Church thrives through true disciples

Homily: 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle B

          Friends, today our scriptures all point to what it means to be a disciple.  Being here in a “college town” I would guess that most of us have a good sense of what it means to be a student of a particular subject... or even of a particular teacher.  It means that you study, you learn what you can, and you then decide what you are going to do with it.  A disciple is something more, however.  A disciple is one who listens to a teacher and then seeks to apply that teaching to his/her life.  Perhaps an example from my own life.  At one point I was a student of engineering.  I studied engineering and learned the particular aspects of mechanical engineering.  I didn’t become an engineer, however, until I started to apply all that I had learned to my life and work.  In other words, I didn’t become a “disciple” of engineering (as strange as that sounds) until I began to observe what I had heard.  It is in this sense that I see our scriptures speaking of being a disciple.

          In our first reading today, Moses is speaking to the Israelite people who had been wandering through deserted lands for 40 years during their exodus from Egypt.  He is going to remind them of the Law that God had given to him on Mount Sinai many years ago.  Moses knows that he will not cross into the Promised Land with the Israelites and so he urges them to hear and observe the laws that he will give to them so that they might have a prosperous life in the land into which God is leading them.  Moses instructs them that it will not be enough to be a student of these laws—that is, to study and memorize them only—but rather that they must observe them: allowing them to shape and form the way that they live, both as individuals and as a nation.  By this—by being disciples of the Law—Moses said, they will be esteemed as a people: noted as truly wise and intelligent among other nations.

          Our second reading, from the Letter of Saint James, one of the Twelve Apostles, is even more clear.  After reminding his readers that everything good comes from God, he exhorts them to receive humbly the teaching that comes from God; but then he goes further, stating that it isn’t enough to be a student of this teaching, but rather one must also be a “doer”: making it clear that it is not enough to simply acknowledge the importance to serve the poor and remain unstained by the world, but that one must also do it if one is to be considered a true disciple.  This, he said, is the demand of “religion that is pure and undefiled”, meaning “of right praise and worship of God”.  In other words, Saint James is saying that we worship God falsely if we hear God’s word only and do not observe it in our daily lives by conforming our actions to it.

          This teaching, of course, comes to a concrete example in our Gospel reading in which Jesus—always critical of the Scribes and Pharisees—again criticizes them for their misunderstanding of “religion that is pure and undefiled”.  They criticize Jesus’ disciples for not observing the ritual washings which the Law (by their study) demanded of them.  Jesus corrects them by reminding them that the ritual washings are of no value in themselves, but rather only when they act as an outward sign of and inward purification do they have value.  Here, therefore, is an example of people who were trying to observe the law without truly having heard it (that is, without having taken it to heart).  “Religion that is pure and undefiled,” Jesus seems to say, “comes from a heart that is first pure and undefiled.”

          Friends, as all of the events in the news have reminded us, simple observance of the outward rituals is not enough to ensure a religion that is “pure and undefiled”: that is, that one is in right relationship with God.  Rather, one must have allowed the law—that is the word that comes from God—to sink into the deepest part of one’s self and to purify it, before the outward observance will truly become worship.  Every priest and bishop, including myself, has failed in some way to hear and observe fully God’s command.  Some priests and bishops have been grossly negligent to do so, which led them to commit horrible crimes against the very people for whom they were called to care.  These men continued to preach and teach and to fulfill the outward rituals demanded of them—and demanded the same observance from their people—while the deadly sins of greed, lust, and pride defiled their hearts and led them to mar the word of God and the holiness of God’s Church.  Jesus, if he would appear to us again today, would certainly speak much more harshly against them than he did against the Scribes and the Pharisees.

          Therefore, it is understandable if we, for our part, are caught up focusing on the sins of these men as we seek clarity about what has transpired and accountability for those responsible—and if we find ourselves questioning the institution of the Church itself.  I would caution us to remember, however, that the holiness of the Church doesn’t rise and fall based on the holiness (or lack thereof) of any one particular member (even if that member is the Vicar of Christ himself, the Pope!), but rather that it is holy, in and of itself, because Jesus Christ, present within it, is holy and thus makes it so.  Our task is to show that holiness to the world by how well we embody a “religion that is pure and undefiled”, that is, by how well we are disciples.  Blessed Pope Paul VI once said “The world more readily listens to witnesses than to teachers; and if it listens to teachers, it’s because they are first witnesses.”  The great social activist Mahatma Gandhi, when asked why he refused to become Christian said “I don’t reject your Christ. I love your Christ. It’s just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

          Friends, the Church will survive this crisis: the Holy Spirit guarantees that.  The way that it will begin to thrive again, however, is to purge this evil that has embedded itself into its institution, of course, but will also be when its members “humbly welcome the word that has been planted within them” so as to be authentic disciples: doers of the word, not just hearers of it.  In this way—through the apostolic witness of its members—trust in the Church will be built up once again, and more and more of our brothers and sisters will return to this altar of grace to receive the Bread of Life, the Body and Blood of Christ our Lord.

          And so, let us pray today for the grace not to allow these scandals to pull us away from our efforts to be more authentic disciples of Christ, so that the work of restoration—the healing of those who have been so grievously hurt and the building up of the Body of Christ—might begin with us.  May the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Immaculate Conception and Mother of the Church, guide and protect us by her intercession, so that we might weather this storm and emerge, purified by grace, to enter God’s kingdom of light.

Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – September 1st & 2nd, 2018