“I Believe in God”

1st Sunday of Lent

“I believe in God,
  the Father almighty,
  creator of heaven and earth.
  I believe in Jesus Christ,
  his only Son, our Lord.”

Thus begins the Apostles’ Creed, the earliest known Christian creed. Like the later Nicene Creed, it opens with a statement: “I believe” which in Latin is “Credo,” and from this the Church’s authoritative summaries of our Christian Faith are called creeds. The Apostles’ Creed is so named because it is rightly considered a faithful profession of the Faith the apostles believed and preached. Since our return to public Masses, we have been proclaiming the Apostles’ Creed together on Sundays and solemnities. For this season of Lent, I am going to do something I have never tried before. Beginning this Sunday and continuing through the 5th Sunday of Lent, I will be preaching a homily series on the Apostles’ Creed. Week by week, we will unpack this, “the oldest Roman catechism,” and explore its meaning and implications for us. The Apostles Creed begins, as all things began, with God.

“I believe in God.” The whole creed speaks of God, and when it also speaks of man and of this world it does so in relation to God. Each passage in the creed tells us more about him, much like how God has progressively revealed himself to us, who he is and what he is like, more and more throughout salvation history. Who is God? God is the fullness of Being and of every perfection. God is without beginning and without end. God is Truth who cannot lie. The beginning of sin and of man’s fall was due to a lie of the tempter who sowed doubt concerning God’s word, faithfulness, and love. God is love. God’s very being is love. By sending his only Son and the Spirit of love in the fullness of time, God has revealed his innermost secret: God is an eternal exchange of love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They call us to share in their personal communion of love now and forever, but the choice whether to respond is ours.

“I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.” God the Father is the Father of all. He is the origin of everything, of the Holy Trinity in eternity and of all Creation in history. The Father fashions the material universe and the spiritual realms distinct from and outside of himself, and by his gift he creates new life inside of them, including the angels and us. God the Father is transcendent authority, perfectly just, while providing good things and loving care for all his children.

The story of Noah’s Ark and the Great Flood from the Book of Genesis communicates important truths. God is our Creator with sovereignty over all he has made. He is holy and hates sin in his creatures. God’s Great Flood aims to wash away sin from the face of the earth and then begin anew through a new covenant with Noah. Yet the consequences of the Fall were neither cured nor cleansed; Noah and his household carried sin with them onto the ark and humanity’s waywardness continued after they disembarked.

This represents a cautionary tale for us against a common human error or misconception about how evil might be cancelled or conquered in this world. In 1945, the Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was sentenced to a Soviet forced labor camp for his criticism of communist tyranny. After his release he went on to write his most famous work, “The Gulag Archipelago.” In it, the Christian Solzhenitsyn shares this true insight:

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

We can and should work for change in this world, but advocacy for changing evils “out there” will prove ultimately futile without accompanying spiritual change within us. But how are we to accomplish this most difficult transformation inside our own hearts? Human history and our personal experience show we cannot achieve this on our own, so how shall we be saved?

“I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.” On the cusp of his fruitful public ministry,

“The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert,
  and he remained in the desert for forty days,
  tempted by Satan. He was among wild beasts…”

After the Fall of man, the garden paradise is replaced by a desert. The animals, formerly tame in the Garden of Eden, have become wild in our fractured world. Humanity now had a great debt with God it could not pay, a vast chasm between him and us we could not cross. The first Adam died unatoned, but a new Adam has come. The Eternal Son of God entered time and space and became human to reconcile God and man and establish a new covenant between us. Jesus comes to undo the Fall, dwelling in the desert among the wild beasts, to be tempted by the ancient serpent, the devil. Jesus comes to reclaim the crown that Adam had lost. Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, would be the Lord of all. He comes and proclaims:

“This is the time of fulfillment.
  The Kingdom of God is at hand.
  Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

During these forty desert days of Lent, Jesus invites you to approach him, asking his forgiveness in the Sacrament of Confession. He invites you dwell with him, spend time with him, encountering him through daily prayer and the Holy Eucharist. Jesus would accompany and strengthen you in your earnest battles against temptation, growing you in his virtues. And he would perfect your love, forming you in his likeness, preparing you for more fruitful works on earth and for the supreme, communal joy of Heaven. Now is the time for Confession, for prayer, for the Mass, growth in virtue, and growth in love.

