This is a transcript of the homily given at the Mass to Open the Year of Faith at Cathedral Guadalupe, October 14, 2012. Photo credit: Texas Catholic.
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Two thousand years ago a young disciple of Jesus Christ came up to him and said “What must I do to possess eternal life?” and Jesus answered him in the words of the scripture that we have just read today. “You must know God, you must love God, and you must make the word of God become a reality in the world.” Fifty years ago, Blessed John XXIII, in his address to convene the Vatican Council, made the same comment. He said the world needs to know God, needs to listen to His word, and needs to put His word into practice.
We gather today to officially begin in our diocese this Year of Faith. Our Holy Father Pope Benedict wrote a letter almost one year ago called Porta Fidei or the “Door of Faith” in which he asked us all to take one year of our lives to reexamine and to convince ourselves that we too are on that journey towards eternal life. We too need to know what it is we are asked to do.
This year we commemorate fifty years since the beginning of that Council and we also commemorate twenty years since the publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Last Thursday, Pope Benedict celebrated Mass in St. Peters Square and there he recalled with the people why Blessed John XXIII called the Vatican Council together in the first place. The Pope said that at that time it appeared as if Jesus had nothing to say to the culture of the moment, but during that Council he reflected on the great desire by the church to represent once again the message of Jesus Christ to the world. To make the truth and the beauty of the Word of God and the beauty of our faith shine out once again in our world, to make the Word of God relevant to the world and to the culture of fifty years ago.
Today, fifty years later, the Pope is calling us once again to look at the way we believe in Jesus Christ and he’s asking us to make sure that we relive that word, relive the excitement of the second Vatican Council to once again be challenged to go out into our world and into our culture and preach the word of God. He is asking the whole Church across the globe to take this year to reflect on what it means to be a Catholic in today’s world. He is asking us to put some life and some enthusiasm back into our Church, back into our lives as Catholics and as Christians. If today the church proposes this Year of Faith this year of new evangelization, this year of reflection on our mission, and on the Word and how we live the Word of God it, is not to honor an anniversary but truly because there is great need for it even more today than there was fifty years ago.
Fifty years ago, especially in our nation, we lived in a more or less unified culture, a culture that broadly accepted the principles and values of Christianity and Christian belief. Today, due to the profound crisis of faith, the unity that existed among us in the past has collapsed. Morally we live in very chaotic times. In our present culture it is very easy for us to develop habits, ways of thinking that undermine virtue, character, and moral judgment. It is hard, in fact, to reach a moral consensus on any issue when our culture can’t even agree on the most basic standards of what is right and what is wrong. This is the Church of today. This is where we are called to live out the gospel of Jesus Christ.
To answer this crisis it is not enough for us as Christians, as Catholics, to sit around and look back with nostalgia on the church gone by fifty years ago. It is not enough for us to sit around and to criticize the culture of the present day. As Christians, Pope Benedict tells us, it falls to us to each one of us to change the culture of this day by rediscovering the message of Jesus Christ and to teach that Word to all people by our Christian witness in this world. We cannot criticize the culture of our present day because in many ways we become accomplices to that culture. Today, we are called as Christians, as Catholics, in a special way to look once more at the question that the disciple posed in today’s gospel. “What must we do to poses eternal life?” We must know God, we must understand God, we must listen to His Word, and we must put that Word into practice. This Year of Faith is a call for each one of us to confront our culture and to renew our world.
To give it new life once again during this year our Holy Father calls us to do three things. The first one is to examine who we are. We have been Catholics for so long, for so many years, that perhaps we in our lives have forgotten why we are Catholic. Our faith in Christ has little or no consequence in our lives. It is perhaps time for us to pause. It is time for us to ask ourselves how much do we know about Jesus Christ, what do we really know about him, and do we understand what His word is all about. Yes, our Catholic faith many times has been reduced to merely going to Mass on a Sunday just like we would go maybe to the supermarket every Wednesday, or playing cards every Friday. It’s many times become another activity in our busy schedule, but has little or no profound meaning in our lives or effect in what we do with our lives. This Year of Faith becomes an invitation to this new evangelization, to reencounter with the person of Jesus Christ, to know what he teaches us in the gospels, to read the scriptures every day, to study His word, and to know what our faith is all about.
It is a time for us to study once again the Catechism of the Catholic Church. What does it mean to be Catholic in today’s world? It is my hope that every family in this Diocese of Dallas would during this year at least purchase and read the Catechism of the Catholic Church. But it is not enough for us just to know what the Catechism teaches. It is a time also for personal conversion, for we live our faith each day. There can be no separation between what our faith teaches, what we believe, and what we do in our personal life. That is why the Holy Father has called us to this Year of Faith in our Catholic church. The new evangelization responds to our ongoing move away from religion by urging Catholics to share Christ in Word and the credible witness of their lives. We need to change the culture of the day not just by preaching against it, but rather by the testimony and the witness of the lives of each one of us.
The second point our Holy Father makes, is that he urges us intensify our witness of charity. Faith and charity depend on one another, and faith without charity has no meaning. Faith teaches us not only to see Jesus in the least of our brothers and sisters, the less fortunate, but it also teaches us to know ourselves, to understand ourselves, and to see other people through the eyes of Jesus Christ. Charity and faith together help us to understand the world in which we live and to look at the circumstances, the situations, and the crisis of our modern life through the eyes of Jesus Christ.
And the third point, the Holy Father asks us during this Year of Faith is to study the documents of the Second Vatican Council. The Second Vatican Council teaches us how we must confront the culture of our day and how we as Catholics are required to live in the modern world. It teaches us how the Church must become once again a shining light. The Church itself must be holy again.
The Vatican Council invites us and reminds us that each one of us is called to be a witness to Jesus Christ in our world. Above all, the Second Vatican Council emphasizes the importance of family and family life which is so important when we consider the tragic situation of our world today. We need to renew the culture, we need to lead this renewal, so that society will once more see marriage as sacred and that the family is the true sanctuary of human life and heart of a civilization of love. We must give new meaning once again and we must build and support our Christian marriages. The council teaches us many, many things and therefore it is incumbent upon each and every Catholic to read and understand the documents of the Second Vatican Council.
My dear brothers and sisters, we are all called during this Year of Faith a year of re-evangelization, of rethinking of the way we live our Catholic faith. We must become, once again missionaries in this world. We are called once again, my dear brothers and sisters, as we did for many, many years to be truly a positive, good influence in our society and our culture.
Let us all together strive to understand our faith, to live our faith, and to preach our faith by what we say and what we do in every moment. We must become in our society that culture of life, that civilization of love. And once again, the church must be a shining light of example and Catholics and Christians must be shining lights in the darkness of our present culture and world.
I thank all of the people of this diocese who will make a very special effort during this year to relive the enthusiasm of their faith in Jesus Christ. I thank all of the parishes who are represented from across the diocese here today as we officially begin this Year of Faith. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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