Fifteenth Sunday: Rite of Acceptance into the Order of Catechumens
This was the alternate homily that I gave at 10:45 Mass, during which we accepted a young man into the Order of Catechumens.
In the ancient Church, there were several so-called orders within the assembly. The main group or order was, of course, the believers. These had been baptized and had come to accept Jesus Christ, to live within the Church and celebrate the sacraments. Other orders included the Order of Widows, those women whose husbands had died and had no supporting family members. These women were taken care of by the community, and in turn served the community as they were able. Another order was the Order of Penitents. These people had sinned publicly, usually through some violation of the sixth commandment, and were unable to partake of the sacramental life of the Church. They usually confessed their sins, and were given a lengthy penance to accomplish, and then were reunited with the Church on Holy Thursday.
The other order, which we still have today, is the Order of Catechumens. These are unbaptized people who desired to become one with the Church and live the life of faith. This is the order into which we accept Aaron today. His search for Truth has led him here to us, and we have accepted him in our ritual. This rite of acceptance into the Order of Catechumens is one that symbolizes a kind of first official step for Aaron. He has been inquiring into the faith and now wishes to join us. His formation will continue in the months to come, and he will be baptized, receive Confirmation and First Eucharist at the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday night.
We are blessed to have Aaron with us today, because his presence indicates that our faith is alive and vibrant. His presence shows us that God still searches for his people, calling them out of darkness into his own wonderful light. As he continues to journey toward baptism, he will be with us in the assembly, being dismissed with candidates for Full Communion, until that day when they can all join us at the Table of the Eucharist.
We accept Aaron publicly today, not just for his benefit, but also for ours, and for two very specific reasons. First, we as a community have a responsibility to bring the faith to all people until the day of the Lord’s return. It’s not just the RCIA team and catechists, not just the priests and staff, but the entire community that makes this happen. Our faith must be a witness to Aaron and to others that Christ is alive among us and longs to lead us all to salvation.
Second, we have a need to grow in our own faith. Every day, we come up against new obstacles, new darkness, and our faith must shine light into all of these situations. We have a need to come to know our Lord Jesus in more intimate and meaningful ways. And so Aaron isn’t journeying in faith alone here; we are all journeying and growing with him.
Just like that seed that found its rootedness in the good soil, so too may our own faith, and Aaron’s, take root in the good soil of instruction and prayer and earnest longing for Christ. May God’s Word go forth from us and never return to God void, but instead achieve the end for which he sent it, yielding a harvest of a hundred or sixty or even thirty fold.
Sphere: Related ContentThe Easter Vigil
Next Sunday, I will have the wonderful privilege of baptizing my brand-new niece Katie. This past Thursday, I anointed a parishioner who is very close to death. On Monday, I will preside at the funeral of my mother’s aunt who was over 90 years old. This past year has been a roller coaster of emotions for me, rejoicing here in ministry at St. Raphael’s and burying my own beloved father. I thought about all of these things this week as I prepared for this Holy Vigil. It is always so amazing for me to see Christ’s presence in all the stages of life, from birth to death, in good times and in bad.
Did you hear what we prayed at the very beginning of tonight’s vigil? Listen again: “Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end, Alpha and Omega, all time belongs to him, and all ages, to him be glory and power through every age forever. Amen.” And these are important, even brave words for us to offer on this most holy night. Because it is certainly the position of our world that time is to be endured, that it is fleeting, and that it ultimately meaningless. But tonight’s vigil proclaims that all time is holy, sanctified by our God who has walked with us through our yesterdays, remains with us today, and forges on with us toward our tomorrows. There is not a single moment of our life, not a single moment of our history that is not holy because every moment has been, is now, and always will be imbued with the presence of our God who is holiness itself.
As we have walked through Lent, and especially through this Holy Week, there is even a temptation, I think, to come to think that the world, and especially human history, was a creative experiment that went horribly wrong, that God sent his Son to clean up the mess only to have him killed for it, and then in a last move of desperation raised him up out of the grave. But that’s not what we’ve gathered to celebrate tonight. Salvation was not some kind of dumb luck or happy accident. The salvation of the world had been part of God’s creative plan all along. Humanity, given the grace of free will had, and has, certainly gone astray. But God did not create us simply to follow our own devices and end up in hell. He created us for himself, and so sent his Son Jesus to walk our walk, to die our death, and to rise up over it all in the everlasting promise of eternal life. That’s what we celebrate on this most holy of all nights.
Our world would have us believe that everything is futile and that the only possible way to endure this world is to cultivate a kind of cynical apathy that divorces us from our God, our loved ones, our communities and our world. We are conditioned to believe that time, and life itself, is meaningless, that there is nothing worth living for, and certainly nothing worth dying for. But tonight’s vigil debunks all of that. Tonight we are assured by our God that our present is no less redeemable than was our past, nor is it any less filled with promise than is our future.
Tonight we have heard stories of our salvation. Each of our readings has been a stop in the history of God’s love for us. God’s plan for salvation, and his sanctification of time, began back at the beginning of it all. Each of the days was hallowed with precious creation, and all of it was created and pronounced good. Then Abraham’s faithfulness and righteousness earned us a future as bright as a zillion twinkling stars. Later, as Moses and the Israelites stood trapped by the waters of the red sea, God’s providence made a way for them and cut off their pursuers, making the future safe for those God calls his own. Keeping all of that in mind, the prophet Baruch sings of the wisdom that God makes known to us, extolling the greatness of God who leads his people in understanding and splendor. St. Paul rejoices in the baptism that has washed away the stains of sin as we have died and risen with Christ, and has brought us into a new life that leads ultimately to God’s kingdom. And finally, our Gospel tonight tells us not to be afraid, to go forth into the Galilee of our future and expect to see the Lord.
