Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. In conversation, there are times where you really want to talk about something, but it’s not really part of the conversation at that time. So you just wait for some word that bears some tangential connection to the point that you want to make, and then pounce and try to steer the discussion to the topic you desire. Or, if the conversation is not going well, or going in the wrong direction, I will sometimes use the cheeky phrase, “Speaking of segue…”
So, speaking of Jerusalem, speaking of segue, I would like to draw us deeper into these words of Archbishop Vigneron. He was speaking, of course, of God providing a shepherd to the Church in Kalamazoo, and how Christ pours out all necessary gifts for every local church, just as He sent the Holy Spirit to the Apostles and disciples gathered at Pentecost.
But the same applies to us, even without consecrating a new bishop today. We are no poorer than Jerusalem at the beginning. We have all the gifts that God gave to His nascent Church in that Upper Room fifty days after Easter. We lack nothing of what it means to be a true church, an 𝜀𝜅𝜅𝜆𝜂𝜎𝜄𝛼, a people “called out” (𝜀𝜉 𝜅𝛼𝜆𝜀𝜊) of darkness into the light of Christ.
What are the necessary aspects of being a Church? First, it is that we are founded by Jesus Christ, and faithful to what He taught. All other religions in the world are about man seeking out God. Judaism, and its fulfillment in Christianity, is about God seeking us out. We don’t make up teachings because we think they make sense to us. We read and ponder the revelation of God, given to us through the Scriptures, and interpret it through the authentic teaching of the bishops in union with the pope. We cannot contradict what Christ taught or what Christ did. We do not refrain from ordaining women priests because we hate women. Indeed, the holiest person ever is a woman, the Blessed Virgin Mary. But Christ did not ordain her a priestess, nor anyone else. It was only to the Apostles that He gave the sacred office. We do not use rice and rice wine in Asia because we reject those staple food and drink of another culture. We use bread and wine because that is what Christ Himself used. We are not the masters of theology, but the servants of preserving it, even as we delve deeper and come to understand it more fully.
Even our Protestant brothers and sisters, who are united to us in baptism, while they can point to Christ, cannot claim that their ecclesial communities (things which look like churches but are not, strictly speaking, churches) were founded by Christ. They were founded by Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, the Wesley brothers, etc. It strikes me that so many of the communities founded on sola scriptura are now divided because at least some in their official governance bodies want to walk away from Scripture because it is no longer fashionable, or seems, to the modern person, discriminatory. To be a church, we must be founded by Christ and be rooted in what He has revealed.
To be a church, we need to have all seven sacraments, all the major vehicles of sanctifying grace, that God has given us to become saints. We share baptism with most of the Protestant denominations (I say most, because some have messed with the necessary words that effect validity). But we also have six other ways that God makes us holy: the Sacraments of Penance, Eucharist, Confirmation, Holy Matrimony, Holy Order, and Anointing of the Sick. God takes these ordinary elements (water, oil, bread & wine, voice, consent, the laying on of hands) and makes them a way that His life is given to us, in a way that sitting in nature, or watching a religious movie never could. The sacraments, which not only remind us of Christ but actually cause His life to increase in us, help us to develop in our relationship with Him, and then share that relationship with the world.
To be a church, we finally need connected to the Apostles. We are truly an apostolic church, because our bishops can trace themselves back to the college of bishops at Pentecost, with Peter as their head. Our Lord founded His Church in a particular way, such that those who listened to His Apostles listened to Him. We mention their names at every Mass (in this form) in the Roman Canon: Peter and Paul, Andrew, James, John, Thomas, James, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Simon and Jude (and Matthias gets mentioned later in the Canon). And even every post-Conciliar Eucharistic prayer mentions the Apostles. Those Apostles laid hands on their successors, giving them the Holy Spirit to continue their work and their connection to Christ.
It seems like every one to two months, Amanda, our Director of Faith Formation, is telling me about another person who wants to become Catholic. Some have never been baptized; some have been baptized in other ecclesial communities. And we don’t just “make them Catholic” and never see them again. They continue to participate in the life of this parish community.
We are proud of our two young men, Joseph and Glen, who have heard the call to become priests and will continue to discern that call in seminary. You strongly participate, whether at home with your families, or in our different formational groups and classes, in growing in your faith and deepening not just your knowledge of facts about the Lord, but your knowledge and love of Him, a real Person who lives.
We don’t have money for fancy programs. In many ways our parish, in both ways that the Mass is celebrated, is not culturally up-to-date or cutting edge. We are certainly not the largest parish in Genesee County, not by a long shot. But I would argue that we’re doing something right, because we do continue to bring people into relationship with Christ. How? Because we are no poorer than Jerusalem. God has given us everything we need to proclaim His Gospel: fidelity to the teachings of Christ; the sacramental life of the Church; apostolic foundations and succession. As long as we have that, we will continue to draw others to the truth and beauty that are part and parcel of our Catholic faith, founded by Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever. Amen.
