15 Oct 2017
28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
It’s never happened before in Christianity. 2,000-plus years and it’s the first time this
trend is appearing: people are angry and resentful at having been baptized as
an infant. It usually comes out around
Confirmation time; utter contempt for the faith and the Church—as if to say,
“How dare you do something against my free will. How dare you try to raise me to have values
and responsibilities.”
Of course, that could just be teenage rebelliousness. If it is, it’s pretty extreme—to have such a
visceral reaction to having been baptized.
But it goes beyond that: we see it happening with adults,
too. Just turn on the television, go
browse the internet. Our world culture
is not only not interested in Christian values and what the Church has to say,
it’s actually hostile to the gospel message of faith, hope, and love. It’s flat out rejected. Christianity has always been more or less
controversial. But the reasons for its
rejection today are something entirely new—and, quite honestly, we’re still
trying to figure out what to do.
We look at the statistics and we see declining Mass
attendance, the mass exodus of youth from the Church, constant financial
struggles, struggles to get volunteers, and so on. The life of the Church is waning,
dramatically. And, of course, our usual
response is to try to liven things up: peppier music at Mass, a more engaging
Mass where the priest is supposed to entertain the audience, more fun events,
we gotta cater to the youth and keep them happy, and fundraiser after
fundraiser after fundraiser to keep the money coming in.
Or, even more radically, some people start thinking: we have
to change our teachings, they’re too stiff and we’re losing customers; the
Church has to start loosening up and ordain married men and women, or we’re
going to run out of priests; and we have to lighten up on our expectations that
people are actually going to Christ-centered—they’re good people, nice people,
they work hard and that’s good enough.
I imagine we’ve all heard at least some of those sentiments
from time to time. And, for sure, the
Church needs to be attuned to culture so we can speak the gospel in a way that
it’ll be received. But today it seems that,
no matter how the gospel is presented, it doesn’t strike the right chord; it
doesn’t resonate the way it should.
Could it be that faith, hope, and love are...passé, archaic, and on the
way out?
We see some of this in the gospel today. The King invites all these people to his
son’s wedding, but there are many who refuse to go. It’s not so much that they reject the
invitation; it’s just that they have other priorities, other things to do, and
going to a wedding isn’t one of them.
And I suppose if the King kept on inviting them, and inviting them, and
inviting them, they might get a little irritated and go after the King.
Maybe that’s where we are today in our culture. The wedding feast is like the Kingdom of God,
the life of the Church, the life of faith, hope, and love. And people have been invited to share in that
for ages. But now the invitation is
received with either indifference, or hostility—even within her own walls.
That little guy in the gospel who didn’t have his wedding
garment on...he’s one of those. He was
invited in to the feast, and he sort of wandered in. But he was never really interested enough to
put on his garment, which is a symbol for faith. He was in the community of faith (the
Church), but he had no faith—and he wasn’t interested in having it, either.
Now, as we heard, Jesus spoke his parable to the chief
priests and the elders of the people. He
saw them as being like that little guy without his wedding garment. They didn’t have any real faith. And that affected the whole community; it
affected the mood of the wedding feast.
But, in a way, Jesus also addresses the parable to us—but more so as a
question, as something to ponder.
At our baptism, the priest or deacon said to each of us: “You
have become a new creation, and have clothed yourself in Christ.” That’s the “wedding garment” in the gospel:
our having been “clothed in Christ;” wrapped in a life of faith, kept safe in a
life of hope, and clothed warmly in a life of love and charity.
Here we are: a little portion of the global Church, a
community of believers, a community of the faithful. But we’re made to ask: Do I have real
faith? And if I don’t, do I really want
it? Do I still have my baptismal
garment, my wedding garment on? And that
can be a tough thing to ponder because saying “yes” to faith means also saying
“no” to anything that goes against that faith and the community of the
faithful. And there are pretty
significant things out there that we have to say “no” to—in order to say “yes”
to faith, hope, and love.
