Word to the Wise
Sunday, May 21, 2017 - 6th Sunday of Easter - A
[Acts 8:5-8, 14-17; 1 Pet 3:15-18; John 14:15-21]Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence, keeping your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who defame your conduct may themselves be put to shame. [1 Peter]
It is graduation weekend in many places, including Texas Tech University, where I live with the Dominican campus ministry community. I spent nearly 30 years in active campus ministry and now enjoy being around a big campus ministry but able to continue my itinerant preaching as well. It is always a bitter-sweet experience to see a student whom one met as a freshman now graduate as a senior and go on to either graduate school or into the world of work. I stay in touch with a great many of my former student parishioners. (One of them even became a Dominican friar and now directs the same campus ministry where I met him!) The lines quoted above from the First Letter of Peter are really appropriate for this time.
In the past academic year, a program called ESTEEM took place as part of the campus ministry here. It is a nation-wide effort to help graduating students make the adjustment in living their faith when they move from the comforting peer-oriented atmosphere of the university faith community to finding a parish in a different city (perhaps even a different culture) and joining a new faith community. Even those who are simply starting graduate school find their lives to be different in terms of faith and relationships. Law and medical students especially find this to be true. I gave several presentations in this program and the words from 1 Peter form the challenge that faces them and all of us. How DO we give an explanation for the hope that is within us?
Those who are baptized and/or received into the church at the Easter Vigil consistently testify that it is the faith of someone they know that has been the principal influence in their decision to become a Catholic. Faithfulness and integrity in living the life of Christ as a Catholic can be a powerful witness. (The same can be true of any religious commitment.) When people ask us, "But why be a Catholic and not something else?" what do we tell them? For some of us the answer is, "This is how I was born and raised. I don't know anything else." For others, "I saw how my spouse, best friend, etc. found truth and comfort in their Catholicism and I wanted that for myself." The second statement fulfills the challenge in 1 Peter. Our personal witness makes a difference. Are we ready to explain that? AMEN
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