A bishop, a priest and a
deacon were out fishing on a lake when they realized that they had left their
beverages of choice on shore. The priest
said, “Don’t worry, I’ll get them,” as he stood up, stepped out of the boat, walked
across the water and retrieved their drinks.
Upon his return, they soon found that they also had left the bottle
opener on shore. So the deacon said,
“Don’t worry, I’ll get it,” as he stood up, stepped out of the boat, walked
across the water and retrieved the bottle opener. The bishop was amazed and humbled at what he had
seen, so when they noticed that they had also left the pretzels on shore, he
felt obliged to demonstrate his trust in God in a similar way. Nervously, he stood up, stepped out of the
boat, and quickly plunged to the bottom of the lake. As the priest and deacon were hauling the bishop back into the boat, the priest said to the deacon, “We probably should have told him
where the stones are.” The deacon
replied, “What stones?” In the priest,
deacon and bishop we find reason, faith and courage, the three key components of
Christian belief that today’s readings present so beautifully.
If nothing else, our readings this morning
tell us that Christianity can be hard to believe. In our first reading, we find the apostles
rejoicing because they suffered dishonor in Jesus’ name, while in our Psalm we
learn that God can turn our mourning into dancing. So apparently we’re called to believe that
God can transform curses into blessings.
In our second reading from Revelation, John learns that the Lion of
Judah who will open the scroll of God’s providence is, in fact, a Lamb that was
slain. So we’re called to believe that
power reveals itself most fully in weakness and humility. In our Gospel, we encounter the risen Jesus
feeding his apostles. So we’re called to
believe that Jesus, who suffered, died and was buried, rose again from the
dead. Christianity can be hard to believe because it doesn't always align with our expectations. To believe all that Christianity teaches, we need reason, faith and
courage. Allow me to address each in
turn.
I’ll begin with
reason. The priest in our little joke
observed his surroundings and used his God-given gift of reason to find a way
to get out of the boat and walk across the water to shore. Christian belief doesn’t require us to check
our brains at the door. Jesus came to
take away our sins, not our minds. That’s
why “Catholicism is an intellectual religion.
If it holds something to be true, it has reasons for this claim, reasons
that should be valid in logic and in evidence.”[1] And if we take the time to read Scripture, the
Catechism and the magisterial teachings of the Church, we’ll find that they
are. In his somewhat infamous lecture at
Regensburg, Pope Benedict XVI said that it’s both “necessary and reasonable to
raise the question of God through the use of reason.”[2]
God is the source of all knowledge - knowledge obtained
through Divine Revelation and knowledge obtained through reason. Faith and reason do not contradict each
other. “There is a profound and
indissoluble unity between the knowledge of reason and the knowledge of faith.”[3] God gave us
our brains to use them, not just to contemplate the world around us, but his
eternal truth as well. After Jesus’
gruesome death and burial, the apostles saw the risen Lord with their own eyes;
they touched him with their hands; they spoke with him; and they broke bread
with him. They had ample evidence to
believe, through the use of reason alone, that the one who appeared to them
“was not a vision, nor the figment of someone’s excited imagination nor the
appearance of a spirit or a host; it was Jesus who had conquered death and come
back.”[4]
Christian belief requires reason.
Saint John Paul II said that “[f]aith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.”[7] But these two wings are useless to us, if we don’t have the courage to step out of the nest in the first place (or the boat, as the case may be). Courage is essential to Christian belief. In an increasingly secularized world, religious belief is often greeted with patronizing disdain. That’s because Christianity calls us to the highest standards of moral living – God’s standards – and human standards don’t always live up to God’s standards. So for some, it’s easier to criticize and dismiss God’s standards as archaic, irrelevant or oppressive than to try to live up to them. For some, it may seem easier to go along with the critics and ignore what faith and reason compel us to believe. I encourage you, particularly our teens and young adults, to have the courage to believe anyway. That bishop didn’t want to leave the safety of the boat, but he had the courage to do it anyway. I challenge you to be like that bishop and the apostles in the Temple, summon up the courage to proclaim Christ crucified unabashedly, even if it’s not the cool thing to do, the easy thing to do, or the dry thing to do. Christian belief requires courage.
Let’s face it, Christianity is hard to believe. It takes reason, faith and courage. But if Christianity weren’t hard to believe, it wouldn’t be worth believing at all. You see, “the entire purpose of the Christian life [is] to make us, not simply better people . . ., but to make us divine, to conform us to a participation in the life of the Trinity.”[8] What greater goal could we have than to be holy and burning with God’s eternal love through Jesus Christ? Scripture shows clearly that every encounter with Christ is life-changing. But first, we have to engage our reason, our faith and our courage and believe. You can’t walk on water, if you don’t get out of the boat.
[1]
James V. Schall, The Order of Things
(San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 2007) at 170.
[2] Pope Benedict XVI, Faith, Reason and the University, Memories and Reflections (Vatican
City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2006)
<http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006>.
[3]
Pope John
Paul II, Fides et Ratio (Vatican
City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1998) 16.
[4]
William Barclay, The Gospel of John,
vol. 2 (Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press, 1975) at 283.
[5]
Pope Benedict XVI, Faith and the Future (San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 2006)
at 33.
[6]Pope
Francis, Lumen Fidei, (Vatican City,
Libreria Vaticana, June 29, 2013) at 18.
[7]
Pope John
Paul II at 1.
[8]
Robert Barron, The Strangest Way: Walking the Christian Path (Maryknoll,
Orbis, 2002) at 29.
