This Sunday’s readings propose for our reflection the fact that there are people who resist believing God’s message, in the time of Ezekiel, in the time of Jesus, in the time of the Church and still today. Thus God speaks to Ezekiel: Son of man, I am sending you to the Israelites, to a rebellious people, who have rebelled against me. I send you to them so that you may communicate my words to them. And they, whether they listen to you or not, will know that there is a prophet in their midst. It is as if God said to Ezekiel, I am sending you to preach in the desert; but you must transmit my message, although they will not listen to you. I do not know with how much courage the prophet assumed a mission doomed to failure. But the same thing happened to Jesus. When he arrived in Nazareth, where he had grown up, fame preceded him. His countrymen heard him when he spoke in the synagogue and recognized that he spoke with wisdom and that his miracles were on display. But the fact that they had known him since he was a child sowed disbelief. So Jesus sentenced: Everyone honors a prophet except those of his own country, his relatives and those of his own house. The Gospels often note that crowds gathered to listen to Jesus. But they also point out that it met with resistance, that many rejected it. People had other interests that prevented them from putting faith in Jesus and his words.
If we were to take a survey today among those of us who call ourselves Catholic believers and are here in the church, we would find that we are not all believers in the same way, nor with the same conviction or with the same integrity. For example, one encounters people who say they are Catholics and therefore come to church to request a religious service. But when one says that in order to render this service one has to comply with such and such conditions, the person gets angry and finally threatens: I will see if the evangelical church will do this service to my liking. These are Catholics in name, not in conviction. In reality, they are not believers.
Our society is characterized by the fact that a great majority of people say they believe in God and that they attend this or that church to worship Him. We live in a religious pluralism, more or less Christian in its inspiration. But this pluralism also leads to the spread of religious relativism. One sometimes hears people say that all churches are the same, that they all believe in the same God. Well, no. They are not all the same, nor do they all believe the same, nor do they all think of God in the same way. That is why we sometimes meet people who attend this or that church, not out of conviction that it is the true Church of Jesus Christ, but because they feel at ease there. When they have a setback, they move on to another. Many Catholics have a superficial knowledge of the faith; partly because of the poor and limited catechesis we give in church and partly because of little personal interest in deepening their knowledge of Catholic doctrine. In matters of faith we must seek truth, not taste; we must know what God said and what the Church teaches, not what is convenient for me and fits my way of life.
There are regions of the world that were once Catholic countries and today have become de-Christianized. These are countries where there was such an abundance of priests that they even came to our country to lead our parishes in the middle of the 20th century; in several of these countries there are almost no Catholics or the number of Catholics is decreasing year after year and the priests that there are are elderly. What happened? Can it happen to us too? Guatemala, the place where I live, was one hundred years ago a country where more than ninety percent of the population declared themselves Catholic; today barely forty-five percent do so and of those perhaps half strive to live according to God’s commandments, know something of Catholic doctrine and participate in Sunday mass and receive the sacraments.
The causes of unbelief or religious practice according to taste and not according to truth are varied. On the one hand, some have received religion as a culture, as a social tradition, and practice it as a custom. Those who are Catholic in this way give importance to the popular practices of veneration of religious images, to the processions and to the ceremonies proper to each occasion. Perhaps those who practice Maya spirituality as a way of affirming a historical, cultural and social identity also fall into this category. Sometimes they receive the sacraments, also as part of the rites of belonging to the Church, but without consequences for everyday life. They are Ash Wednesday Catholics. Religion is a complement to other main interests.
Others may live so immersed in professional, political, economic or social successes and achievements that the Catholic religion they may have received in the family becomes something marginal, occasional. The idea that Jesus is God sounds like a fairy tale; the thought that God has promised us heaven after this life sounds like a fictional story. What counts is this life, the tangible and visible achievements that can make life more comfortable, more prestigious in the eyes of society. If they practice any religion, it is one that does not question their way of life and makes them feel comfortable with themselves.
Others declare themselves agnostic or indifferent to religion. They think that science is contrary to faith, so that God and the transcendent realities of which Catholic doctrine speaks can neither be proven nor believed. It is common to find people who think this way in the world of academia and universities. At most, the Catholic religion is useful for the moral education of children and young people, but not that much.
Of course, there are many sincere Catholics who believe what the Church teaches, who know the doctrine more or less well, who strive to live according to God’s commandments, who come to Mass on Sundays, who receive the sacraments, who pray personally. I hope that most of us here fall into this category. The greatest weakness of Catholics is that we ignore what we believe and practice. We must strengthen our faith through knowledge of doctrine by reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Assiduous church attendance, reception of the sacraments and living according to the commandments will help us to deepen and strengthen our conviction to come to life and thus attain eternal salvation.