The Holy Spirit would lead you out to Jesus during this desert retreat of Lent. And everything Jesus does for you, everything he does within you, is to lead you back to God our Father. I believe and proclaim that this is the Father’s will for you. Yet, despite all of almighty God’s infinite, omnipotent power, only you can freely choose whether to answer him with your “Yes.”

False Paths to Paradise

Early in the Book of Genesis we read about a great flood wiping out humanity (sparing only Noah, his three sons, and their wives) and then about people building a great city and high tower until God confounds their efforts. These two inspired tales hold important lessons for every society in history, including our’s today.

When God saw how wicked the human race was he decided to pour down judgment on the earth and start over. So he told Noah, the best of men, to build an ark for his family to survive. Once the floodwaters had receded, “God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them: Be fertile and multiply and fill the earth.” This was to be Eden anew. But when Noah drank wine to excess and became drunk he was somehow violated by his son while laying naked inside his tent. The flood was meant to cleanse the earth of sin, but sin stowed away upon the ark.

Then, after detailing Noah’s descendants, Genesis tells how people said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky, and so make a name for ourselves!” The Lord said, “If now, while they are one people and all have the same language, they have started to do this, nothing they presume to do will be out of their reach.” God confused their language so that they stopped building the city and scattered across the earth. Why did God react this way? That city is called Babel because God made them babblers but also likely in reference to ancient Babylon, the enemies of God’s people who had high towers called zigguratts on which they worshiped false gods and offered human sacrifices. God thwarts Babel to limit the evils they can accomplish.

The tales of the Great Flood and the Tower of Babel reflect two ineffective strategies for eradicating evil: purging all the wicked and uniting everyone apart from God. Our world seeks scapegoats, persons and groups to blame for our problems. “If only it were all so simple,” writes Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” Our world also clamors for greater unity in one leader or party, nation or race, economic system or secular ideology. We must not ignore politics, realizing that a movement detached from God and sufficiently empowered will lead people to physical and spiritual deaths.

God’s desire is to unite all peoples in Christ, undoing Babel with Pentecost. The Church, Christ in his members, is sent to save our world through conversion rather than destruction “for God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through him.” Sin and sinners must be opposed but not without the love which we ourselves have received as sinners reconciled to God. Take courage today by recalling the conversions of Saul and the Romans Empire, Christianity’s early enemies – by grace and virtue the Church can win over even her worst persecutors.

Catholic Twitter

Twitter.com is a social media website where both famous figures and less famous folks share their free thoughts of 280 characters or less. Pope Francis posts there daily (@Pontifex) alongside many other Catholics as well. There is a good deal of Catholic community, evangelization, and defenses of the Faith to be found on Twitter, depending on whom you follow. I recently came across a wonderful reflection by Fr. Dylan Schrader, a Catholic pastor in Missouri with a Ph.D. in systematic theology. @FrDylanSchrader wrote:

“If the Catholic Church fulfills the figure of Noah’s Ark, then of course the Church is ridiculed and seems stupid, crazy, or like a waste of time to the world until all of a sudden we realize that it’s our only hope.” Like Jesus says in the Gospels, in the days before the Great Flood people were eating and drinking, marrying and given in marriage, up until the day that Noah entered the ark. They had disbelieved until the flood waters came, and it carried them all away. So it will be with the Second Coming of Christ.

Twitter allows threads of conversation and Fr. Schrader’s tweet was apparently replied to by a Protestant Christian who wrote: “CHRIST JESUS, alone, is the hope of a [C]hristian… if your hope is in a church, then your hope is misplaced.” Does the Church displace or minimize the Lord? To this, Fr. Schrader answered, “That’s like saying that it’s Noah who saves from the flood, not the Ark.” Indeed, Noah built his Ark and Jesus builds his Church. The Ark was God’s means to save a portion of humanity through Noah. Likewise, the Catholic Church is God’s means for saving the human race through Christ.

Stained Glass Symbols — The Dove

A Symbol of the Holy Spirit

From the Ark, at the time of the Flood, Noah released a dove three times to scout for land. The bird’s return with a fresh olive leaf in its beak signaled an end to the deadly judgment and the beginning of new life. Noah’s dove revealed that peace was restored between heaven and earth. When Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River by John the Baptist, they saw the Holy Spirit descend in bodily form, like a dove, and land upon Christ. By receiving Christ’s baptism, the Holy Spirit comes to rest on us, pouring into us the new life and graces of the Trinity.

