Father Rick Bolte's Homily

C: 12th SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

“Who do you say that I am?”  This question Jesus asks his disciples is important for us to answer as well.  Of course we all know the right answer, the answer we learned at the very beginning of our religious training; Jesus is the Son of God, second person of the Trinity, our Lord and Savior.  But that answer comes from our intellectual knowledge.  But who is Jesus according to the way we live our lives?

Let’s be honest; we all have other gods.  Most of us believe we are basically following Christ because we are busy doing things we believe are good.  Most of us are very busy, driven by goals that seem so important.  We devote ourselves to our careers, education, advancement, better jobs and higher grades.  We commit ourselves to sports watching our favorite teams, playing ourselves, trying to make our children and grandchildren the best they can be, and driving children and grandchildren around to all their games.  We work hard on caring for our homes, yards, cars, entertainment systems, boats, or whatever is our favorite possession.  We give ourselves to being successful and good citizens and we believe that is what God wants us to do.  We don’t believe they are other gods.

But when does God really enter the picture?  We generally try to stay in God’s good graces hoping that by attending Mass and saying prayers before meals and bedtime we might be successful in our efforts and all our loved ones will be healthy and safe.  While life goes relatively smoothly, this is how we coast along.  For most of us God really gets our attention when important things are at stake and we are scared or feel uncertain about the future.  When a loved one is seriously ill, when our job – promotion – raise is on the line, when we need to pass a test, or when we’re awaiting word on our application to our favorite college we usually turn to God asking for help.  When we reach the limits of what we can control, we turn to God.

Does God really answer our prayers?  We’ve been taught to believe but the evidence is not so certain.  To question seems to be a lack of faith, however not to question leads us to consider God almost irrelevant.  It is not a lack of faith to question what God does but it does leave our faith hollow if we don’t have confidence that God answers.

To question God is to enter into dialogue with him.  To question is not so much our presumption to judge but our admission of a lack of understanding.  The first step to gaining wisdom is to admit what we don’t know.  We question to seek understanding.  This is something we should expect from the more experienced (elderly) members of our community.  This is the wisdom that reflects true knowledge/experience of God.

Often we learn most from those occasions when God does not grant us what we ask for.  It invites a reflection on “Why not?”  It invites us to discern who God is by recognizing what is and is not considered important to God.  This challenges us to abandon our lives (living for our lives of success in this world) and choose a new way of life.  This is why Jesus says, “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”  Jesus’ “No’s” to our requests teach us what matters to God and ultimately matters to us.  The wisdom that comes from the dialogue with God helps us to know who God is.