Transcript

Even though we couldn't scale the heights of heaven, He stooped down in His love to show us what we could never discover on our own.

But only when we go back and look at what He's done for us, in the light of who He is, do we really come to understand it.

The covenant reflects God's own fatherly purpose for making us His family, coming to know who God is, from all eternity, as the Trinity, in terms of family life and love.

The church is, in fact, the family that God has fathered.

Christ fulfilling His promise on this rock, I will build my church.

It is the kingdom of the Son.

It is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

This is what it means to be a Catholic Christian.

Good morning.

My pleasure to be with you.

As you know, as Catholics, we hear about the new evangelization.

In the second half of the 20th century, it became the main event.

It reached a sort of crescendo as we crossed the new millennium.

But now, in the 21st century, we realize we were just getting started.

This was not a short-term mission.

This was a long-term strategy.

And so, my first presentation today is going to be entitled, First Comes Love, subtitled, What is the Catholic Gospel?

Because in order for us to evangelize, we have to know what is the evangel, the good news.

And so, I would like to focus this morning on what it means for us to believe in the gospel and to understand what it is for us as Catholic Christians.

A lot of people talk about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

And of course, not only do we have no problem with that, we would affirm that as a wonderful and awesome grace.

But we're talking about something more.

We're talking about a covenantal relationship with Jesus, so that more than a coworker, more than a neighbor, more than a close friend, He really is the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.

He is the eternal Son.

So, we enter into this covenant kinship with the eternal Son of God and find ourselves members of the family of God.

But how do we begin to wrap our minds around it?

I would like to propose a very simple point of entry.

And that is something that we do as Catholics all the time.

The sign of the cross.

When we make the sign of the cross, we're speaking the words in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit while we trace the cross upon our bodies.

On the one hand, we confess the highest and the holiest mystery of who God is from all eternity, while we also remind ourselves with this performative utterance, this gesture, what God has done for us, not only to forgive our sins, but to adopt us into His family through the holy sacrifice of Jesus upon the cross.

It seems so basic.

It's over and done in less than three seconds, and yet it contains the whole mystery of faith.

But when we hear that phrase, the mystery of faith, we have to ask, what do we mean?

I remember becoming a Catholic way back in the mid-80s and teaching a class of young teenagers.

And I asked them the question, what do we as Catholics mean when we speak of the mystery of faith?

And this one kid, a hot shot, raised his hand.

He said, a mystery of faith is something we have to believe in, even if we know it isn't true.

And I'm like, well, not quite.

I mean, the mysteries of faith go beyond reason, but they never go against it.

And so what I had to clarify is how there are mysteries in the natural order.

Like, I know a friend who has a doctorate in physics focusing on optics, and yet he tells me that we have never really resolved the mystery of light.

What is it?

Is it a particle, a wave, or a beam?

Somehow it's all three and yet one, but we don't turn off the lights until we have purely identified and defined that mystery.

And even more, the mystery of life, and most of all, the mystery of love, which is not reducible to biochemical processes in the brain or the body.

And so there are mysteries in the natural order, but there are also mysteries in the supernatural order, most especially the mystery of the Holy Trinity.

Now, when we hear about the mystery of the Holy Trinity, that there is one God in three divine persons, it almost feels like something of a mathematical abstraction, that somehow God is both three and one.

And we know it's doctrine, we know it's defined, it's dogma, and so we have to believe it upon pain of mortal sin, but there's so much more than just simply that legal requirement for Catholic Christians to believe this.

This has been at the heart of the Christian faith since the Incarnation.

So what I would like to do is to begin focusing on how the Catholic Gospel originates in eternity as the plan of the Father for the Son to give us the spirit of Sonship that we would share in nothing less than Jesus' own divine Sonship.

Now, as we think about how to do that, and I've taught courses on the Trinity at the university and seminary level.

In fact, I'm getting ready to teach another one next semester.

But the fact is, it isn't easy, and yet on the other hand, I remember as a Protestant seminarian back in 1982, no it was 1979, I remember your Pope coming to Boston, and I was up there on the North Shore studying, and I always remember some classmates who skipped school to go down to hear him in the Boston Commons.

There was a deluge, a downpour I thought served them right for going to listen to their Pope.

I was not a Catholic.

In fact, I was still very anti-Catholic, but I have to admit that a few days later when I picked up the homily and read it in the Boston Globe, I was startled at how clear, how profoundly biblical it was, and yet how practical too.

And so I began to look around to see if this was just an exception, but no, as a matter of fact, this is the way your Pope could preach and make the Bible come alive.

And so I began to gather fragments of his homilies, and there was one in particular that he'd given earlier that I found on the Trinity, speaking to ordinary Catholics.

And I remember a quote from this homily.

I wrote it down.

I committed it to memory.

He said, and I quote, that God in his deepest mystery is not a solitude, but a family, since he has in himself fatherhood, sonship, and the essence of the family, which is love.

And he went on to explain the love of the Holy Spirit, the interpersonal bond of communion that is more than a power, it is the third person.

But notice that God in his deepest mystery is not a solitude, but a family.

The Catechism echoes this.

God is one, but not solitary.

Then it goes on.

He says God in his deepest mystery is not a solitude, but a family, since he has in himself fatherhood, sonship, and the essence of the family, which is love.

Did you catch that?

Notice that John Paul did not say that God is like a family.

He said that he is a family.

And why?

Because God possesses from all eternity these absolute fundamental features of the family, namely fatherhood, sonship, and love.

And he alone possesses them in their perfection.

It would almost be more accurate than to say that the Hahns are like a family.

Because we also have fatherhood, but I'm told that it's flawed.

I wouldn't know.

I don't see my own mistakes.

We also have sonship.

I've got five sons and one daughter, and I can assure you our sons have flaws.

And we have love, but it too is imperfect.

It's incomplete.

So what we hear in this amazing statement is that the Trinity involves more than a dogma, more than a mathematical abstraction.

It is a spiritual vision, as well as a practical and personal challenge for us, not only to enter into the family of God, but for us to live family life wherever we take that grace back home with us.

