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Sunday 15(B): Read Eph 1:3-14; Mk 6:7-13
Being Catholic can be understood in a number of ways. If you loathe Catholics, then to be called Catholic can be an
insult. If you are a sociologist, Catholic is just a label for a certain sector of society. Anglicans and Episcopalians often
describe themselves as “Catholics”, meaning that they too hold to the tradition of the apostles, even if we, as
Roman Catholics, believe that they do not do so fully. Most commonly, most Catholics think the word simply means “universal”
in a geographical sense – world-wide, if you will. However, the fullest and most proper meaning of the word Catholic,
from the earliest times of Christianity, was much deeper, indeed it was overwhelmingly wonderful. St. Augustine, for example, instead of
using the word “Church” to describe the community of believers, used the word “Catholic”: the Church
was “The Catholic”, as a noun. In its Greek etymological roots, “catholic”
means “according to the whole”: it means fullness, completeness, plenitude. And this was the word the early Fathers
of the Church found most fitting to describe, indeed to define, the Church. For them, the Church was not just the community
of believers, but the deep, spiritual communion between all believers and, through Jesus Christ, with the Triune God.
So, Catholic is literally, in what appears to be modern jargon, a “holistic” term. It is the word that
symbolizes and sums up the entirety of God’s loving mercy for man, in creating him, redeeming him and gathering him
together in the Body and in the Heart of Jesus Christ. The fullness of the Church is nothing other than the fullness of Christ,
a fullness He poured out upon us through His death and resurrection and through the sending of the Holy Spirit. On the day
of Pentecost the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church already existed, and its expanse to the ends of the earth is like
the Body of Christ Himself expanding to embrace the earth and indeed the entire cosmos. This is something of the meaning of
today’s second reading from St. Paul, whose ecstatic and mystical grasp of Christ as the source, mainstay and goal of
all creation is expressed with such intense beauty. When we commune with Christ, in prayer or in the sacraments, especially
the Eucharist, we ourselves become ever more Catholic, ever more complete and fulfilled, ever more plunged into the depths
of that Mystery which holds the entire universe in existence.
But, of course, we often, and perhaps permanently, feel far from this wonderful reality. Our experience of life, both
personal and interpersonal, is plagued by brokenness, contradiction, misunderstanding, paradox and sometimes just sheer absurdity.
The Christian Gospel identifies the source of this fragmentation in sin, which is precisely man’s individual and collective
rupture of communion with God and with one another. That sin of man, however, found its model in the sin of Satan, whose jealousy
of mankind, as Scripture teaches, introduced death into the world. Satan’s work is to replace truth with lies, love
and freedom with hatred and slavery, and life with death. And indeed, all of us who sin but refuse to admit our sin, end up,
to a greater or lesser degree, doing just the same.
Satan destroys the intellect and its thirst for truth, by feeding it with half-truths and gradually with non-truths;
he destroys the will and its thirst to choose freely to live the truth in love by feeding it with false loves and false notions
of freedom; he destroys the body and its deep-seated yearning for eternal life by feeding it with experiences of self-indulgence
which, under the appearances of physical prowess and happiness, alienate the body from the spirit and render it fit only for
eternal death.
Is it any wonder, then, that the Lord who created us and loved us, and who knows very well the ploys of the Evil One,
does three principal things in His public ministry? He preaches the truth of the Gospel of repentance to heal our minds; He
drives out evil spirits to restore our freedom for good; and He lays hands on the sick to restore them to health, and even
upon the dead to restore them to life. And what He Himself did, is what He gave power and authority to His Apostles to do,
as today’s Gospel reading relates: “They went off and preached repentance (= healing of the mind). The Twelve
drove out many demons (= the healing of the will), and they anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them (= the healing
of the body).”
In the depths of His compassionate mercy for us, as the Divine Physician, He provides what is necessary for us to pass
from brokenness, fragmentation and alienation to wholeness, to holiness, to being once again fully Catholic. Now you may object
that if this were so, why then are we still subject to error, hatred and disease, not to mention death? The only answer to
that is that, according to God’s own plan and wisdom, the fullness of time has not yet come for final judgment and for
all things to be restored in Christ. What He desires of us now is that we partake of the struggle, of the agony which was
His as He laid down His life for our salvation.
