FROM THE PASTOR’S DESK
Dear St. Mary’s Parishioners:
If you were to ask a random person on the street, “What is the purpose of the Christian life?” What kind of answers would we get? Most commonly, we’d probably get some variation that the Christian life is all about being nice and kind. Just do a bunch of nice things for people, being “loving” toward all those you meet. In many ways, it's the reduction of the Christian ideal to simply, “Don’t be a big meanie.” Since the 1970’s, a massive cultural shift has happened in the Church, especially in the West, namely Europe and the United States. It attempted to jettison the dogmatic differences between the religions and instead, replaced it with a vague idea of being nice. Bishop Robert Barron famously coined the phrase describing this type of religiosity as “beige Catholicism.” Its hallmark is an intellectual hollow, non-committal, synchronistic (meaning all religions are the same), counterfeit of the faith. Jesus is no different than the other wise, religious leaders of history. He is like Buddha but with a beard and sandals. It insists on no objective truth, just the version of your truth and my truth. Religion becomes a hobby; something nice to do in your spare time, rather than the soul and foundation of your existence.
Take this common viewpoint of religion in our modern culture and compare it to the words of St. Paul in the Second Reading. He reminds the Christians of his day, “You who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be holy.” There it is! That last word, “to be holy” is the key to unlocking the purpose of the Christian life. The first time we encounter this word holy is in the book of Genesis, as God creates the world. It says in Genesis chapter 2, that the seventh day is meant to be “holy” as a day of rest to be with God. In other words, he creates the whole universe to share in his very life. The human person is the pinnacle of his creation, made in his “image and likeness”, given the very “breath” of God in our souls. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in paragraph 2809 put it even more beautifully: “The holiness of God is the center of God’s inaccessible center.” In other words, to be holy is to be like God.
That my friends is the radical life we are called to live as Christians. We're called to be holy, not just to be “nice”. My heart longs for a greater adventure than simply to be polite, as important as that is. St. Paul is trying to remind the Christians in the church of Corinth of their new identity that Jesus Christ won for us through his death. After Original Sin we lost that life and the word “holy” is no longer used in the entire Book of Genesis. It would only reappear in the Book of Exodus as God famously begins his work of saving humanity with Moses on Mount Sanai. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” (Cf. Exodus 3:5). It’s holy becomes God would begin to restore their true identity, lost by sin, and finally culminating in Jesus Christ.
A Slave of Jesus Christ,
Fr. Brian J. Solive