Now at this point, somebody could protest and say, wait, does John Paul, does the Catholic Church, does new evangelization require us to become professional theologians?

And I would say no.

But at the same time, we recall that Jesus said that we should love the Lord our God with all of our heart and our mind, as well as our soul and strength.

And if that's the case, then I would propose that coming to know who God is from all eternity as the Trinity in terms of family life and love.

This is not a call to become professional theologians and get your graduate degree, although I would invite you to consider that sort of thing.

But what it's calling us to do is to get to know God for who he is to us and for who he is from all eternity, not just what he does to us or for us.

There's a sense in which we can be true amateur theologians because the word amateur comes from the Latin amour.

It's a French word meaning one who loves.

And so as we come to know who God is, we're going to come to understand what he does much, much better.

And I think that is the key that it's going to unlock the door over and over again.

The importance of getting this right, I really want to clarify.

I remember one night teaching a Bible study for undergraduates and graduates on our home.

And my two boys at the time were not even teenagers, but they wanted to stay up late.

They always wanted to.

And so they came up with a really interesting excuse.

We'd like to sit in on your Bible study.

Well, I thought, sure, I'll let them have my way.

As long as you're alert and you're awake and you're paying attention, you can sit on the stairs.

And so they did.

We went through an hour of Bible study.

They were still alert at the end.

We went through about five or ten minutes of Q&A. And one of my grad students asked me this really complicated question about the metaphysics of the eternal decree of God regarding the incarnation.

And my two boys were looking at me like, what language was that?

And so I answered it in terms of the Christocentric perspective of Duns Scotus.

And I tied in St. Thomas.

And they were like, he understood.

And then he followed it up, this student, Professor Hahn, let me follow this up by saying, and as they were rolling their eyes, uncomprehending, I answered it again succinctly.

And then a moment later, I dismissed the group and they all left.

And as the kids were heading upstairs, suddenly my oldest turned around and said, could I help you with the folding chairs?

And my other son said, and I can help with a sweeper too.

And I'm like, absolutely.

And so they came back downstairs.

And suddenly as they were getting the folding chairs stacked, my oldest son said to me, Professor Hahn, can you explain to me the theology of the folding chair?

And Dr. Hahn, my second son, chimed in, can you explain the vacuum cleaner from philosophy?

And I'm like, cut.

Doctor is what I do.

Dad is who I am.

And don't you ever forget it.

And we had a good laugh.

But the fact is, we distinguish between what we do and who we are, right?

And we know from experience that no friendship, no personal relationship is possible unless we get beyond what that person can do for us and get to know them for who they are.

Now, in a store, you know, a customer comes up and, you know, he's not going to want an interpersonal relationship.

So, you know, in a classroom too, when students are concerned about grades, I understand that.

But in real life experience, personal relationships get beyond what he'll do for me or what he has done in terms of who that person is.

And if that's true in the human realm, it's not less but more true in the divine realm.

In our relationship with God, we have to come to understand what he's done.

But even more, we've got to reach that point to discover who he is, to enter into a personal relationship that is more like family than a store or a classroom.

The Catechism is very clear on this in one of my favorite passages in paragraph 236, because it points out how the fathers of the church distinguished between theology, the word is theologia, and economy, oikonomia, which has got nothing to do with Wall Street.

On the one hand, theology refers to the mystery of God's inner life within the Blessed Trinity, an economy to all of the works by which God reveals himself and communicates his life, not just factual information.

Through the economy, the theology is revealed to us.

Through what God has done, we come to know who he is.

But conversely, the theologia of who God is illuminates the whole economy of what he does.

And then it goes on to explain how this is also true in human experience, that a person discloses himself and his actions, and the better we know a person, the better we understand his actions.

And that is true, especially in our relationship with God, our Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Another experience that I had, which really drove this home, was I got an invitation to come out to Penn State and debate a Muslim scholar.

And at first, I had no trouble saying no.

But then when I realized that this good friend had exhausted all of the other possibilities, reluctantly I said yes, because it was more than a year away, and it just seemed like that was a safe time.

And so about five or six months passed, and I was out there in Penn State College visiting my friend, and much to my surprise, he joined us for dinner and he announced that this Muslim scholar happened to be passing through town the same weekend.

And I'm like, how interesting.

And he said, I hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of setting up a breakfast time tomorrow.

I'm like, well this is supposed to be vacation, but I guess since you already arranged it, we'll go through with it.

So we got up in the morning, and we drove down to the restaurant, we said a prayer, and then we walked in.

The place was empty, and I'm thinking, okay, he forgot, let's leave.

But we sat down, we ordered coffee, and then about three minutes later, this man walked in, a tall, dark stranger wearing a turban.

We introduced ourselves, we shook hands, we sat down, and after just a moment or two of these pleasantries, he dove right into the subject matter of the debate that we were going to have, namely the Trinity.

And he had just come from another university where he had debated a Christian scholar on the philosophical terminology used in the Trinity.

And so I referred to God, but I referred to him as Father, and suddenly down came his fist very hard on the table.

And I was startled.

And he said, do not blaspheme in my presence.

And I was wondering what he was talking about, because I don't like blasphemy with breakfast any more than the next guy.

I just didn't think that I had blasphemed.

Did I suddenly contract a Tourette's syndrome?

I didn't think so.

But I asked him what he meant by me blaspheming, and he explained that to call God Father is to take human attributes and project them onto God, whereas fatherhood is finite, not infinite.

It's human, not divine.

And so to bring God down to this level would be essentially blasphemous.

And I said, okay, I'll do my best.

And so we changed the subject.

A moment later, we're talking about Jesus.

A few minutes later, I referred to Jesus as the Son of God, and down came his fist again a second time, even louder and harder.

At this point, there were a couple customers looking at me like, what's your problem?

And I didn't know.

And so I asked him, what now?

He said, I'll ask you once, I've asked you twice, but not a third time.

Don't blaspheme.

And I'm like, how have I done so?

