Dcn. Tom McClelland's Homily:
        7th Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 18, 2007

There are at least a dozen homilies in that gospel, if you consider all the instructions Jesus gives us concerning how we are to act and think and respond to others.  It is so rich in fact that, after Mass, it would be good to re-read it and pick out one or two things that really strike a chord with you.  Perhaps it would be "to forgive" more, or "to stop judging," or to "give to others" more of your time.

What I want to do, though, for the next few minutes, is explore a parallel topic with a contemporary flavor, that of being a Catholic Christian.

What is a Catholic Christian?  What do you have to do or say or think to be a Catholic Christian?  What is it that distinguishes Catholics in particular, and other Christians as well, from the very large number of people in the world whom we all would simply call "good people?"  I'm motivated to explore these questions with you today because Bishop Sample asked essentially the same questions in his homily at the Marquette deacon's retreat last September, and I see a strong tie-in to the gospel we just heard.

The imagery I'll use, though, is my own.  Namely, I want to describe being a Catholic Christian in terms of a three-tiered structure.  First, you need a good, strong foundation as the beginning tier.  Then you need a clear and solid faith in the particular teachings of Christ and in the Creed as the second tier.  And on top you need a complete acceptance and practice of the teachings of the Catholic Church as the third tier.

In Bishop Sample's homily, he described being at a luncheon with several other heads of churches, and they got around to discussing what people thought it meant to (quote) "be a good Christian" (unquote).  As they talked about this, it became more and more evident that the members of their congregations and their parishes, and possibly most people in America today, think that to "be a good person" is the same as being a good Christian.  At first blush, maybe everyone here would lean in the direction of that being true, partly because we seem to presume that most people are basically Christian, or that being Christian is sort of a general thing.

To illustrate, let's say there is a family with mom and dad at home, and they have a boy and a girl in school, both getting A's and B's on their report cards.  Their bills are paid on time.  Their car and their yard are clean.  The kids get along pretty well with others in school and in their neighborhood, and both mom and dad occasionally help an older couple in the house across the street.  The dad works at an office in town, and the mom has a part time job.  Both parents get along well with their co-workers.  So it is easy to say that these are "good people."

I'm sure you caught that nugget in today's gospel, when Jesus said, "Do to others as you would have them do to you."  We call that the Golden Rule — and my hypothetical family of "good people" lives by the golden rule.  If their dog does his duty in the neighbor's yard, they go over and pick it up.  And they hope their neighbor will do the same if his dog wanders in their yard.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to the husband of my hypothetical family and found out they were making plans to have his wife's aged mother move in with them.  I commented that that was pretty remarkable, and the dad mentioned that honoring your father and mother was one of the Ten Commandments.  He said that his family believed strongly in the Ten Commandments.  Well, what do you think so far?  This is a pretty good Christian family, right?

Then from another neighbor I found out that the mom of my hypothetical family was a regular and compassionate volunteer at the food pantry in town.  Both the son and the daughter are active in their respective Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, and they participate in community projects.  Yes, the whole family certainly seems like "good people."  Did I mention their name?  This is the Itzak Goldman family, and they are deeply involved in the Jewish synagogue in town.  Their son's bar mitzvah will be next year.  So you see, they are not Christian at all!

My purpose in leading you along with this story is to say that every major religion emphasizes human improvement, love, respect for others, and sharing other people's suffering.  And that is a good thing!  We share these values with them.  Yet we should be careful to understand that not every "good person" is Christian.  Bishop Sample homed in on this same point.

In the foundation layer of my three-tiered structure for being a Catholic Christian, yes, we all need a broad base of deep-seated values.  We need to love our neighbor as ourselves.  We need to do good to those who hate us.  We need to give to everyone who asks of us.  It is imperative that we be merciful, just as our Father is merciful.  Without this foundation, we cannot be Christian, but these things are not unique to Christianity.

