Stay with Us : The Word of God and the Future of Hispanic Ministry The Most Rev. José H. Gomez, S.T.D. Archbishop of San Antonio Chairman U.S. Bishops Committee on Cultural Diversity in the Church University of Notre Dame Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism August 1, 2009 Queridos hermanas y hermanos, que alegría estar con ustedes esta tarde! My sisters and brothers, it is so good to be with you this afternoon. I am honored by my friend Tim Matovina s invitation to speak to you today. This is a very distinguished group and your topic the Word of God and our Hispanic people is absolutely vital. I know my role today. I know you have been taking part this weekend in a long series of workshops and sessions covering many aspects of this important topic. I am coming in as the closer, as they say in baseball. I will do my best to make this a short, 1-2-3 inning for you! Earlier this year, Pope Benedict sent a very poignant and very personal letter to all the bishops of the world. In it he said:
2 The real problem at this moment of our history is that God is disappearing from the human horizon, and, with the dimming of the light which comes from God, humanity is losing its bearings, with increasingly evident destructive effects. Leading men and women to God, to the God who speaks in the Bible: this is the supreme and fundamental priority of the Church and of the Successor of Peter at the present time. (March 10, 2009). I really believe our Holy Father is right, my friends. God is becoming more and more remote from the concerns and priorities of our culture. It s not as if God has withdrawn his presence. It s that we are moving away from him. More and more of our brothers and sisters go through their days without any awareness of his presence or their need for God in their lives. They don t hate God. They just don t think about him much anymore. It s as if he doesn t exist. This includes more and more of our Latino brothers and sisters, I m afraid. I m not a big believer in polls that try to estimate people s religious faith. But every major study of Hispanics in the last few years has come to a consistent and disturbing conclusion that between 10 and 12 percent of all Hispanics no longer practice any religion. And this number has doubled in the last decade. This is the context for our ministry in the future, my friends. Our only priority can be what the Pope said to lead our brothers and sisters back to God. But not just to any god, or to some vague spirituality, or to what some people call cultural Catholicism. No. Conducir a los hombres hacia Dios, hacia el Dios que habla en la Biblia. To lead men and women to the God who reveals himself in the pages of the Sacred Scriptures. The God who has shown his face to us in Jesus Christ. Only this God can save us.
3 To take up the text that has set the theme for your weekend: The Gospel paints us a picture of the two disciples going down the road to Emmaus, all wrapped up in their hurt and disappointment, so shattered that all they can do is think about themselves. They say, We had hoped that he was the one. Nosotros esperábamos que sería él el que iba a librar a Israel. This is one of the saddest moments in the Gospels. To see those who once believed lose hope. But why had they lost their hope? The text tells us very clearly. They had been hoping that Jesus was the one who would liberate Israel. A librar a Israel. They came to Jesus expecting a political savior, a Messiah whose salvation would be expressed in political or sociological terms. A lot of people back then made the same mistake about Jesus. A lot of people still do. Those disciples had made Jesus in their own image. This is a problem with some of the hermeneutics in the Church today. With the best intentions and good faith, we try to read Jesus through the lens of our particular group and to interpret the Gospel in light of our group s needs. Of course Jesus speaks to the condition of every man and woman, and of course his Gospel has inevitable and radical political implications. But we can t make Jesus fit into our categories. We have to make ourselves fit into his. If we seek him and his kingdom, everything else will be added to us. We have to seek the true Jesus, not the Jesus of our imaginations and desires. Those disciples in the Emmaus story had their own ideas about who Jesus should be, about what a Messiah should look like. This
4 is an approach to Jesus that leads nowhere. It makes them blind. Jesus is walking right next to them and they can t see him. The Gospel says: Pero sus ojos estaban retenidos para que no le conocieran. Their eyes were kept from recognizing him. Sometimes isn t this true of our theology, my friends? Too often we take the Jesus of the gospels, who is meant to be an icon the image of the invisible God and the firstborn of a new humanity and we turn him into a mirror. All we can see in Jesus is ourselves. But our people want to see the real Jesus. They are like those folks who seek out the apostles in the Gospel. They are coming to you and me because we are the so-called experts the pastors, the scholars, the teachers. They are coming to us with that same simple request, We wish to see Jesus (John 12:21). Queremos ver a Jesús. We have an obligation before God, and out of love for our neighbors, to show them the real Jesus. The Jesus of the Gospels. But we have to make sure we know the real Jesus ourselves. To do that we have to get rid of our preconceptions and read the Gospel in faith. At the Transfiguration, the apostles heard the voice from heaven say, This is my beloved Son listen to him! (Mark 9:7) That s what we have to do, my friends. We have to listen to what Jesus says about himself and what is said about him in the Gospels. And we have to believe in the testimony of those who witnessed his rising from the dead, the testimony of the Church s great tradition. We have a hard time today believing in the Gospel even many of our professional exegetes, pastors, and teachers. We re so
5 advanced, so scientific, that we think we re too sophisticated to believe in miracles like the ones we read about in the Gospel. But St. Paul is right, my friends: If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain (1 Cor. 15:14). And if our faith is in vain, friends, what are we living and working for? We see the roots of unbelief at Emmaus, too. The disciples refused to believe the witness of the women who discovered the empty tomb. This theme runs through all of the Easter stories. The blindness caused by unbelief. We all remember doubting Thomas. Remember what he said? Unless I see I will not believe (John 20:25). In Mark s gospel, Jesus criticizes the disciples because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen (Mark 16:14). Jesus makes the same criticism in the Emmaus account. He calls the disciples there fools Oh insensatos y tardos de corazón para creer! We have to watch out for the same temptation, my friends. None of us has seen the risen Christ either. We ve never met anyone who can walk on water, or multiply loaves and fishes, or raise a man from the dead. We have no proof that Jesus is the one the Church says he is the Son of God, the Savior of the human race. For that kind of knowledge, we need the gift of faith. And this is what Christ draws near to give us. While they were walking, Jesus drew near and went with them. Jesús se acercó y siguió con ellos.
