19 September 2024
I am writing you having experienced our first Catechesis Evening this past Wednesday. Those of us who attended quickly learned why Dr. Michael Ida was honored as the Hawai'i State Teacher of the Year. Brother Michael, who is also an Oblate of the Order of Julian of Norwich, does an excellent job of teaching content while using multiple pedagogical techniques that stimulate conversation, reflection, and group interaction. On top of his superb teaching, we had a fun time together. The next Catechesis Evening is on Wednesday, October 2, and all are welcome to join us.
We live in a world that is always speeding up our lives, pushing us and rushing us. We live in a perpetual state of fast-forward. One of the gifts of these Wednesday nights is that they provide the space for us to slow down and let our lives be saturated with Scripture and prayer. We cannot be the people God wants us to be, if we do not allow time in our lives for prayer and study.
I also want to emphasize the importance of having our lives be guided by the stories of Sacred Scripture. So many Christians do not know the basic stories of the Bible, and they cannot articulate how those stories form the basis of the faith. There is a divide in Christianity between what we might term as biblical faith versus therapeutic faith. Furthermore, these two versions of the faith are not simply the divide between Evangelicals and everyone else, for surprisingly, evangelical Christianity and liberal Christianity are both frequently obsessed with self-improvement practices, and thus both are often aligned with therapeutic faith rather than biblical faith.
But as Christians we are not here to heal ourselves. God is the healer, and God has healed us and our world through the cross and the empty tomb. God is the actor, and we receive the grace. Christian faith is not about reaching our "potential" or having our "dreams released." We do not go to church so that we may "live our best life." The self-improvement industry has permeated everything within our society, and we must realize how this type of thinking has moved Christianity from being a biblical faith to a therapeutic faith. The fact that so many Christians know so little about the Bible has allowed the self-improvement industry to easily alter how we practice our faith without us actually perceiving the mutation.
Once a fellow priest told me how his practice for Lent was to improve his self-care, and part of that routine was to get a massage every Friday. Nothing against massages, but I remember being stunned, thinking how our Lord was crucified on a Friday, but his priests now get massages on Fridays. How did Christianity become more about self-care and Sabbath-taking than about taking up the cross, being last, and following Jesus? Each one of us must examine our Christian faith. Is it really indicative of the way of Jesus? Or is it simply a therapeutic practice in which we seek out beautiful liturgy or praise songs or constant moments of rest and relaxation? Do we worship the God who died on the cross, or do we worship the moments that we get to spend on ourselves, while simply adding a sheen of Jesus' love?
Nothing will serve as a better corrective or realignment to our faith than gathering with other Christians who are serious about studying the scriptures and praying corporately. Church is the school for sinners. I invite you to join us when we gather on Wednesday nights. During Holy Hour and the mass you may detox from the busyness of the world and be filled with the holy presence of Christ. During the Bible and theology study that follows, you will deepen your faith by engaging the stories of Sacred Scripture. As you gather with fellow Christians, you will grow as the Body of Christ. The irony is that you will discover how our faith is both biblical and therapeutic in the best sense of both words.
Father Paul Lillie +
