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For
this I was born and for this I came into the world: to testify to
the truth.
Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.
(John 18:37)
At
this time of year following the Thanksgiving or Christmas
holidays—and even the Easter holiday—when people return home from
their relatives’ homes, there’s one statement I oftentimes will hear
people make that drives me right up the wall. It’s the statement
that has to do with how these people evaluate their experience
having gone to church at a different parish in a different town.
They’ll say: “I really liked going to such-and-such a parish because
it made me feel good.”
It’s the same when people come to discuss changing parishes. While
they may like and feel very comfortable with their home
parish—oftentimes defined by boundaries drawn by a diocese—as the
saying goes “things happen”—the pastor makes what they believe is a
“bonehead” decision, the liturgy is “boring” and the homilies are
“uninspiring,” the music is dreadful (second, of course, only to the
quality of the lectors), the school or some of its personnel are
“awful”—and people make the difficult decision to “try out” another
parish. The ultimate decision to switch parishes oftentimes rests
upon whether or not these people feel good about the alternative.
Now, I don’t want to sound like an old curmudgeon—you know, the Andy
Rooney of the pulpit—complaining about what’s wrong with the people
who go to church. I also don’t want you to think that I believe
everything is A-Okay with Sunday Mass. What I want to do today is
to alert you to the primary reason why this statement drives me up
the wall and what it means about our faith and its practice in light
of the Solemnity we celebrate today, Christ the King. The belief
that the sole purpose for anyone to go to church is to feel
good is just plain wrong. According to this logic, if
one doesn’t feel good after Mass, one is entirely justified at
pointing the finger of blame at the priest or the homily, the music,
the cantor, all of those crying infants, how long Mass took, the
servers’ lacsidaisical behavior, and the like. Just name the reason
and it provides the reason to leave a parish…or, at least, to gripe
and complain about how any or all of this just “doesn’t make me feel
good.”
The
primary purpose of Sunday Mass, however, isn’t to make people feel
good. No, the primary purpose is to provide a forum—it’s called the
“liturgy”—wherein individuals and groups encounter Jesus Christ and,
in particular, the truth Jesus Christ testified to, and allow this
truth to transform the way these individuals and groups—the People
of God—live their lives.
Just stop for a moment and think about this: it’s very hard to find
in the gospels any individual or group who encountered Jesus
teaching and then walked away feeling good. Instead, it’s much
easier to find individuals and groups who encountered Jesus teaching
and ended up walking away feeling bad. So bad, in fact, that many
of these individuals and groups ultimately conspired to have Jesus
put to death for teaching the truth. “I came to testify to the
truth,” Jesus said.
So,
you might be wondering, do I want all of you to leave Sunday Mass
every week saying, “I really liked going to Mass today because it
made me feel really bad?”
“No,” I’d have to respond to that question respond. “I don’t think
it would be better if people left Mass feeling bad.”
Why?
Because that’s not the objective. The purpose of Sunday Mass is for
all of us to encounter the truth Jesus Christ taught. And, when you
and I really and truly encounter that truth deep in our hearts, it
is quite likely, I believe, that we will feel as bad as did all of
those individuals and groups who listened to Jesus teach and ended
up walking away feeling bad.
But, why did they feel so bad?
The likely reason
is that
Jesus spoke directly to their hearts and exposed the truth of the
sinfulness these people and groups were desperately trying to hide
and forget. Jesus illuminated what the people wanted kept in
darkness. This certainly didn’t make any of them feel good.
Applying that concept to our lives today in order to get a sense of
what this means, Jesus taught that divorce is absolutely wrong, no
if’s and’s or but’s about it. Interestingly, when I preach
about this, people get angry with me and leave Sunday mass upset.
Some even say terrible things about me for teaching what Jesus said.
When I preach about “turning the other cheek” and apply this to
things like the in-laws, an estranged child, and seeking to build
peaceful relations between war-prone peoples, I get complaints left
and right for not being “realistic.” All of that pales in
comparison to when I preach about important moral issues relating to
the Gospel of Life: abortion, contraception, assisted suicide, and
the death penalty. “Who are you to tell people what to do in
their private lives?” “Stop mixing politics and religion.
Politics has no place in church!” many people complain. It
seems that I make lots of people not feel good for having gone to church simply by
restating and applying what Jesus taught and the truth he
proclaimed! It’s easy to see: I watch them walk out.
So,
that’s one reason why I think the assumption that Sunday Mass should
make people feel good is almost—if it isn’t—a heresy. That is, when
I act upon this assumption, I come to Sunday Mass making myself and
my feelings primary. In effect, I am saying: “You do this for
me—you make me feel good—and then I’ll come back. Give me what I
want, or I won’t be wasting much of my time, talent, or treasure on
you in the future.” However, using the gospels as a standard, we
should come each Sunday to listen to what Jesus has to teach and the
truth to which he testified. Our purpose is to allow that—the Word
of God—to illuminate the darkness in our hearts. Quite likely,
that’s not going to make us feel good.
Furthermore, rather than turn away feeling bad like all of those
individuals and groups whom Jesus taught, we should embrace the Word
and allow it to transform our hearts of stone. We “hear” Jesus
teach and we accept the truth to which Jesus witnessed, first, by
hearing it with our ears and, then, by allowing it to move downward
past through our minds, past our ears and mouths, and into the
depths of our hearts that have grown stone cold as a consequence of
sin. Sure, the experience may quite likely be, first, one of
“feeling bad”—yes, the truth is exposed.
But, that’s not where the Word of God ends.
