Tuesday April 19, 2005 Homily by Fr. Robert Altier Fourth Week of Easter
Reading (Acts 11:19-26) Gospel (St. John 10:22-30)
for the gift of our new Holy Father
formerly
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
In the Gospel reading today, the people come to Our Lord and say to
Him, “How long are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ,
tell us so plainly.” Now He had told them very plainly, but they did not want
to listen. That was exactly the point He was making to them, and it is the same
point He makes to us. We know He is the Christ, the question is: what
difference does it make to us? How much do we really want to believe that this
is the reality? Not objectively, but subjectively. What does it mean to us to
say that Jesus is the Christ? (The Anointed One of God is what that means, or the Messiah.)
When we read in the first reading what it meant to the people, they
went and they preached Him. They brought the news about Jesus Christ to anyone
who was willing to listen. At first they went only to the Jewish people,
because they were Jewish at the time, and they preached to the people in the
synagogues. But then they started reaching out to the Gentiles as well. Now not
everybody is called to be preaching – with words, anyway – but all of us are
called to preach by our actions. By the way that we live our lives, we are
called to bring Christ into the world, to bring Him to other people. People
should see in our lives something which is entirely different from what they
see almost anywhere else in this world because there is something entirely
different in one who is living their life for Christ as opposed to the way that
most people in this world live.
So as we look at our own lives, we can honestly say, “If it really
means much to me to say that Jesus is the Christ, then the way that I live my
life is going to be different, different from what most people live.” That is
the first thing we can look at when we ask that question about ourselves,
because He has told us Who He is. The people of old refused to listen. The
people of today refuse to listen as well. So we need to make sure that we are
listening, that we are paying attention to what He is telling us. The second
thing, if we are going to believe in Him, is to trust Him. We see the people in
the first reading today from the Acts of the Apostles being spread all over the
place because of the persecution. On the natural level, of course, it looks
like a terrible thing. Yet it was precisely this that brought about the spread
of the Gospel. So we see how God brings good out of the evil that is inflicted
upon us.
We simply need to learn to trust and to see what God is going to do. We
do not see it initially; it requires trust as we go forth to do whatever it is
that God is asking of us, which we may not fully understand ourselves at that
time. We simply need to remain faithful to Him. Again, if we are going to say,
“I believe that Jesus is the Christ,” then we need to let Him be in charge. We
need to trust and we need to simply seek to do His Will. These are not easy
things. It is easy to believe generically that Jesus is the Christ. So what?
The devil knows that Jesus is the Christ and it does not mean one thing to him.
We know that Jesus is the Christ. What difference does it make to us? What
change has it brought about in our lives? What are we doing with the knowledge
that we have? If we truly believe that Jesus is the Christ, then we need to
trust Him, we need to put our faith entirely in Him, and we need to live our
lives for Him. If we are doing that, we are going to live in a way that is
completely different from the way most people live. That is what we need to be
doing: to live the faith that we profess and to bring Jesus to the pagans and
those who have fallen away from their faith, simply by the example of the way
that we live our lives, because believing in Him will change everything in the
way that we operate.
* This text was
transcribed from the audio recording of a homily by Father Robert Altier with minimal editing.