Mass readings for the 4th Sunday of Easter:
Acts 13.14, 43-52 Psalm 100.1-3, 5 Revelation 7.9, 14b-17 John 10.27-30
Our gospel passage is quite short. In it we have an essential teaching, and that for all its brevity it needs to be considered at length by each of us as individuals and as a community living in these times.
We the sheep of the good shepherd’s fold ought to know his voice; we ought to recognize it in the speech of others, hear the echoes of his good teaching in the words of priests, bishops, and deacons; rejoice when we hear it in the rhetoric of politicians, in the lectures of professors and the lessons of teachers; we should be able to discern what is of Christ, and what is not; hear him in this world, but know the counterfeit and suss out the imposter.
That is a characteristic discipline of the true disciple: to constantly develop our capacity to hear our Lord through the din of this chaotic world. So, who today hears his voice?
I might claim to hear it, and you might claim to, and we know many in the Church and outside it who claim to know what God wants of us because they say in so many words that they hear him clearly say to them what really is good, and proper and just for ourselves, for our neighbours, for the stranger in our midst, for the poor and the marginalized.
However, for all the talk, all the politicking and protesting about creating an ideal, harmonious world in which all have fullness of life, free of fear, without want, I can’t say I hear the voice of Christ in much of it. Rather I hear other voices, those of power, of coercion, making threats and accusations, shaming and inducing guilt, emotionally blackmailing; some even directly attacking the gospel message just as the officials went after Saint Paul for his preaching, jealous of how people responded to it. Indeed, when I think on those words of Christ that I do know from scripture, from the reliable teaching of our tradition, I witness many who twist his words, ignore his teaching, deny the truth, refuse the wisdom and even try to refute its common sense.
I am reminded of a phrase from the writings of the catholic writer Flannery O’Connor. She was born, raised and lived her too short life in the U.S. south; and she described that part of the world as “Christ-haunted.”
We might think that an odd description. Who doesn’t think of the southern U.S. as the location of the famous “Bible Belt”? Aren’t they saturated in Christianity?
If you know O’Connor’s work, and if you are aware of the sociological literature on that distinctive culture, you can’t help but pick up on the problem of hypocrisy as it relates to Christian morality. This isn’t to say that southerners are more evil than the rest of us, it’s just that when you consider the figure of the firebrand, bible-thumping southern preacher, or the clichés about southern Christian worship with all its drama and spontaneity, the shouts of “Amen” and “Hallelujah” that seem to demonstrate the presence of the Holy Spirit, the gulf between what people profess and how people actually live is obvious.
But as I say, that doesn’t make us better than them.
We can observe as O’Connor did of southern U.S. society that our culture has had its Christian essence drained from it, leaving only an empty exterior shell, the form with little of the content – it’s a shadow, a ghost of its former self.
So, there may be proclaimed in the Bible belt a great love of Jesus with all the fervour of a televangelist, and we hear in much of the West the claim we’ve outgrown Christianity while retaining Jesus’ concern for the poor and the marginalized, for justice, for the creation of a loving, caring society – these are like twins separated at birth. Each in their own manner, the bible-thumper and the post-Christian liberal, believe themselves to be far more authentically Christian than any of the baptized who have come before. Each claims to hear the Lord’s voice, and to be doing his bidding.
I’ve mentioned before the philosopher Alasdair McIntyre and his famous book, After Virtue. One of the central points he makes is that the philosophical language of the ancients, the language that first articulated with some precision ideas like virtue, goodness, justice, are no longer reliably translated into our modern thinking. We have suffered a break in understanding as we’ve moved further and further into our modern existence; indeed, into a post-modern reality. That is, we might use a word like “justice” or talk of the “good” but we don’t understand those words in the same way as our spiritual ancestors did, those of the early Church, the philosophers of Athens, the scribes of Jerusalem. What is “good” to us would not be seen as “good” to them. What we think of as “justice” would not look at all just to our forebears.
Without delving into the mire that is the abortion debate, events of recent days, statements arising from the news coming from south of the border, were astonishing to me. The framing of abortion as a right and a good by pretty much the whole of our Canadian establishment gave me pause.
There clearly has been a fundamental shift in definition of what is a right and what is good. And so, I don’t know how we will ever be able to discuss this matter, or indeed any issue of public importance because we no longer have a shared concept of what is good.
We’re heading into an election, and of course we’re going to hear how each party, each candidate is going to work for our good, our rights. I wish you all the best of luck in your task of discernment.
We had the confirmation retreats this past week. And I must publicly thank our youth minister, Chelsea Torregossa for the fantastic job she did. I was relieved of having to organize the day, and could focus on teaching the confirmandi about the idea of worship.
Here we got to the problem of words and what they mean. I started the discussion by asking what is worship? And after some conversation, we landed on the word offering. And I said that “offering” was fundamental to worship; and the offering in worship really isn’t the money you put in the collection, it isn’t really the bread and wine that comes forward as the gifts for the eucharist. The offering is of one’s self. One gives oneself to what one worships. And in our culture today, many worship fame and wealth, which are all means to power over others. And I asked, what do we Catholics worship? To what or whom do we give ourselves?
They said, “God.”
I pressed them on that: who or what is God?
We then got to St. John’s famous formulation: God is Love.
And then I asked what is Love? And as I’ve said here many a time, Catholic teaching is that true love is willing the good of another without self-interest.
So far, the progression to this point was fairly smooth. But the next question was, “what is good?”
Well, we didn’t have time to get into that one. I don’t think if we had a month, we would have had time enough for that one. That is a hard question around which we should exercise humility and caution, in a complex world, and especially in the chaos we have created, the easy answer is almost surely the wrong one.
I did tell them to look up at the cross, Jesus is good, and that terrible cross, seen with the eyes of faith is good. But to understand that, you’re going to need to know Jesus as something more than a name.
As with any person, you must spend time with him, listen to his words, watch what he does if you’re going to get to know him. I’m still getting to know him, but I think after all my years of following him, I’m getting better at recognizing him: I think I could pick him out of a line-up, spot him in the crowd.
So, I look for him in what I see today in those offering themselves as our leaders and our representatives, who serve as our teachers and our pastors, who are our corporate CEO’s and our social activists; I try to hear him in their words. I search for the humility. I listen for the wisdom. Who among these shows some hint of that greatest love that Jesus spoke of: the willingness to lay down one’s life for others? Who would endure humiliation for our sake? Pain for our salvation? Suffer defeat to win for us a greater victory? Is that an impossible search? The proverbial needle in the haystack?
That might be a lot to ask of people these days, to genuinely exhibit the qualities of Christ, not just pretend like an actor, but I don’t think so. Jesus expects that of us, and we need to ask it of ourselves if we are to be Christ in the world. And in asking it of ourselves, then we can ask it of others. Not with a tone of accusation, mind you, but as an invitation to join in the life of Christ, the love of God, through which we can then all pass through this great ordeal as a community to the springs of eternal life. Amen.