In today's first reading, we hear about how
it is important that people are taught correctly regarding religion. When I was a seminarian up at Sacred Heart
School of Theology in Milwaukee just before being ordained as a priest, we had
a week-long visit from a visitation team of priests, sisters, and lay people,
appointed by the Vatican to visit all of the seminaries who are educating men
to be priest. The
goal of the visitation team was to ensure that we as seminarians were being
properly taught and formed in our faith in our role as future priests, that our
theology and moral ethics truly reflected what our Church teaches. Being
faithful to the word and the spirit of the Gospel is a daunting task indeed,
one that we grow into as we journey daily as a pilgrim Church and a pilgrim
people.
Today,
I think this task is even more difficult as our secular world seems to be going
in a very different direction than our Church. As I
walk around in public in my clerics, I realize how counter cultural that is in
our society today, while it would not have been so a generation earlier in our
society. Our
reading today from the first letter of Timothy challenges us to truly listen to
the sound words of the Good News of Christ, to not have a disposition for
arguments and verbal disputes. We
can get so caught up in the ways of our modern world, in striving for earthly
accomplishments and material gain, yet the radical message of Christ's Good
News calls out to us and challenges us to take up our cross and follow Christ,
to deny ourselves in order to gain everything that our faith is all about. May
we truly open ourselves to the Gospel – may it penetrate our very hearts, our
minds, and our souls.
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