But he will always be Bishop Robert to me. He was received into the Catholic Church on Jan. 7 as a simple, humble lay man. What a treasure he is and will be. Here's one of his writings. He made time stand still when he prayed the Mass or preached. Heaven came to earth. We were so blessed to have him.
Sin, Salvation, the End of Man
A Homily by Bishop Mercer
“Keep before you an outline of the sound teaching”
(II Timothy 1,13).
Christianity is about relationships.
Christianity is not primarily about a book, though there is a whole library called The Bible, Greek for books, orScriptures, Latin for writings, which is of immense importance to us.
Christianity is not primarily about rules and regulations though there are 10 commands, neatly summarized into 2, which are of immense importance to us .
Christianity is not primarily about doing good or about being good, though if our concern is with relationships,the difference between right and wrong is of immense importance to us.
Christianity is not primarily about knowledge or understanding, though if our concern is relationships, then a measure of knowledge and understanding is of immense importance to us.
I repeat: from first to last Christianity is about relationships.
And the first and foremost Relationship is calledGod. Within one God are relationships. There is a self consciousBeing called the First Person. From Him derives another selfconsciousBeing called the Second Person. They have taught us to think of the relationship between Them as akin to, though not exactly parallel with, the relationship between a father and his son. From the relationship between this Father and this Son derives another self conscious Being called the Third Person. They have taught us to think of Him as the Spirit. For this one God we have ourselves,perhaps under the Spirit’s inspiration, coined a new word, Trinity,from the Latin, three one. There are other ways of thinking of this Trinity: Lover, Beloved, the Love between Them. Or God, HisWord or Self-Expression or SelfRevelation, His Spirit.
God creates the universe from nothing. And here comes the next relationship. As part of creation God invents man, whom oddly enough, God describes as being in His own image. Odd, because in some ways man is in the image of brute beasts: like pigs, we eat; like dogs, we dream; like chimpanzees, we play games; like birds and fish, we reproduce and die. But God gives to man self-consciousness;the ability to reason, the ability to reason about right and wrong;the ability to know the difference between good and evil; the ability to choose the right. God gives to man participation in relationships. No one human is ever sufficient or complete in and of himself. We need others in order to survive, in order tobe. We love and we are loved. A male and female love. From their love other humans derive. We call this derivation family. But we share in everwidening rings of “relationship”.We call other humans grandparents, ancestors, uncles, aunts, cousins,children, friends, teachers, pupils, clients, customers, craftsmen,nurses, and so on. Our happinesses come from knowing and loving other humans. Our sadnesses come from ruined, broken, quarrelsome relationships with other humans, or from severed relationships by way of death. God made man for relationship: God made man inHis own image. If the first and foremost relationship is God,the second and derived relationship is mankind, humanity.
And the second exists in order to relate to the first.Man is here to know and love God, more importantly, to be loved by God. Here in this life we are to relate to God. But this short life is the entry to a fuller life after death, just as life in the womb is entry to a fuller life outside of our mothers. In the next phase we shall have an even better time loving and being loved by God and, incidentally, loving one another.
But there’s a snag to this idyllic swirl of loving relationships. The snag is called the fall, sin, or original sin.Ruined, broken, quarrelsome relationships. Severed relationships by way of death. Our knowledge of the difference between good and evil is impaired. But even when we do know the difference,we have a compulsion to do the wrong. I can’t forgive. I won’t forgive. I’ll kill. I’ll conquer, bully, steal. Need I go on?We all know about life together. Our human life together is made miserable by selfdeception, deceit towards others, selfishness,aggression.
The result of sin is twofold. We are on the outs with each other. We are on the outs with God. There is still relationship,but it’s impaired. What’s to be done?
God’s way of healing broken relationships, God’s way of reconciling man to God, of reconciling man to man, is byway, yes, you’ve guessed by way of relationship.
God the Trinity gives us the Second Person called the Son. And to facilitate this special relationship the Son became man, became one of us. If we put our trust in Him, if we entera specially intimate relationship with the Son, so intimate that we are described as ‘in Christ’, part of Christ, Christ’s body,Christ’s wife, then in Christ we shall be restored to the wholeTrinity: we shall be restored to each other. Because of Christ’s tender love for us, called grace, we shall be able to love, to forgive, to say no to sinful impulses, to know the difference between right and wrong, to choose the right. This slow improvement of our inadequate selves is called growth in grace, or sanctification,though it involves suffering. When the Son Himself became manin order to give Himself to us at our level, man responded bykilling the Son. If, as part of the Son we become like the Son,there’s a good chance man will kill us too!
Remember, relationships: not mechanisms, not magic,not manipulations. In a personal relationship you can not manipulate anybody to your ends, by saying words, or performing mechanistic actions. Prayer, Bible study, sacraments, all other activities like fasting or almsgiving, are to be understood in terms of relationships,not of magic. It is inhuman to say things like, “Prayer works”. It doesn’t. What we mean is that God loves and understands and that we respond by turning to Him in trust. Thou and I. Outward acts, a kiss, a smile, a friendly wave, are expressions of an inward meaning, not methods for controlling God or for controlling man.
God and man: sin, salvation, grace and penitence:the true end of man. What I’ve done in this talk now is obfuscate the creeds. If you want an excellent summary of the whole Christian faith, of the whole Bible, don’t listen to me. Turn to your PrayerBooks, turn to what you already know by heart. There is a statement about sin, salvation, grace and penitence, the true end of man,nicknamed the Apostles’ Creed. There is a slightly longer statement nicknamed the Creed of Nicaea. And there is a much longer statement nicknamed the Creed of St. Athanasius. This last is full of detail about the relationships among the Father, the Son and the HolySpirit within the Godhead. Also about the relationship withinChrist of His divine nature which He has from without beginning;and His human nature which He took of a human mother (she too is of immense importance to us). There is an even shorter summary of the whole Christian faith than the three creeds. St. Paul sums up the whole faith in just two words which he used over and over again: In Christ.
The important thing about Christianity is not to understand and know everything, but to relate to God in a loving personal relationship. And this we do by relationship with HimWho is both God and Man. A Christian is one who trusts Jesus,and who, trusting Jesus, is baptized into unity with Jesus, and who feeds on Jesus by way of bread and wine.
Christianity is about Christ.
+RM CR
