Last weekend, our parish celebrated the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul. Because of this, we heard a Gospel passage read which normally occurs a little after the scene that we hear in today’s Gospel passage. Just as a reminder, the passage that we heard last week, on the Solemnity of Peter and Paul, had Peter confess that Jesus was the Messiah. In the homily, Father Brook Stacey sj, asked us who is Jesus to us and how do we act as a result of this profession of faith.
The Gospel that we hear this Sunday asks a follow-up question to the Gospel that we heard last week. Most of us are here this Sunday because we do believe that Jesus is the Christ. The follow up question that is asked in the Gospel this Sunday is basically: If we do believe that Jesus is the Messiah, in what areas of our lives are we willing to listen to Him and heed his teachings?
In the Gospel that we hear this Sunday, Jesus returns to His hometown, where He is well known. While He is there, it is noted that although He did heal some people who were sick, He was unable to do any deeds of power while He was there. What this basically means is that He was unable to save people. They ultimately did not place their faith in Him as Son of God and show a willingness to follow as disciples. It appears that the fact that the people from His town knew where He was from, and were overly familiar with Him, made it impossible for Him to do anything of significance in their midst.
This can also be the case with the way in which we who have been Christian or Catholic for a long time can relate to the Lord. As Christians all of our lives, we can think we have heard everything and know everything that Jesus is capable of doing for us. Many Christians think that they know everything about their faith and that it cannot offer anything new. I think of just one example: I was recently at a meeting and people kept referring to the Church’s social teaching and teaching on the environment as a well-kept secret. As we have had so many homilies and workshops on these issues here I am always surprised by what has not been heard. And so ,I think it is important that we who claim to be Christian, actually do challenge ourselves to ask if we are listening to Jesus and His Church, or have we become so familiar with Him that we have stopped listening and think that we know everything and that there is nothing more than our faith can offer us.
As a kind of challenge to us who profess to believe in Jesus and to listen to His teaching, I thought it might be a good idea just to review our basic profession of faith and to see how much of it has actually stuck in our hearts. To do this, I thought we could just move through the creed and see what insights it might offer by way of challenging us to see in what areas of our life we might attempt to listen more closely to the Lord. For the sake of this exercise on a hot Sunday, I think it best to stick with the shorter Apostles Creed.
- I believe in God the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth:
This very simple sentence says so much. God has revealed himself as a Father. This is important for so many reasons. One simple reason speaks to what it says about creation. If God revealed God’s self as a mother, it would give more the idea that creation grew out of God. The significance of Father is that creation was brought into existence as something separate and outside of God. God created everything out of nothing. It is all gift. The fact that God created earth and heaven means that it is all a gift to be cared for by humanity. This fact then becomes the source of all of the Church’s social teaching on the environment. As Pope Francis has said in Laudato si, creation is a gift and we humans are to receive it as such, caring for it as stewards, so that it may also be gifted to other peoples and generations. Creation cannot be owned and exploited for and by any one people. In the face of growing populations and concerns, all of humanity must act responsibly to care for the gift of creation. - …and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried; he descended into hell; on the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty; from there he will come to judge the living and the dead:
This paragraph is basically the whole mystery of Christ’s mission and life. The fact that God exists as a Trinity of love is something that has been revealed to us by Jesus who spoke of God as Father and promised the sending of the Holy Spirit. This is also revealed in the manner that Jesus taught baptism in the name of the Trinity. The coming of Jesus into our midst is a sign of His love. His incarnation also shows us the value of the human person. The dignity of humanity is so great that God became one of us, so that we might become like Him. Out of love, Jesus handed himself over for crucifixion, so that we might know that we have a God who has suffered, as we will in life, and that He loves us so much, there is nothing that He will not do to save us. God loves us so much that He will even go to hell and back to get us. His love is so great that He is never done with us. Even after His work among us, He is seated at the right hand of the Father interceding for us until the end of time. The reason that we are to care for one another is because God cares so much for each one of us whom He has made in His image and likeness. The significance of this paragraph could be developed for hours. However, it can be summarized by saying God loves us and has great faith in us and invites us to love Him and have faith in Him. - I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints:
This short sentence contains a few very important facts about our faith. It basically means that God’s interest in us is eternal and will never end. In order that God might continue to be in communion with us and part of our lives, after Jesus ascended into heaven, the Holy Spirit was sent into the world and into our hearts. The work of the Holy Spirit is not just to keep us in communion with the Holy Trinity, but to form us into a community through which we all live in communion and are saved. The name of this community is the Church. The scriptures are clear that Jesus established a Church and it is through this Church that He and the Trinity will continue to speak and to be present in the world through word and sacrament. For many today, the fact that there are other human beings in this Church becomes a significant reason to dismiss and not listen to Christ as He speaks through it. Here in a very real way, the Church experiences the same kind of dismissal that Jesus experienced by those who were convinced they knew what He would say and do. It is easy to dismiss institutions today. However, the challenge of the Gospel today is to ask ourselves if we really know what and who we are dismissing. Yes, the Church has taught that murder is wrong for almost 2000 years. That does mean that the teaching is wrong. It is incredible how many people dismiss the Bible as an old book. Very few have read it and come to know that it is the WORD of God that sets people free and brings them eternal happiness. If we have professed Jesus to be the Messiah, we need to challenge ourselves to understand His Church and its message. There is no Christianity without the Church. That is a basic fact of the faith we profess. So essential is the reality of the Church that we cannot escape it ever. We do not go to heaven as individuals. We go to join the communion of the saints—the Church in heaven for all eternity. - …the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen.
The Good News is that Jesus has forgiven our sins by His sacrifice on the cross and has won for us eternal life. Because He has forgiven our sins, we can never despair or His love. The human persons was not meant to be cancelled and God never cancels us. We are always forgiven, if we repent and ask forgiveness. Just as we wish to be forgiven, we too are to forgive others. The resurrection of the body reminds us eternally of the value of every human body. We are called to respect our bodies and those of our brothers and sisters. No person is an object to be used by another. Young or old, every person and body is to be treated with dignity and respect. And perhaps most significant of all, we can never be lost forever. Each one is created for eternal life, and even after earthy death, continues to live with God in the Kingdom of heaven. God’s love is eternal; we are eternal; and we have been created to love and be loved for eternity.
By this very superficial examination of the creed, I have hoped to challenge both myself and you with the question of whether we truly listen and understand what we profess about Jesus. We can become too familiar and think that there is nothing new that He or our faith can do for us. However, I think if we grasped even a little of what we profess in faith, our entire world would be changed forever.
This summer, let each of us take some time to ask ourselves how open we are to really listening and hearing the offer and invitation that Jesus and His Church make to us in faith.
Fr. Michael McGourty
Pastor—St. Peter’s Church—Toronto, Ontario
This reflection is based on the readings from the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time—Year B: Ezekiel 2:3-5; Psalm 123: 2 Corinthians 12: 7-10 and Mark 6:1-6.
