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Twenty-Ninth Sunday of the Year
16 October 2011
Dear Friends in Christ,
Pope John Paul II was beatified on Divine Mercy Sunday this year, and his feast day in the Church’s liturgical calendar will fall each year on 22 October, the date on which he inaugurated his papal ministry with a Solemn Mass in 1978. But he actually became pope on 16 October 1978, the day on which he was elected Bishop of Rome by the College of Cardinals — thirty three years ago today. In observance of this anniversary, Pope Benedict XVI and our Bishop Robert have allowed our normal observance of the Twenty-Ninth Sunday of the Year to be replaced by a Mass of Thanksgiving in honor of the beatification of Blessed John Paul the Great.
This weekend also brings another anniversary of note for me. It was on 15 October 1981, thirty years ago, that the Lord Jesus laid hold of my life and gave me the gift of saving faith that liberated me from six years of atheism. From the summer before I entered the eighth grade, I was sincerely convinced that God does not exist and that the universe and everything in it could be explained without recourse to anything or anyone beyond the natural world. This is a philosophy often described as scientific materialism, and it is an illusion that holds powerful sway in our world. This sort of materialism (not consumerism, but a philosophical commitment to the belief that the only thing that exists is material or physical) was a foundation of the thought of the men who shaped the ideologies of National Socialism and Communism — the twin evils which confronted young Karol Wojtyla with the challenges that helped him decide to become a priest. It is fitting, then, that one of the events which prepared me for my unexpected encounter with Christ in October 1981 was the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in May of that same year.
Be not afraid! Open wide the doors of your heart to Christ! I did not hear these stirring words of the Polish pope when he spoke them to the world in 1978, but only three years later they helped change my life and set me on the course that eventually brought me to this parish and our remarkable decade together. All of these details — dates, places, words, events — remind us that the universal truth about God and man is revealed in the particularity of real human persons living, by the Providence of God, in a certain time and place. We live in a time of great challenge to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, a time in which many people do not believe that the Son of Mary is the Son of God, a time in which many live as though there is no God and nothing beyond the material, a time in which biblical religion is regarded by many as the enemy of human freedom. In the face of this opposition to our faith, we are summoned by one of the great Christian witnesses of all time: Be not afraid! Open wide the doors of your heart to Christ! Today I give thanks for the gift of saving faith, and the Church bids us give thanks for the life and ministry of Blessed John Paul the Great.
Father Newman