Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time - A

Lately, I have taken an interest in one of the masterworks of the famous and prolific English writer and Catholic convert, G.K. Chesterton: a book entitled, The Everlasting Man. Another well-known, English writer, C. S. Lewis credited The Everlasting Man with "baptising" his intellect, calling it "the [very] best popular defence of the full Christian position I know”. Lewis also cited it in a list of 10 books that "most shaped his vocational attitude and philosophy of life". In this book, Chesterton states: “The world owes God to the Jews.” The uniqueness of the declaration made me pause. “The world owes God to the Jews.” I continued reading and realized how evident and accurate this conclusion was; how profound and simple it was at the same time.

Popular theories on the development of worship would have us believe that monotheism, or belief in one true God, was a late development in humanity only after centuries of the worship of many Gods, known as polytheism. To the contrary, we believe that the human understanding of God was originally monotheistic and that from the beginning, we were created in a relationship with the One True God. Over time, and as a consequence of our fallen human nature, faith in this God was abandoned for the worship of created things. From this disordered type of worship, elaborate forms of polytheism grew and prevailed throughout human civilization everywhere, except in one place and among one people: in Israel, among the Jews.

Yet, Faith in the One True God did not originate with the Jews. Beginning with Abraham, God chose a people to be His People in order to preserve what was once lost among a mass of confused mythology. The Jews were given the Laws of God at the hand of the prophet Moses. By these laws, God charged His people to stand out among the other nations. To be holy and set apart for him alone and not to profane their religion by mingling their faith with the pagan practices of their neighbors; so that, through their obedience, the other nations would come to know who God was. And, though you and I might think parts of the Mosaic law are strict and strange, we can see that, at the very least, these laws set them apart from the polytheistic cultures that surrounded them. They served to remind the Jews that they were to be a sign, an emblem, a contrast that was significant enough to preserve the Faith in the One God, creator of heaven and earth in a world that had long ago abandoned it.

They would obey this law even to the point of death, because of the obedience of faith to which God called them. And so, for centuries, the Jews carried Faith in One God amidst the threats of polytheism, leading Chesterton to the conclusion that “the world owes God to the Jews.”

Turning to today’s Gospel reading from chapter 15 of Matthew, we meet Jesus at a particular time of in the history of the Jewish religion. As usual, we see Jesus challenging the understanding of the Jews of Jesus’ day; for the Jews had developed their religion to the point of hating their non-Jewish neighbors, whom they called “Gentiles”. Today, Jesus reminds the Jews that their separation from the Gentiles was not to develop into hatred and that the law was never meant to lead to the mistreatment of the stranger; that their obedience to the law was intended to lead the Gentiles to know God and to desire a relationship with God.

In the account of the Canaanite woman, Jesus is also testing the faith of the Canaanite woman. I would even say he is eager to play the role of the typical Jew so that his disciples can see how great a hunger the Gentiles have to know the one True God and to demonstrate how great a Gentile’s faith can be in contrast to many Jews. Why else would he have led them into the Gentile territory of Tyre and Sidon? It would be absurd to conclude that he was simply offending a Canaanite woman.

Jesus is telling the truth when he says that “[He] was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” At least, this was his first and primary mission, because this is what God promised the Jews, but Jesus is always listening to the Father, who also promised to the Gentiles what we read from Isaiah:

The foreigners who join themselves to the LORD, becoming his servants-
all who keep the sabbath free from profanation and hold to my covenant,
them I will bring to my holy mountain and make joyful in my house of prayer;
a house of prayer for all peoples.

In context, the purpose of the Father becomes clear: At the end of this chapter, we read about the feeding of the 4000 IN GENTILE Territory. Just one chapter before this, Jesus was feeding 5000 in Jewish territory. Clearly, Matthew marks a turning point and a teaching point in Jesus ministry.

Saint Paul attempts to capture the significance of Jesus actions in our second reading from the book of Romans, chapter 11. He speaks of the disobedience of the Jews which allowed the Gentiles to be united to the believing Jews, through faith in Jesus Christ, into one body, the Church. In some verses of this chapter which we did not read, he explains that “some of the branches were broken off [meaning the disobedient Jews], and you, a wild olive shoot [the Gentiles], were grafted in their place and have come to share in the rich root of the olive tree [Israel]…. They were broken off because of unbelief, but you are there because of faith.”

The teachings of the apostle are clear: The Church is the new Israel, and we have an obligation to continue what God began with the Israelites. In our modern times, we face something not unlike the situation of the ancient Jews, but instead of polytheism, the new Israel is threatened by any number of competing philosophies demanding equal validity with the gospel of our Lord.

Our modern culture suffers from the delusion that all philosophies (worldviews, beliefs) are equally valid because every person is of equal dignity. Now, although we can agree that every human person has equal dignity, we cannot agree that all philosophies are of equal worth, nor can we conclude that they are equally correct, especially if they are contradictory. Doing so would be contrary to reason.

Others may argue that we are all equally fallen in regard to our human nature, and so we can only conclude that all human philosophies are equally invalid, meaning that no one has any claim on the truth. This conclusion is equally unreasonable and ultimately leads to despair.

