Homily

I was thinking about the Rich Young Man in today’s Gospel. One way of looking at life is that we all relate to our world through a kind of filter. Our own personal filter. This filter, to one degree or another, is made up by our values, our idea of the meaning of life, our moral code, the importance that other people have to us, the wisdom or the foolishness we have taken from others and made our own, and although this filter by which we see and relate to the world largely comes from what we have accepted or rejected from others, it is also colored and shaped by our inner, personal life. That filter not only colors how we see and interact with the world, it also is the filter through which the world comes to us.

The Young Man’s filter was based on the Commandments, which is obviously a very, very good thing. But he knew there was more to life than that, which is why he came to question Jesus. Even though his personal filter was very good it was severely weakened by his need to trust in his wealth rather than trusting in God. He felt he needed to keep the control that he believed his wealth gave to him, because it was too risky to abandon himself to following Christ. Christ, as his new and improved filter for seeing and acting in the world, would not have done away with the commandments the young man lived by. Instead it would have elevated that moral code by the man becoming a disciple of Christ. His filter of protection would not have been his cash, which is so easily lost, especially at death, but instead, his protection would have been the Lord of Life.

At each baptism we sing, “All you who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” That’s St. Paul’s idea, who also tells us that it is no longer he who lives, but Christ Who lives in him. Jesus is the filter for us who are Christians. We don’t give up our individual selves, but we raise up our human natures in Christ to become sharers in His divine nature. Jesus must be our filter, so that we see this world and all the people in it, through His eyes, His understanding, His wisdom, His knowledge, and we worship and pray as He leads us so that we may grow into what the Rich Man turned away from. Jesus must be our filter also because of the dangers that are there in the world, and the tragic effects of sin. There are many good and wonderful things in the world, and many good and wonderful people, but how do we know who and what they are unless we see them through the filter of Christ? There are also many sad, ugly, painful, and evil things and people in the world. How do we recognize them and protect ourselves from them without the filter of Christ to help us? How can we banish our own personal sins without Him? How can we grow in lives of love and virtue without Him? What must we do to gain eternal life? Make Christ, more and more, the filter through which we live and act. Make Christ be more, and more, our very life.

I was reading an article about a song that has been #1 on the charts for two weeks now. I read the lyrics to that song. It has to be the most filthy, degrading, disgusting and sexually perverse lyrics I believe of probably any song ever put out to the public. It was listened to 93 million times in the first week it went online. 93 million times. I read about a show that Netflix is advertising for showing next month. It’s a French movie about an 11-year-old Muslim girl in France, raised by a mother who believes in the virtue of chastity and personal dignity. But the girl becomes friends with some other 11-year-old girls who have formed a dance team. Rebelling against her mother she joins this dance team and in order help them win the dance competition prize she leads the group into sexualized dance routines that aren’t even appropriate for adults, and certainly not for little girls. Netflix’s original ad showed them on the dance floor posed like strippers. Thousands of people protested, so Netflix changed the ad to another picture. Thousands of people protested, but I have no doubt that when the movie airs millions of people will watch this film promoting the sexualization of 11-year-old girls and will give it a thumbs up, because it celebrates how a girl finds freedom from the restricting, unenlightened moral code of her mother and also achieves fame and approval from the world. Sex and fame! What more could an 11-year-old girl desire?

As I see it, the personal filters through which more and more people are relating to the world and the people in it, those personal filters are becoming thinner and thinner. Not strongly built from solid moral standards, from the love of family, from the idea of a true community of neighbors, not built from the wisdom of great women and men of the past and surely not crafted from the revealed wisdom of God. These weakened personal filters allow the worst of the world to enter into their lives with terrible consequences for people. Addiction, pornography, mental illness, isolation, anger, and frustration are just some of the ways by which people become attached and trapped. And these weakened filters lead people into these temptations and so many others, which lead to the degradation of the human person. And these weakened filters can lead to the rejection of the importance of family and the human dignity of neighbor. Instead the raw ego, the raw individual, unfiltered, shows itself operating in sin, and as history shows us, so very often it explodes into violence and sexual perversion. We don’t have to go too far north up I-5 to see this, on almost a daily basis. We don’t have to go further than the screens in our homes to see this on a daily basis guaranteed.

We must put on Christ, because He is indeed the only filter that can protect us from the corruption that we face in this world and the effects of that corruption on our lives and our families’ lives. We must put on Christ so that we can respond to this ever more corrupt world with the message of human dignity, the value of life, the goodness of virtue and the good news of the everlasting love of Christ for all people. My friends, Jesus Christ alone. He must be our only filter as we look into the world and discern what is true and what is false, what is life-giving and what is deadly. He must be only filter to protect us from spiritual death. He must be our only filter so that we can reach out to those in the world with genuine good news. He must be our only filter as we come to Him asking for eternal life, that we may use the grace He wishes to give us to grow in virtue and goodness.

We have been baptized into Christ. What must we do to gain eternal life? Let us live and put on Christ.