6 What great love our Lord has for us, my brothers and sisters! What a great gift he gives us, the gift of faith. Unless we believe, unless we have faith, Jesus will remain for us just another rabbi from ancient Israel. And again, if he is just a wise man, not the Son of God who rose from the dead, then he can t save anybody. Then all our work is in vain. Practically speaking, we need the gift of faith to interpret the Scriptures properly and to proclaim them. The Scriptures were written by believers and they were written for the purpose of bringing others to that same faith, to the encounter with Jesus Christ. We just celebrated the Year of St. Paul, the great evangelist. Paul said that God was pleased to reveal his Son to me in order that I might preach him (Gal. 1:16) We need to have that same faith that Paul, did. We need to believe that the biblical texts are inspired by God. We need to proclaim them as St. Paul did. Not as the word of men but as what it really is the Word of God (1 Thess. 2:13). La Palabra de Dios. At Emmaus Jesus teaches us how we should read the New Testament, and how we should proclaim Christ. Beginning with Moses and all the prophets, [Jesus] interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. Y, empezando por Moisés y continuando por todos los profetas, les explicó lo que había sobre él en todas las Escrituras. Jesus explained his identity through the Old Testament, through the plan of God what St. Paul and the Church Fathers called the economy of salvation. This is how he taught his disciples to proclaim him. That s why there is not a page of the New
Testament that is not filled with allusions, citations, and quotations from the Old Testament. I worry sometimes that in our preaching we have become a little like Marcion, the early heretic who wanted to throw out the Old Testament. At Emmaus, our Lord himself tells us that if we want to know him then we need to know the Old Testament. We need to know how he is the fulfillment of all that Israel had hoped for. My friends, the way we teach and preach about Christ should make the Word of God come alive. Our proclamation should make our people s hearts burn with the desire for conversion. The desire for a life that s more than just a surface existence. That is what happened to the disciples at Emmaus. Did not our hearts burn within us while he opened to us the Scriptures? And they ask our Lord: Stay with us. A simple request that reflects a profound conversion. Quédate con nosotros. Through his interpretation of the Scriptures, Jesus has shown them that the Word of God, spoken of old through the prophets, in these latter days has become flesh, a living Person. As the Book of Revelation says: He is clad in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is the Word of God (Rev. 19:13; cf. Heb. 1:1). Quédate con nosotros. Jesus has come into their lives and they don t ever want him to leave. Now, how does Jesus respond? He takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them just as he had done with the apostles at the Last Supper (Luke 22:14-20). 7
8 The Word of God is meant to lead us to the table of the Lord. To the Eucharist. To the sacraments of the Church. In the Eucharist the story of salvation history continues. What the Scriptures proclaim, the liturgy makes real the communion of God and his children. In the Eucharist, the disciples recognize Christ. He was made known to them in the breaking of the bread which is what the early Church used to call the Eucharist. Le habían conocido en la fracción del pan. And finally, my friends, we notice that the disciples, having met our Lord in Word and Sacrament, set out to proclaim him to their brothers and sisters in Jerusalem. The encounter with Christ in the Scriptures must lead our people to beat witness to him. To take their part in the mission that Christ gave to his Church: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations (Matt. 28:19 20). Jesus said he came to cast fire upon the earth (Luke 12:49). This is the burning that the disciples felt in their hearts at Emmaus. The Word of God seeks to start that fire in the hearts of every man and woman. He want so inflame our hearts with the desire to know him and to love him ever more deeply. With the zeal to bring other souls to love him too. With fervor to share his love with others. Let us then go out and proclaim this Word! Let us draw near to our brothers and sisters as they make their way down the road of life. Let us speak to them of our friendship with Jesus. Thank you for the opportunity to talk with you today.
I pray that Our Lady of Guadalupe, who heard the Word of God and allowed it to dwell richly within her, will watch over you and your families (cf. Col. 3:16). 9