Lec
# 104- 15th Sun of OT- July 15, 2012- Fr. Bresowar- Lectionary Cycle
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In
today’s Gospel, the Church gives us the model for priestly evangelization, that
is to say, Christ calls us who would go out and spread the good news to the world,
to our people, to go without reserve, to go detached from the world, detached
from all the things that would distract us, and to go without fear of the
results.
As
a priest, this is a difficult task. To go out into a world which is overwhelmed
with distractions and false idols (consumerism being the number one false idol
in America) and to preach the timeless truth that Christ is the only way,
repent and believe the good news, and to recognize that more times then not
what you say is falling on deaf ears, that’s a challenging thing to accept.
It’s challenging enough to live in the world and not become of the world, and
it’s equally challenging to accept that fact that many people just don’t care
anymore.
Now
as a priest, I’m preaching to you, who generally do care and are struggling on
your own journey to keep Christ relevant in your own life when so many around
you find him to be irrelevant. You care because you are here at Mass, and if we
take a look around, you may think, "well Father there is a decent amount of
people here at Church today, we are not doing so bad." But if I asked everyone
here if they knew someone who was Catholic who should be at Church but has
decided that it’s not for them, I’m sure just about everyone could tell me at
least one person if not many.
Lax
Catholicism, lax Christianity really, is a prevalent in this society, in our
own families, just as it is throughout the world.
I
was fortunate enough recently to tag along with my sister and her family to
visit England a couple of weeks ago. We spent the majority of our time in
London, with a few trips to other parts of England. And one of the things I
noticed most, besides the fact that everything is really old, was the large
number of women who were wearing full body burkas. You almost couldn’t look in
any direction and not see the influence of Islam in London. It’s spreading
quickly there, and I imagine it’s on its way here.
What
I didn’t notice however… was the rampant spread of Christianity.
That’s
not good, that means we as a society have failed to Let God do what God does.
That means this generation and the generations before us, have somehow failed
to get the Christian message of sacrifice and love, self denial and repentance
across to our children.
When
I was growing up, I grew up in the 80s as a child and the 90s as a teenager,
all I remember of Sunday school was that God loved us, and everything was about
love, love, love… love as an emotion, even the liturgy was about the music, or
about the preaching, or fellowship, or lack of fellowship, or whatever… I had
no idea that the truest nature of the liturgy was about sacrificial love. That
divine worship was about offering myself as a living sacrifice untied with the
one sacrifice that is acceptable to God, that of His Son, was not something I
was taught. Sure I knew that Jesus died for our sins, but how that is relevant
to me didn’t come across accept that maybe one day if I was good I’d go to
heaven.
IT
was easy once I got to college to be confused by religion in general, and to do
what so many do today, which is to reject it outright, or make the presumption
that all religions are the same.
I
didn’t recognize the value of sacrificial love, and thus became enamored with
my own self- and fell victim to the trap of consumerism, finding self-worth in
the opinion of others, and ultimately thinking less of myself because I
couldn’t live up to the ridiculous expectations that the world puts on young
men and women.
It
wasn’t until I realized the truest nature of love, which is one self-sacrifice
for the sake of other, that I came to understand what I was never taught as a
child, that to love Christ is to die with him on the cross!
To
die to self, to die to worldly allurements, to practice the virtues of
humility, and self- abasement, not for some sick sense of mortification, but
that we might see Christ clearly and become an instrument of his salvation, is
necessary for us if we want to see just how incredibly contagious Jesus might
become in our own society, starting with our own family and our own individual
life.
To
die with Jesus is a choice of love.
The
difference between Christianity and Islam, is that ours is a choice, Islam
means submission. In Islam, God is not interested in our free will, he’s
interested in our submission to his Will. That’s not God at all. That’s a false
God. The triune God, of the Father, Son and Spirit will never force us to do
anything, which is why we have this rampant atheism in the world and the spread
of false idols like Allah, but he will likewise not stand in our way if we want
to truly discover what it means to be Human which he reveals to us in his Son.
So what
do we do?
Well
first, we get ready to be unpopular. Jesus was clear if you come after me the
world is going to hate you because what I offer you is not of the world. Remember
though, if it hates you, it hated me first.
Then
we might ask, How do we actually get to a point where we might be Christian
enough to actually call ourselves true Christians? I mean, how do we get to the
point that we would be willing to die, not just the death of a martyr, but to
die every day to our own selfishness, to our own pride, our own desires to have
more and more approval from this world, to die to our own desire to seek out true
comfort in things of this world which cannot give us true comfort? How do we
get to THAT point when everything that is its antithesis surrounds us, and
influences so much of the culture that we live in?
Well,
we start small, and let God water the planted seed.
Here’s
a good prayer… Lord I’d like to know you more, Lord I’d like to maybe one day
possibly one day, in the future way down the road, possibly, maybe, be willing
to give up part of who I am so that I might one day, way down the road, possibly
maybe, experience you in a deeper more personal way even though I know that is
going to require some element of sacrifice.
That’s
a good prayer because it is a start; it’s an opened door for God to work, and
sometimes that’s all he needs to get us moving in the right direction.
The
greatest prayer though that we can offer him happens right here at the Mass in
union with his Son. Save the Liturgy, save the world. WE need to look at what
the Church teaches about Liturgy and try to implement it more and more. Divine
worship is not subjective; it is to be carried out with care to protect its objective
uniting nature. Our mother the Church asks us to offer the sacred Mass in such
a way that the solemnity of what actually happens at each Mass is emphasized.
And she has 2000 years of living tradition and liturgical knowledge to speak on such matters.
Understanding
that there is some leeway, any dissent from what she teaches is inappropriate
and damaging. Obedience to the Church is obedience to Christ himself.
If
we are able to with simple faith say yes to the Lord, and then put our emphasis
first on divine worship, then we will be able to go out to the world with a
clear vision of Jesus Christ, living within us, and become his hands and feet
to the world, and serve not for ourselves but for others, and we will eagerly
look for opportunities to die to our own desires, so that as John the Baptist
rightly declared, I must decrease, He must increase will pervade our whole
existence, and Christ will convert the world through our yes, and if our sense
of glory is anything other than that, then let us pray for right knowledge and
wisdom to understand that (as St
Paul reminds us in the second reading)
“In him we were
also chosen,
destined in
accord with the purpose of the One
who
accomplishes all things according to the intention of his will,
so that we
might exist for the praise of his glory,
we who first
hoped in Christ.”
