Fr. Simon's Letter - March 5, 2023

As we continue our Lenten journey, Jesus leads us to the mountain where “his clothes became white as light.”  Peter, who along with James and John, witnessed this and blurted out, perhaps in excitement, “Let’s make three tents, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah,” who had appeared along with Jesus.
 
Then they heard a “voice from the cloud” that would hardly have improved things — “This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.” Whose voice could it have been? In telling them to listen, it seemed to affirm what Jesus had so recently said about himself being killed. But if it was God’s voice (and who else’s could it be?) how could God let that happen to his “Beloved Son”?

On the way down the mountain, Jesus says to them, “Do not tell the vision to anyone until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.” This would simply confuse the disciples. The other evangelists tell us that they discussed among themselves what “rising from the dead could mean.” They simply could not hold together both the obvious specialness of Jesus, their friend, and the fact that he would face being cruelly and humiliatingly killed. That would “mean,” surely, that their dreams and hopes would be over.

Perhaps our current experience has led many of us to wonder, like Peter, James and John, what does it all “mean”? Our Church, our Catholic Church, has “clay feet.” Some have left, others have lost interest; we worry if people will come back. How can we, as the Church, continue to be relevant today, tomorrow and into the future?

The early disciples struggled to hold together Jesus’ only too obvious humanity, his weakness, his powerlessness and his embarrassing death with his equally obvious specialness, his wisdom and his wonderful attractiveness; and most especially his resurrection and his breath-taking forgiveness. They came, in time, to accept that Jesus was inseparably both a divine and an only too human reality.
Today we struggle to hold together the Church’s only too obvious humanity with its undeniable goodness and its equally undeniable sinfulness. The Church welcomes people such as ourselves; it is people such as ourselves. Among us are wonderfully generous, merciful, heroically loving and radically good people — saints. Others have behaved abominably, have betrayed the Christ they claimed to follow and have missed the point completely. Others again are somewhere in-between, ordinarily good and ordinarily sinful. Yet others are an inconsistent, constantly changing mixture of all these virtues and vices.

But more than this human dimension, we believe that the Church is also the Body of Christ — it is not just a human reality, a human institution. To accept this divine reality is a pure act of faith. But that is no surprise. We know that. Faith makes the difference. And the effectiveness of our act of faith in the Church seems to be a reflection of the freshness and depth of our personal relationship with Jesus.

The only response that can ultimately sit with all that and hold it together is love — unconditional love.

This is easier said than done. However, we have to begin somewhere. The Archdiocese of Chicago along with fifteen other dioceses in the country have commissioned a survey in partnership with the Catholic Leadership Institute to address this concern. I invite you to be part of this endeavor by taking part in the Disciple Maker Index Survey. This survey invites you to share with us what parish activities and programs help sustain your faith; what you would like to see happen that would re-kindle and strengthen your faith; and what hinders your growth in faith and discipleship. I encourage you to fill out this anonymous and confidential survey that will help not only our parish but the entire archdiocese and its leadership to better respond to a variety of needs. This is not about you going out to ‘make disciples’ (although that is our true calling), this is about helping the Church’s leadership to help you be a better disciple. The greater the participation, the better the sampling that will help us plan for the future. You may access the survey through the parish website or through the link you receive in our weekly emails. For those of you who prefer to use paper, we have printed copies available in the vestibule of the basilica. You may drop off completed surveys in the rectory. Please note that the survey is open until March 31. Thank you for your participation to help us help you.

Blessings!!