8th Sunday - The Mystery of Faith

There is this saying, an adage common in religious circles, but has been applied elsewhere: If you think you know God, then you don’t got it. If you do not know God, then you got it.  It is a paradox clearly, but a true one. Anyone who claims they truly know God, and by virtue of that, the whole of faith, does not understand.

We call this “mystery” in Catholic circles. More of God and of our faith, and therefore of our own selves, becomes revealed as we grow in God and faith. Mystery means we seek more and more.

I heard another saying several weeks ago. If we wait to be certain to take the journey, we will never take the first steps. Certainty only can be found after we have begun to take those steps.  People can want to have all the facts, all the data, all the assurances that what they are about to do is the correct thing to do. Now, this is not particularly bad, especially for buying a car or home, or some other major purchase. But, certainly in most of life, in faith, certainty does not begin a journey, faith does.

The Gospel passages for the past several weeks come from Luke’s Sermon on the Plain. There is a structure to them that we can lose sight of unless we see the whole. Jesus comes down off the mountain and lays out a vision, a grand vision: Jesus reveals the Beatitudes. Then the vision begins to narrow in focus, calling on the disciples to think of their own approach to the world, to the cycle of death in the world, and what they can do to break that cycle in the world. Then today, even more narrow, what within ourselves needs to exist; this inner commitment to discipleship.

Jesus lays out a journey of faith, a journey ever deepening. If we truly desire a better world for ourselves, for generations to come; if we truly wish to be able to live this life to the fullest; we walk with Jesus ever deeper into the life of a disciple.

Like the Gospels, our journey starts out wide, broad, a grand vision; but we simply can’t stay at that level if we wish to live that vision. We must take the steps inward, into Christ, follow him to assess our lives, assess how we make choices, how we love, how we interact with others. We must follow to learn more of him and what it means to be truly human.

We must never assume we have it all, or we know it all. The second we do so, we get stuck on the journey. We stop.  I have witnessed this many times. People have come to me, miserable. They come full of anger, sadness; they come full of confusion, they come feeling lost. I probe them. They stopped on the journey.  They stopped right after Confirmation and did nothing more. They stopped right after the wedding preparation, they did nothing more. They stopped because Fr. Seamus, or Fr. John, or Fr. Pedro, or Fr.  Vincent told them something a hundred years ago in first communion prep and have never ever moved passed it.  They stopped because they disagreed with the Church and/or pastor, or did not like someone and rather than exploring the matter, just gave up or gave in, or stopped being part of the community.

This applies to priests as well. Priests can get stuck in their own journey. Caught up in the rigors of acting as priest, we can forget our own journey of faith. We maintain the theology the level of faith we had as we left seminary, and never ever crack a book, do an honest retreat…

We all come to faith at different levels. Some of us have remained at that grand vision, that high level of faith in which the commitment level remains low. Others have chosen to commit to a higher level and go deeper into the faith. The parish contains and welcomes all people of whatever level of faith.

As parish, our work means that we also invite people to go deeper into Christ. We invite, not force. We inspire but not shame. We invite, we inspire by offering the vision, by those who have chosen to commit sharing that faith, that journey with others. We create a safe place for people to belong and through that belonging they find a path to believe.

Christ calls all of us to journey, from children to full blown adults. Christ calls us to this journey not because Christ wants numbers, rather Christ wants for us to live and to live life in the full. He is the way, the truth and that life.

We can only respond by having a seed of faith, and take that first step.