He said, you referred to Jesus as the Son of God.

God does not have a son.

Once again, sonship is not divine, but human.

It's not infinite.

It's finite.

To project that onto God is the essence of blasphemy.

And I was wondering at that point, how are we going to debate the Trinity if I can't refer to God as Father or Son?

But I wasn't going to press that point or even ask that question.

Instead, I took a step back, and I wanted to identify some common ground for dialogue.

And so I introduced the idea of analogy, which is common in philosophy.

And I said, well, you and I would agree that God, Allah in your case, is all-powerful.

He's omnipotent, that we have power, but it's finite.

And he nodded.

And I said, likewise, you would agree that God, Allah, in your case, is all-knowing, that he is omniscient, and that we have knowledge, but it is finite.

And he again nodded.

And I said, you would also agree that Allah is all-good, that he's all-merciful.

That's one of his 99 titles.

And we sometimes show mercy, and we also exhibit goodness, even if it's limited.

And I said, you would agree then that Allah is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-merciful, all-good, and all-loving.

Why couldn't we bundle these divine attributes together and apply the label Father?

And he was staring intently back at me, and he said, because Allah does not love as a father loves.

And he could tell I wasn't tracking it all that clearly, and so he explained.

He said, let me illustrate.

He said, I just finished a doctorate in Philadelphia Temple University, and I congratulated him, because I knew from my own experience what went into getting a doctorate.

And he said, no, I'm going off to the State University of New York for a postdoctoral fellowship.

And I congratulated him again.

He said, and that's not my point.

I'm leaving one town and moving to another.

I've been living in an apartment where the lease allowed pets, and so I actually owned a dog for the last year or so.

It's my dog, and I own the dog, and I love the dog, and I cared for him, but I'm signing a lease up in New York that allows for no pets.

I've tried to get rid of this dog.

Nobody will take him, and so I may have to kill him.

And I thought that was odd, and I said, with love like that, who needs hate?

He wasn't amused.

He was staring back intently, because he was making a point.

And I'm like swallowing hard and trying to understand exactly what he was referring to, and then I realized that this is not a fatherly love, that what he was describing in Islam is more precisely and accurately called a master-slave relationship.

And I'd come to understand that from studying Islamic scholarship, but I'd never really confronted it this way before.

So we made some adjustments, or at least I tried, and we got back on track with the conversation until about four minutes later, I said something, and I don't know to this day what it was, but down came the fist even louder and harder, and he stood up, and he said, I've asked you once, twice, and not a third time.

And suddenly he turned around and walked out of the restaurant, and everybody was sitting there in stunned silence, including us.

The waitress came over and asked if we were ready to order breakfast.

Honestly, we had lost our appetites.

We paid for the coffee.

And then in stunned silence, we walked out to the parking lot.

We sat in his car for five minutes without saying a word.

Suddenly my friend, who is a Baptist from birth, turned to me and said, Scott, I don't think I've ever appreciated what we do every time we say, our Father who art in heaven.

And I said, and I believe in God the Father almighty, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son.

And he's like, Scott, glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.

And he started up the cart, and we drove home.

You know, two things happened that week.

On the one hand, we got a call from this scholar who was canceling the debate.

And to be honest, I wasn't disappointed.

I was somewhat relieved.

But the excuse was that I was not going to employ the typical philosophical terminology that I was going to use all of these family images and terms.

Well, that's what Scripture and our tradition do.

The second thing was also that I realized that sometimes it takes an outsider to show us insiders what we have come to take for granted and how much we have assumed.

Because I thought if there's anything inoffensive in our faith, it is God as Father.

Until I realized that no.

What Jesus did was to launch something of a revolution in the history of world religions by teaching his disciples to pray in a way that not even the most devout rabbis ever dared to address the deity.

Our Father who art in heaven.

Referring to God as Father so many times, many more than we find in the entire Hebrew Bible.

And so what he shows us is not just that it is alright to apply the label Father to our Creator, but that the identity of God is simply not reducible to Creator.

Because that would make God's identity dependent upon a creation.

For there to be creatures.

And so suddenly you step back and realize that long apart from God creating, God is God.

But who is God apart from our Creator?

We wouldn't know.

We couldn't scale the heights of heaven.

But even though we couldn't scale the heights of heaven in his merciful love, he stooped down in his condescending love to show us what we could never discover on our own.

Who he is from all eternity.

That Father is more than a noun, it's a verb.

Because from all eternity he is fathering.

That's why the Son isn't younger than the Father.

He's not smaller than the Father.

He is God from God, light from light, true light, because he is begotten, not made.

He is consubstantial with the Father.

And so Father is a noun, it's a verb, it's revealing to us that the first person doesn't lord it over the second person.

He makes his life a gift of love which he lavishes upon the Son from all eternity.

And the Son as the Son does what sons do, and that is he images the Father with the same dynamism from all eternity by not only accepting that gift of love, but by returning it, loving the Father as the Father has loved the Son.

And so what do we call the love of the Father for the Son and the love of the Son for the Father?

The Holy Spirit.

More than the power of love, the Holy Spirit is the person of love.

And suddenly we can see why we're looking at something that is more of a family than the Hahns could ever be, or any other household.

But we're also discovering what it means for us to have been made in God's image and likeness.

For us to have also been redeemed by Christ.

For us to have been given the Holy Spirit that we could be sanctified, that we could become holy, that we could become saints.

So often we hear people say, well, I prefer God, the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sanctifier, because then it doesn't get us involved in these other terms that are controversial and problematic to some.

Well, I mean, we should also thank God for being our Creator, our Redeemer, and Sanctifier, but we should distinguish between what God has done and who God is, and how it is we discover who God is precisely because of what He's done.

But only when we go back and look at what He's done for us, in the light of who He is to us, do we really come to understand it.

So just take those three categories, for example, Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier.

At one level, we understand what it means for God to be our Creator.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

How?

God said, let there be light, let there be this, let there be that, and by the power of His Word, all things came to be, until suddenly we come to Genesis 126. And there we read how God spoke, let us make man in our image after our likeness, and He makes man male and female.

