Exodus 16:2-4, 12-15
Eph 4:17, 20-24
John 6:24-35
Bishop Untener's Homily
The Depths of our Faith
One of the themes in John's Gospel is the failure of people (including the disciples) to understand the deeper meaning of what Jesus is saying.
In today's passage, for example, Jesus talks about giving people the bread of life. He's referring to the gift of divine life. The crowd, remembering the miraculous feeding of the multitude, thinks he's offering them another supply of barley loaves.
There are many examples of this in John's Gospel. I'll give you just one. Jesus tells Nicodemus that a person must be "born again," referring to divine life. Nicodemus takes this literally and wonders how people can re-enter their mother's womb to be born again. He misses the deeper truth.
I'm not suggesting that, in each of these incidents, the people should have understood instantly and completely the depth of what Jesus was saying. I simply want to call attention to the fact that the truths of our faith, and our traditions, and our liturgical rituals, and our symbols, have a depth to them. It is one thing to be able to name the truths of our faith, as we do, for example, in the Creed. It is another thing to be able to go to the depths of these truths.
How do we do that? We use human reason to explore and understand more fully the deeper meaning of the truths we profess.
Faith and Reason
One of the trademarks of the Catholic Church is a friendly relationship between faith and reason. It's no accident that the Church founded the first great universities in the world. It was the Church that founded the University of Bologna in the 12th century, and the University of Paris in the 13th century, and the University of Cologne in France in the 14th century.
We believe that faith enriches reason, and reason enriches faith. St. Anselm, back in the 11th century, had it right. He coined the phrase: "Faith seeking understanding."
Fundamentalism does not accept this friendly relationship between faith and reason. To the fundamentalist, faith is an enclosed world all its own, a place where reason cannot enter. For example, you have to take every word of Scripture literally. If study and analysis indicate that there is much symbolism in the story of creation as it is told in the first chapters of Genesis, well, that is just plain wrong. It is an invasion of reason into the separate world of faith. The fundamentalist would say that if Genesis describes creation as taking place in 7 days - no matter what literary analysis tells us about the author's use of symbolism, no matter what science tells us about the origins of the universe - creation took place in seven days, and that is that.
A Lesson for Us
I say all this because you are the products of a Catholic school. Our Catholic schools modeled a friendly relationship between faith and reason. You received what is called a "classical education". Human reason was a friend, not an enemy. You learned history, literature, mathematics, geography, science, physics all in the same rooms that you learned religion. It was "all of a piece." You learned to think, apply human reason to everything you believed.
But that raises a problem that we have to face. Your understanding of every subject you studied in school has advanced during these past 30, 40, 50 years. I worry that for most Catholics this has not been true of their understanding of the faith.
Why do I say that? I've been a priest for 40 years. Often, after Mass, someone will come up and ask a question about our truths or our practices. And they begin by saying, "Father, the way I was taught..." And I look at them. Their hair is as gray as mine. "The way I was taught" goes back 40 or 50 years. Their knowledge in every other part of their life has grown. But their knowledge of the faith is where it was 50 years ago.
It would be such a different experience to have someone come up and say, "I was doing some reading on the history of the Mass, and I was wondering..." That seldom if ever happens.
An Example
Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about... one that may be very sensitive, but because of that, it might be very helpful.
One of the things Catholics can get upset about these days is whether to stand or kneel during the Eucharistic Prayer. Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with kneeling or with standing. The question is, which posture best expresses, and best helps us enter into what is taking place during the Eucharistic prayer?
The fundamentalist approach would be simply to say that if was good enough for our parents to kneel, then it's good enough for us. A different approach, looking to reason as a helpful friend, would be to say: "What is our history of this? What are we doing in the Eucharistic Prayer, and what posture best expresses and helps us to do whatever we are doing?"
Let's pursue it that way. An enlightening (and perhaps surprising) question that helps us get to the heart of the matter is this: In the Eucharistic Prayer, whom are we looking at? Some might say that we are looking at and adoring Jesus Christ who becomes present when the words of consecration are said.
But the truth is we are not looking at Jesus. We are joining with Jesus, and together with him looking at and speaking to God the Father. Every single word of the Eucharistic prayer, from beginning to end, is directed to God the Father. We are joining with Jesus as he looks to the Father and gives himself entirely to God - especially in his dying on the cross - and invites us to join with him in doing this. The crescendo of the Eucharistic Prayer comes at the very end when the priest holds up high the Bread and the Cup. He is not holding these up so that we can see them. He is lifting them up to the Father and inviting all of us to look with Christ to the Father, and to say to the Father, ”Through him, with him, in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours Almighty Father, forever and ever. Amen."
That is why our earliest tradition is to stand during the Eucharistic prayer. We are standing with Christ in his act of giving himself (and all of us) to the Father.
A Challenge
I close with a challenge, a call. You received a classical education. I challenge you and call you to grow in the knowledge of your faith. You don't have to go to class - although there are an increasing number of adult classes available. There are excellent books in every field of theology and liturgy and Church customs. Some are thick books and some are slim books. Some are heavy reading and some are light reading. Find one that you like. There are also fine periodicals that provide an excellent way to stay up to date. I challenge you to go to the depths of your faith and make use of our friendly relationship with reason to deepen your understanding of our truths. It is a life-long process: Faith seeking understanding.
A good ending to these reflections might be the prayer in the Catholic Book of Blessings, for the blessing of a school:
Lord God almighty, in your kindness hear our prayers. We dedicate this building to the education of our people, to the progress of the sciences, and to learning. Make it become a center where students and teachers, imbued with the words of truth, will search for the wisdom that guides the Christian life, and strive wholeheartedly to look to Christ as their teacher, who lives forever and ever. Amen.
Originally given at the reunion of all the students of St. Mary's Cathedral School. August 3, 2003