We Christians have been spared the necessity of a cynical view of the world and its people. Our gift has been and always is the promise that Jesus Christ is with us always, even until the end of the world. And so, just as God sanctified all of time through his interventions of salvation, so too he has sanctified our lives through the interventions of Sacrament. We are a sacramental people, purified and reborn in baptism, fed and strengthened in the Eucharist, and in Confirmation, set on fire to burn brightly and light up our world. Tonight we celebrate these three Sacraments of Initiation, all of us recalling and renewing our baptism, Kelli being Confirmed in the faith, and all of us strengthened with the Eucharist, Kelli for the very first time tonight.
These days of Lent have been a sanctifying journey for our sister Kelli who joins us in faith tonight, but it has been no less sanctifying for all of us, as we have celebrated the Stations of the Cross together, gathered for fish fries, attended our parish mission, spent time before the Eucharist in our Forty Hours Devotion, and so much more. Christ has definitely sanctified this Lenten time for all of us, and has now brought us to the fullness of this hour, when he rises over sin and death to bring us all to the promise of life eternal.
And it is this very night that cleanses our world from all the stains of sin and death and lights up the darkness. The Exsultet, the Easter Proclamation that I sang when we entered Church tonight tells us: “Of this night, Scripture says, ‘The night will be clear as day: it will become my light, my joy.’ The power of this holy night dispels all evil, washes guilt away, restores lost innocence, brings mourners joy; it casts out hatred, brings us peace, and humbles earthly pride.” What a gift this night is, not just to us gathered here in this church, not just to all the Catholics gathered together throughout the world on this holy night, but to all people in every time and place. Our world needs the light and our time needs the presence of Christ, and our history needs salvation. Blessed be God who never leaves his people without the great hope of his abiding presence!
And so, having come through this hour to be sanctified in this vigil, we will shortly be sent forth to help sanctify our own time and place. Brightened by this beautiful vigil, we now become a flame to light up our darkened world. That is our ministry in the world. That is our call as believers. That is our vocation as disciples. “May the Morning Star, which never sets, find this flame still burning: Christ, that Morning Star, who came back from the dead, and shed his peaceful light on all humankind, [the Son of God] who lives and reigns forever and ever. Amen.”
Sphere: Related ContentThe Baptism of the Lord
Today is the last day of the Christmas Season. What a wonderful gift we have as Catholics to celebrate the birth of our Lord for an extended period of time! Last week was the Epiphany of the Lord, a time to celebrate Christ manifested in the flesh, the greatest gift of God to his creation. On the occasion of the Epiphany, we have three traditional readings. The first is the reading about the magi visiting the Christ Child. The second is the wedding feast at Cana, where Christ turned water into wine, the first of his miracles. And the third is the Gospel we have today, of Christ being baptized by John the Baptist in the River Jordan. So today is the octave day of the Epiphany.
As we heard last week, Epiphany means “manifestation.” In each of these Gospels, Christ is manifest in our world in a different way. The magi celebrated that this baby was truly the manifestation of God in our world, because no other birth would have been occasioned by such great astrological signs. The wedding feast at Cana celebrates that Jesus is no ordinary man, that he had come to change the world by the shedding of his blood, just as he changed the water into wine. And today his baptism celebrates that Christ is manifest in the weakness of human flesh to identify himself with sinners through baptism.
So if Jesus Christ identified himself with us sinners through baptism, then we who have been baptized must also identify ourselves with him. We must manifest him in the world through living the Gospel and following in his ways. Today we hear in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles that Jesus, having been anointed with the Holy Spirit, “went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil.” That’s the model he set for all who would be baptized as he was. So we baptized ones must do the same.
It is easy to see how we can go about doing good. There are thousands of opportunities to do that in our lives. Children and young people can do good by obeying their parents, being kind to brothers, sisters and friends, attending to their school work, and praying for those who are needy. Adults can strive to lead godly lives, raising families in peace, working diligently at their jobs, and being of service to the community. Every day there is an opportunity to do good in ordinary and extraordinary ways. All we have to do is decide to live our baptismal call and do it.
Healing those oppressed by the devil might seem harder to do. But there are lots of ways to cast out demons. Teaching something to another person is a way to cast out the demons of ignorance. Reaching out to an elderly neighbor is a way to cast out the demons of loneliness. Educating ourselves on the evils of racism is a way to cast out the demons of hatred. Buying fair trade coffee, or bringing food to Loaves and Fishes, or volunteering at Hesed House is a way to cast out the demons of poverty and hunger and homelessness. Visiting the sick, or picking up medication or groceries for a sick neighbor, is a way to cast out the demons of illness. We have opportunities to heal those oppressed by the devil all the time. All we have to do is decide to do it.
On this Epiphany Day, on this Christmas day, Christ, born among us, enters the waters of baptism to sanctify them through his body. Our own baptism is a share in this great baptism and outpouring of the Holy Spirit. We who have been baptized then are literally INSPIRED - given the Holy Spirit - in order to continue to make Christ manifest in our world. All we have to do is decide to do it.
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