Well, didn't He make the other creatures with gender differences?

The dogs and the cats and the horses and the cows?

Well, yes, but nothing is said about male and female with regard to the other creatures, because for them, it's just simply biological.

But for us, there's a mystery which is irreducibly theological.

For God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness, and so being man is more than just having a soul by which our intellect knows the truth, and our will chooses the good, and we enter into love.

That is an essential part of what it means to bear the image and likeness of God.

But what we discover, especially when we read the Old Testament in light of the New, is that being made male and female in Genesis 1, and being called into the marital covenant there in Genesis 2, unveils to us the deepest dimension of the interpersonal love, not only of God, but what it means for us to bear the image of God, and the likeness as well.

Because there in Genesis 2, we read about how the two become one flesh.

And I can relate, because in our first couple of years of marriage, as we ratified and renewed our covenant, the two became one flesh, and the one that we became was so real, that nine months later we had to come up with a name.

Michael Scott Hahn, our firstborn, was the embodiment of our oneness, the incarnation of our love.

And in the process of the two becoming one, we became three in one, a kind of triunity, which is more than a numerical coincidence.

It is a creaturely reflection of a divine mystery that might seem lofty, but it lures us into something that is pure love, something that we will have eternity to come to a deeper appreciation of.

And so for God to be our creator is something more than just our maker.

He has made us to bear the image and likeness of God.

And so when we come to understand what he does as our creator, in the light of who he is as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we're going to see that marriage is not a man-made institution, that the family is not reducible to the biological or even the sociological.

It really is something that is meant to provide theological wisdom, not just for scholars, but for peasants.

It gives access to all of God's children to come to understand who he is and who we are as his beloved children.

In effect, God has given us all fathers so that we can come to know him for who he is.

And yet, he's given us all fathers who have flaws, who have failings.

I mean, except for my kids.

No, no, even my kids have a dad who has flaws and failures.

But he's given us fathers who are flawed, not only so that we can forgive them, but so that we'll come to understand that there is only one true and perfect father.

And so he's given us all fathers so that we can come to know him for who he is, but he's given us fathers with flaws so that we'll never settle for anything less than the best, the only perfect Abba father is what he longs for us to discover.

So all of our fathers and all of our father figures, our teachers, our coaches, our priests and pastors, all of them are like rungs in a ladder by which we ascend to discover the face of our one true and perfect father.

And in that moment, we will know who we are as his beloved sons and daughters for all eternity, including a family that is not merely human or earthly, but truly divine and heavenly.

And that's just reflecting upon what God has done as our creator in the light of who the Holy Trinity is.

Let's move to the second category, and that is God the Redeemer.

Because at one level, I think we understand what it means to be redeemed.

It means to be redeemed from sin, from iniquity, from judgment and condemnation and guilt and so on.

But I think we often tend to sort of accentuate the wrong syllable.

We sort of misunderstand redemption by reducing it to what we're redeemed from, when in fact it's more important to discover what we're redeemed for.

Because yes, we are redeemed from sin and guilt and judgment and hell.

And if that's all redemption is, that's good news.

But the good news for us as Catholics is even better, because it's what we're redeemed for.

That is, we're redeemed for adoption, for being made partakers of the divine nature, as we read in 2 Peter 1, verse 4. But this is not something easy to understand.

Both sides, being redeemed from sin or being redeemed for sharing Christ's sonship.

Look carefully at this idea of being redeemed from sin.

Once we come to see that what God does in redeeming us is also a reflection of who God eternally is, we're going to see what sin is all about and why God prohibits it and why God punishes it because frankly God knows us better than we know ourselves.

He loves us more than we love ourselves and so he only legislates what he knows as an all-knowing, all-perfect Father, what will fulfill his children and what will perfect us.

And so he hates sin because he loves us.

In other words, sin is more than broken laws.

Sin is broken lives, broken hearts, broken homes.

And this is why ultimately what sin involves is not a breach of contract, but a broken covenant.

And in ancient Israel, they understood the difference between a contract on the one hand and a covenant on the other, more than we do today because we tend to use those terms as though they're synonymous or interchangeable.

In a contract, ancient Israelites would understand that you exchange property.

This is yours and that is mine.

Whereas in a covenant, I am yours and you are mine.

In a contract, you exchange promises first and then you sign your name and that name is the sign.

When you say I give you my word, that word is your name, the signature is the sign of the contract, and once you've exchanged the property, the contract is fulfilled and you can go your separate ways and never have any other dealings.

But in a covenant, you don't just give promises, you don't just share property, you invoke the holy name of God and more than my name or your name which is the glue of a contract, God's name, God's holy name becomes the cement that binds the two and makes them one for the rest of their lives and for generations to come.

What God has joined, let not man put asunder, is how Jesus describes marriage in Matthew 19. Precisely because it's not merely a contract, it is especially a covenant.

And so the covenant reflects God's own fatherly purpose for making us his family.

And so we don't really break the covenant so much as we violate it and we come to understand how it is we're really harming ourselves.

What do I mean?

Well, I don't think modern people understand how firmly fixed God's moral law is for us.

It's the same as it is in the physical or the material realm.

I mean, we know how absurd it would be if we heard about a debate in Congress and both houses were debating whether or not to repeal, say, the law of gravity.

You know, even if they ended up passing that law unanimously and handing it on to the president.

We have announced the repeal of the law of gravity and he agrees to sign it into law.

And so together, they celebrate the repeal of gravity on Monday morning by after signing it, getting up on the roof of the White House and jumping off.

Well, we know what would happen.

They wouldn't break the law of gravity, right?

They would demonstrate it.

Gravity would break whatever bones of their bodies hit the ground first because in the material realm, these physical laws are permanent.

They're firmly fixed, non-negotiable.

Well, the same thing is true in the realm of the spirit for our souls as much as our bodies.

And so the moral law isn't broken as much as it's violated.

And in the process of sinning, we do more than break a contract or break laws.

We really break hearts.

