This Sunday, known as Good Shepherd Sunday, points out the unique role of Jesus in salvation, because He is the one true shepherd, as God come in the flesh. Saint Peter said today in the first reading that "there is no other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved." Jesus is the one and only savior we have, and we can only be saved through Him, whether we are aware of it or not.
G.K. Chesterton, an adult convert to Catholicism after being an atheist in his college years, and one of the sharpest minds of his day in early 20th century England, eventually came to profess the Christian faith because, as he simply put it, he believed it all to be true. Indeed it is. Our faith is ultimately a faith about the person of Jesus, about who He is and what God has revealed and established through Him and through the Church he founded. In The Everlasting Man, Chesterton describes the faith as a key, that transforms human history.
The creed was like a key in three respects. First, a key is above all things a thing with a shape. It is a thing that depends entirely upon keeping its shape. The Christian creed is above all things the philosophy of shapes and the enemy of shapelessness…
Second, the shape of a key is in itself a rather fantastic shape. Someone who has never seen a key before would have no idea what this thing was about until they saw it put to use. It either fits the lock and opens the door, or it does not…
And thirdly, as the key is necessarily a thing with a pattern, so this was one having in some ways a rather elaborate pattern. ...because the world had not only got into a hole, but had got into a whole maze of holes and corners…
The Early Christian (really every one of us) was very precisely a person carrying about a key, or what be said was a key. The whole Christian movement consisted in claiming to possess that key. It definitely asserted that there was a key and that it possessed that key and that no other key was like it; in that sense it was as narrow as you please. Only it happened to be the key that could unlock the prison of the whole world; and let in the white daylight of liberty. (not so narrow after all)
The only way to understand history is to understand the deepest human questions, and this faith we own is the key to unlocking the questions in our hearts.
About a month ago I was at someone's house for my day off and I went for a long run. It felt great to be out exercising but by the end of it (over an hour), I was totally worn out. The big problem I then discovered was that I had locked myself out of their house. No one was around. Huge problems immediately arose: 1 - My body needed food. 2 - I needed a shower. and 3 - All my stuff was inside. Luckily a neighbor was able to get me in: they had the key, the one answer to all the longings I had at that moment.
Every longing in our heart is answered and fulfilled by God in Christ Jesus and our Catholic faith. Jesus' resurrection is the most mysterious, peculiar, but absolutely right answer to the questions of human existence. Why do I have a longing for things that this world never fully satisfies? Why do I feel like I am my own worst enemy at times, and carry around inside me a voice that calls me to something greater than myself? Why do I feel like I can't get out of this myself and need someone to draw me further?
All of this is answered in the fact that God looks upon our fallen state with mercy, comes to us, and dies and rises for us, so that we may be raised from the dead and brought into the eternal life of heaven.
Our world doesn't like absolutes, and claims to truth. But Our Catholic faith is the one key answer to the mystery of our life. Other religions may have part of the naswer, but we are the ones with the whole answer. We hold this not in arrogance, but in humble submission to the truth.
Scott Hahn (who was here in the are this weekend) has a new book It is Right and Just that emphasizes the importance of worshipping God.
I've seen a lot of momentum in my lifetime and in recent years of meditation, "mindfulness" and other eastern spirituality avenues that may have some good things in them, but ultimately lack a hugely important thing: they do not put Jesus at the center, and thus they truly to not worship God as we truly should.
However, there is a solution to this that can allow you to incorporate these practices in a Christian context: The Hallow app.
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