14th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
First Reading: Ez 2:2-5
Second Reading: 2 Cor 12:7-10
Gospel Reading: Mk 6:1-6

During Jesus’ public life, people debated who he was. Some believed that he was the Messiah because of the “deeds of power” he performed. Could even God’s anointed be “expected to perform more signs” than he?

Others argued like his fellow-townsmen in this Sunday’s Gospel Reading: “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? ... Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?”

“We know where this man is from,” they claimed on another occasion. “When the Messiah comes, no one is supposed to know his origins.”

Similarly, the other Pharisees jeered at Nicodemus. “Look it up,” they said. “You will not find the Prophet coming from Galilee.”

A similar debate continues today about the Catholic Church. Like the prophet Ezekiel in this Sunday’s First Reading, the Pope says, “Thus says the Lord God.” Like the rebellious Israelites, the world asks, “How can a human Pope be infallible?” and jeers at those who accept his authority.

Jesus is fully man, but also fully God. The Catholic Church has a divine head, who is perfect, but human members, who are sinful. Her sacraments are “outward signs” of “inward grace.” Human beings are God’s co-workers.

In particular, Jesus made Peter and his successors his co-workers when Peter recognized him as “the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” and Jesus replied, “Blest are you, Simon son of Jonah! No mere man has revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. I for my part declare to you, you are ‘Rock,’ and on this rock I will build my Church, and the jaws of death shall not prevail against it. I will entrust to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you declare bound on earth shall be bound in heaven; whatever you declare loosed on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

That is why we trust Pope Francis: not because of his origin, his environment, or his learning, but because of Jesus’ promise. That is why we hold “that the Pope cannot err when, as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church.”

We believe that, like Jesus, the Pope could say to the world, “So you know me, and you know my origins? The truth is, I have not come of myself.”

However, it is not just the Pope and the bishops whom Christ has made his co-workers. He calls all of us to co-operate with him: to work with him as sons and daughters, not just as tools; to change the course of events not only by our prayers, but also by our actions.

Of course, we cannot work with God in the same way we work with other human beings. If one human works with another at the same job, then what that one does, the other does not do, and vice versa; the two humans exclude each other.

However, we cannot exclude God in this way. God’s existence is not somehow parallel to ours: He is the ground of our being. Even our ability to work with him comes from him.

Accordingly, in the Second Reading, St. Paul boasts of his weakness, so that “the power of Christ” may dwell in him. “Whenever I am weak, then I am strong,” he says.

St. Thérèse of Lisieux, realizing that she was “too little to climb up the steep stairway of perfection,” turned to the Bible to find an “elevator.” Eventually, she concluded that “the elevator that will carry me up to Heaven is your arms, O Jesus! For that I do not need to grow bigger; on the contrary, it is necessary that I remain small: that I become smaller and smaller.”

Father Hawkswell's course, “The Catholic Faith in Plain English,” has now ended, but all the materials (video and print) will remain available online free of charge at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course until the end of August.