We break homes and lives are shattered as a result.

This is how it is that God as a father comes to redeem us as prodigal sons and daughters, as rebels, as runaways through the son.

It isn't how much he suffers on the cross that saves us.

It's rather how much he loves.

It's how much he offers to the father.

And he gives to God the father immeasurably more in his own love than all of our sins have taken away.

So in the process, he fulfills the covenant.

He renews this bond of love.

He redeems us not just from hellfire and punishment, but he redeems us for sharing his own divine sonship.

What a difference it makes to realize that we're not just redeemed from sin, but we're redeemed for sharing Christ's own divine sonship.

Now I remember being invited to participate in a radio debate because there was a fellow in Pittsburgh on Word FM who was sort of targeting Catholics.

And I heard him at times and I would hear about him.

And apparently he heard about me because he called me and asked me if I would debate him on air during this live show during rush hour.

And I said, no Don, I won't debate you, but I will dialogue with you as a brother in Christ.

And he said, whatever.

What difference does it make?

And I said, okay, here's the condition.

I will come on at three o'clock provided you let me take you out at one o'clock for lunch.

And he said, sure, free lunch.

And so we went to the lobby of the building where the radio station was and I took him out.

And we ate and about halfway through I said, okay, tell me about your family.

Tell me about your profession.

You were once a Lutheran minister.

And out comes the wallet, the family pictures.

And suddenly we discover we also have friends in common because I shared I was once a Protestant minister.

He asked me about my family and my experience in ministry.

And suddenly a friendship was being formed.

And the conversation got really wonderful until he looked at his watch and realized that the show was supposed to start in about 14 minutes.

So we quickly paid the bill.

We got on the elevator.

We went up to the floor where the studio was and the technicians were panicking.

Where have you been?

We couldn't reach you, you know.

So we got our headphones on and then we jumped right into the conversation.

It was supposed to be the first hour of the three-hour program, but it went so well he invited me to the second hour.

And by the end of the second hour we were finally getting around to our differences because I kept pointing out the fact that we as Christians, whether we're Protestant or Catholic, share so much more in common than where we diverge.

And we so often fixate on our differences we don't recognize how much more the common ground is and how much better it is to stand on that common ground to focus on the differences.

Because the disagreements are not unimportant, but our agreements are even greater.

And so at the end of the second hour I mentioned something to him.

Just in passing as we were running out of time I said, you know, there we do come to one important difference that you speak about how we're redeemed from sin, I would speak about how redemption is more than just being forgiven.

And he rolled his eyes.

Of course the radio audience couldn't hear that, but I could see it.

And he said, wait, I'm going to ask you to stick around for the third hour.

You've got to explain that.

And so we came back after the break and I had prayed during the break, help me to know what to say.

And as we came back he said, what is there anything more than being forgiven?

And I said, okay, well, two examples came to mind during the news break.

On the one hand, just last week I had car trouble and I took my car down to the BP station at the bottom of the hill where Bill is a great mechanic as well as a good friend and he identified two different problems.

So I left the car and he fixed it and I came back and he was gone the next day and I paid for the repairs and I drove it home and I realized that one problem was fixed, but not the other.

I could still hear it.

So I dropped it off again the next morning and I said, did you get to that?

And he said, no, I forgot.

Oh, would you forgive me?

And I said, Bill, of course I forgive you.

And I said, Don, I had no problem forgiving my friend, but I didn't adopt him.

I didn't fill out adoption papers and write him into my last will and I didn't drive him home and introduce him to my own kids as though he had become their sibling.

And I said, one thing is to be forgiven.

It's another thing to be adopted.

I said, another example came to mind.

Picture a fellow in prison on death row for all kinds of enormous crimes and today the day has come for his execution.

Whatever we think about capital punishment, this poor soul is not only doomed to die, but he's also got some disease for which there is no cure.

Plus he's an orphan.

He's got no family, no friends.

The only people who want to see him are his creditors because he's got a lot of deep debt.

And so imagine this guy walking down the hall to the chamber and then he hears the phone, he picks it up and the voice of the governor announces, I've granted you a pardon.

I said, Don, I would call that good news, but I wouldn't call it great news because now he's free to leave the prison and die from the disease as the creditors try to get him to pay debts that he cannot afford.

I said, but suppose the governor went on to say, not only have I granted you a pardon, but we've discovered a cure for this illness.

Don't worry about paying for that.

There are going to be a doctor.

There are going to be physicians outside the prison in the yard.

They'll give you the cure and you'll see that white stretch limo.

I filled out adoption papers.

You're coming to my house and I've adopted you into my family.

I said, Don, that's what I would call great news.

And I said, that's the gospel according to the Catholic church that we're not just redeemed from sin.

We're redeemed for sharing Christ's divine sonship, coming home into the family of God, discovering that's our one true home and nothing less than that.

It's almost too good to be true, except it's all true.

And it's the fullness of truth.

And he looked at me and he said, I have no problem with any of that.

And I said, of course you don't. But the fact is we don't hear that outside of our tradition.

And then he said, you know, to be honest, you're right.

But at the same time, he said, I know a lot of Catholics who don't seem to be familiar with that other side of the good news.

And I had to admit he was right.

In fact, he ended up taking me out for dinner and we've become good friends.

We've stayed in touch ever since.

But I want to encourage you to recognize how important it is for us as Catholic Christians to enter into the new evangelization, to come to a deeper appreciation for who God is, Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit and all that God does as our Creator and our Redeemer.

And the third category is what?

Our sanctifier.

What does it mean to be sanctified?

It means to be made holy, not just to be forgiven, not just to be adopted, but to be filled with the fullness of God's own love, God's own life.

Now, this is not something that we can do for God.

It's precisely what God alone can do for us as our Father, through the Son, but especially in and through and by the Holy Spirit.

So I believe in the Holy Spirit, and that's why I believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church.

Because the church is not an institution that we have formed to welcome people who have been pardoned from their sin.

The church is, in fact, the family that God is fathering.

It is Christ fulfilling his promise when he said, on this rock I will build my church.

