Don’t be angry with non-believers
Our self-sacrificing faith is a holy surrender only God can sell
The Spirit led us from confusion to an awakening we knew came from a loving God. We would actually get excited and try to explain that to others. It was in those attempts that we knew the truth needed to come from God, not the mind or purpose of a human. “Ask him yourself” is where we end up.
Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Easter
Acts 20:17-27
John 17:1-11a
Some of us were fortunate and properly groomed to deal with the oddities and realities of the Catholic faith. However, that history of formation didn’t plant the faith in us. It revealed it, but the planting needed to come from a divine source. The Catholic faith, both ancient and suffering, is impossible to grasp with human logic and commitment alone. It takes an all-loving, holy, clever God to do that.
Our formations educated us on the wonders and perils of our faith, but the ultimate sales pitch had to come from someone other than holy examples. We need an intimacy with the characters in this story to believe it is true. Thankfully, God gives us three persons who each, individually, can do that. And they do it as one.
(See? We can’t really sell that.)
You may remember the early hurdles of attending rituals, sitting still, keeping quiet, and performing reverent acts of bowing, kneeling, and responding “Amen.” God as Father, our parental kinship creator, nurtured us there. A number of us rebelled, but that loving Father’s hold touched both our hearts and bodies to be obedient.
Few of us knew what the dickens was going on, but we could acknowledge it had elements of the sacred. The sign of the cross marked us over and over again.
If we skipped, missed, or abandoned that fostering relationship, it remains available to us even as old men and women. Reverence stills our souls.
The Word of God had no less a pathway of gauntlets, an obstacle course of painful and even torturous turns. Remember the difficulties in the seemingly endless string of skeptical studies? We heard that a man became God, which was absurd. We finally spoke up and were corrected. “No, God became man.” That reset us, but was no less absurd.
When we finally read the scriptures on our own, do you remember the published plots of the Jews, which included apostles thrown in jail for preaching about the Messiah? Their disdain led to the executions of Christians, including Saul’s observance at Stephen’s stoning. How could that reporting inspire us to become Christians? How could a monster like Saul become the apostle Paul?
The Holy Spirit likely had a hand in our being inspired. A second lens appeared in our view. Stephen’s holy glow at entering heaven as his body was smashed is not an interpretation that we could manufacture. The words in verse after verse came alive, and we began to hear and see the truth.
The Spirit led us from confusion to an awakening we knew came from a loving God. We would actually get excited and try to explain that to others. It was in those attempts that we knew the truth needed to come from God, not the mind or purpose of a human. “Ask him yourself” is where we end up.
Seeing Jesus from the pages of scripture into our daily life may well be the height of surrender. Jesus spoke of being glorified, himself having nothing to repent, while calling us to cry out to him. We found out he wasn’t just a holy prophet, or a martyr, or an effective teacher. He believed and acted as if he were God. When we found that out, there was no denying the truth.
Folks had every right to ask. “Why the heck did he think he was God?”
Jesus wasn’t self-deprecating, which is one of the highest signs of a humble, intelligent, and genuine human being. That doesn’t sound right. He wasn’t brash, but he was bold. He corrected those who told him what to do, including his mother. He never walked back anything. That’s not a typical human being. Even a narcissist would question whether Jesus was a great human being.
Paul spoke that his life was of no importance, because it belonged to God. All of his apostles, except one, died as Jesus did. They bore witness to already living an eternal life with God, because the Spirit indwelt them. They were connected to Jesus in the Eucharist, and the Father loved them. They said all that was a good thing, and more than anything the world could offer.
Our 2,000-year-old Church, embodied by many knuckleheads, but more saints, gets hit with bad PR, devilish disasters, and intractable doctrines that butt heads with the intelligencia and the authorities. Yet, we’re staunch members, apologists, and sacramental witnesses that this is where all humanity needs to belong. That’s worthy of applause and respect, but it’s not all that convincing.
We can’t convince anyone that our faith is true, even with our example and our clarity as the Holy Spirit speaks through us, or as the Father gives us authority. No one really buys the pitch that Jesus walks with us. But pitch it we must, even though we look and sound like fools.
And that is good.
The intimacy of God, which continues to mold us, is not the message. Rather, we claim that God was born into our humanity, the humanity that he created. He lived, died, was buried, and was resurrected, conquering the finality of death. His Spirit gathers us for lives lived in holiness, as we await the second coming. That message must be told by us, but God does the awakening.
We, the fools, trigger God’s opportunities. Even, sorry to say, in our deaths.
Jesus exited creation in order to send his Spirit, not just available to us, but to live in us — to “temple” in us. Jesus does the will of his Father, still, and urges us to do the same. He’s here in the Eucharist, in the icons and imagery, and the holy words.. The three-in-one theology isn’t just symbolism. It’s perfection. It’s an overwhelming revelation hitting us from every realm.
We’ve got documents, encyclicals, miracles, rosaries, and holy sacraments. We’ve also got cosmic stuff that’ll knock your socks off, like saints praying for us, and angels guiding us. But none of these are enough.
It’s not humanity or any construct of created beings that converts, even though the Holy Spirit gathers us together for support, stewardship, witness, teaching, preaching, and testimony. That’s a lot we’ve got to be doing, with holy ones enveloping us, but that’s not the essential thing.
Surrender to God, repent for your sins, and live in His love (all the stuff above we’ve been talking about). That’s the faith. Only the Holy Trinity gives us faith, because God wants us to be his. Nothing makes sense until you do that.
I’d say, take it from us, but that misses the point. Take it from God.