We have a policy where I work
that says you can’t carry over your vacation days at the end of the year. So this past Tuesday, looking at an
absolutely perfect weather forecast for the Adirondacks, I decided to use one
of my remaining vacation days and take Wednesday off from work to go hike in
the mountains. I had another motive for
getting away too - I decided it would be a good opportunity to put some thought
and prayer into my weekend homily.
Well I decided to hike the Santanoni
range, probably the most remote of the Adirondack high peaks, and after hiking
and climbing for three hours, I reached the top of Santanoni Peak, the first of
the three mountains I planned to climb that day. The skies were cloudless and blue, the sun
was warm and the breeze was cool and you could see probably forty or fifty
miles in any direction from that mountaintop.
I was surprised to see other human
beings on this hike, that’s how remote these mountains are – but on top of this
mountain I met two hikers from Syracuse, Rick and Eddie, both about my age,
both playing hooky from work like I was.
They were next heading to the same two mountains as I was, so I asked if
I could tag along. And so we hiked for the
next two hours to the next mountaintop, having a pleasant conversation and enjoying
a splendid day in the woods.
After eating lunch on the second
mountaintop, we had to start the five hour hike back toward the parking lot and
Eddie told Rick to go on ahead to that third mountain, leaving just the two of
us. Eddie asked where my kids go to
school, and I told him one at Notre Dame, one at Clemson, and one at St. Mary’s
College. He said “oh, you must be a good
Catholic boy.”
Now perhaps you’ve had a similar
experience, but then Eddie proceeded to give me a 40-minute witness talk, about
how he grew up Catholic but then at age 19, he found Jesus, he found the
Lord. How on December 19, 1979 he
professed his faith in Jesus Christ and was saved.
Before he got to the inevitable
question, “Ed, are you saved?” I explained how I could never abandon the
Church, how important the Eucharist is to me, how most mornings my wife and I
listen to the Word of the Lord and then receive the Sacred Body and Blood of
the Lord, how that fuels my life.
He asked me if I was familiar with
John chapter 3, the story of Nicodemus, how we must be born again. I said yes I was, that I was born again on
June 6, 1959, the date of my baptism.
After he raised his objections to baptizing babies, I explained the
biblical basis and early Church history of christening infants. We had a good theological back-and-forth and
I let him know that I’m an ordained deacon, and I asked if I could mention him
in my preaching this weekend. Pretty
much at that point he told me that he wasn’t planning to hike the third
mountain after all and that I should go on ahead of him. We amicably parted ways and we descended from
the mountain range by different trails.
Now why do I tell you this
story? First of all, I was impressed
that Eddie could tell me the date in 1979 when he professed his faith in the
Lord. In the first part of our Gospel
this afternoon/morning, Jesus is asking for just such a profession of
faith. “Who do you say that I am,” He
asks Peter and the disciples. And He is
asking you, and asking me, this same question today. Who do you say that I am? Peter says “You are the Christ!” Who do you say that I am?
Now I was saddened that Eddie found
it necessary to leave his Catholic faith when he “found the Lord,” for don’t we
profess our faith in Jesus Christ every time we come to mass on Sunday? “I believe in One Lord, Jesus Christ... For
our sake He was crucified, suffered death and was buried and rose again on the
third day…He will come again to judge the living and the dead.” We say the words. We profess the faith.
But what do the words mean to
us? And do they make a difference in our
lives?
In the last part of the Gospel,
Jesus tells us. He says that to be His
disciple, we must take up our cross and follow Him. Take up our cross. That could only mean one thing to His
disciples, especially after He had just finished telling them that He must
die. It means that we must die for Him,
die to ourselves. It means that we must
give up our lives for Him. It’s unlikely
that you or I will ever literally be asked to give our lives for Him (although
that does happen daily in many parts of the world) but what it means is that we
must live not for ourselves but surrender our lives to the Lord. That Jesus Christ must be the Lord of our
life. That everything we do, everything
we say, must be for the Lord, for the glory of His Father. It means that our lives should look very
different from those who do not believe.
Jesus is telling us that this is what it means to have faith in Him,
that faith is far more than just words.
No, as St. James tells us in the
second reading, real faith is visible, it can be seen through our works, our
actions, our love. Make no mistake, we
cannot earn eternal life from our good works and our virtuous
lives. Only by the grace that comes to
us from our faith in Jesus Christ, by His death and resurrection, do we gain
eternal life. But if our faith is
alive, it is also on fire, it can’t be contained, it expresses itself in all
that we do. Not only in our concern for
the poor, the hungry, the sick and the grieving, but in our reaching out and
helping the poor, the hungry, the sick and the grieving.
We believe that this faith is NOT a one-and-done thing, say the words
and you’re saved. It’s a lifelong
journey of ever-deepening commitment, of living more and more faithfully for
Jesus Christ. A decision every day to
follow the Lord and Him alone.
I don’t know about you, but that’s a
real challenge, a very high bar. I fall
far short of it much of the time. We are blessed indeed to have the sacraments
to give us the grace to persevere – the
Sacrament of Reconciliation where we confess to the Lord how we’ve failed – in
what we’ve done and in what we’ve failed to do – and the Eucharist, where we
gather as one people united in faith around the Lord’s table, to share in His
body and blood, to be strengthened and nourished and enlivened to go forth to
be His presence in the world around us.
So as we go through this week, let
us pray to the Lord, to deepen our faith, and increase our love and to use us
to be His presence in the world. To give
us the strength and courage and love to witness to Him, by our words and by our
works.
In the name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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