Thursday, April 14, 2016

Homily: Thursday - 3rd Week of Easter 2016 - Practicing Good Religion

One of my favorite Catholic philosophers, Dr. Peter Kreeft, wrote: “Christianity is not a system of man's search for God but a story of God's search for man. True religion is not like a cloud of incense wafting up from special spirits into the nostrils of a waiting God, but like a Father's hand thrust downward to rescue the fallen. Throughout the Bible, man-made religion fails. There is no human way up the mountain, only a divine way down.”

Think of the Tower of Babel, man’s attempt to pierce the heavens through his own power. He fails.  Think of the Northern Kingdom, the new flashier rival religious system fail, because it severs itself from the root. Think of Adam and Eve in the Garden, their grasping at the forbidden fruit is probably the first example of bad religion in human history; instead of eating what God has provided for them, believing the devil’s lie, they grasp at another way because they think it will make them like God.


Jesus explains this in the Gospel, how God is drawing men to himself, feeding us himself.  In Christianity, God doesn’t expect us to discover some hidden road, he has laid the road for us, he has become the road for us, he is the way, the truth, and the life. And he has given us food along the road, in the Bread of Life, the Eucharist.

We see God’s drawing souls to himself in the first reading. In the Acts of the Apostles, God has placed that desire for life and truth in the heart of the Ethiopian Eunuch. The eunuch is a seeker: he has a copy of the scriptures, he’s reading through them, but does not understand them. On so, on the road, God orchestrates a divine collision.  God’s angel sends the apostle Philip to minister to this Eunuch, to explain the Scriptures and baptize him if the eunuch responds in faith.


Who are we in this story? Well, at one point we were all the eunuch, searching for God. God sent an apostle to us, perhaps a parent, or a neighbor, or a friend, or a religious sister, or a priest, to explain the scriptures to us. Through that spiritual friend, God drew us deeper into his divine life, thanks be to God. And of course, we are all meant to be Philip in that story too, attentive to the quiet voices of angels, sending us out to bring souls to Christ.

There are seekers out there, seeking for Christ, seeking for truth, seeking for the road that leads to eternal life.  And sometimes we don’t hear God’s angels sending us to meet them because we are so focused on ourselves—building our own towers of babel, grasping at forbidden fruit, fixated on the flashy glamours of the modern false religions. 


To be God’s instrument in the great work of the Church, we must subjugate our egos to God, seeking His will above all, walking by the light of His truth, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

No comments:

Post a Comment