When we experience the forgiveness won for us in Christ Jesus, we
discover ourselves “feeling good” having reconciled ourselves to our
Heavenly Father. The problem with coming to Sunday Mass with the
intention of leaving church feeling good is that we don’t allow the
truth to confront us in the depths of our hearts and to allow
ourselves to feel so bad that we determine to change our lives. We
come wanting only to feel good; so, we focus upon ourselves, not the
Word of God; and, we leave church feeling bad and pointing the
finger of blame everywhere but at ourselves.
As
you may have already guessed, the second reason why I think the
assumption that weekly Mass should make people feel good is almost,
if it isn’t, a heresy, is that it gives inappropriate emphasis to
our feelings of self-determination and independence. When I act
upon this assumption, it is I who chose to come to Mass. That is,
from among the plethora of choices available to me, I—as a
self-determining, independent individual—have chosen to go to
church and this church in particular.
This is an especially pernicious attitude in that it can so easily
morph into a demand: “Well, I’ve done this for You, God, so you had
better come through for me!” Notice how we make what is superior
inferior and what is inferior superior. God now “owes” us because
we’ve freely “chosen” to do something for God. Isn’t that so
generous and kind of us? And, if not God, then the pastor sure
had better pay me back big time for being so generous to attend his
parish.
As
I noted earlier, I bring all of this up today because we’re
celebrating the Solemnity of Christ the King. Our purpose in
gathering is to recommit ourselves to Christ and to the truth to
which he testified. We’re gathered here today to say, “You, Lord,
and what you teach are primary. They are the bedrock upon which I,
as an individual, will build my life and, as a community of faith,
we will build our lives.”
What Jesus taught and the truth to which he testified are that
bedrock. At the very minimum, they should be the bedrock. Or, is
the unvarnished truth that Christ and the truth which he testified
to really don’t matter all that much to us? We’d prefer instead the
Jesus who makes us feel good, the “warm and fuzzy, good ol’ plastic
Jesus” like those we used to put on the dashboard of our automobile
to protect us when driving? Unfortunately, that’s the Jesus without
the “truth” part. That’s God without the “judgment” part. And,
that’s the Church without the “moral” part. Is the truth that we’d
like to neuter God, the commandments, Jesus Christ, and the Church
so that we don’t have to feel bad about our sinful choices?
“Christ is King” doesn’t mean that Jesus “lords” his teaching and
the truth to which he testified over us. Quite the contrary, when
we accept Jesus as Lord, what we are saying is that we surrender our
desire to live on our terms and to live instead on God’s terms. We
give up self-determination and independence in order to live feely
in greater obedience to God’s law. We seek guidance and counsel
from the Church’s collective wisdom and use that to inform our
decision-making process in matters of faith and morals so that we
don’t err. And, we demonstrate our commitment by coming to Sunday
Mass to meet the Lord each week in word and in sacrament. We listen
to the Scripture to hear Jesus teach the truth and we heed it in
order that we might belong to him. We receive Jesus in the
Eucharist—his body and his blood—in order that he will strengthen us
and nourish us to fulfill our commitment by giving up our
self-determination and independence. In short, to invite Christ to
be King in our lives means submitting to Jesus’ teaching and the
truth to which he witnessed by allowing these to be our higher
authority.
When we “do this” in memory of Jesus, we submit not to an oppressive
power but to the power of God’s love. This is the only power—not
self-determination or independence—that makes us truly free…from
sin. And, the evidence is seen when we feel bad enough to reject
sin and then feel good enough to allow Christ to rule our lives.
A brief commercial
break...
As
Catholics, we prepare for Christ's coming by celebrating the season
of Advent. During the coming four weeks, we prepare the way
for Christ to come into our own lives each and every day not just on
Christmas day. For Catholic families, let me suggest five
practical ways to prepare for Christ's coming:
1. Place
an advent wreath in the center of your dinner table. Each
evening before sitting down for dinner, have one member offer a
prayer of thanksgiving to God for His presence in the life of your
family and light the appropriate candle(s).
2. Use
an Advent calendar.
Hang an
advent calendar on the refrigerator door beginning on December 1st.
Each morning, before everyone scatters for the day, have one member
of the family open one door and read the scripture verse or describe
the biblical scene behind the door. This is a great way for
family members to keep focused on the coming of Christ for the rest
of the day.
3. Make
a Jesse tree. The Jesse tree is the traditional way that
Catholics recall Jesus' heritage, coming from the line of King
David, the son of Jesse. Have members of the family make a
symbol for each day of Advent that marks an important moment in
Israel's history (e.g., Noah's ark, Jacob's ladder, Moses' stone
tablets, David's harp). Then, each evening before everyone
goes to bed, gather the family around the Jesse tree, have the
family member explain the symbol, and hang it on the tree.
4.
Celebrate the Feast of St. Nicholas on December 6th. One
way to "put Christ back into Christmas" is to reclaim the
faith-filled life of heroic virtue revealed in the great Christian
saint, St. Nicholas of Myra. Besides sharing simple gifts with
family members, like placing candy in shoes that have been left
outside of the bedroom door, share some time with people who are
alone, in the hospital, convalescing, etc.
5.
Celebrate God's mercy. Advent is a particularly fitting
time for every member of the family to welcome the light of God's
forgiveness into the dark places of family life. Gather the
family together and go to church to celebrate the Sacrament of
Penance together. Then, go out for pizza to celebrate God's
mercy and a new beginning free from sin.
By
participating in these five practical activities to prepare for Christmas
day, Catholic families will not only have contemplated their need
for God and God's self-revelation through salvation history.
In addition, they will have experienced God present and active in
their family's life. Then, on Christmas day, when family
members greet one another by saying, "Merry Christmas," they all will
truly be prepared to celebrate the Mass wherein Christ will
strengthen and nourish them with his body and blood to bring Christ
to the world.
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HOMILY