The only hopeful answer is the one we started with: that God chose to reveal Divine Truth to his people despite their sinful, fallen nature, in order that all may know Him and have a foundation for determining what is right and wrong, what will bring ultimate fulfillment and happiness. All of God’s people, having been baptized into Jesus Christ, have an obligation to live in the obedience of faith, just as the Jews did, so that all might come into a relationship with God leading to eternal salvation. Therefore, just as the Old Testament Faith did not originate with the Jews, the New Testament Faith does not originate with us.

We were baptized into Christ, not ourselves, and not unto ourselves, but unto God to be more conformed to his likeness in how we think and what we desire. For our sake, the Lord gave the keys to the kingdom to Saint Peter and his Successors in Rome, NOT to any of US. For centuries it has been their duty to protect the gospel and determine what teachings were essential to it.
When confronted with a behavior, practice, belief or philosophy in our modern world which contradicts the Gospel, we cannot treat the Faith as one opinion among equals. God has appointed the Church to guide us in these matters. We must pursue God like the Canaanite woman pursued Christ. We must also persevere in Faith like the Jews. As they were to reject the influence of the cultures around them, rejecting any other gods, so we must reject the erroneous thinking prevalent in our age. We should not profane the teachings of the Church by mingling them with teaching contrary to the Gospel entrusted to our leaders.

In this way all nations will come to know the one True God, through you and me – through our obedience of faith – a heritage entrusted to us by the Lord himself. Today, if you are a Jewish Catholic, rejoice that you are of the original olive tree. I you are a Gentile Catholic, rejoice that you have been grafted in, but let us together be on guard lest we once again be cut off.

We like to reduce things to signs and symbols. It’s convenient. Symbols simplify communication and are useful in teaching. The message behind the sign is usually much greater or deeper than the sign itself. For example, what does this sign mean? (I love you.) (Touchdown – Ben Roethlisberger to Hines Ward.) (Peace/Sign of Peace at mass.) (Blessed Trinity/Two natures of Jesus Christ.)

Our Creed is a symbol, it contains within it the most central and highest mystery of our faith, the Blessed Trinity. I believe in God, the Father…in Jesus Christ…the Holy Spirit…, but these are not a bare minimum for our faith. They represent much more.

It is correct to say that “the faith of all Christians rests on the Trinity.” It is the mystery of God in himself and is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the "hierarchy of the truths of faith". We cannot arrive at this knowledge by human reason alone. Before the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, even Israel did not understand God as Trinity even though he left traces of his Trinitarian work of creation and in his Revelation throughout the OT.

What is the Trinity? The Trinity is an eternal dialogue of love. Not a selfish love. God is one, but he is not alone. Father + Son + Holy Spirit = an eternal community of love. Through the revelation of the Trinity, we know that love is generative, it gives of itself, it produces fruit, it seeks the other, it goes outside of itself. The love of God is the primary cause of our existence. We exist because God loves us and willed us to exist. He did not need us – we add nothing to him nor does anything we do detract from who or what God is.

Which brings us to the second most fundamental and essential teaching of our faith, the incarnation of the Son of God. In the fullness of time, God chose to complete the revelation of himself to Israel and all who would believe, through His only-begotten Son. A human person who was also divine in nature. We call this the “hypostatic union”. (Show the hand sign.) In Christ, the divine nature of the Son remained undiminished by his human nature and his human nature remained complete and unabsorbed by his greater divine nature. There was not a new third nature created in Jesus. Rather, it is a union, like marriage, in which the two remain distinct as individuals, but are now bound to one another in one person.

Through the Incarnation, we learn that God refused to abandon his creation even though it had fallen into sin. From all eternity, he chose to bind himself to our human nature in time and restore to us our original dignity and reveal our purpose to live in a communion of love with him forever in heaven,

We know God by his actions. One of Jesus primary missions was to reveal the Father. To show us who and what the Father is. That is why today’s Gospel is so important to Trinity Sunday and our understanding of God.

God so loved…that he gave. (We know God by his actions.) This is perhaps one of the most famous passages of scripture. John 3:16. Love is generative. It gives of itself. It seeks the other. John 3:16 is often used as a symbol representing the entire gospel. Unfortunately, this too is often misused as a bare minimum for faith, and worse, for excluding others from the possibility of being saved.

God knows us by our actions, also. Through the Son of God, we know what is required of us when we say that “we believe”. Belief goes beyond simple assent. The Son does not simply receive the love of the Father, he acts on it. He does what the Father tells him. HE ALSO GIVES. The Father gave the Son, the Son give us himself in obedience to the Father, and the Son gives himself back the father through obedience. Love is not a feeling – love is an action and requires a response. If we do not receive and respond, the love bears no fruit.

As symbols, the Creed and John 3:16 are not intended to be the bare minimums of faith for us. They are meant to be symbols of all that we believe to be revealed by God through His Church. Now more than ever we are without excuse if we are ignorant of the faith and if we don’t know why the Church teaches what it teaches to be part of that revelation. Baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, having the benefit of an education, we have every obligation to respond to the love God has freely poured into our hearts. We must use human reason and everything he gave us through the Catholic Church: Scripture, Tradition, the Sacraments – to act in obedience and return the love we have in the Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ, to the Father. In order to this, I pray in the words of Saint Paul: May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.