“Are we there yet?” That is the common phrase out of every child’s mouth from the back of the car on road trips. We have all heard it and it is the universal cry of the impatient human heart, and it fits this Sunday’s Liturgy of the Word almost perfectly.
In our First Reading from the Acts of the Apostles, the early Church is most certainly not yet “there.” A few weeks ago we heard Luke describe the Christian community as a near paradise, holding all things in common and breaking bread with glad and generous hearts. This week we hear the rest of the story. The Hellenists, the Greek-speaking Jewish converts, are grumbling against the Hebrews, the Aramaic-speaking natives, because their widows are being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. The Church is barely out of the upper room and there is already tension in the pews.
In a strange way, I find this enormously consoling. The Holy Spirit had only just descended at Pentecost, and these people were already arguing about who was getting their fair share. If the first Christians grumbled, we are in good company when we do. The genius of the apostles is that they did not pretend the tension was not there, and they did not impose a solution from above. They held the tension and carried it. They told the community itself, especially the grumblers, to choose seven reputable men. The grievance was real, the response was concrete, and the word of God continued to spread.
Then Jesus, in today’s Gospel, gives Thomas and the rest of us the deepest answer to the “Are we there yet?” question we will ever hear. “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Thomas wanted a map. Jesus gave him a Person. We want directions and arrival times. Jesus tells us that the journey itself is a relationship, and the destination is not a place but a face. Jesus is the way.
That is hard to sit with. We Catholics love a checklist. Sacrament received? Check. Religious education completed? Check. Confirmation? Check. Now we have arrived. Yet Jesus never described the Christian life as a graduation. He described it as a road on which he walks beside us, and as long as there is breath in our lungs we are still on the way. Saint Augustine captured this beautifully in his image of the two cities, the City of Man and the City of God, woven together throughout history. We live as pilgrims in one while our hearts belong to the other. Because Jesus is the way, we are always already on the way.
This brings me to a particular and urgent invitation this week. Next Saturday, our 8th grade students will receive the Sacrament of Confirmation. They have prepared with great seriousness, and we rejoice for them. The data, however, tell a sobering story. A landmark study from the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate found that the median age at which young Catholics begin to disaffiliate from the Church is now thirteen. Other research suggests that as many as eighty-five percent of young Catholics stop practicing within seven years of Confirmation. For too many families, Confirmation has become a graduation ceremony from the faith rather than a deeper commissioning into it.
We can change that, one child at a time, and you can help this week. I am asking every parishioner to write a card of encouragement to one of our 8th grade Confirmation candidates. Tell them you are praying for them. Tell them they belong here. Remind them that the Church is a family they are growing into for life. Cards can be dropped off at the parish office or in the basket at the back of the church all week. Let us surround these young people in love. We do not want them to leave the Church. We want them to BE the Church with us!
This Sunday at 9 a.m. Mass please join us as we offer a special blessing for our Sunday faith formation catechists. These extraordinary women and men have walked alongside our children all year. Please come and pray over them and thank them.
After morning Masses, please make time to visit the Book Fair that Maria Palomo has coordinated in the school library and make sure you visit our St. Simon School Art Show. You will be inspired! Angela Schaufler, our amazing Art Teacher and her students have created something genuinely beautiful, and walking through the gallery is a small act of joy. Children’s art reminds us that the world is still being made, and that wonder is itself a way of knowing the truth.
So, are we there yet? No, dear friends, not until the end. Yet because Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, every honest step we take with him, every grumble we bring to prayer, every card we write, every catechist we bless, every act of love offered to a young person on the verge of drifting away, is already an arrival. He is here. We are walking with him. That is more than enough.
God Bless,
Fr. Brendan
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