23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, A September 10, 2023
Fr. Alexander Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
There are many things I love about being a priest: Mass, confessions, baptisms, weddings, flying in a helicopter to bless the crops from above… the fun stuff that only a priest gets to do, things that help people, often in ways I get to see first-hand. It’s why there’s joy even in the sadder stuff like anointings of the sick and funerals. As with anything worth doing, these can get old and sometimes stress makes it harder to see the joy, but perseverance always pays off.
Besides, repetition isn’t the hardest part of being a priest and a pastor. No, one thing that’s much higher on the list is what we see in the readings today. God’s solemn warning to Ezekiel to rebuke sinners, Jesus’ teaching on correcting a brother… these cut to the heart in a way nothing else does. It’s not just because I don’t like being the bad guy and correcting people. It’s the fact that, even if I do it perfectly, there are going to be people who still turn away from God and the Church.
Jesus himself often challenged sinners. He constantly called people to conversion. He used patient kindness, he used stern rebukes, he used miracles and still there were some who refused to repent. If God incarnate couldn’t always succeed, I know I won’t. I can’t even keep everyone in Church paying attention for 10 minutes.
But I still have to try, don’t I? Because that’s part of being a priest too: not just the fun and easy things… it’s about being a “watchman” for God’s people. I know people might say “don’t worry about the rules” or “let things go” or “it’s their problem, not yours.” I could do that. I could be the nice guy who looks the other way, who cares more about being liked by his people than about the “rules.” There are priests who do that and people love them for it.
But these aren’t just arbitrary rules, are they? The Ten Commandments, the Sacraments – they come from God himself. If I don’t care about those, why bother with any of it? Jesus says that the Apostles – the Church – can bind and loose on earth and in heaven. If the Church says it matters, who am I to simply ignore it? To think I know better, that I have the right to make up my own rules?
I could avoid the hard part and worry more about being liked by you than about your soul. It might be fun. But God is pretty clear. If I do that, then I go to hell. I love you. Imperfectly… inconsistently… but I really do. But I don’t love anyone enough to go to hell just to avoid upsetting them. That’s not love anyway. It’s because I love people that I want them to repent, to receive God’s grace and be transformed.
It’s not fun to turn someone away from baptism, confirmation, communion, marriage or other things because they’re living contrary to the faith. It’s agony when I try to gently lead people to overcome whatever is cutting them off from God and then never hear from them again. I have files full of marriages, baptisms, confirmations, and 1st communions that never happened because those involved walked away. They decided I was wrong, or that the effort was too much, or that they’d rather hold on to their sins. No more calls, no more visits, no more responses. I sometimes look and remember and just… hurt.
But if this is real… if anything about this faith is real, then I want to do it. Sometimes I do it poorly – acting callously or lazily because I’m tired, selfish, stressed out, or caught up in sin. Sometimes I don’t do it and that only brings a different kind of sorrow, another thing to confess, and the sense that I risked my soul and got nothing real for it.
It’s a new year for school, a new year for catechism, and I want nothing more than for everyone to learn their faith. Not just showing up and learning about their faith. Learning their faith, learning God, learning to embrace and respond to the love at the center of everything, learning what love really means not just up here, but deep down in their soul, knowing in the deepest sense that this difficult way of life called Catholicism is not only possible, it’s liberating… capable of producing a joy that can coexist with suffering and, ultimately, outlast it.
So yeah, I’m going to continue to challenge people to grow in their faith. I want to convince everyone that their presence – and their absence – matters. Where two or three… or ten thousand are gathered, each individual person… each of your participation in Mass and the sacraments – even if you can’t receive communion right now – your presence and attention is unique and meaningful, something only you can contribute. So I exhort you to prayer, further study of the faith, more courage and kindness in calling others to repent, greater detachment from a worldly way of life, and boldness in evangelizing. I convict myself with this. Just because I fail to live up to what I preach doesn’t make me a hypocrite. A hypocrite excuses themselves, saying it’s okay for them to do what they condemn in others. I admit my guilt.
And that’s a key piece of Jesus’ teaching. He doesn’t say “cut your brother off when he sins against you.” He outright rejects the idea of setting some numerical limit, as if we can kick someone out of the Church simply because they fell one too many times. No, the only reason he gives for excommunicating someone is when they refuse to repent… when they refuse to admit they are wrong and refuse to try.
When someone is unrepentant, when they stubbornly refuse to even try, it is not the pope, bishop, or priest who is wrong. It’s not the watchman who is stopping them from receiving whatever sacrament or spiritual gift they want at the moment. It is their own sin. The Church and the watchmen are simply shining light on the truth, holding people accountable to the consequences of their own actions. And if they don’t hold the line? Then the sinner doesn’t benefit anyway. A sacrament received without faith, an honorary title received with hypocrisy, a checkbox marked off with a lie… maybe the make things more convenient for a while… they only fool us. But they don’t fool God.
That God loves us right here, right now, as we are. Yet, he loves us too much to leave us as we are. Accept that he loves you. Let that love change you. We don’t have to be perfect, we can’t earn it, and we will still make mistakes, but if we try, if we recognize that the people who love us most are often the ones who convict and challenge us, if we keep trying… we will “receive true freedom and an everlasting inheritance.”