Word to the Wise
Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - Wednesday in the Sixth Week of Easter
[Acts 17:15, 22 - 18:1 and John 16:12-15]For 'On him we live and move and have our being, ' as even some of your poets have said, 'For we too are his offspring.' Since therefore we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the divinity is like an image fashioned from gold, silver, or stone by human art and imagination.
One of the "priority" ministries for the worldwide Order of Preachers (the formal title of the Dominican friars) is "Catechesis in a De-Christianized World." That phrase comes to me whenever I read the passage describing St. Paul's visit to Athens and his speech in the "areopagus" - a public debating forum. Of course, one might argue that the world had not been "christianized" at that time and it might be debatable whether the world has EVER been "christianized!" That debate need not detain us right now. What continually speaks to me is the content of Paul's preaching on this occasion. He assumes there is no Jewish theological background in his audience and that he must start with their own cultural experience. His appeal to their "altar to an unknown God" (a kind of religious bet-hedging) and to Greek poetry show him to be a creative, informed and savvy preacher. By virtue of our baptism we are all called to be "preachers in the marketplace." We represent faith to an increasingly secularized culture that is more and more in love with images "fashioned from gold, silver, or stone by human art and imagination." Our God is becoming "unknown" in many ways. We claim that God "gives to everyone life and breath and everything." It takes courage to say such things to hearers who, as the text says, may "scoff." But the text also says that others responded, "We should like to hear you on this some other time." Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI have spoken about a "new evangelization." They are speaking not about pagan or secular societies but of the Catholic Church! I know that I often find myself preaching to Catholics with little knowledge or understanding of their Catholic faith and heritage beyond going to church on Sunday and some traditional ritual gestures/prayers. Even Catholic faith can become simply the worship of particular things that are of human creation - physical or intellectual. Catechesis in a de-Christianized world has to begin in the pews of our own churches! AMEN
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