It occurs to me that the times we are currently experiencing in the universal Church demand a so-called “back to basics” approach. I have yet to encounter a person who has told me that they are leaving the Catholic Church because of the current scandals. Quite the contrary, I’ve seen people who have put out into the deep waters that Christ calls us to in search of that elusive holy life. I’ve seen and read about people who want to get more involved in their Church and rediscover the beauty of their faith. They are finding the religion that St. James speaks of in today’s second reading. And this is where the back to basics approach comes in. St. James tells us: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world (James 1:27).”
Even if we haven’t left our religion during this summer, we have no doubt questioned it, its precepts and its leaders. St. James defines pure religion as caring for the other, in this case, those most vulnerable during the time of the first Christians: the orphan and the widow. Then James sums it up by beautifully stating something that I and so many preachers have been hammering home the last few weeks: our call to be holy. We are to keep ourselves “unstained by the world.” And this is key particularly after a week in which we have seen such a fractured Church: a Church that has been divided into left and right as if political parties ran it. It calls to mind Don McLean's musical lyric: “I saw Satan laughing with delight.” The devil is rejoicing seeing a splintered Church, a Church that is doubting its leaders, dabbling in conspiracy theories as if we were living in an Oliver Stone film, and running from the very reason Christ brought the Church into existence: to love those who need to be loved with the love of God that has been poured out into our hearts and to be a light for all nations.
Satan can laugh all he wants but the music has not died. Despite our best efforts to destroy the Church from within (and I’m talking about bishops and priests here), the work of the Church continues. Mass is still being celebrated. The poor are still being fed. Our children are still being educated to be disciples. The sick and the widows are still being visited, and the orphans, well, we can do much better in that department if only our government would let us, but I digress. Faith in Christ is growing stronger in the face of adversity and we are being transformed from being mere hearers of the words to being actual “doers of the word.”
This is why I said last week in my homily that the future of the Church is found in the pews. You must take leadership of the Church because you ARE the Church. We priests and our bishops need to be taken down a few pegs and start washing feet again. Clericalism is a diabolical sin that has plagued the Church for way too long and it only serves to separate us the clergy from being true servants to the people of God. There was a brilliant essay penned yesterday by George Weigel who is a magnificent Catholic writer in which he concludes “that the Church is being called to a great purification through far more radical fidelity to Christ, to Catholic teaching and to Catholic mission. Bishops who have failed in their responsibilities as teachers, shepherds and stewards have typically done so because they put institutional maintenance ahead of evangelical mission. Keeping the institutional Catholic machinery ticking as smoothly as possible, by compromises with truth and discipline if necessary, was deemed more important than offering others friendship with Jesus Christ and the sometimes hard truths the Church learns from Christ.”
It truly is time to get back to basics and pursue a religion that is pure and undefiled. It is a time to return to the basic evangelical love and mercy of Christ which made us fall in love with this extraordinary faith. It is time for the laity to take up the mantle of leadership within our Church and help us restore the beauty of Catholicism.
