One Sunday, while I was hearing confessions before Mass and the bishop was in the sacristy getting ready, I heard a voice over the PA system. I recognized the voice as one of the regular Catholics. He was not a reader but he started talking about how the Catholic Church had deceived him all these years and how the Church was wrong, saying, “Look it says right here in the Bible, ‘call no man your father,’ and we have been calling our priests fathers.” I quickly finished up confession and went out and asked him to chat. We had a good conversation after Mass about how, firstly, you don’t get to take up your concerns about the Church from the pulpit and, secondly, what the answer to his problem was.
This was a very sincere man. He was not attacking the faith but was shocked when it was not as straight forward as he always believed. When I was younger I definitely did not care if the faith was strong, I delighted in attacks of the faith. When I grew to love the Church though, I remember the first time a question of faith happened to me. I believe it may have been this very same question, “Why do Catholics call their priests Father?” I remember being shocked and wondering if I could be the only one seeing this. The Church has been reading the Bible but I somehow just discovered this. I remember asking a priest and he explained to me why and once again I had peace. But this was the time that my faith started to grow a little, until the next big question. This really helps us to grow in our faith but the problem is that maybe we don’t want to grow in our faith. We want to have our pile of Catholic faith and we don’t want our faith to be challenged. In order for us to have any faith though we must have it tested and find it to be true.
I personally really liked Pope Benedict t XVI. It was like having a great warrior at the helm of the Church as he defended and explained the Church. You knew that he always could answer attacks and you didn’t have to worry because he was a “bring it on” pope. I loved him for his clarity and his ability to make the faith make sense. Pope Francis I love, too, of course and I believe that he is inspired by God but he is not like Benedict. Benedict was so fearless when it came to questions. Francis is fearless in his own way in that he is not afraid to take the Church into the dirtiness of the world. I think Francis is forcing us Catholics to know our faith because, more that anyone, he is good at getting people talking because he is good at being misquoted. This morning a fellow sent me a text, “Hey, I heard that Pope Francis is considering woman priests, allowing priests to get married and woman deacons.” I am sure that is not what Francis said, but it does give us a chance to talk and know what the faith teaches and what Francis really said. You see the point of the Gospel is really the point of the question the young man was asking. What can I rest my faith in? In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us not to trust in titles, or in anything, but only in God. When we come to a crisis, we must rest in God. When we encounter the question, we must read.
The interesting thing that the answer to the man’s question is really the solution to the Gospel question of why Jesus tells us not to rest in titles but to rest in God. The charge of, “call no man your father here on earth,” has been leveled against the Church since the protestant reformation and it has been answered since the protestant reformation with no fear. We have always called the priests Fathers, even though we actually wrote down those words inspired by the Holy Spirit. It is not that we have never read the Bible, as I said, we wrote it, it is our book, it came through the Catholic Church. So the answer is simply this: if Jesus meant it the way some people take it, He would be breaking His own commandment when He tells us to honour our father and mother, or when he told the people of Israel, “your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day.” St Paul, too, would have also seriously transgressed this command in the book of Philemon when he said, “Onesimus, whose father I became in prison.” Scripture must always be translated and interpreted in light of the rest of it. I am sure it feels like a great victory to find this verse if you are against the Church. But a priest is not the Father; he shares in the fatherhood of God Himself when he brings forth the Sacrament by the power of God. The meaning of this text is that we are not to take titles upon ourselves and not to rest in them because our titles are more likely to condemn one than save one in the world to come. Titles, authority are all given to serve others. There is a danger in titles because we might think that they are what give us value, but they do not really and any value they give you can be taken away.
The title of being a priest will not save me. Yes, it is true that I have more time than most to pray. I have the Blessed Sacrament on my door step but all those graces won’t save the priest unless he uses them. God will expect more because there are more graces offered. St Norbert reminds priests of this when he says, “Oh priest lest it be said of you, he saved others but he cannot save himself.”
What then does the Christian rest in? God alone. We are called to always do our best but not to rest in that but rather to rest in the love of God, in our relationship with God. Fr Walter was a prisoner in Russian work camps and they were called to build towns and factories. The prisoners hated the Russians and would often sabotage the work they were doing. Fr Walter never did though because he did not work for Russia, he worked for God and someone else would have to live there, maybe even himself one day. This is an important thing for us to keep in mind: when we give our all to God we rest secure and trust in Him and not in our titles. This is what God calls us to do. He gives us His very self so we can give ourselves.