16 September 2018

Homily - The Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time - 16 September 2018


The Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)
Catechetical Sunday

Dear brothers and sisters,

It is a curious question that Jesus asks today: “Who do people say that I am” (Mark 8:27)? Notice that he does not ask, “What do people say about my teachings?” or, “What do people say about my healings?”, but “Who do people say that I am?” In this, we see quite clearly that Jesus’ teachings and healings are intimately bound up in his person; indeed, who he is is more important than what he says or does because what he says and does flows from who he is.

For many long and unfortunate years, Catholics – and others – have been too concerned with the teachings of Jesus Christ and not concerned enough with his person. In his encyclical letter Deus caritas est, Pope Benedict XVI rightly reminded us that

being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”[1]

Too often do we focus solely on learning what Jesus said and did, and not enough on knowing him personally, on entering into an ever-deeper relationship with him and with his Body, the Church.

To put it differently,

This is an encounter, not with an idea or with a project of life, but with a living Person who transforms our innermost selves, revealing to us our true identity as children of God. The encounter with Christ renews our human relationships, directing them, from day to day, to greater solidarity and brotherhood in the logic of love. Having faith in the Lord is not something that involves solely our intelligence, the area of intellectual knowledge; rather, it is a change that involves our life, our whole self: feelings, heart, intelligence, will, corporeity, emotions, and human relationships. With faith everything truly changes…[2]

It is safer, we think, to know about him than it is to know him because there is less risk we will hear him calling us to give everything away for him. If we know about him and do not draw too close to him, he cannot ask us a question as pointed as, “Who do you say that I am” (Mark 8:8)? If this is what stifles our relationship with Jesus, it is only because we have forgotten that he “keeps the little ones” (Psalm 116:6).

The Lord Jesus was able to ask Saint Peter and the Twelve a question not about his teachings or his doings but about his own identity because they were close to him. They walked with him, ate with him, and prayed with him. In their encounter with the Christ event, in their encounter with the person of Jesus Christ, they came to know him, and in knowing him they learned his teachings and could rightly say, “You are the Christ,” the Messiah, the Savior (Mark 8:8).

Today, the Church in these United States of America observes Catechetical Sunday, a day to thank and bless our catechists for their important and vital work of handing on the faith. The word catechist comes from the Greek catekeo, meaning “to echo.” An ancient proverb holds that repetitio est mater studiorum, that repetition is the mother of all study or learning. Your task, then, dear catechists is to assist our children’s parents in teaching them the fundamentals of the faith in a way that they can echo them back to you. In this way, you can be certain they have begun to grasp them. But what is it that you are to teach them?

In his First Catechetical Instruction, which he wrote to give advice to the Deacon Deogratias on how best to hand on the faith, our heavenly patron Saint Augustine said the principal aim of the catechist should to help someone

learn how much God loves him, and might learn this to the end that he might begin to glow with love of Him by whom he was first loved, and so might love his neighbor at the bidding and after the example of Him who made Himself man’s neighbor by loving him, when instead of being His neighbor he was wandering far from Him.[3]

“With this love, then,” he went on to say, “set before you as an end to which you may refer all that you say, so give all your instructions that he to whom you speak by hearing may believe, and by believing may hope, and by hoping may love.”[4] All of this begins with knowing Jesus Christ, with a personal encounter with him who speaks to us in the Scriptures and who gives himself to us in the Sacraments.
           
Seek, then, to help those entrusted to your instruction come to realize that

Having faith … is meeting this “You”, God, who supports me and grants me the promise of an indestructible love that not only aspires to eternity but gives it; it means entrusting myself to God with the attitude of a child, who knows well that all his difficulties, all his problems are understood in the “you” of his mother.

Teach them and show them that God loves us more intensely than a mother and that from this fundamental relationship of love flow all of the Lord’s commands to keep us in his love.

To be fruitful catechists, you yourselves must first draw near to the Lord Jesus and allow him to ask you, “But who do you say that I am?” Always ask for the grace to yield to his love. Always be ready to take up your cross out of love for him. And always be willing to set yourselves aside so that he can shine through you. If you live in this way, the glow you receive from your friendship with Jesus will be passed on to your students and they will know the love he has for them. Amen.




[1] Pope Benedict XVI, Deus caritas est, 1.
[2] Ibid., General Audience Address, 17 October 2012.
[3] Saint Augustine of Hippo, First Catechetical Instruction, 8.
[4] Ibid.

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