Notice he says, I will build my church.

It's not our church.

We're not the builders.

We're the tools.

He's the master builder.

It isn't our church.

It's his.

And it's not on this rock I will build my church's. There is one church because there is one God, one Father of us all.

What do you call a man who fathers two or three or four families?

I grew up in Pittsburgh.

We'd call a guy like that a jerk, a scoundrel.

And so the glory of God's own fatherly reputation is staked in the fact that he is fathering one family, and that his Son is fulfilling that one promise on this rock.

I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.

And no wonder, because the Holy Spirit is poured out upon us to give us all that we need, to make up for all that we lack, but to give us all that Christ has merited.

Even if it comes slowly, it is going to come fully, and it is going to transform not just bread and wine into Christ's body, blood, soul, and divinity.

That's much easier than for God to transform sinners like me into saints.

But that is what God the Father is intent upon.

And that's what we've got to allow Him to do.

And that is why the church is not like some wooden stage on which the drama unfolds.

The church is the drama itself.

It is the family that God is fathering.

It is the kingdom of the Son.

It is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

It is our one true home.

And we call it Catholic not just because it's bigger and older than all the other denominations, and it stretches all around the planet.

We call it Catholic because it's not just international or planetary, but because it's universal.

The essential members of the Catholic Church are not the Pope and the College of Cardinals.

The essential members of the Catholic Church are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, along with the Blessed Virgin who became the mother of God and was given to us to be our mother too.

And along with the Holy Trinity and the Holy Blessed Virgin, we have also Saint Joseph and all of the saints and all of the angels who are like older siblings who aren't just sitting back and watching us as though this is a spectator sport.

Hebrews describes them as a cloud of witnesses.

They're bearing witness.

They're praying for us.

They're more deeply invested in us becoming saints and getting all the way home than we realize.

Talk about having holy friends in high places.

This is what we mean by the Catholic Church.

It's one.

It's holy.

It's Catholic and it's apostolic, not just because the bishops are the successors of the apostles, but because Revelation 21 describes the New Jerusalem as being based upon these foundation stones of the twelve apostles.

They're not dead.

They died on earth, but they're more alive in heaven than they were when they were on earth.

And they're praying.

And they're giving thanks to God.

And they're also interceding on our behalf like our older siblings never did, at least in the Hahn family where I grew up.

And so this is what it means to be a Catholic Christian.

This is what it means to be hearing the good news again and again.

And this is why the catechism affirms that outside the church there is no salvation.

Now when I first read that, I was somewhat startled.

Does that imply that non-Catholics who die outside the church have no hope of heaven?

No. It's not reducing salvation to whether you end up in heaven or not.

For non-Catholics, salvation is sort of like whether you get out of hell and make it to heaven.

But for us as Catholics, salvation is understood best in the light of who it's saving us as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

It's not just then and there.

It's here and now.

It's not just entering heaven.

It's when heaven comes to earth in the mass.

When we renew not a contract, but a covenant.

When we come to share flesh and blood there from the altar that makes us members of God's own family through the Holy Eucharist, through Holy Communion.

So outside the church there is no salvation.

It's more a description or a definition of what we understand salvation to mean because it's more than getting out of hell.

It's more than getting into heaven.

If that's all it was, that's good news.

But the fact is, we don't have to wait to die to go to heaven.

All we've got to do is go to mass.

And heaven is where we are.

And the angels and saints are who we're with.

Heaven and earth are united in that moment, in that mystery.

And this is what we mean by salvation.

Being outside the Catholic Church is being outside of the family of God.

That's what we need to be saved from.

And salvation is being adopted and brought home and sharing the fullness of truth, the fullness of life.

There are probably going to be non-Catholics who die outside the church higher in heaven than I'll ever be.

But the fact is, that's not all salvation means.

It means sharing here and now in the fullness of the family of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit with the angels and the saints that are our older siblings and discovering that this is present as a mystery, but a mystery that is more real and more enduring than the solid wooden pews on which you're sitting today.

This is where we'll be in a trillion years.

This is who we'll be in ten trillion years.

And we'll look back and wonder why life on earth seems so long when eternity is eternal.

And this is what matters the most.

And yet at the same time, we are kind of called to lofty contemplation of the beauty and the power of the truths that we say, I believe.

At the same time, it has to kind of be brought home.

It has to also be lived out.

That's why I love to reflect on an experience that I had years ago, a few years even before I became a Catholic, before I entered the church in 86. Back in 82, I became a father for the first time.

Kimberly was nine and a half months pregnant.

She was already two weeks overdue.

And then when the contractions began, we went to the hospital.

More than 30 hours later, she's still in labor.

And I was fighting sleep while she was fighting the pain.

And suddenly I get jostled awake thinking I'll be looking at her face and I'm looking at an anesthesiologist who just explains to me while I'm waking up that we had to take your wife a moment ago down to the ER for an emergency cesarean section.

I'm like, why didn't you wake me?

Well, we tried to, but you were still sleeping.

We had to take her.

And so just hurriedly I ran down the hall towards the ER, half awake.

But when I got there, I saw her strapped cruciform on this gurney where they had taken her down.

So I came over to her side.

I just gripped her hand and I said, I'm so sorry.

I felt like, oh, I understand.

I'm like, oh.

And I just led her in prayer.

And after the amen, I tried to give her some words of encouragement and some comfort.

And then I made a big mistake.

I stood up and I looked over the sheet.

When I tell my bride, I love your guts, I know what I am talking about.

It was like I saw every major organ up close like I had never imagined.

I got dizzy, almost nauseous.

I knelt back.

Let's pray some more.

And I gave her some more words of comfort and consolation.

You know, until about five or 10 minutes later, I could hear them tugging.

I could hear the suctioning.

And so I stood up and they suddenly handed me this big bundle of baby boy.

And as I'm looking into this face of this beautiful baby boy, nine six, no small baby.

It was so awesome.

I mean, it was indescribable.

And then after a couple of minutes, he began to fuss.

He began to cry.

