14th Sunday Upgraded in God
How about our first cell phone? Have we upgraded those as well? It is a common practice to upgrade, whether it is our car, our technology, our homes, etc. We upgrade. There are safety advantages, convenience, and things simply will not work anymore and we need to get new ones. The poor Nova’s floor rusted out the last year of my graduate school.
The majority of us here have learned or are currently learning our faith, learning about God and Jesus, being Catholic as children. We began with a certainly mentality and a certain way of understanding based on our age. Have we, will we, upgrade our understanding of God, Jesus and our Catholic faith?
There is a tendency to remain on the same level with our faith. I find this sad. If our faith level remains that of an 8 year old or 15 year old, and yet we have upgraded our age, but not our hearts and minds….we miss out on a beauty, and we miss out on opportunities to heal and be healed that come with a deeper faith.
Once, in parish long ago, in a galaxy far far away, I had preached about Jesus’ and his baptism, and in passing talked about how Jesus was Jewish. This elderly woman, raised as Catholic, approached me afterwards with curiosity. She asked then if Jesus was born a Jew, did he become Catholic after the baptism? She always thought he was Catholic.
Suicide is serious. Too many people, too many young people are not finding hope, losing faith, and are giving up. Yet, there remains this stigma and a misconception of what this means as Catholics. Based on antiquated understandings of our faith. Yes, a long time ago there was a teaching about how to treat people who had taken their lives. A teaching that was cold, heartless, and not reflective of mercy and love of God. But… as a whole, we have upgraded. We have a better grasp in our understanding of mental health. We know there are tremendous pressures and little resources. We also are to walk with people. We have grown as a Church. Now, we look with compassion upon those families who must endure this loss. We hold in prayer and love those who lost hope. And we do everything, we must do everything we can, to provide support to people so that they find a reason to have hope, a reason to live, to see that there is always new possibilities.bbGod offers love, and that is supposed to come through us.
Imagine how many people we can “Cure/heal” if we understand more, if we upgrade ourselves in our faith?
Sometimes as well, non-catholics or Catholics who have been away, come to the parish or any parish and they have questions. Well-meaning Catholics, but not upgraded ones, answer those questions and end up hurting people and drive them away. They give an incomplete answer at best, or outright wrong answer in the worst case. This does not create a welcoming parish.
People too have their stereotypes of Catholicism, usually gained from TV or Movies, that caricatures what it means to be Catholic. From this, a divide is created.
Jesus comes home and he speaks to his neighbors, but they are frozen at their level of faith. They would not let themselves be upgraded. Jesus, because they were not open, was unable to heal and cure. People whom he knew, yet closed off to him in their hearts and minds, not open. How sad.
Time and time again in the gospels those that Jesus did heal, forgive and welcomed were because they themselves were open. Jesus says that their faith has saved them. They were upgraded. They were open to a grander understanding of God and that vision of God that Jesus revealed. They began to see how God truly is faithful to them. The ones who were hostile to this could not accept this vision that Jesus revealed. They were closed of heart and mind.
Ezekiel the prophet was sent to the exiles to announce that God was with them. We need to understand that at this time Israel's defeat at the hand of Babylon told them that God was also defeated. The thought in those times was that God was only God in their own land, in their boundaries. Thus God could also not be in exile in Babylon with them. Israel had to be upgraded. They had to be shown that God is God, not confined to one place, not defined by borders. The people had to think larger. Once this happened the Jewish people’s grasp of God was forever changed. God became Universal.
Then of course we have Saul, who thought he understood the Law better than anyone, who had the perfect Jewish faith, who then set out to get rid of those upstart believers of Jesus of Nazareth. On his way, Saul was upgraded, his heart and mind was altered in a magnificent way. Saul became Saint Paul.
What about ourselves? Ready for upgrades? There is so much to our faith that speaks to us at so many levels. There is so much beauty and power; why else would Paul and Peter be willing to die for it. Catholics need to continue to upgrade our formation. It never ever ends, because we cannot exhaust or come to the end of God. God is infinite, God is mystery, and yet this same infinite, mysterious God wants us to know. Therefore we must grow to accommodate. Jesus offers us the way.
Last week, after mass, a young man stopped me to ask questions about the readings. It was wonderful! This past week Virginia told me that the kids say the homilies are too short, we need to go into them more. Clearly then our young persons are alive and ready for the upgrades!
This parish will be doing more too to help in this formation. We will form and provide new and diverse opportunities to experience and grow in our understanding of Jesus, so as to encounter God each day. Connection to diocesan events or other parishes will be shared, so that a rich menu of options can be discovered.
But, as persons we can take our own initiative. We can read, pray, contemplate, and/or practice lectio divina. We can allow ourselves to be challenged in what we think we know. There is no way we can offend God by doing so, only our egos can be offended.
On twitter there was a report on how young people are no longer believing in God. I wonder if it is because we as church teach such a small God, that the young persons cannot believe in that small way, and so they equate this with unbelief.
Even consider our Eucharist. Yes we celebrate in the Sacrament the very real presence of the resurrected Christ. But there is so much more to this, about hope, love, mercy, generosity… The Eucharist speaks of God’s faithfulness to us and this world. The Eucharist speaks to us of God with us, Emmanuel, and that God is not out to get us. The Eucharist speaks of a world transformed by God through us, not abandoned.
We have a mission, to work for God and to transform this world, to build up heaven here on Earth. It starts with our own willingness to be transformed as persons, to allow ourselves to be upgraded.
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