Word to the Wise
Wednesday, July 18, 2018 - Wednesday in the 15th Week in Ordinary Time
[Isa 10:5-7, 13b-16 and Matt 11:25-27]"I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him." [Matthew]
The gospels make it clear that Jesus was rejected by the religious authorities of the Jewish community in his time and he was accepted by poor peasants, fishermen and tax collectors and others whom those authorities considered "unclean" or unimportant. These latter are the ones whom Jesus refers to as the "childlike" because of their openness to his preaching and healing.
In the midst of an enormous reality like the Catholic Church with all its rituals, rules, church buildings and traditions, it is easy to lose sight of the central point of all of this: the person and teaching of Jesus Christ. It is all too easy to mistake the institution for the person. It is not only the person of Jesus, but the person sitting next to us. No matter how we decorate a building in which we gather to worship, there is no church if there are no believers because it is the faithful who make up the Body of Christ. It is our openness to Jesus and his Father and the Holy Spirit that creates the church. Jesus founded this on human faith, beginning with the apostles and then, through their witness and the witness of missionaries like St. Paul, the faith spread. But before that could happen, there had to be people like the apostles who were open to Jesus and his message.
Jesus is not simply one great ethical preacher like any others in history. He is God's manifestation and revelation. Without that truth, all the rest of what we love about "our church" makes no sense. AMEN