Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
It
seems, at least historically, that the American people have an adventurous
nature. Look at the way we spread
across this land, moving out into the unknown to establish new States. While I’m not positive, it wouldn’t
surprise me that an American invented the sport (though I consider it more rash
than adventurous) where you get a snowmobile up to terrific speeds in order to
do flips and twists in the air, before trying to land it safely on the
ground.
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| G. K. Chesterton |
Given
this adventurous nature, there should be droves of people lining up to be
Catholic. Now, Catholic and
adventurous may not always go together in your mind. Our liturgy, though altered in noticeable ways in the late
1960s and early 1970s, dates back (at least in its basic form) to the first
century, and old and adventurous do not always go together. It is sometimes said that those who are
Catholic are simply afraid of pursuing other beliefs and opening their minds to
other realities. The Catholic
Church, fairly or unfairly, is often associated with conservativism, of holding
on to the past, rather than the liberalism of plowing ahead on a new,
undiscovered path. But, as G.K. Chesterton
said, “People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as
something heavy, humdrum and safe.
[But] there was never anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy.”
What
do I mean? What does Chesterton
mean? Well, look at our readings
today. In our first reading, God
calls Jeremiah to be His prophet, His spokesman. But being a prophet for God means that God’s own Chosen
People were going to fight against Jeremiah. And so God assures Jeremiah that God has made the prophet “a
fortified city, a pillar of iron, a wall of brass.” Jeremiah had to tell the people, especially the leaders of
Judah, that they could not trust in foreign alliances to save them; that they
needed to turn away from the false gods of Canaan and Assyria; that only by
fidelity to God would salvation come.
But the people preferred the foreign alliances and the idolatry that came
with it. It would be no easy task
to try to get the people to turn away from sin and be faithful to God. It took a true adventurous heart to say
“yes” to God’s call and fight the cultural norms of the day.
Or,
look at our Gospel. What an
adventure to follow a guy who claims to be the fulfillment of the Messianic
prophecies, but looks exactly the same as everybody else; is thought of as the
son of Joseph, and has been doing miracles everywhere else, but when it comes
to His own home town, nothing major happens. And then, rather than just passing by, Jesus condemns the
people’s disbelief, and says that God prefers the pagans to the Chosen People
because at least they have faith, as in the days of Elijah and the widow of
Zarephath, or in the days of Elisha and Naaman the Syrian. And, based upon this critique, the
people, Jesus’ own neighbors, try to drive Jesus off a hill to at least do Him
bodily harm, if not to kill Him.
What an adventure to follow the guy that everyone wants to put to death!
Catholicism
now is no less an adventure now than it was when Jesus was founding His Church
in the first century. It takes
real courage to follow a Person who is not half-God and half-Human, but 100%
God and 100% Human, without any mixture or confusion. It is so much easier to say that Jesus was just a really
good, but really misunderstood, sage.
It is so much easier to assert that no one has a special office and we
can all just vote on what we want to believe. But as a Catholic, we’re not into easy. Our faith is adventurous in what we
believe and in what we preach.
The
Lord God still reminds us that we are called to be “a fortified city, a pillar
of iron, a wall of brass against the whole land.” We are not necessarily morally better, but we are called to
be faithful to the truth that God has communicated through His Church, governed
by the apostles and their successors.
The gift of truth that we have received, the Spirit of Truth who leads
us into all truth, is not meant to be something that we just hold by ourselves
in smugness, but spread to others so that they can find the freedom of living
as a child of God. But we will get
pounded for this. When we defend
marriage as created by God between one man and one woman we are called
bigots. God’s truth is called
lies, light is called darkness, and good is called evil.
It
is in those times that we should turn back to St. Paul and his second letter to
Timothy:
proclaim the word; be
persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient; convince, reprimand,
encourage through all patience and teaching. For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound
doctrine but, following their own desire and insatiable curiosity, will
accumulate teachers and will stop listening to the truth and will be diverted
to myths. But you, be
self-possessed in all circumstances; put up with hardship; perform the work of
an evangelist.
Of course, we are called
to preach the truth in love, as our second reading reminds us, so that we are
not “a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal.” We are called to invite to the joy of the truth. We are called to propose, but not to
impose. But this love is not the
emotion which encourages someone to do whatever he or she wants, but the will
for the best that the other person can be. And in the end, being Catholic means that we believe and
hold firm to teachings that the world considers folly.
Being
Catholic is an adventure, and is not for the faint of heart. But a crown of righteousness awaits
those who are faithful and complete the adventure on earth. “People have fallen into a foolish
habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum and safe. There never was anything so perilous or
so exciting as orthodoxy.”