God gives us something to hang onto and hand on – 1 Tim 3:1-13

Daily Mass, Holy Cross parish, Tuesday of Week 24.

The widow of Nain has a certain fame among younger Holy Cross clergy, as anyone who’s been through the preaching formation program at Notre Dame in the last ten years or so will have preached on that passage as their first assignment in second semester preaching.  That means I heard 12 homilies on it within three weeks two years ago, so, as beautiful a passage as it is (the teacher chose it for good reason) I haven’t no intention of adding another one today!  I need a little cooling off period from the widow of Nain, but a better reason to not preach on that read is that our reading from first Timothy rather grabbed me, especially as a new deacon.  While I can assure you that I have not contracted multiple marriages, the question of whether I have held fast to the mystery of faith: that occasioned more reflection on my part.

The way we use the word ‘mystery’ in modern English can confuse or distract us from what the ‘mystery of faith’ really is.  We normally use ‘mystery’ to describe something like a puzzle.  We might think of mystery novels or tv series, where a cunning sleuth, relying on their wits and powers of observation, marshals the available data to determine ‘whodunnit.’  We do not put our faith in a puzzle.  For a puzzle doesn’t really require faith, just cleverness.  Puzzles can be mastered, if we’re mentally strong enough, and once solved we’ve exhausted the fun of the puzzle.  How often did Sherlock Holmes hang around after the crook was uncovered?

When the mystery of faith is uncovered, we linger, we kneel, we adore, we cry out: “My Lord and God!”  Faith cannot be mastered.  Faith does not require cunning, does not depend on human strength.  If faith were just a list of facts to be memorized and assented to, though, it could be.  But no, faith, itself a gift from God, is our response to a God who willingly, lovingly reveals not facts about Himself but His very Self: in the beauty of creation, in the deposit of the scriptures, most powerfully in the person of Christ, and in the continued ministry of the Church.  Faith is relationship.  Relationship can be deepened, delved into, explored, dwelled in, rested in, wrestled with; but never mastered, never exhausted.  It’s through God’s gracious gift that we have something to ‘hold fast to’: that the utterly mysterious, utterly ‘other’ God willingly self-reveals and invites us into relationship, a relationship nurtured through sacrament and sacramental, through human relationships, through scripture and doctrine, through things we can hold fast to, and hand on.

We read that a bishop should not be a new convert.  The Greek word is the root of our word ‘neophyte,’ new Christian.  But here, it does not yet seem to be a technical churchy word.  It literally just means ‘newly planted.’  God plants us into the soil in which He self-reveals and beckons us grow deep roots, holding fast, in order that we may flourish.  We also read that a bishop should be attractive to outsiders.  Like a flowering plant, may we all show forth the beauty of the soil we cling to, that outsiders may see in our rooted-ness a joyful dependence on a loving God and be led to embrace Him themselves.