Give some of your bread to the hungry

A brother priest had shared a story from the trenches of the classroom.  A young girl had seen a movie the previous weekend which depicted the Church with-holding some sort of eschatological secrets in the Gospel of Thomas.  The young lady wanted to know why the Church would do such a thing.

Now the Gospel of Thomas is a Gnostic Gospel and can be purchased through Amazon.com, or wherever books are sold.  There is not enough space here today to describe the whole Gnostic thing.  But what is both amusing and scary is this young woman believed something in a movie depicting a Church position not being able to draw from her 10 years of catholic education to refute the misunderstanding.  What St. Paul asks of us today, as he does so often, is to become firm in faith.

To do so requires a total movement from knowing stuff about the church, to having an experience of Jesus, and thus building a relationship with him.  Perhaps this is why it is so easy for folks to leave a parish of move from one religion to another, we base our faith on music, programs, or people, rather than the mysteries we celebrate.  This weekend I get to go to help out on a Kairos retreat for high schoolers.  For the vast majority of these young people this will be a pivotal moment in which they will discover the divine person of Jesus Christ as opposed to going through ritual motions.

Faith becomes real when we can consider a Christian lifestyle as a normal part of our daily mission rather than having to 'think' about doing good.  The knowledge we gain from catechesis should somehow move our being so as to respond with compassion, kindness, and forgiveness.  Again there is a frightening reality when popular culture can suggest a premise of what 'we Christians' believe in, and we do not really have a retort.

Our faith is not clean and sterile, nor is it rainbows and butterflies.  Christians are invited to a relationship which includes the cross, prophecy, and servant leadership.  It is important for us to remember that Jesus is calling us to be disciples an not spectators.