Wednesday, May 28, 2014

6th Sunday of Easter - A Reason for Your Hope

Location: Basilica of Saint Francis Xavier (Dyersville, IA) – 5 p.m. Saturday & 8:30 a.m. Sunday
                Saint Boniface Catholic Church (New Vienna, IA) – 10 a.m. Sunday
Date: Sunday May 25th (6th Sunday of Easter, Year A)

READINGS:
1st Reading: Acts 8:5-8, 14-17
Resp. Psalm: Ps. 66:1-3, 4-5, 6-7, 16, 20
2nd Reading: 1 Peter 3:15-18
Gospel: John 14:15-21

FOCUS: Following St. Peter’s command, we should be prepared to explain and defend our faith.
FUNCTION: Attend the Cluster CRHP retreat; take time to read your Bible; learn your faith.

            Every once in a while, I’ll watch a TV show like Law & Order, and it’s always very fascinating; it’s interesting to see how the law gets played out (often in a dramatic way, but, hey, that’s TV).  Someone’s accused of a crime; one attorney in the legal drama is the prosecutor, who’s trying to bring about a conviction for the person charged with a crime, who’s known as the defendant; and it’s then up to the defense attorney to come up with an argument, testimony, and evidence about why the defendant should not be charged with the alleged crime.  Then the jury takes the testimony, the evidence, and the arguments presented by the prosecutor and the defense attorney, deliberates on it, and returns with a verdict of either guilty or not guilty regarding the alleged crimes.

          It’s exciting stuff; the lawyers have to be ready to give some good arguments about why someone should either be convicted or acquitted.  In a similar way, this weekend’s second reading says we should always be ready to give a defense for what we believe and why we believe it.  Obviously our defense or explanation won’t be quite as dramatic as the presentation by the defense attorney in a TV show like Law & Order, but it what’s we’re called to do, regardless.  St. Peter says, “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence…” 
          This verse is often used as the basis for Catholic apologetics.  Now, the word “apologetics” doesn’t have anything to do with apologizing – we’re not called to go around saying, “Oh, I’m so sorry for being Catholic, this is just the way I was raised…..yeah, I’m sorry that we believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist…...yeah, I don’t know why we have a Pope, either…..you’re right, we do make too big a deal about Mary.”  No, no, no….nothing like that.  Apologetics is about offering up reasons – based on Scripture and Tradition – for why we believe what we believe.  This is something that we Catholics need to be able to do a much better job of.  Many of us don’t know our faith like we should.

          Yes, we believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, but we might not have any idea where to turn to in the Bible or the tradition of the Church for why we believe in the Real Presence; and to do that, we should be familiar with the Gospel of John, chapter 6, where Jesus speaks about Himself as the Bread of Life in His famous “Bread of Life discourse.”  And we should know about someone like St. Ignatius of Antioch (from the early 2nd century), who frequently talked about the Church’s faith in the Eucharist in his letters. 
          Likewise, we give Mary the highest honor after God Himself, but perhaps we can’t adequately explain why; and to do that, we should be familiar with the text of the Annunciation to Mary in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 1, and how the Archangel Gabriel addresses her as “full of grace,” and how that means that she’s been specially chosen by God and set apart in a special way to be the mother of His only-begotten Son; and we should probably know a little bit about her title, “Mother of God,” and how that title came about because the early Church Fathers in the 3rd and 4th centuries were trying to defend the divinity of Christ from heretics who tried to say that Jesus wasn’t actually God.
          Furthermore, we all know that we have a Pope, but we might now know why we have a Pope, and how that position in the Church came about; and to do that, we should be familiar with the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 16, and St. Peter’s confession about the identity of Jesus, and how Jesus named Him Peter and said that He would build His Church upon Peter, whose name means “Rock,” and how Jesus gave Peter the keys of the kingdom, giving Him the power to bind and loose.   And we should know about how St. Peter became the Bishop of Rome, and how successors were chosen after He died, and how the Church in Rome developed a primacy among Christians because of Peter’s authority among the apostles.

          The Eucharist, Mary, the Pope – these are just a few of the many topics that we should be able to talk about intelligently as Catholics; we should know our faith and be ready to give an explanation for our hope to people who ask.  How do we do that?  I think we all have to spend a little more time learning about our faith.  Maybe we need to spend a little more time reading our Bible; or listening to a good CD from Lighthouse Catholic Media; or reading a good Catholic book by someone like Scott Hahn or Patrick Madrid or Edward Sri or Brant Pitre; or visit a website like catholic.com (the website for Catholic Answers) or cuf.org (the website for Catholics United for the Faith) and read some of the content they offer.  There are so many ways we can grow in our faith.
          We must not be accidentally Catholic; we have to be intentionally Catholic – because we believe that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God, that He founded the Church upon Peter, the first Pope, and that He died and rose from the dead, and sent His disciples out to preach to the whole world the truth of the Gospel and God’s plan of salvation.  That’s why we have to be intentionally Catholic; we have to know our own story; we should be familiar with our family history as Christians, as members of the Church, the family of God.  If we’re just going through the motions, then we’re missing the point.  Faith is something that either needs to be continually growing, or it will shrivel up; faith is like a plant – you have to water a plant in order to keep it alive; the point is, if our faith isn’t being nourished by continued learning, we shouldn’t be surprised if it feels kind of dead.
 
          One way to nourish your faith would be to get involved in the Cluster CHRP retreat – Christ Renews His Parish.  Many people have learned that when they started giving more to God, God gave them a lot more in return.  Is it a sacrifice?  Perhaps, because it means we’re not doing something else.  But could it be just what you need?  Absolutely.  Give God a little, and He can do great things. 
          I especially encourage our Catholic men to step up to the plate about attending the upcoming CHRP retreat, quit being afraid, and become the kind of spiritual leader that your wife and family and this community needs.  The point is this: if we know our faith, then we’ll always be ready to give a reason for the hope that we have in Christ.                    




No comments:

Post a Comment