Assailed by evil in subtle and diabolical fashion, Jesus held together because He remained focused on His Father’s
will. Was anyone tempted in his intellect to doubt and even reject the truth of His mission more than Jesus? No, yet look
at the fullness of Truth which graciously fell from His lips. Was anyone tempted more than Jesus to rebel against the will
of the Father? No, yet look at the glorious freedom and boundless love He showed to all, precisely because He remained
obedient to the Father: obedience is not the enemy of true freedom – the real enemy is disobedience in the name of some self-proclaimed or diabolically insinuated alternative to the Truth of Christ.
Did anyone suffer physically and mentally more than Jesus? Most probably not, and yet the chaste, poor and obedient Lamb of
God, once sacrificed, now stands at the right hand of God pleading for us.
And his pleading is: that we remain in communion with Him through His Body, the Church, “The Catholic”;
that we open our minds with sincere, devout and religious adhesion to the Truth that His Apostles teach us in His Name; that
we open our wills and embrace with freedom and love God’s plan for each of us as it unravels in the circumstances of
our lives; that we unite our physical sufferings and other sufferings, of whatever nature, to His suffering for us, in order
that we may one day hear His beautiful and powerful voice command us, as it once did Lazarus, “My friend, come forth
from that tomb!”. Christ bore our errors, our rebellions, our infirmities and our death, and destroyed them all. His
call is to life, for life, for eternal life!
Being Catholic therefore means engaging ourselves courageously, in mind, will and body, in the work of Christ to unite
all things in Himself and so to bring everything to the fullness for which it was created. As was said, in daily circumstances
it is not easy to keep this grand vision constantly before one’s eyes. But that’s precisely why we need to proclaim
it and re-proclaim it, to pray, to read, to be faithful to the sacraments we have received, to encourage one another in times
of distress and to help one another perform generous deeds of charity and holiness. The mass media and our decaying Western
culture make it all too easy for the subtle machinations of the Evil One, and for the evil already in us, to seduce and overcome
our resolve. We cannot win alone. We need to do it together, united in the Catholic Church wherein Christ, notwithstanding
all our foibles, remains active and faithful to his promise that the gates of Hell itself would never prevail.
Sinful times call for courageous witnesses to holiness; the many, subtle distinctions which the human mind can
draw, only to avoid accepting the Gospel of repentance, are rife all around us; but we must remain faithful to “the
truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” as Christ feeds it to us through His Church; the many perceptions
of freedom detached from that truth, and even from truth about our own human nature, make it all the more urgent that we
understand true freedom to mean the loving acceptance of the will of God; and the many, prevalent forms of narcissism which
exalt the human body, yet in doing so distort its real beauty and meaning, make it all the more urgent that we cherish
our bodies as God’s first gift to us, that we take care of our health, that we live soberly and chastely, according
to our state in life.
I have mentioned Satan, the fallen angel, a few times. I end by recalling another truth of the Catholic faith: devotion
to the three Archangels, Michael, Raphael and Gabriel. The angels are sent by God to serve us and help us on the road to salvation.
For the healing of our minds, we can pray to Gabriel, the Archangel who announced to Mary the will of God for Her: to accept
Jesus, the very Truth and Word of God, in Her womb, for our repentance and salvation;
for the healing of our wills and the casting away of rebellion and false freedom, we can invoke St. Michael, the arch-enemy
of Satan and victor over him by the “power of God”; and for the healing of our bodies, we can invoke St. Raphael,
the medicine of God.
Being Catholic is not just some social tag branded onto us on the day of our baptism: it is the program and
destiny of our life, here and in eternity. Let us never forget it, lest we forget the love, the sufferings and the glory
of Our Savior and in doing so, forget and lose ourselves.
Msgr. Peter Magee
July
12th, 2003: “Mother Seton”, Germantown, MD, Vigil Mass, 6.30 pm.
July 13th, 2003: St. Matthew’s Cathedral, DC, 10.00
am; St. Thomas Apostle, DC, 12.00
noon.
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