And that's when I realized that, you know, I got to hand him back to her and let nature take its course with the rooting reflex.

And that's where the illumination comes to so many of us.

First time dads were those wonderful anatomical parts of her body reveal their other deeper purpose of life, giving love.

And it was awesome just to see her nursing him and not just at the moment, but for the rest of the three or four days.

But like a typical guy, I'm just looking for some problem to solve something to fix, but that's what the doctors and the nurses and the attendants and orderlies were all doing.

And so it was only after four days that I could finally get into action.

I got the baby seat in the back of the car.

You know, I also got the wheelchair.

I was able to, to wheel her to the elevator with baby Michael and get them to the car and strap him in and drive them home.

And it was just awesome because that night the baby room was finally prepped and, oh, it was so cool.

I remember especially around 3 a.m. where I could hear her nursing our little baby boy.

And as she hoisted him up to her shoulder to begin burping him, I'm thinking, I can't do the one, but I can do that.

You know?

So I said, hand them off to me.

You go back to bed.

And she did.

And she just fell into bed and she fell fast asleep.

While I take little baby Michael down the hall towards the baby room and I began to burp him for the first time, just like I'd seen her do.

Only I must have burped him a little harder than she did because I heard the burp and then I felt something warm and wet going down my pajama shirt in the back.

And I turned him around.

I'm like, okay.

And he clearly felt much better.

Whereas I'm not so sure about how I was feeling.

You know, if you'd asked me a year earlier, has anybody ever vomited on you before?

I would have said, frankly, no.

If you would follow that up and ask me how I'll feel the first time it happens, I think I would have admitted frustration, anger, maybe rage.

But here I am one year later looking into the face of the only person on the planet who's ever vomited on me.

And there's no anger, no rage.

It's like, it's okay.

You feel better.

That's all that matters, you know?

And it was so cool.

And even at that point where it became somewhat cold and clammy, I just didn't want to lay him down yet.

And so I walked into the room and we had a rocking chair and I just, I just sat down and I began rocking my little baby boy.

Because, I mean, this kid was rocking me and my world and I didn't want to lay him down yet.

And as his eyes are drooping and as he's getting ready to fall asleep, I'm still not ready to lay him down.

And I'm just like, oh, wow, God, thank you.

And that's when something happened.

I don't know exactly how to explain it, but I could feel this presence suddenly enter the room and I knew at once that God was there.

Well, of course he's always everywhere, but in that moment he was here in a really cool way.

And I'm like, oh, wow.

Thank you, God.

And as I kept rocking him, even though he was now beginning to sleep, I could feel as though God was trying to communicate something to me.

And I wasn't sure exactly what it was.

And then I began to sense that what he was trying to say was, do you see how much you love your child?

I'm like, oh, God, words can't begin to describe this love welling up.

It's like, oh, thank you.

But there was something more.

And I couldn't figure out what the more was, but he was trying to communicate something else.

And then suddenly I realized that what he was really trying to say to me was, do you think it's possible for you as a father to love your child more than I love my children?

And in a moment I realized theologically that's totally absurd, right?

You're God.

I'm a first-time father.

No, I can't possibly love my child more than you love your children.

But then I realized it was more than just a theological point that he was trying to make.

In a moment I look at my little baby boy and I'm like, wait a second.

You don't mean to say that you love me like this, only more?

And all I could think of in that moment was the countless times that I had vomited on God, not literally, but figuratively, and all my sins and selfish behavior.

And I'd always kind of assumed that the more I do that, the less he loves me, as though my being good is the cause of him loving me.

And then all of a sudden he just turned it around and I realized how the human tail had been wagging the divine dog, that his love was not caused by my goodness, but my goodness, like my very life and existence, these things were caused by his love.

He loved me into existence.

He loved me to the moment where I had become a father.

And he was using my child to show me a love that I would have known abstractly as a theologian, but I'd never experienced personally until that evening.

40 minutes later, I don't want to lay this kid down.

I am rocking him because God is now rocking me.

I finally did.

And I just drifted off to sleep in a moment.

When I woke up, I'm like, Kimberly, you won't believe what happened last night when I took him from you and I burped him and he threw up on me.

And then all of a sudden I realized that God was there and he was trying to show me that he loves me more than I love my baby.

And I couldn't find the words to describe how much I love this little baby boy.

It's amazing.

And she's like, oh, that's nice.

And I'm like, nice girl.

That's radical.

I mean, that's revolutionary.

I mean, it's not just true in the abstract.

It's true in the concrete and I've never known it.

She grew up in a family that was so devout and Christian.

Her dad is an amazing prince of a man.

And so she did experience that.

And while my dad was a virtuous fellow and I thank God for him, he was an only child and he had some real trouble.

And so I never had that experience.

And now I've had it not just once, but six times and not just with the six births of our six kids, but countless other times, even as they became adolescents, I began to see how God loves me through thick and thin and how important it is for us to get beyond what he does for us to discover who he is.

And only then can we really be assured that we are his beloved children.

And I'd like to say ever since that night, ever since 3 a.m. back in 1982 on December 8th, but no, I've actually come again and again back to the point where I doubt that.

Back to the point where I forget that.

Back to the point where even when I remember, I question whether God could love a sinner like me that much.

I remember one night in particular, I was just really seemingly drifting away from the experience of his love.

And I was trying to pray.

I got out my journal.

I'm like, I know you love me more than, I said, I know you love your children more than I love my children.

I just wonder sometimes if I can really be sure that I'm one of your children.

Like, whoa, that is a moment of truth.

That was for me a kind of breakthrough, like a moment of real honesty.

And there was no thunder or lightning striking me.

I'm like, I know you love your children more than I love my children.

But I just wonder whether or not I happen to be one of your children.

And I felt this presence.

Long time, no feel, you know.

And I didn't see any figure, I didn't hear any voice, but I could feel as though God was there, once again, trying to get something across to me in my hard heart.

And I wasn't sure what it was.

And I just felt like he was saying, do your kids ever wake up wondering whether or not they're your kids?

