3rd Sunday of Eastertide

These weeks of Eastertide return us to those first, uncertain but grace-filled days following Our Lord’s resurrection, when the apostles, on fire with the Holy Spirit, found their voices and began to bear fearless witness to the gospel. It was the dawn of a mission that would carry them to the edges of the earth and, for most, to the ultimate testimony - the shedding of blood in martyrdom. It is a time for us to reflect on how faithfully we witness to the risen Christ in the ordinary settings of our own lives.

Working for many years as a military chaplain I was immersed in a very secular world and it wasn't uncommon to encounter indifference and even outright hostility towards things of faith.

Such attitudes, however, were rarely born of malice, but rather ignorance and, sometimes, experience - even painful experience. The abuse crisis wounded the trust of so many, and with good reason.

And there are smaller but cumulative wounds that can erode a person’s faith: being scandalised by careless or insincere ministry at the most sensitive times of life, or the petty divisions that sometimes reveal themselves in the midst of Church communities. Or by rank hypocrisy or weak leadership or lack of charity in those who claim to be disciples of Christ.

Sometimes faith is wounded by the sense that the Church doesn't truly listen and so take the time to understand the complexities of individual lives: the pain of broken relationships, questions of identity and sexuality, the anguish of watching a loved one suffer. These are not abstract issues, they're deeply human experiences which cry out to be heard with compassion and understanding.

During my former ministry I often found myself in conversations about faith perhaps while standing on the bridge of a ship in the deep watches of the night or sitting next to someone at a mess dinner. The person would describe what they thought faith to be - and then dismiss it.

Yet more often than not, what they were rejecting was not faith at all, but a distorted version of it. I saw my task as to help them see that, gently and without provoking the confrontation that hostility often craves. As they opened up to a different perspective, something would shift. It was as if a door had opened: they began to look again, to question, to ponder. And that is always where the journey of faith begins.

What does genuine faith look like? Not the self-constructed caricature, so easily knocked down; but the real thing. What does true faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ look like?

To begin to answer that question, we might turn to the quiet, enduring wisdom of the Church - fashioned not in a single age, but patiently and across centuries: tested in suffering, clarified in prayer, a wisdom refined in the lives of saints and sinners alike. Which has passed through the fire of history and yet remains luminous, ancient but still speaking to the deepest longings of a human heart living in the world of today.

St Augustine of Hippo, one of the Early Church Fathers, was a founding architect of the Church’s wisdom. A theologian who lived in the fifth century, Augustine has been a great inspiration to many, including the Holy Father, Pope Leo, who is an Augustinian priest. 

The Pope celebrated Mass in the place where Augustine was bishop this week in eastern Algeria. What makes Augustine so compelling is that his insight was not born in comfort, but in struggle. As a young man, he lived a dissolute life - no stranger to the temptations of a world which promises fulfilment often leaves the heart feeling empty.

For Augustine, faith is not so much about ideas as desire. “You have made us for yourself, O Lord,” he wrote, “and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.

True faith is often born in the moment we recognise that what we seek cannot be found in worldly success, wealth, or recognition. It is a pivotal moment that brings many to faith today, after testing a culture that offers much, yet delivers little. A culture that, like junk food, may taste appealing but leaves us undernourished, so many worldly pursuits can leave the soul restless and unsatisfied. Seeing through such illusions paves the way for a deeper awareness to emerge - the realisation that the peace we long for, lasting sustenance for the soul - can only be found in Christ.

Augustine reminds us that faith is not blind. He used to say 'Fides quaerens intellectum' - faith seeks understanding. Once the door is opened, the questions begin. The mind engages, the heart responds, and what began as a moment of doubt or dissatisfaction blossoms into the beginning of a deeper search for truth.

Seven centuries years after Augustine, his insights found new depth and clarity in the work of St Thomas Aquinas. A Dominican friar and a towering intellect, Aquinas forged a remarkable synthesis between Christian revelation and the philosophy of Aristotle, so laying foundations that would shape Catholic thought well into the late Middle Ages and beyond.

For Aquinas, coming to faith was not a blind leap but a deeply human act - one which engages both the intellect and the will. He taught that grace does not override our human nature, but perfects it, and that faith and reason, far from being in opposition, are, in fact, harmonious allies which, together, lead us more deeply to the truth. 

For Aquinas, faith is the free assent of the mind to the truth revealed by God. But, crucially, he saw this assent as animated primarily not by curiosity or even the drive towards self-improvement but, incredibly, by the self sacrificing love personified by Jesus Christ on the cross.

