Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time 'C'

Saturday October 6, 2007

Faith must be integrated, not just memorized.

As a pastor, I enjoyed many opportunities to work with youngsters and their families preparing for the sacraments of Reconciliation, First Eucharist, and Confirmation and eventually, given my vast experience of married life, ministering to engaged couples preparing for the celebration of their wedding.

Preparation for the sacraments at any age is a rather formidable process and I’m far from convinced that we will ever get it right. However, I can testify that the formation sessions were as enjoyable as they were challenging.

One of the challenges facing our catechetical team was getting parents to put away the bad memories of their own experiences of preparation for the sacraments. I have enough of my own to erase—of those days when faith was more or less pounded into our heads through the memorization of the Baltimore Catechism. I can still hear my mom say, “You’re like a hen on a hot griddle! Stand still” as she listened to catechism questions and answers we had to memorize. (I think I was A.D.D. and hyperactive as a child!)

By the time I got to the confessional box, I was convinced that I committed every sin in the book and more. In fact, I managed to fail my first confession because my mind went blank during the Act of Contrition.

On my First Communion day I was still trying to figure out how Jesus was present in the bread while doing my best to keep the host from touching my teeth or getting stuck on the roof of my mouth.

Aside from memorizing the answers to one hundred questions for Confirmation the greatest challenge was ducking behind the kid in front me when the bishop came down the aisle to ask questions. The catechism questions were the same as those we had learned in previous years, but just a little longer to tax the memory of = emerging adolescents whose hormones were all over the lot and making the whole experience extremely distracting to say the least.

Though I still remember the answers to some questions, most have long since been encrypted and archived in the depths of my memory. I’m not opposed to putting some definitions to memory but memorization without fleshing out the meaning does little to instill faith that inspires and leads to good works. Faith in this context tends to become cerebral rather than integral to Christian living.

The people who had the greatest influence on me as a child were those who believed in a God with skin and whose experience with God was real and very personal. God was not simply a transcendent reality, detached from their human experience. They knew and accepted who they were in God’s sight. They are comfortable with themselves and with God but not complacent and they didn’t have all the answers.

At first hearing, Habakkuk’s desperate plea would seem to dissuade one from faith. But then he moved quickly to words of reassurance: that God would hold the people up and they would not be conquered by sin. The righteous live by faith, not by sight. They needed to look beyond the present moment to see the hand of God not in sin but in goodness and foregiveness.

Timothy was urged by Paul to stay the course, to remain faithful. Faith is a “high maintenance” gift. It doesn’t grow on trees and it doesn’t grow on its own. It has to be nourished in a very personal way by prayer, worship, study and service. Authentic faith empowers us not just to believe, but also to live our beliefs. One commentator put it this way: “A true believer is faithfulness in overalls!” How appropriate!

Luke’s gospel is a collection of sayings. If we live in God and God lives in us, we will take on the words and deeds of Jesus because God will have become incarnate in our own lives. When we live life from the center, we are just doing what is second nature to us — or should I say, first nature. We do not expect a reward or need to be thanked. Doing good is its own reward.

Faith is initially caught, not taught. We catch it from people who run into burning buildings to rescue other people. We catch it from people who walk for hunger or for AIDS or work in soup kitchens; from people who live integrity in the marketplace and who know what it’s like to be bread blessed and broken for others; we catch it from people who know are persistent in their response to evil, never giving in to hatred but always finding a way around defeat, sustained by the vision of hope that comes to us by living in Christ and using our God-given intelligence in applying our faith to religious practice.

Young people today have a lot more going for them and are able to grasp the more abstruse aspects of our faith more easily then we did in our day. Yet most of them are still wet behind the ears in the practice of their faith. In many ways they are naïve about life and innocent of the wrongs that can derail travelers on their earthly sojourn. It’s not that they are incapable of faith or culpable of wrongdoing. They are only neophytes in the ways of God. Their faith is simple and their religious practice is somewhat rote. However, they need to be challenged to mature in faith and religious practice—challenged, not hassled! Otherwise their faith will remain childish rather than childlike and their religious practice simplistic rather than simple. Unfortunately, there are many adult Catholics for whom faith and religious practice has remained cerebral and rote. Many Catholics abandon faith development and religious practice after their 8th grade graduation or perhaps after high school. At the other end of the spectrum are those (trained by the Jesuits) who are unable to think out of the theological box or in categories that demand a consideration of the impact of the latest scientific theory into critical matters of faith and morals. (I’m jesting about the Jesuits, so please do not report me to the ‘Black Pope.’

How do we begin to explain or define faith for young people who are able to find a rational explanation for everything through technology? The key of course is intelligent discussion with an openness to deal with the integration of faith and lived experience. And we must create an hospitable environment in which this can occur whatever the issues be they right to life, death with dignity, sexual orientation, war and peace, broken borders, racial boundaries, women in ministry and other issues that push our faith to the brink of disbelief or despair. There is a point at which all of us including the Pope reach a point in extreme situations at which the human intellect simply cannot explain or comprehend the mind of God. But in the words of Benedict VI in his book, Without Roots, “Perhaps the church has forgotten that the tree of the kingdom of God reaches beyond the branches of the visible church, but that is precisely why it must be a hospitable place in whose branches many guests find a place,” to whichs Jesuit scholar, Drew Christian, adds, “If Benedict’s vision of the kingdom/church as the mustard tree is put into practice, then the church will have no problem adapting to this secular age.” [“Of Many Things,” America Magazine, October 8, 2007]

Help us,
O Keeper of faith,
to keep the faith entrusted to us,
faith in a world worth saving,
faith in a dream worth sharing,
faith in a heritage worth keeping,
even as we reinvigorate it
to have meaning for us now.
Help us keep faith in you,
and help us not lose faith in ourselves,
for faith is in the substance of our hope,
and hope, the assurance of love.
Praise to you, O Faithful One,
now and forever.

[Miriam Therese Winter, Complete Book of Christian Prayer, Continuum, New York, 1997]

Recent Articles

Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time 'A'

The Church is here to stay … but not in its present form. Although I have driven through the town of…continue reading...

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time 'A'

All are invited—no exclusions. It’s a safe bet that every ‘objective’ historian writes with a bias. When I attended Catholic…continue reading...

Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church

On “Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church—Reclaimng the Spirit of Jesus” By Bishop Geoffrey Robinson. The Liturgical Press,…continue reading...

THE SURVIVAL OF THE SPIRIT

WHILE MIRED IN THE TOXIC WASTES OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL SWAMP Thomas P. Doyle, J.C.D., C.A.D.C. ANNUAL SNAP GATHERING…continue reading...

Feast of the Assumption

She made it; so can we! It’s a happy coincidence this is the patronal feast for our parish. It is also…continue reading...