Over 20 other religions have a teaching equivalent to the Golden Rule, including Buddhism, Judaism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, and Shinto.  There are "good people" in all these religions — as well as in non-God-oriented ethical and philosophic systems, like secular Humanism and Ethical Culture.  There is almost unanimous opinion among religions, ethical systems, and philosophies that every person on earth should treat others in a decent manner.  The United Nations, for example, has promulgated a "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" as one manifestation of this growing worldwide consensus.  We should pray for the growth and spread of these endeavors, as they are clearly against evil in the world.

But let's come back to the question of being Christian.  We have our set of values that recognizes the worth of every human being in God's eyes.  Jesus said so empathetically in today's gospel.  And in our Old Testament reading, young David gives us the perfect example of having mercy on our enemies.  He declines to have Saul killed because Saul was the Lord's anointed king of the Israelites, even though Saul was hunting David to kill him.  But even this perfect mercy is not uniquely Christian, as this event of David's occurred a thousand years before Christ.

To be Christian is to be in the second tier of what I see as a three-tiered structure.  Being Christian is to have the strong base of good human values AND to imitate Christ — in knowing, loving, and serving God the Father.  To imitate Christ is not simply to be a "good person."  We must set our vision and our goals higher.  We must study the life of Jesus in the gospels and learn what the apostles said about him in the New Testament, and we must adopt his attitudes and his outlook.  If we want to honestly answer the popular question, "What would Jesus do," we need to acquire a personal knowledge of Jesus through reading the gospels and by praying to him daily, so as to become familiar with Jesus.  We need to talk about him with our family members and friends, and we need to understand the things that are uniquely Christian — that Jesus is truly God's Son; that his passion, death, and resurrection were for our redemption.  We need a greater daily awareness that each and every one of us will live forever, and that Christ alone is our savior.  To be Christian is to truly see that we are sinners, and that we need a loving relationship with Christ through prayer.  And we need to pass this understanding on to our children.

To be Christian and not just a "good person," we need to accept our mission of spreading the Gospel to others.  We need to evangelize.  As modern day disciples, we should not only be imitators of Christ to others but we should invite them to do the same in turn.  In God's final covenant with mankind, established by Christ's blood on the cross, he opened the Kingdom of God to all human beings.  Our concern for the salvation of others should be one of our biggest concerns as Christians in this second tier of this structure.

To be a Catholic Christian is the third tier of the structure.  At this level, we are expected to accept and live out the teachings of the Magisterium of the Church, the dogmas and the doctrines, and to comply with the teachings of our bishops.  For example, the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the Immaculate Conception of Mary and her Assumption body and soul into heaven, the communion of saints, and the seven sacraments as a means of obtaining God's grace.  With Lent coming up, to be Catholic Christians we are expected to observe the requirements and teachings for penance and the rules for fast and abstinence on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and abstaining from meat on every Friday of Lent.  As Catholic Christians, we need to know and assimilate and practice the moral teachings of the Church.  We need to have and to live according to our well-formed consciences, and to teach this to our children as well.

In the three-tiered structure for every Catholic, then, I think it is plain that we need to have a broad, solid foundation in human values.  These same values are shared across many religions and philosophies and even in what we might call secular humanism.  At the second tier, our particular Christian challenge is to understand and interpret and implement those foundational values in the way that Christ would have us do.  For example, we need to see, along with Christ, the value of suffering, which the world generally has little regard for.  As Christians in the second tier, we need to be obvious imitators of Jesus.  And at the third tier — being a Catholic Christian — we need to take on and practice those things which are taught by the Catholic Church, led by Holy Spirit.

Bishop Sample's point to his deacons last September was that there are many "good people" in the world but they are not all Christians.  As Christians, we have to raise the bar higher and specifically seek to imitate Christ.  And then as Catholics, we overlay on our Christianity the teachings of the Catholic Church, which descend from the apostles and are under the care and guidance of the Holy Spirit.  Thus we take on an even fuller and more highly refined approach to life.  It is a challenge to be a Catholic Christian, but it is clearly the way in which we are called to live out that part of our life that occurs here on earth.

May God bless us all.