May 25th, 2014 Sixth Sunday in Easter.

“Beloved, Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts. 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 for conscience clear.” These words of St. Peter written in the first century were repeated to us by his successor, His Holiness, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI at His last visit to our beloved Country before he retired. By these words of Peter, the pope was calling us called, each and every Catholic in the United States, to give a stronger witness to others of the hope that we hold in our hearts. This was and is is a great challenge for us in our culture, which is in so many ways is quickly losing hope. It is a great challenge in our current environment that is becoming increasingly hostile to the truths of the Gospel. However, in today’s Gospel, we learn that the Holy Spirit will be with us to give us His help in all the little moments and in all the difficult moments that we are called to give faithful witness to Christ who is our hope, our Way, our Truth and our Life.

Certainly our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, understands us intimately well. After all He knitted us while we were in our mother’s womb; He knows us better than we know our self. And so He knows our feeble human nature and how fickle can be our love. He understood that His apostles would be scattered during His passion and death. He knew it would take time and His help for them to be able to grow in their faith, hope (trust) and their love so that they could be His faithful witness, His faithful friends who would witness to His love by proclaiming His truth in its fullness, boldly and without fear even unto death.

We too, like those first apostles, are afraid of giving witness to Jesus, and He as well knows our fear. We can be afraid what the truth may cost us. He knows that we can be tempted to not give a reason for the hope that is within us by burying our head and the sand and pretending that we can somehow be faithful Catholics without fidelity to the teachings of the Church which are the same as the truths of the Gospel. Jesus today however tells us that we will not be orphaned; he will not leave us alone, that through the Sacraments of the Church, He will be with us until the end of the world. And even more, He promises to send the Advocate, the Spirit of truth to us in order to help us, to strengthen our love for Him, and to lead us to all truth, to lead us to The Truth who is Jesus; and Jesus is the hope that never disappoints. He will be our strength in order to faithful witnesses to the truth He came to give us in order that we would be free and have life and have it to the full.

While he was last in the United States, Pope Emeritus Benedict also reminded us of the great dignity and the great responsibility we American Roman Catholics have in Christ. His words bear repeating; Pope Emeritus Benedict said to us:

“You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people he claims for his own, to
proclaim his glorious works” (1 Pet 2:9). These words of the Apostle Peter do not simply remind us of the dignity, which is ours by God’s grace; they also challenge us to an ever-greater fidelity to the glorious inheritance, which we have received in Christ (cf. Eph 1:18). They challenge us to examine our consciences, to purify our hearts, to renew our baptismal commitment to reject Satan and all his empty promises. They challenge us to be a people of joy, heralds of the unfailing hope (cf. Rom 5:5) born of faith in God’s word, and trust in his promises."

Benedict here is telling us that to be faithful witnesses to Hope for our increasingly hopeless country and world entails many difficulties. To begin with, we have to do the difficult work of examining our conscience, particularly in the Sacrament of Penance. There, in the Tribunal of God’s Divine Mercy, honestly and humbly confessing those areas of our lives where we have not been faithful and which we continue to not be faithful to our baptismal promises. This hard work is the very foundation of our ability to give effective witness to our world to Christ.

Our witness is not and cannot be authentic if we fail to do this difficult work of repentance, of changing for the better with the help of God’s grace and our own hard work. So often we can tend to avoid trying to witness to our faith because we are ashamed of our sins. We can feel like hypocrites; for we ourselves have failed to live the Gospel so many times and in so many ways. Yet, the Sacrament of penance cleanses us from this fear and shame and gives us the grace to do better, to become better, more faithful, stronger and bolder followers of Christ; thus, giving witness not so much by what we say but by how we live.

Another aspect of our difficulty with giving witness is our culture is that our culture has basically relegated religion to solely a private affair. Our culture says if you want to belief that fine as long as you keep your beliefs to yourself; sadly many Catholics buy into this great error. Now, it is true that we want to respect the freedom of people to believe as their conscience dictates; we shouldn’t force our beliefs on others. This is also a true principle for civic life; the state should not dictate our beliefs.

This all being said, on the other hand, however, faith is really an ascent of our hearts and minds to the truth that is revealed by the Holy Spirit to the Church and through the Church. In other words, faith is a commitment to not just believe, but to live fully the truth, which is contained in its fullness only in the Teachings of the One, Holy, Catholic and apostolic Church. Faith is to live the teachings of the Church, all of them, no picking and choosing, to live them with our whole heart, mind, will, strength, with all our being, with the help of the necessary grace of the sacraments. To live the truth, to live the teachings of the Church is what is known as holiness and sanctity and is what the second Vatican called the universal call to holiness.

Sadly, us Catholics so often have difficulties with this reality of our faith, that of living the truth, living all the teachings of the Church. I think one of the main reasons is because of the false notion of freedom that our culture purposes to us and even imposes on us. Many think that obedience to the Church’s teachings is oppressive, that they stifle our ability to be free and even to think and be ourselves. Our Holy Father addressed this when he said,

“Authority”… “obedience”. To be frank, these are not easy words to speak nowadays. Words like these represent a “stumbling stone” for many of our contemporaries, especially in a society which rightly places a high value on personal freedom. Yet, in the light of our faith in Jesus Christ – “the way and the truth and the life” – we come to see the fullest meaning, value, and indeed beauty, of those words. The Gospel teaches us that true freedom, the freedom of the children of God, is found only in the self-surrender which is part of the mystery of love. Only by losing ourselves, the Lord tells us, do we truly find ourselves (cf. Lk 17:33). True freedom blossoms when we turn away from the burden of sin, which clouds our perceptions and weakens our resolve, and find the source of our ultimate happiness in him who is infinite love, infinite freedom, infinite life. “In his will is our peace”.

If we turn to Him in faith, hope and love, the Holy Spirit allows us to surrender ourselves fully to Christ and to all that He has revealed; to live the truth no matter how hard or difficult. Surrender to the truth that comes from God far from restricting our freedom gives us true freedom, freedom to chose the True, the Good and the Beautiful. In this, freedom is not freedom from something but freedom for something; and that something is God and the truth of His life giving ways, which bring us, Hope and fill us with God’s Divine Mercy and Love. And far from asking us to abandon our intelligence in some kind of blind obedience, the Church calls us to us all of our intelligence in service of the Gospel.

As we are preparing this coming week for the Ascension of our Lord, which will be celebrated next Sunday, and following this Pentecost, let us ask for an outpouring of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in the life of the Whole Church. Let ask Him to enlighten us to our sins, to our failure to love God by falling faithful to His Commandments and confess them truthfully and with a contrite heart in Confession, His tribunal of Mercy. Let us ask Him to help us surrender ourselves totally to our loving Father through Christ His Son. When we give ourselves totally to Christ and struggle to live fully the teachings of the Church, we lose nothing of ourselves, but instead we find ourselves and inherit true freedom and true dignity and life, the freedom, dignity and the life of sons and daughters of the Almighty God, our loving Father.

By obedience to Our Heavenly Father’s Commandments, which includes obedience to all the teachings of His Church, we show not only our faith in Him, but also our Love for Him; and He in return brings us into an intimate union with Himself through Christ His Son, in the Love of the Holy Spirit. Yes the truth may cost us, but it is better to suffer for doing good, if that be the will of God, than for doing evil. And proclaiming the truth of the teachings of the Church which are the teachings of Christ of God Himself, not only by our words but most especially by our lives is the good to which we are called in order to be used to lead souls to Christ so that they too may embrace the truth and be saved.

Let us pray: Come Holy Spirit; come by means of the powerful intercession of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Thy well beloved Spouse. (x3) Amen.