Ordinary 31

The Thirty-First Sunday of Ordinary Time

Deuteronomy 6:2-6; Psalm 18; Hebrews 7:23-28; Mark 12:28b-34

This is the 1st in a series of homilies on a vision for Faith Formation

Being in the presence of parents and learning in various ways is vital to the life of children. There is an exchange that takes place between a parent and child that is wonderfully mysterious and wordless.

The Church has understood that this intimate relationship is integral when it comes to raising a child as a Christian. Thus the Church begins the Baptismal Rite by asking the parents a crucial question. In asking to have your child baptized, that is, entering the experience of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, do you understand it is your responsibility to bring your child up to keep God’s commandments as Christ taught us [recall the image of Saint Anne teaching the Law of Moses], by loving God and our neighbor [recall the image of Saint Joseph teaching a life skill]?

There is a bond created by this question between the community of the Church and the parents. The Church generously opens the door of grace and life in Jesus Christ to the child while the parents are called to foster that grace and faith every day. Then both the church, through the priest or deacon, and the parents for the first time mark the child with the Sign of the Cross.

Just prior to celebrating the Sacrament with the child, the parents are again reminded, you must make it your constant care to bring your child up in the practice of the faith [understand here, to bring your child up in the Christian lifestyle]. See that the divine life which God gives your child always grows stronger in their heart.

Yet again, when the flame from the Paschal candle is passed on to them for their child, the parents are addressed, this light is entrusted to you to be kept burning brightly.

The Baptismal Rite concludes with a wonderful prayer over the father: May God bless you…you and your wife will be the first teachers of your child in the ways of faith. May you be the best of teachers, bearing witness to the faith by what you say and do.  By what you say and do, again, recall the images of Joseph, Anne or one of your own memories.

I recently sent you a letter about formation in the Christian Faith with the examples of Kristen singing at the Liturgy, parents signing their children with baptismal water and my mother with her budget book and priorities. For years such examples have led me to reflect on how we pass on the Christian Faith in a culture and society that is often in opposition to religious belief and Catholic Christian values. As I asked in the letter, how did the belief of a small group of Jewish Galilean men and women, that a crucified man was the presence of God among us and was alive in a new and transformed way, become the belief of the entire Greco-Roman Empire in a short 300 years?

I believe we are living in a similar society to that of the Greco-Roman Empire. A society with a different value system; with new religions being hawked on every street corner and computer screen; marked by the enslavement of people, in our situation the slavery of productivity, technology and corporations; and consumerism as a fundamental value. The Catholic fishbowls of neighborhoods and shared faith that protected and insulated many of us from the outside world no longer exist. But did not Jesus send us into the world?

I believe, absent visible institutions andorganization and in the face of sporadic imperial persecution, it could only have been a lifestyle of these Jews and Gentiles that attracted people to Christ. Christianity offered a thoroughly new vision of human dignity and salvation for all people which included slaves, women and foreigners. It offered comfort in its care for the sick and the dying, courage in its persecuted and martyred members, and hope in its proclamation of eternal life.

We are called, as early Christians were, to be a model of this same vision of human life and challenge the values of our present society being a catalyst by our lifestyle, rooted in the common good and salvation of all people.

Reflecting on the past and present environments that the Church finds herself in has led me to consider a different way of thinking in regard to raising and forming our children in the Christian Faith. Though my reflections are not only for our children. Being formed in Jesus Christ is a lifelong spiritual endeavor. We never finish or stop being formed into Jesus Christ.

All of us, through the Catholic School system or Religious Education programs were raised in the Catholic faith through the classroom model. We in fact still use the language of academic education: classes, teachers, programs, and curricula. Our parishes follow the academic calendar rather than the liturgical year. Many families go on vacations at Christmas and Holy Week because school is recessed. And the reception of Sacraments continues in the minds of Catholics to be linked with chronological age and academic grade. Thus Sacraments have become similar to graduation ceremonies rather than a deepening experience of the living Jesus in the midst of the community on the way to eternal life.

Recall, the first disciples experienced Jesus as risen from the dead. It was not something they were taught. And disciples, like Thomas, did not believe until? Until he experienced the risen Christ himself in the midst of the community. Only then did Thomas proclaim, “My Lord and my God!”

The Baptismal Liturgy sets up the pattern of Christian experience. A family enters into the midst of the gathering of God’s people that is their spiritual family and a bond is created between the community of the Church and parents and sponsors. The child experiences touch in the Sign of the Cross, the anointing with Sacred Chrism, the pouring of water and the sealing of the ears and mouth. The child sees the flame of faith passed from the Paschal Candle to their Baptismal candle. We hear ourselves singing the praises of God as we bless water and acclaim what God has done: “I have loved you with an everlasting love…”

This pattern of experience speaks to the heart. And though there are traditions, lessons, beliefs and liturgical patterns, understandings and explanations that must be learned, are they not subsequent to the primal experience of the living Jesus Christ and a recognizable lifestyle that is called Christian? I believe so. Knowing about Jesus is not the same as personally knowing Jesus.

Is not the great commandment about relationship? “Hear, O Israel! You shall love the Lord your God…You shall be in relationship with the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength and in relationship with your neighbor.”

Knowing a person is to be formed by that person.

The family, which introduces us to our relationship with Jesus is then the foundation of the Church; what Pope Paul VI called the “domestic Church”.  Here within the family we first learn how to live the life and values Jesus taught us.

Let us continue this reflection next week.