“He Is Not Here” — Easter Vigil

When the women came to the tomb they did not find Jesus, but a radiant messenger. He told them, “Do not be afraid! I know that you are seeking Jesus the crucified. He is not here.…” The tomb was empty, Jesus was not there.

Jesus was present at the beginning of creation, for through Him all things were made. Going forth from the Father’s mouth, He was at hand on earth throughout the ages, achieving His purposes.

He was mystically with Noah, who saved his family from death by building a ship, just as Jesus built the Church to save us.

He was mystically with Isaac, who, though bound and led to sacrifice, was not to be lost forever.

He was mystically with Moses, who freed God’s people from Pharaoh’s demonic slavery by leading them through miraculous waters.

He was mystically with all the prophets, in proclaiming a law to be written on hearts instead of stones, in promising the gift of a Holy Spirit from Heaven, in suffering at the hands of those who refused to hear wisdom.

He has been in His saints, from the least to the greatest, throughout the centuries to this very night. He is present here in all of us who are ‘living for God in Christ Jesus.’

By the all foreshadowings that proceeded His coming, and by the fruitful witness of all His saints ever since, we can confirm the angel’s words, “he has been raised just as he said.”

Jesus is not there in the empty tomb. He is here,  tonight, with us.

Prayers Gradually Answered — Wednesday, 6th Week in Ordinary Time—Year I

Noah’s Ark was no cruise ship, and forty days and nights on stormy waters is no pleasure cruise. Imagine what it was like for Noah; shoveling food for the animals all morning, shoveling something else all afternoon; hearing the squawking of the animals all night, hearing the complaints of your family all day. Noah must have been praying hard for land. He sends out a raven and it doesn’t come back. He sends out a dove and it brings back with a twig. After sending out the dove again they finally make landfall. Noah’s prayer was fulfilled in a gradual way, just like Jesus healed the blind man of today’s gospel in stages.

Sometimes we get impatient and question when our prayers for ourselves and others are not answered immediately, but we should not lose hope.  But remember, slow, gradual progress doesn’t mean that God’s plan is not being fulfilled. And just because you’re not instantly healed doesn’t mean that your prayer for healing is not being answered.

Christ’s Boat — Tuesday, 6th Week in Ordinary Time—Year I

Perhaps you’ve noticed at Mass that most of our prayers are directed to God the Father. That is why you see me looking up so often. I’m looking up to our Father in Heaven as I speak to Him. From time to time, while I’m looking up, I can’t help but notice the ceiling. Take a look for yourself. It often reminds me of a boat’s wooden hull. That is really quite appropriate, because the Church is a boat and it is an important boat to be in.

The old ark was a boat built by Noah in which a few persons, eight in all, were saved through the waters of the flood. The new ark is our Church, the boat built by Christ, in which many are saved through the waters of baptism. Jesus’ boat has the cross for its mast and its sails are filled by the winds of the Holy Spirit. The Catholic Church, the bark of Peter, is the only vessel that navigates safely through the dangerous waters of this world.

As the Church Fathers frequently said, “Outside the Church there is no salvation.” But how should we understand this teaching? Restated positively it means this: that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church, which is his Body. Basing Herself on Scripture and Tradition, Bride of Christ teaches that she, the Church, is necessary for salvation. As the Second Vatican Council repeated in modern times, Jesus “himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.”

It must be noted that this teaching is not aimed at those who do not know Christ and his Church through no fault of their own. “Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do His will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience – those too may achieve eternal salvation.”

“Although in ways known to Himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please Him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men.” If we love all men, we will naturally desire to share the truth and blessings of the Church’s Gospel with everyone. Think of it this way: while it is theoretically possible for anyone to swim the English Channel, it is a far easier crossing if we take the ferry. In the same way, it is not a matter of indifference if people come into the Church or not. The journey is much safer and easier if you’re in the boat.

Remember not underestimate the importance of the Church. In the end, all those who will be saved will be saved through their relationship, known or unknown, with the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church Jesus founded.

And do not underestimate the importance of the Mass. All the graces that flow into souls pours forth from the Catholic Church through this sacrifice we celebrate. The Mass takes the sacrifice of Calvary from then and there, through space and time, to here and now, and applies its power and effects to our world today. (What we’re doing here is a very important thing.)

And finally, do not underestimate the importance of remaining in the Church. May we never forsake it. We have to stay in the boat with Jesus Christ, because without Him, none of us can walk on water.