In today's first reading, we hear about how it is important that people are taught correctly regarding matters of faith. 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, all appointed by the Vatican to visit the seminaries who are educating men to be priests. 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 reflected what our Church teaches. Being faithful to the word of God is a daunting task indeed, one that we grow into as we journey daily as a pilgrim Church and a pilgrim people.
Today, 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 here in Mississippi where Catholics make up such a small part of the population, I realize how counter cultural that is in our society today, while it would not have been so a generation earlier in our society. In 1960s, the hippies saw themselves as counter-cultural. Today, I would say it is the priests and those who try to lives as disciples of Christ - we are the ones who are counter cultural now.
Our reading today from First Timothy challenges us to truly listen to the words of truth in 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 to 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 the Gospel penetrate our very hearts, our minds, and our souls.
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