I’ve mentioned in past homilies that we live today in the
Post-Modern Era. We’re in a time that’s
characterized by skepticism, doubt, disbelief, and radical individualism. The motto today is: “The only truth is my
truth—and even that I’m not so sure of.”
This is an era of fragmentation, where there are no universal truths,
there are no objective standards, “there’s nothing outside of what I think is
important.”
It’s easy to see why the Church and faith are on such a
decline today: just about everything we stand for, everything we see as true is
contrary to the Post-Modern Era. We
believe in this grand, overarching story called “salvation;” we believe in the
past, the present, and the future. The
Post-Modern Era doesn’t; there’s just today, the present moment, and that’s it.
We believe in there’s meet to life than meets the eye. We believe in the spirit, the soul; we
believe in life-after-death; we believe in God’s presence, and in his working
in everyday life. The Post-Modern Era
doesn’t; there is no God, it’s just a bunch of baloney; and when we die, we
die, that’s it.
We believe in universal concepts, what we call
“archetypes.” It’s what allows us to
look at a forest of pine trees and say, “There’s a forest of pine trees.” Archetypes allow us to look at a bunch of
people and say, “There’s a bunch of people.”
But the Post-Modern Era doesn’t believe in archetypes. It looks at a forest and says, “No, that’s
not a bunch of trees; that’s a bunch of individual things that have no relation
to one another whatsoever.” The
Post-Modern Era looks at a bunch of people and says, “That’s not a bunch of
people; that’s a bunch of individual things that have no relation at all to one
another. The fact that they look similar
and act and sound the same doesn’t mean anything. There’s no connection between them at
all.” That’s how the Post-Modern Era can
look at a fetus in the womb and say, “That’s not a human being.”
We believe in logic, we believe in patterns. We believe in the importance of thought and
rationality, using our brains, common sense.
The Post-Modern Era doesn’t. Even
if a truth is staring a Post-Modern person in the face, they can still deny
it—even it’s a nonsensical, irrational, insane thing to do.
A life of faith implies the existence of something bigger
than myself. A life of hope, and a life
of love and charity imply the same thing.
We believe in something much bigger than ourselves. The Post-Modern Era doesn’t. It’s little wonder, then, why the Church and
faith are in such troubled times right now.
But the remedy isn’t to give in, and to doubt the importance
of what we believe. And the remedy isn’t
to dig in our heels and stubbornly refuse to “get with it.” The remedy is to be simply faithful...to God,
to one another, to the community of the faithful. The remedy is to live with a confident hope
in the promises of Christ, and in the presence of the Holy Spirit. The remedy is to be a person who has real
love, charity, compassion, and mercy at our core.
In short, the remedy is to simply (and really) be who we
profess to be: the Church. We should
expect that our way of life will continue to be looked down upon—even by people
within the community. We should, we can,
expect that; this is the Post-Modern Era.
And the winds of this era we’re living in right now are pretty
strong.
It’s like we’re at home, in the evening, and there’s a storm
outside. The winds are blowing, rattling
the windows, howling through the cracks.
The thunder is shaking the dishes in the cupboard. And the rain is pounding down on the roof,
making quite a noise. But there we are
at home, not alone but together, enjoying each other’s company, singing the
praises of God around the roaring fire of the Holy Spirit.
There’s a feast going on!
The Lord is providing “rich food and choice wines.” He’s wiping away tears and sadness. We’re in the house of the Good Shepherd,
where he “refreshes the soul,” and “gives courage;” where “my cup overflows,”
and “only goodness and kindness follow me.”
The “fattened cattle” are served in a feast of abundance. Our God puts on a great celebration. And the faithful are the ones who are
enjoying it—even as the Post-Modern storm rages outside.
We pray for those caught out in the storm; we hope God will
keep them safe as best he can. And, at
the same time, the faithful simply enjoy being the faithful, the Church, the
house of God on earth.
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