Twenty-seventh Sunday of the Year - October 3, 2004

    In the year 490 BC, nearly 500 years before the birth of Christ, there was a battle fought just outside the city of Athens, Greece. This was a most decisive combat, because it determined the fate of the whole Western world. It was a most decisive contest, because it brought two mutually antagonistic worlds together against each other, and the winner would decide the fate of every generation after that time. In the year 490 BC a Greek army, made up of soldiers mainly from the independent city-state of Athens, an army almost exclusively of volunteers, stood its ground against a Persian army of one and a half times it in size, an army dead-set on taking all of Greece, starting with Athens, Athens in her golden age, to be the first western prize in the Persian emperor’s crown.
    But the Greeks had a different idea about their future, and one day before dawn they attacked, and within just a few hours the whole Persian army was in flight, with almost half its soldiers dead on the field of battle. The difference in these worlds of that time, these armies, these soldiers? One Athenian, whose words were recorded for us in history, explained the Greek victory simply: free men fight much better than slaves. Free citizens defending their city, their women and children, their way of life against an alien and despotic regime easily out-fought the mercenaries of the Persian tyrant. In the end it was no contest.
    There are so many lessons like this from history. How little we realize that things could have been so very different. The Romans, for example, battling for their very existence against Carthage in the Punic Wars, Carthage, a city highly advanced in luxury and technology, a city whose cult included the sacrifice of children to their horrible god Moloch (a culture ours is beginning to resemble more and more). And Carthage had one of the greatest generals in all of history, Hannibal, who crossed the Alps and massacred thousands of the Roman people and soldiers and looked as if he would take Rome itself. He sent back pleas to Carthage for more money, equipment and reinforcements, knowing that the Romans would bounce back if not completely destroyed. Why, how did Hannibal know this? Because, as he described them, they were free men defending hearth and home, men who desperately loved their city and culture. Thus, the observation that Rome was not loved because she was great, but she was great because she was so tenaciously loved by her citizens. And Hannibal proved right: by the end of the third conflict between Rome and Carthage, Carthage was no more. And Rome we know of as the Eternal City.
    What is going on here? The simple fact of nature, the clear and evident truth, that one does not guard and protect, as the Greeks and Romans did, what one does not love. “Guard the rich deposit of faith,” St. Paul commands the young bishop Timothy in today’s second reading. “Guard, my son, the rich deposit of faith.” The same feeling, the same principle, the same motivation that erupted in the hearts and passions of the free citizens of Athens and Rome, is the same thing that Paul urges upon Timothy, now with the aim of that protection centered on something much more valuable than all of Greek and Roman civilization combined. Protect, the Apostle Paul orders Timothy, what is much more than a way of life, but the way to eternal life. Guard the deposit of faith, the truth that brings all who follow it to everlasting happiness. Preserve, Timothy, St. Paul is commanding, and keep clearly marked, the road that leads to heaven.
    And if the deposit of faith needs to be guarded, then, it’s obvious, it must be under attack, and under an attack much more insidious than what the Persians and Carthaginians were capable of. We have before us these days the spectacle -- and sad spectacle it is -- of those ordained to uphold and teach this deposit of faith, who placed their hand on the Holy Gospel and swore an oath to do so, and yet fail at the task. We see and hear those who would stand up and teach in the name of the Church what is contrary to Catholic faith and feel good about themselves and their own terrible treachery, fooled as they are by such things as media accolades praising their “courage.” Others reject Church teaching when it clashes with their lifestyle. They claim that their lifestyle choice is a decision of the conscience, when in fact it certainly is not: they, not even bothering to seek to understand in humility the constant teaching of the Church. Those would claim such imperial stature for their individual conscience do not understand what the conscience is: a faculty of the intellect, the Second Vatican Council reminds us, that is not free, but bound, bound to the truth, to seek, to know and follow the truth and apply that truth in particular circumstances.
    This is all, ultimately, a failure, a failure of love. If we loved the Faith as we ought, then we would guard it, preserve it, better pass it on to our children as the most precious thing that it is. If only we loved. Perhaps many have not known, truly known, the faith (an understandable happening with our present state of catechesis), and in not knowing it, have not loved it. Oh, but if we would only know it!
    Let me now speak to you as a convert who grew up without Catholic faith. What a light it shines on our lives -- if we would let it -- brightening up every corner of our existence, strengthening our bonds of human love with divine, self-sacrificing charity, infusing the deepest of meaning into our everyday lives, intensifying our joys and explaining and alleviating our sorrows (turning them even into avenues of God’s grace), directing our eyes and hopes to a heavenly city that does not crumble and pass away as everything of this world does, pouring life into those who approach even their weakest of years and making even the grave into a sign of hope and resurrection.
    If only we would love, love that most precious of gifts, our Faith. And gift it is. May those who claim to speak in the name of the Church and present the Faith as a burden out from under which we need to be delivered -- may they open their hearts to that which they obviously do not know. Otherwise, they would love it. They would give their lives for it. If they really knew it, they would love it as it really is, the only true road to freedom.
    The Persians, so used to victory in the fifth century BC, must have been shocked at the ferocity of Athenian valor before the gates of their city. And so it was with the early Romans. And once upon a time, the whole world was amazed by what burst forth from Judea 2000 years ago: a new people with a new and true message of death and resurrection, of forgiveness of sins, of God’s visitation. They turned the whole world upside down, because they loved the faith left them by Christ. They knew it, knew it was true, and they loved it, and so they guarded from error. They guarded it from false teaching, for us. Now, what will we do with it?