Know Only Jesus Crucified

This is a computer-generated transcription that has been included to make the homily searchable.  It has not been verified by the author. 

“You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.”  How can we be this salt of the earth, this light of the world today, in our situation, in the world in which is called a post Christian society, a society which is becoming like pagan and even anti-Christian, worse than pagan, because anti-Christian. And so how can we fulfill this call to be salt and light in this situation? And so, we have a reading today from St Paul, and we have a lot to learn from him about how; because what Jesus is calling us to is participate in this mission of saving souls. And that’s, of course, not an easy thing. It’s often a hard, slow effort, and which we’re called to be faithful. We don’t always see a success, but we’re called to be faithful and leave the rest in God’s hands. So, let’s see St Paul’s example. And so just first of all to recall the situation. Before he came to Corinth, he had been at Athens, and the Acts of the Apostles, speaks of his time in Athens. And remember that Athens was renowned as an intellectual and cultural center; centuries before it had been the city of Socrates and Plato and Aristotle and the Greek playwrights like Sophocles and so forth, such an astounding place of human creativity and art and philosophy. And so, we might compare it today to like some of the best universities in the world, or city like Paris, known for its culture. But that flowering in Athens had been centuries earlier, and by the time St Paul is coming now, it’s a long way from there. So, it still has some reputation, but it’s basically living on its reputation. And this is what the Act of the apostles said when it says, “now all the Athenians and the foreigners who live there,” because a lot of people were attracted to Athens, “spent their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.” So, it’s not very complimentary, just spending all their time just gossiping, basically talking about different stuff. And so, St Paul is now challenged, at how is he supposed to speak to this Athens, these people in Athens. Remember, these are just the very earliest years of the spread of the gospel. And so, what is he supposed to do in Athens? And so, this is a big challenge for the evangelizer, and he’s got this very sophisticated Greek audience, and probably very bored and always just wanting something new. So how is he supposed to adapt to this situation? How far is he supposed to adapt to try to reach them, wanting to make it more accessible. So, the Acts gives us his summary of his preaching there, and it’s striking that he began, he relates it to their traditions there in Athens. And when he begins to speak of Jesus, he doesn’t even mention the crucifixion, but he begins to speak about the resurrection. But as soon as he begins to speak about the resurrection, they say, Okay, well, that’s enough for today. Well, maybe we’ll hear you sometime later. So, it’s a very disappointing response. And so, from there, he goes to Corinth. And so, Corinth is a big trading city. It doesn’t at all have the cultural heritage that Athens has. It’s a big business city with a lot of commerce, a lot of competition, and it’s known for its immorality. And to be known for your immorality in the Greek cities, and in the cities at that time, you have to be very immoral, because there’s a lot of immorality in all the cities. But Corinth stood out.  And half of its population is a slave population, so there’s a lot of injustice. And so, it’s a very difficult situation in this big, big corrupt city, but it seems like there’s also an opening for a true message of hope. And so, it seems that Paul, after Athens, changes his approach very much. And it seems like it bore a lot of fruit. We now have the great letters, the first and second letter to Corinthians, which are a result of him spending time there and then writing back to them. So, I want to focus on three lessons I think that we can learn from St Paul. Because I think we all know a lot of people that we love and care for, but who have wandered far, or maybe who have never really known the gospel of Jesus, and so, St Paul can is an example for us. And so, the first point is his fidelity to Jesus crucified. And remember, when he was at Athens, he didn’t even mention Jesus’ crucifixion, and it’s like this, maybe like this is going to be too hard for them, so my first approach, I won’t do it, but he takes a very different approach in Corinth. And probably if you had hired a PR firm to say, okay, how can I reach the people at Corinth talking about the crucifixion, would not have been high on their recommendations if you did a marketing survey of what’s the best way to reach them. But St Paul doesn’t follow that approach. Here’s what he says, “For Christ sent me,” and this is to the Corinthians, “for Christ sent me to preach the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom.” That’s