I have been asked to preach and discuss about intentional discipleship while your pastor is away. That’s not what I am going to do directly. I want all of you for this weekend to focus on one question, on this one question: Why am I here? I do not mean the great philosophical question about our existence and all that. I am asking each of you to consider why you are here, why you are present in this church at this hour. What leads to your decision to come here to worship? Could you not be spending that time in a more useful pursuit rather than sitting here listening to me speak?
I’m sure quite a few of you have thought that at some point in your life, questioning why you need to grace the church with your presence. Perhaps you have seen the results of that inquiry in your family and friends who are not now present here. Perhaps you’ve come close to doing the same. Yet something keeps you coming back, something poking at your heart or some small voice perhaps echoing inside telling you that you need to go, you need to be there. And so you continue to come, you continue to be present, yet you probably feel ...
Is this how we are supposed to be in church? Is this what this hour or our life is meant to be like? Or is there meant to be more? Are we called to be spectators, observing what is happening and not doing much more; or perhaps are we called to something more? The prophet Isaiah declares “Seek the LORD while he may be found, call him while he is near” (55:6), and in this message we can see our response. Our lives are meant to be a pursuit after something: even better, our lives are meant to be a pursuit of some-ONE, an important distinction. We are made for the Lord.
This is why we are meant to be here in this building. This is why we are called to gather together, to gather as one. We are meant to be discovering who this Lord is, and what it is that He desires from us. We have been made for God, as Saint Augustine famously said in his autobiography, and our hearts are restless until we rest in Him. Admit it: how little does this world satisfy? And I mean truly, deeply, completely, without any emptiness, satisfy you? It cannot! It is incapable of doing so! Everything that exists around us is not meant to be the be-all and end-all of our lives. If you were to sit down and consider everything you hold as satisfying and truly consider the meaning of satisfaction, you would see that there is nothing that this world can offer which can satisfy that definition.
Things in general, and specifically money, cannot do it: we are always desirous of more, even when we have enough. Honor or prestige are fleeting and can change from minute to minute: how respected was Ray Rice before the video emerged, or any major figure, be it sports or politics or entertainment. And speaking of all those things, none of them can truly satisfy: every sports game ends, leaving us desiring more action; every political fight either breaks us or makes us addicts, movies and television all have an end, a point when the credits roll and no more is to be seen. None of these things can satisfy us, none of these things is enough. Then where are we to quench this thirst, this desire for something in which our hearts can rest?
Our hearts are meant to rest in a person, in the greatest Person to ever live: Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the God-man. This is the heart of the Christian religion, of the Catholic experience as passed down to us from Christ Himself: to approach this man who is more than He seems; whose wisdom is far beyond anything we have heard; who has power over everything, even death. Our cry should be the cry of the people as recalled in the Gospel of Luke when they behold Jesus raise a young man from the dead: “God has visited His people!” (7:16) Indeed, God has visited His people, and continues to visit them every time the Holy Mass is celebrated.
Our hearts will continue to be restless until we meet Christ, until we encounter Him and engage in the relationship He has desired to have with each one of us from all eternity. This is the fundamental message of the Church: “Come and see!” (John 1:39) Come and see the one who proclaims the Kingdom of God, that reign in which there is no pain, no sorrow, no loss, but there is found peace. Come and see the one who brings about that kingdom by acting in obedience to His heavenly Father, even unto the death of the Cross (cf. Phil 2:5-8), that death which heals the world of sin. Come and see the one who is truly King, victorious over sin and death by rising from the dead. Come and see the King who is still with us, who is still present to us, and who desires to be with you.
But this cannot be done without our action. Christ beckons to each and every one of us, calling to us, drawing near to us, wishing to fill us with His life-giving Spirit. Yet we can turn Him away, either through indifference or through distraction. We can ignore Him and remain as we are now, but it will come at a cost. In the parable of the workers found in the Gospel of Matthew, Christ says that the landowner came to gather men to work at various hours of the day, even at the last hour before dusk. The landowner, upon the completion of the work, gives each worker the same reward. Yet what about those who did not answer the call of the landowner? What happened to them? They were not rewarded, but were left out, without any reward, without any consolation.
This parable strikes at the heart of what I have been trying to tell you. No matter your age, no matter how little you may know Christ, no matter how little you may relate to Him, it is not too late. Jesus beckons to you to come to find the work that is the heart of our relationship with Him. I do not shy away from saying that it will be work: consult the lives of the saints to see how hard it was for each of them to work so as to come to know Jesus better, love Him completely, and serve Him in everything. God does not want to lose you, but you have only this life in which to find Him. After this life, we will either enter into the joys of our reward, even the little that we have done, or we will sink into the oblivion of hatred and despair which plague those souls who chose on their own to abandon God, to ignore Christ, to despise the Holy Spirit. What we do in this life indeed echoes for eternity, and it is completely in our control.
Our religion is not for bystanders or spectators or loungers; our religion, our faith is for soldiers who hear and answer the call, for pilgrims who rise up and wander towards that which should be truly sought, for lovers who discover one in whom their love can find rest. Do not be settled in your faith, because faith does not beget complicity. Saint Paul told the Galatians that “whilst we have time, let us work good to all men” (6:10), and he told the Philippians to “conduct yourselves in a way worthy of the gospel of Christ” (1:27). Let us hear and respond, let us seek for the rest which our hearts have been yearning for, let us find the one who loves us and desires us to love Him before it is too late. Indeed, let us discover the meaning of our faith, the purpose of our worship, and the goal of our religion: to know Christ Jesus and to know God and to live our lives conformed to what they desire for each of us. Let us not wait for heaven, but let us reach for heaven, for only by reaching will we be able to grasp.
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