Homily

If someone were to ask you to say something about yourself, to describe yourself, to tell them who you are, what would you say? Would you give them your height, age, marital status, the number of children you have, where you were born, where you live now, your occupation? How far down on that list would you say, "I'm Christian— I'm Catholic," or would that even come up in your description at all? Isn't it interesting that we would, effectively speaking, consider our birthplace or age or number of children to be more important descriptors of who we are as individuals than our faith in Jesus Christ? Now I will grant you that we are often advised or given an example that faith and religious belief should be kept private, and that advice and example is pretty much accepted by most people in our country today and it's not easy to go against that pattern. But I hope you can see that by leaving that description far down on the list, or off the list completely, it tends to make our faith seem rather unimportant to us and to others, even if that is not our intention.

Now, in an earlier time Catholics may not have always wanted to declare their faith to other people so easily because in certain situations it might cause them trouble if the other person was a Protestant with anti-Catholic feelings. So if you were applying for a job you might be concerned about whether or not you would get it. Of course if your name was Rossini it would have been a give-away. In more modern times Catholics may not want to be so open about their religious affiliation not because they fear discrimination from Protestants, but because they are concerned about disapproval, dislike or even the scorn of the person they are talking to. And then there is a new category today as well. You can always say to another person, "I'm Catholic but I don't go to church or anything."

And you can also use the popular, "I'm Catholic but I don't really believe in all that stuff," in the hope that, even if the person asking you about who you are is also Catholic, that they don't really believe all that stuff either and you've created an instant bond with them. I would say that about 94% of all the people in the entertainment and news fields who say they are Catholic are of the "don't believe all that stuff" category. Is it not strange? Imagine someone saying, "I'm a conservationist, but I don't think we need to keep all those species of mammals and sea creatures; and wetlands just take up valuable space and how can rainforests be so great if nobody wants to live there?" And yet day after day you can read pieces, or watch them, in the new industry where people define themselves as Catholic only to tell you what Catholic teachings they reject. And I think the general impression is not that they are sticking their own necks out to make such admissions. Quite the opposite. They are declaring themselves to be a part of the enlightened, sophisticated and genuinely compassionate crowd whose morality and ideals have pretty much taken over not only the news media but the entertainment business as well.

Now imagine for a moment you are finally a contestant on the T.V. show "Jeopardy," and Alex Trebek asks you what you do for a living. Would you say, "Oh, I'm Catholic?" I understand you might think that kind of an answer would be strange, but please consider, even if Alex and the viewing audience thought it was strange, would it be so strange? The angel, who freed the apostles from prison, as we heard in today's reading from Acts, tells them not that they should go and hide and let the heat die down for a while. Instead he says, "Go and take your place in the temple area and tell the people everything about this life."

He doesn't talk about, "this religion," nor about "this faith," even though that would be accurate. No, he says they should tell the people about "this life!" because it is not just a religion, and it is not a faith that should be considered as an object to be dealt with. It is a way of life. And we see that over and over again in the Acts of the Apostles—the believers in Jesus are not those who have decided to follow His teachings. They are the people who are living a new life, a new way of living, a new existence which is found in the divine life they received in baptism. They have put on Christ not to take Him off as one would a shirt or coat. They have put Him on to live in His life. That is why the Acts also calls this faith in Jesus the "Way" or the "New Way" because it is a path to walk on taking one through life into eternal life. Not something you put into your backpack, but a truth that guides every step along the path, both outwardly and from within by the Holy Spirit.

We live in a time that often describes the greatest purpose in life as following your dream and the greatest spiritual power is having the passion to follow your dream. And people actually use these expressions in this way with a straight face. But what if your dream ends up being a nightmare, and your passion turns to anger, disappointment, despair or violence? I guess I can understand. If that's the best you've got then why not try to achieve it?

But I suggest we follow the example of the Christians in Acts, where the only mention of a dream is God-given, and the only passion mentioned is the Passion of Christ. Many people today think it is foolish to have one guiding principle that directs a person's life. Better to be free to choose on a case-by-case basis what you want to believe in and uphold.

I will agree with this one point. We should not live by a single guiding principle for life. We should live according to a single person—Jesus Christ, Risen from the dead. We're probably not all the way there yet. Let us keep on working to place all of ourselves, all of our lives into Christ, through Him, with Him and in Him.