that a healthy man might say to a surgeon who wish to operate on him there is nothing wrong with me. Leave me alone. In light manner if you are your own law, if you set your own standards, if you are your own God then it is nonsense to ask to be reconciled to another God. As a man gets more wicked he understands his wickedness less and less. Just as when a man's fever climbs to a point of deliriousness he understands his sickness less and less. You may even think himself so healthy that he wants to go to work. The more we are in sin the less we know sin. Because the sounder we are asleep the less we know we are asleep. We have to wake up before we know we were asleep. A modernly bad man knows he is not good. A very bad man thinks he's good. And therefore you reach a point when you cease calling yourself idiotic and do not mean it and begin to call yourself a rotter and really mean it. You are on the pathway of the good bandit that leads to conversion. The perception of guilt is the condition of conversion as the perception of disease is the condition of remedy. And so long as we think we are good we will never, never find God. If you think you know it all how can God teach you? Is the peculiar thing about pride we will admit we are real tempered or that we are in temperate but have you ever in your life known anyone who admitted that he was proud and conceited? We all deny that we are proud. We condemn pride so variably so variably and others that we deny we have ever been guilty of at ourselves. As a matter of fact the more conceited we are the more we hate conceit and others. The more we say I am not conceited the more we prove that we are conceited. Our pride therefore mixes look down on people so that we can never look up to God. In order to look up to God we need must do two things. First we must humble ourselves. That is why it's Sunday after Sunday we ask every Jew and Protestant and Catholic in our radio audience to set aside an hour a day for prayer and contemplation. I wonder how many of you are doing it. Catholics every morning should attend Mass and extend that morning Mass a half an hour and complete the Holy hour. And the second thing that we must do is we must live in humble service of our fellow men. And to cultivate that we have published this little book entitled Friends, the purpose of which is to induce us to be friends with God and friends with ourselves, friends with Catholics, friends with Jews and friends with Protestants. The very moment we stop strutting and posing and begin to see ourselves as we really are, then in our humility we shall be exalted. Let us therefore examine our conscience. Ask ourselves not how much we know, but how much we do not know. Not how good we are, but how bad we are. Let us judge ourselves not by the knowledge we possess, but by our consciences, not by our education, but by our habits, not by our politeness, but by our hearts. As soon as we feel a great void in our souls, and realize that because of our sinning we are no longer our own, and acknowledge that we are still thirsty at the border of a well and admit that we have played the fool, and that our follies of the years mount up in their dark arrears. Then out of a dark and swampy soul we cry out with the thief, as all Catholics do and they go to confession, bless me father for I have sinned. I am a sinner. Such is the beginning of salvation. Did not beginning we say to our Lord, there are two things dear Lord which are not in your treasury, rich as you are. My sins and my sorrow make them thyme. As thou get smake the sins and the sorrow the thief thyme. The thief died as thief for he stole paradise. And if we win paradise it will be because we are thieves too. For we will never deserve what we got, the God of everlasting love. And so as a sinner to sinners I say may God have mercy on our souls. Love you. Monsignor Sheen has just delivered and addressed and titled the second word to the cross, a word to sinners. You may obtain a copy of Monsignor Sheen's talk by writing to the National Council of Catholic men Washington DC or to the station to which you are now listening. Oring to wartime conditions we have not been able to send out copies of the little book that friends which Monsignor Sheen has offered to all who are right for it. If you have not yet sent a true request for this booklet please do so at once so that you may receive your copy as soon as our shipment arrives from the printers. And now our thoughts turn to our crucified Savior as the choir under Mr. Follies' direction things. There is a green hill far away by Guno. I am the God of the Lord. I am the God of the Lord. I am the God of the Lord. I am the God of the Lord. I am the God of the Lord. We are the God of the Lord. We must love Him alone. I am the God of the Lord. We now invite all those listening to join Monsignor Sheen in offering the Holy Spirit to join Monsignor Sheen in offering up this prayer in time of year. O Lord Jesus Christ, who in thy mercy hear us the prayers of sinners, for forth we beseech thee all grace and blessing upon our country and these citizens. We pray in particular for the President, for our Congress, for all our soldiers, for all who defend us in ships, whether on the seas or in the skies, for all who are suffering the hardships of war. We pray for all who are in peril or in danger. Bring us all up to the troubles of this life into the haven of peace. And reunite us all together forever, O dear Lord, in thy glorious heavenly kingdom. Amen. Next Sunday at this time, Monsignor Sheen will deliver a talk entitled, the Third Word to the Cross, a Word to Marxist. And the choir of the Church of the Blessed Sacrament will perform the music on the program. We invite you to be with us this thing. Praise to you, O Lord, O me, and we do pray for them. Praise to you, O Lord, O me, and we do pray for them. Praise to you, O me, and we do pray for them. Praise to you, O Lord, O me, and we do pray for them. The Music On Today's program was directed by Warren Foley. Your announcer is John Patrick Costello. The National Council of Catholic Men has presented the Catholic Hour through the facilities of the National Broadcasting Company and its independent affiliated stations, which have been made available as a public service and as a contribution to the religious life of America. This is the National Broadcasting Company.