Today in the Old Testament lesson and in the Gospel, Holy Scripture speaks of Israel and the Church and their organic growth using the images of a simple shoot becoming a majestic cedar tree and of a tiny mustard seed transforming into the largest of plants with abundant branches suited for harboring all the birds of the sky. And this growth takes place we know not how, except to say that it is by the Providence of God.
Two millennia after the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Church is immense and majestic; indeed, she is the largest human society on earth, serving people in every nation of the world and proclaiming the Gospel in every language. But, friends, let’s also be mindful that Christianity is in serious disarray all over the globe.
Christians are divided against themselves by schisms and heresies, and we are hard pressed from outside the Church by assertive atheism and secularism in the West, by militant Islam in Africa, the Near and Middle East, Oceania, and old Europe, by nationalist Hinduism in India, and by totalitarian Communism or Socialism in China, North Korea, Vietnam, and many places in Latin America.
And more than that, because of the Great Apostasy of our age, many millions of baptized persons have quietly abandoned any practice of the Christian religion and live in most ways just as their pagan neighbors do. Consider: In the past twenty years, twenty percent of Catholics in the United States who once regularly attended Sunday Mass have simply stopped going, and the numbers are far worse in Europe.
This means that two in ten Catholics who were practicing their faith as recently as two decades ago no longer do so. And the rate of defection among baptized Catholics younger than thirty is nearly double that. Meanwhile, the number of Catholics getting married in the Church is plummeting, even as our seminaries and religious communities have fewer and fewer candidates.
Much of the chaos among Catholics in the developed world is often said to be connected to the loathsome crimes of 4% of priests over the last seventy-five years and to the shameful failure of too many bishops to respond properly to those crimes. But the general falling away from Christ was well underway long before the abuse scandals exploded into public view twenty years ago, and so we should see correlation rather than causation between the scandalous infidelity of bishops and priests and the widespread apostasy of the baptized. But that’s not all.
Even among Catholics who continue to practice the faith in some way, faithful adherence to the Gospel of Jesus Christ is constantly contested by Gnostic fantasies that are contrary to the truth revealed by God, especially in regard to essential dimensions of Christian anthropology such as marriage, family life, sexuality, gender identity, the procreation of children, contraception, and abortion.
Our current distress is, I believe, part of a world-historical realignment of Western civilization away from Biblical religion and towards a new paganism in which man is the measure of all things and only the autonomous, individual self is accepted as the absolute sovereign in every life. But although these trends are distressing, we must always remember that the Church has often been in far worse straits than these, and that was true from the very beginning.
For five weeks beginning last Sunday, the second lesson at Sunday Mass is taken from Saint Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, and during this month I hope you will read and study all of Second Corinthians, which runs to about seven and a half pages in most Bibles.
It is likely that Saint Paul wrote this letter late in the year 57 AD, about six years after he planted the Church in Corinth on his second missionary journey. The city of Corinth was a large port and a prosperous trading center, and the Apostle lived there for about eighteen months. Paul began his mission in Corinth by preaching the Gospel to Jews, but he encountered fierce opposition in the synagogue and so he turned his attention to Gentiles and won many souls to Christ.
After a year and a half in Corinth, Paul moved on to Ephesus where he stayed three years, and it was from Ephesus that he wrote his First Letter to the Corinthians about two years after he left Corinth. Then, about three years after that, the Second Letter to the Corinthians followed, probably while Paul was in Philippi or Thessalonica. First Corinthians is concerned primarily with Christian doctrine and discipline, while Second Corinthians is Paul’s personal cry from the heart to a beloved group of disciples who are at odds with him and with each other over a variety of disputed questions.
Paul wrote this letter in the hope that he could offer comfort and encouragement to those who were dejected by disagreements in the Church and so restore the bonds of fellowship and mutual affection that should always be part of Christian faith and life. And throughout the text Paul invokes the work and example of his colleagues Timothy and Titus, whom he later appointed bishops for the Churches in Ephesus and Crete.
Our second lesson this morning is five verses of chapter five of Second Corinthians, but the verses just before our lesson today provide a context for understanding the larger point. So, beginning at chapter four, verse sixteen of Second Corinthians, Saint Paul teaches us, as we heard proclaimed last week, that:
“We do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
Then Paul continues in today’s reading: “So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. But what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience.” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18 and 5:6-11)
So, there it is, from the Apostle Paul. No matter what adversity we face, we do not lose heart, and we are always of good courage. Why? Because this light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, and so we look by faith to the things that are unseen, measuring our present struggles against the horizon of eternity and the day of our own judgment.
Friends, we are not and can not be disciples of the Lord Jesus because it is easy or a path to peace or prosperity; it is none of those things and never was. And if being a Christian in a Christian culture ever conferred benefits of any kind, then that time has long since passed along with the passing of Christian civilization itself.
To be a Christian now is to be, like the Savior himself, a sign of contradiction that will be opposed. To be a Christian now, as at the beginning, is to experience affliction, and that will discourage those who will not walk by faith and look to the permanent things that are unseen. But all such affliction can be transcended by those who are a new creation in Christ and who know that though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.
In Saint Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, we can find encouragement to sustain us in this time of apostasy even as millions of Christians walk away from the Lord, and the Apostle Paul assures us that our transient afflictions are preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. So, that is why we do not lose heart, and that is why by grace through faith, hope, and love we are always of good courage: because the Gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who knows the liberating truth that Jesus Christ is Lord.
This is the text of my homily for 16 June 2024, the 11th Sunday of the Year.
Fr Jay Scott Newman