Today’s Scriptures teach us how to evangelize, how to play a part in helping other people come to know the Lord directly. Let’s look and see what this process is like. Both our Old Testament reading and our Gospel reading show us the importance of entering into a relationship with God. Unless we are in a relationship with God, we will see the Church, and the teachings of the Church, as burdensome human inventions that can easily be dispensed with.
To better understand our reading from Chapter 3 of the First Book of Samuel we should understand that Samuel’s mother had dedicated her son to the Lord and sent him to get his education, as it were, at a boarding school, under the tutelage of Eli, the priest at the Shrine of Shiloh. Right before today’s selection from Chapter 3, the Scripture says, During the time young Samuel was minister to the LORD under Eli, a revelation of the LORD was uncommon and vision infrequent. In other words, it was a laidback time, lots of bad things were happening, religious observance was lax. In some ways it was a time like our own. Could we not say that in our day that the ways of the Lord are unfamiliar to many, many souls?
The text also shows us that “young Samuel was not yet familiar with the Lord because the Lord had not revealed anything to him as yet.” So Samuel did not realize that the Lord was calling him until he had a guide who finally recognized the movement of the Lord in Samuel’s soul. It became clear to young Samuel that he was being called into a deep relationship with the Lord. Life, therefore, changed for Samuel and God worked with him and through him to achieve God’s marvelous ways.
Likewise in today’s Gospel, the guide, John the Baptist points to Jesus as the One to follow. Two of John’s disciples start following Jesus who asks, “What are you seeking?” Then comes from the Lord the invitation to “come and see.” In the developing relationship that comes from this encounter what takes place is the gathering of the apostles and the start of the transformation of the world which is still being carried out today through these successive generations of the Church to achieve God’s marvelous ways down through the centuries.
Today’s problem is that many people do not see the Church as inviting people into an ever deepening relationship with Christ, but as some big bully saying “no” to this and “no” to that, almost as a power play to make people obey a human authority.
That’s the kind of reaction someone will make when they have not yet experienced the Lord. There are many, many people who are like young Samuel, who are “not familiar with the LORD, because the LORD had not revealed anything to [them] as yet.”
Take for instance our second reading’s focus on sexual immorality. This particular teaching is often derided as out of step with the times, as antiquated and as impossible to live up to, so therefore people will say, “I disagree with the teaching of the Church on this matter.”
Now tell me, has it ever occurred to you that when people object to a teaching of the Church like this, they are actually objecting to the teaching of the Lord Himself? The need to justify oneself is what drives the sinner into wanting society to accept this behavior. Yet, the inner soul, in all honesty, knows when some sexual misdeeds have violated a person’s truest self.
Oddly enough, this teaching on sexual immorality is often the doorway for someone to enter into a relationship with the Lord. It’s called a conversion of heart, repentance, a desire to conform one’s life with what one knows in the deepest recesses of his heart as true, as the way to be in union with God. When we have such a relationship with the Lord that we know that we are temples of the Holy Spirit, we do not want to do anything impure, we don not want to violate that very extraordinary relationship with the All Holy One. This does not mean that we deny our sexuality, but that we use it rightly, in marriage, always as a gift from God to express spousal love and bring forth human life as co-creators with God.
So, when someone objects to the Church’s teaching, be the guide who can guide them gently to find God in this very struggle.
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