Genuine faith, according to Aquinas, is neither naïve nor can it be coerced; it is confident enough to engage with the world, unafraid to listen and respond to those complexities of human life with honesty and depth.

That's the driving force behind our series in the parish called Apologia. We've explored so far, the complex nature of suffering, the relationship between faith and reason, the concepts of death and resurrection and the mysteries of the Eucharist. There are plans in the future to engage with some of those very areas which can lead to hostility or indifference.

But back to that question 'what effect does our faith truly have on those around us?'.

Does it barely register, is it a quiet and uncertain presence, or does it shine forth with clarity and conviction, drawing others like a beacon towards the light of Christ?

Between Augustine and Aquinas lived Saint Gregory the Great - a 6th-century pope and a Doctor of the Church who shaped medieval Christianity through great pastoral leadership and missionary zeal - it was Gregory who sent another Augustine to England - the first Archbishop of Canterbury.

And Gregory used to say that the Church grows not so much by argument, but by the witness of holy lives. In other words, people are persuaded not so much by slogans or defensive posturing as by authenticity - integrity - by the quiet, genuine quest to live life in the light of the teachings of Jesus Christ. Which points, inescapably, to the missionary nature of our Christian journey - we are not called to hug our faith to ourselves but to use it to enlighten and enrich the lives of others.

A more modern pope - St Paul VI - who guided the Church in the wake of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960's - expressed this in a very profound way. He said 'Modern man is more inclined to listen to witnesses than to teachers. And, if he listens to teachers, then it's because they are witnesses'.

There are people out there searching for meaning, forgiveness, hope, for a quality of love that will not fail them. They're also searching for fellow travellers on the journey to truth - people who will accompany and inspire them as authentic channels of God's love to the world. And our vocation as Christians is no less than to be that person to others.

Because real faith is infectious - it's often said that the faith is caught rather than taught. When a person catches faith, the caricature that they may have constructed and rejected, well that starts to crumble, replaced by something genuine, resilient and lasting - characteristics of a faith which is caught, not just inherited or learned by rote.

So perhaps we should rely less on argument, and focus instead on becoming people in whom faith is unmistakable because it's a faith that thinks deeply, in the spirit of Aquinas; a faith restless for God, in the spirit of Augustine; a faith expressed with integrity of life in the spirit of Gregory the Great; and a faith made visible through witness, in the spirit of Pope St Paul VI.

Such a faith causes those who were once indifferent or hostile, who once said, “I don’t believe,” to say, instead, “Tell me more. Show me the way".

And that's the beginning not just of a conversation, but of conversion.

I'm going to leave you with a story I may have told before but, I think, merits telling again. It's about an actor giving a one man show, reciting various elements of literature - poems and prose and so on. And the audience is spellbound by his delivery.

Towards the end of the evening, he asks are there any requests for favourite verses or passages from great works of literature. An old man, a rabbi, stands up. He says 'yes, I'd like you to recite the 23rd psalm.' The actor agrees and begins 'The Lord is my Shepherd, there is nothing I shall want.' He speaks with all the gravitas of his training and when he finishes there is a huge round of applause. 

But then the actor addresses the old rabbi, saying to him 'Sir, would you do us the honour of reciting the same psalm'. The old man agrees. He stands up. Through age and frailty his voice is quite thin and weak but, nevertheless, he recites the words of the psalm.

It becomes clear he's a man whose life has been shaped and moulded by scripture, who had spent a lifetime interpreting sacred texts that, in the end, you might say had quietly begun to interpret him. 'The Lord is my shepherd', he began, 'there is nothing I shall want. Fresh and green are the pastures where He gives me repose. Near restful waters He leads me, to revive my drooping spirit'. When he's finished, there is no round of applause, just a stunned silence. Many people have tears in their eyes. 

The actor, who was a wise man, stepped forward and said 'When I spoke, I reached into your minds and your intellects as I'm trained to do. But, when this man spoke, his words resonated with something deeper - dwelling within your hearts and your souls. The difference is 'I know the psalm, but he knows the Shepherd'. I know the psalm, but he knows the Shepherd.

True disciples expect no applause for their witness. The deep and thoughtful response they awaken in others becomes, in itself, a quiet testimony - that they not only know the psalm, but, more importantly, they know the Shepherd.

And it is through knowing the Shepherd - truly knowing Him - that others, glimpsing Him in us, will begin, then, to find their way home.