what the Greeks loved. That’s what they valued so much, was someone who was a very eloquent speaker. It wasn’t really, it wasn’t divine wisdom, but someone who could speak in a very convincing, impressive way. So, St Paul says, “not with eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.” And then he says, “For Jews demand signs, signs of power, manifestations of power. And Greeks seek wisdom.” And again, oftentimes it’s not true divine wisdom, but it’s just kind of how to be successful in this world. But he says, “but we preached Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” And even in the reading today, he even says, “when I was among you, I didn’t want to know anything except Jesus, Christ and Him crucified.” So, the point that very controversial, scandalous point of Jesus’ crucifixion that St Paul in Athens didn’t even touch – here, he makes it the center of his message, directly confronting the prevailing attitudes of those who want signs of power and those who want worldly wisdom. And St Paul preaches the contradiction of Jesus crucified. And he says, “to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” And so, St Paul knows that this, the truth of Jesus crucified, speaks to the deepest yearning of the human heart, wanting not worldly wisdom, but true divine wisdom, true divine power. And for, as I said, many of those in Corinth were slaves, and this was a message that could bring hope also to those who are suffering in slavery. It’s striking today, of course, that it’s the feast of St Josephine Bakhita. And as I think about these points, I think of their relation to the reconquest and the messages of the reconquest. Because the messages that the Lord has asked us to share are very controversial, like a sign of contradiction, but we are seeking to be faithful to Jesus, to Jesus who was crucified by the religious leaders as a blasphemer. It wasn’t the religious leaders, of course, who actually carried out the crucifixion, but they were the ones who were responsible for it. And so, the message of Jesus crucified, fidelity to Jesus crucified. So that’s the first point, fidelity to Jesus crucified, as the mystery of God who offers Himself. And the second point – St Paul says, “when I was with you in weakness and in much fear and trembling, and my speech and my message was not implausible words of wisdom.” So, the Jews want signs of power. And St Paul says he is with them. He came in weakness, in fear and trembling, and the Greeks went eloquent speaking, and he said, my speech and my message was not implausible words of wisdom. So, he says that he came in weakness and not what they were seeking, and he wasn’t supported by a big established religion, but he was the member of a small, obscure, new sect that no one had ever heard of. And so, he’s coming in a very weak position, a weak position of power. And it would seem like a very weak message to be talking about someone who was crucified. And so, St Paul is sharing the very weakness of Jesus Himself. Jesus was not spiritually weak. He was a very strong person, but He accepted human weakness, especially at the cross, and He didn’t come like a powerful king surrounded by an immense army with a lot of money to so having the money and the force to make things happen. But He came in with His human, accepting human weakness. And of course, it ended in, well, it led Him to His crucifixion, and that’s what St Paul is speaking. But St Paul is revealing that in that what seems weak, there’s actually a divine strength. And so, St Paul is speaking about this weakness, but which opens the path to God. And I think of our poor little mission here, in which there’s our own personal weakness, my weakness, the weakness of all of us involved. And for instance, where the Lord has promised a manifestation, and until that manifestation happens, which just sounds like a crazy, a crazy promise. So, it just makes our position even weaker, in a sense, and we’re so small and so few, and so it’s a very weak situation. And there’s not only that, but there’s the whole situation in the Church today, in which the testimony of the Church is so weakened by the terrible scandals, the scandals which are publicized. And other times, whether it’s different things that scandalize people. You know, so many people, so many people have left the Church because they’ve been scandalized by things that they’ve experienced in the Church, and even just the very confusion in the Church’s message has weakened so much the Church’s testimony. So, for many different reasons, we’re in a situation of weakness. But the good thing about that is it can lead us to humility, and that’s what’s key, and that’s what I think St Paul is getting at – the humility, and that humility which leads us to the third and decisive element, which is trust in the Holy Spirit. So, St Paul, he says, after saying, “I was with you in weakness and in much fear and trembling and my spirit and my in my speech and my message were not implausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith may not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God,” not in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. I am laughing because I’m thinking, maybe that’s why the Lord didn’t let me do too many studies, so that it forces me to not depend on my own understanding or studies, education, but trusting in the Lord. Because the point St Paul is making is that the principal agent of evangelization is not him, as great an apostle as he is, as great a missionary as he is, it’s not him. It’s the Holy Spirit only. It’s no human eloquence has the power to truly change hearts, but it’s only the action of the Holy Spirit to truly change souls and open them to God’s grace. This has to be the action of the Holy Spirit. And so, we know our Lord Himself, Jesus Himself, gave us an example. Because when he dies on the cross, He’s dying, and it seems like His work has been destroyed, but He’s entrusting it to the Holy Spirit. He’s done His part, and He entrusted to the Holy Spirit. And so, He rises again, but He rises and goes quickly to heaven and again, entrusting to the Holy Spirit to finish what He has begun. And so that’s we may not, that’s an example for us, that we may not see on earth the fruits of our efforts. But if we’re faithful, we can entrust them to the Holy Spirit. And I think that’s what the Lord is calling our little mission here to do, to trust in the action of the Holy Spirit. Here we are putting out this very controversial message, saying we believe that the Lord has shared some prophetic messages with us, and they’re very controversial. They’re saying that there’s a usurper on the chair of Peter, and we’re just this tiny little community saying that. And when we said that, we knew we were going to be – a lot of people were going to leave us. Maybe we thought, maybe everybody will. We don’t know what’s going to happen. And so, it’s been very surprising for us to see the number of people, number of you all, and other people, a lot of them living far away, but who have contacted us, but who have been deeply convicted by these messages. And that’s not our work. It’s obvious from what they say, that that’s the work of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit who often, many times, the Holy Spirit had already awakened them. Bishop Strickland, Bishop Strickland, just in a message he just published a few days ago, talked about an emergency. The Church is in an emergency and he says, where it’s no longer possible to remain silent, that that would be, that the silence now would be guilty. And so, the same situation. So, a number of people have received this life in the Holy Spirit to sense that, and other people have shared with us how just reading the messages, they sensed that they were convinced that it was the Holy Spirit speaking through these messages. And so there again, we’re trusting in the Lord, we put out these messages and realize and seeing the people that the Holy Spirit has already touched have already responded. Like this remnant, which is part of His luminous army that He is forming. And so, to summarize those three points, the first is fidelity to Jesus crucified and risen. Jesus crucified and risen, not trying to empty or avoid the scandal of Jesus on the cross. And the second is humbly accepting our weakness. We’re not the holiest, we’re not the strongest, we’re not the most educated or most intelligent or most eloquent. So just accepting humbly that weakness, but that can actually, instead of discouraging us, that actually opens the door. And that’s the third point to the Holy Spirit, trusting in the Holy Spirit. And so, when we’re faced with these challenges of evangelizing, we do what we can. We, when the Holy Spirit asks us to speak, we speak. When he asks us to serve – but because that’s also very a powerful testimony, the testimony of a loving service. Isaiah, the passage from Isaiah today, gives examples, and then a loving service, so also prayer and sacrifice. So those are things we can do, but then the rest we leave in the hands of the Lord, in the hands of the Holy Spirit. And so to conclude, as we celebrate this Mass today, we might think perhaps of at least one person in particular that you would like, that you are praying that this person receive the gospel and with our Blessed Mother, mother of the apostles, Queen of the apostles, as we celebrate this holy sacrifice, which the Mass is, the Holy Sacrifice of Jesus’ sacrifice on Calvary, of Jesus, crucified and risen. And so we unite ourselves with Him, offering our intercession, offering also our own weakness, our own prayer and sacrifices. So doing what we can, praying, serving, speaking, sacrificing, but then, above all, entrusting the rest through the Holy Spirit. And I’ll just end with this phrase that the Lord gave through the prophet Isaiah in our passage today, “then light shall rise for you in the darkness.” Amen. 

KEYWORDS / PHRASES:
Matthew 5:13-16
Isaiah 58:7-10