Jesus answers the deepest questions of our existence

By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami

Archbishop Thomas Wenski preached this homily at the Mass opening the annual Catechetical Conference, which brought around 600 religious education and Catholic school teachers to St. Brendan High School, Oct. 29, 2022. The Mass was celebrated in St. John Vianney College Seminary’s St. Raphael Chapel, which is located next door to St. Brendan High.

In the Psalm, we sang: “My soul is thirsting for the living God.” Indeed, faith brings us to that awareness that Jesus Christ is the answer to the longings of the human heart. As St. Augustine said. “Our hearts we made for thee, O God; they shall never rest until they rest in thee.”

However, the Christ that is the answer to the longings of the human heart – the Christ that is found in the gospels – is much different from the image of Christ that prevails in our culture today. The “popular” image of Jesus today is of a Jesus who demands nothing, who never scolds, who accepts everyone and everything – a Jesus who no longer does anything but affirm us.

But this “Jesus” that makes everything okay for everybody is a phantom, a dream, and not a real figure. The Jesus we meet in the Gospel – who is the same yesterday, today and forever – is demanding and bold. And, therefore, he is not always convenient for us in his boldness and in his demands. And, the Church, if she is to be the effective presence of Christ in the world today, cannot be ashamed or afraid of the very real demands of discipleship that Jesus boldly makes on those who would be his followers.

It is precisely in this way that Jesus – the real Jesus of the gospels – answers the deepest questions of our existence. Despite the secularism of our age, people are still asking those questions.

To say “I believe” is to place ourselves within a community of believers who also believe – or as the ancient Fathers of the Church in the first centuries of Christianity used to insist: You cannot have God as your Father, without accepting the Church as your mother. An act of faith in Jesus, while personal, is not “private” – we cannot affirm the position that everyone is entitled to believe in Jesus “a su manera”, in their own way – for then everyone will create their own Jesus – making him in their own image and likeness.

Yet, how can we know the living God? Pope emeritus, Benedict XVI, made this observation: “For the Christian, the reply... is simple: only God knows God, only his Son who is God from God, true God, knows him.... If we do not know God in and with Christ, all of reality is transformed into an indecipherable enigma; there is no way, and without a way, there is neither life nor truth. God is the foundational reality, not a God who is merely imagined and hypothetical, but God with a human face; he is God with us, the God who loves even to the Cross.”

Or, as St. Paul said, in today’s first reading: To me, life is Christ!

Pope Saint John Paul II wrote in Novo Milenio Ineunte: “Young people, whatever their possible ambiguities, have a profound longing for those genuine values which find their fullness in Christ. Is not Christ,” he continues, “the secret of true freedom and profound joy of heart? Is not Christ the supreme friend and the teacher of all genuine friendship?” Then, he adds: “If Christ is presented to young people as he really is, they experience him as an answer that is convincing and they can accept his message, even when it is demanding and bears the mark of the Cross.”

To present Christ as he really is, to present him as the Church believes him to be – not a figure from a long distant past but one who, though once dead, is alive and who invites us into friendship with him, a friendship which is founded in and grows through our communion in His Body and Blood.

It is precisely in this way that Jesus – the real Jesus of the gospels – answers the deepest questions of our existence. Despite the secularism of our age, people are still asking those questions.

Jesus in the Gospel reading speaks about humility – which is not about thinking less of ourselves, but rather thinking of ourselves less. As human beings we hunger for happiness, for meaning. Our hearts thirst for love, for significance. We may be tempted to satisfy that hunger, that thirst – through the frantic seeking for power, prestige, or pleasure – but when all is said and done, only God is enough, for only God is satisfying.  We discover true humility when we recognize that only in God can we find rest.

Next week, we will celebrate All Saints Day. The Gospel of that day is taken from the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus pronounced that the peacemakers, the meek, those seeking after justice were “blessed.” The listing of these beatitudes is fitting for All Saints Day – for “beatitude” is the outcome of a life dedicated to God. And this is what we want for those we catechize: beatitude – or the happiness of Eternal Life.

Again, as we sang: “My soul is thirsting for the living God.”