I'm like, well, no, I don't think so.

I've never heard or never picked up even a trace of that.

And I felt like the Lord was saying, why is that?

Is it because you're a better father for them than I am for my children?

Well, no, I'm not saying that.

And then I began to realize that's really what I was saying by implication.

And I felt like the Lord was saying, okay, so why do you wonder whether or not you're my child and yet your kids don't wake up wondering whether or not they're your children?

I'm like thinking, okay, good question.

I can answer that.

For one thing, they live in my house, right?

So they know they're my kids.

Then I realized we had a couple of students living with us too in the house that weren't my kids.

And so number two, they're called by my name.

The students aren't. And all my kids know why they have Han at the end, because they're my kids.

They live in my house.

They're called by my name.

Number three, they sit at my table.

I'm the breadwinner.

I provide for them.

And they know why, because I'm their father.

They're my children.

They live in my house.

They're called by my name.

They sit at my table.

Besides, number four, if they ever questioned or doubted it, I could prove they share my flesh and blood, DNA, whatever it takes, I can show it.

And at this point, I'm on a roll.

They live in my house.

They're called by my name.

They sit at my table.

They share my flesh and blood.

And I thought of the fifth one, number five, my bride is their mom.

And I never get tired of telling them how much they owe me big time.

Because when I married Kimberly, I knew I was getting a great wife.

I knew I was getting my future kids a great mom.

But she turned out to be much better than I ever imagined.

And so my kids will tell you, you know, how many times they have heard me say, if you show disrespect to me, you will survive.

But if you disrespect her, you can run, but you can't hide.

I will track you down.

And I always give them the same explanation because no other person on planet Earth will ever carry you for nine months inside their body.

And she's had six cesareans for all of her kids.

I said, no one else will ever face the knife like she did, where she faced the prospect of dying so that you could come to life.

And I said, if you can't show respect to her, then none of the rest of us are safe.

So you owe me big time because my bride is your mom.

And that's how they know they're my kids.

And I'm feeling pretty puffed up with pride at this point as a dad thinking that's why my kids don't wonder whether or not they're my kids.

And then suddenly I looked at the list and I could see it through his eyes.

They live in my house.

Suddenly I realized that in the New Testament, when Jesus speaks of the church or when St. Paul writes about it in his epistles, the most frequently used term or image is household in the Greek, oikos, where we get oikonomia.

And so suddenly I began to realize that I'm not just a prodigal son.

I'm not just a pardon criminal.

I'm a part of the church.

I'm a part of your house.

I live in your house.

Okay.

Number two, they're called by my name.

And that's when I realized what is it that causes us to be in the household of God, to be in the family of faith.

It's the gift of baptism whereby we are regenerated into God's family.

Just like we were naturally generated into our own human family.

And we were baptized in the name of what the creator, the redeemer and the sanctifier, right?

Wrong.

We were baptized in the name of the father, the son, and the Holy spirit.

Just like my kids got our family name from me, we get God's family name so that we don't just live in his house.

We're called by his name.

And I looked at the third item on my list.

They sit at my table and I could picture the altar where we gather to renew a covenant as God's family every Lord's day.

And what do we do?

We sit around the table.

What was Jesus doing?

Paul describes it in first Corinthians 10 11. It's the Lord's table where we gather not to renew a contract, but a covenant to celebrate who we are as a family.

I live in your house.

I'm called by your name and I am there seated around the table, the altar of sacrifice.

Then I looked at the fourth item.

They share my flesh and blood.

And then suddenly I recalled the words of Jesus and the bread of life discourse in John six, where he said, my food is flesh indeed.

My blood is drink indeed.

He eats my flesh and drinks.

My blood abides in me and I in him.

And I know the Greek word for abide there.

Menno literally means to share a family, to live in the same home.

So I live in your house.

I'm called by your name.

I sit, I sit around your table.

I share the flesh and blood of Christ.

And then I looked at number five, my bride is their mother.

And I realized that in the new Testament, what do we hear about the church?

That it is the bride of Christ, that Christ is the groom.

I could have said that Kimberly on our wedding night, what I've heard Jesus say through his priest countless times, this is my body, which has given up for you because that is the love of the groom for his bride.

And as St. Cyprian says in the second century, you can't have God as your father if you refuse to have the church as your mother.

And so the bride of Christ has become our mother.

Christ has held nothing back and exhibit a proof positive is the gift of the new Adam.

When he entrusts the new Eve, when he says, woman, behold your son.

And then to the beloved disciple, behold your mother.

Any man who gives you his own mother to be your mother is not about to withhold anything else.

Through the son, God, the father lavishes his life upon us in a way that goes beyond human love.

This is who we are.

This is why we have rock solid grounds of assurance that he who began a good work in us is our father and he will be faithful to complete it and get us all the way home.

And not just forgive us of our sins, but to fill us with his life, with his love and empower us to become instruments of love for all of our younger siblings.

Not just in the theoretical and the abstract, but in the concrete, the practical experience of what it means.

Whether we have a natural family now or not, we all have a family.

As the catechism says, the church, the Catholic church is nothing other than the family of God.

So that nobody finds himself or herself without a home, without a family.

And not just here and now, but there and forever.

Let's turn to our father and in gratitude, let's ask him in the name of Christ for the power of the Holy Spirit to really enable us to live this truth out in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Almighty God, our Father in heaven, we thank you for the gift of Jesus Christ, your eternal Son, our Savior and Lord.

And again in his name we ask you to pour out the Holy Spirit upon us, to enlighten our minds with the word of your truth, the truth of your love, to enkindle our hearts with the fiery passion of this love that goes beyond our own human experience, that envelops us and at the same time transforms us into your sons and daughters and ultimately into saints.

Help us to lay hold of this truth.

Forgive us for taking so much grace for granted.

And help us to make up for lost time in this lifetime of ours by sharing it and by living it and by enjoying it more and more.

And hear us as we pray that family prayer that Jesus taught us, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.

Amen.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now at the hour of our death.

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Thank you very much.