As soon as I got here I got curious about this beautiful mountain just to the west of us here at St. Katharine Drexel it is the Catoctin Mountain or sometimes referred to Braddock Mountain and I wanted to learn all about it. It is part of the eastern and northern most part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which extend from southern Pennsylvania all the way to Georgia and of course they are also part of the Appalachian Mountain range. I know we can suffer from an inferiority complex when we talk about the Appalachian Mountains compared to say the Rockies. I haven’t been to the Rockies, but we have all seen pictures of these huge majestic mountains with high peaks and snow caps year round. But let me tell you the Rockies are baby mountains that formed some 80 million years ago. The Appalachians are some of the oldest mountains on the face of the Earth. There were a series of mountain building events that caused the Appalachians to rise, the last and the greatest of these was 300 million years ago when what would become North America collided with what would become Africa.
The super continent of Pangea was formed and what we know as the Appalachian Mountains were the central mountain range of Pangea. When the continents began rifting apart creating the Atlantic ocean we were left with a huge mountain range, the Appalachian Mountains were at this time as big as the Himalayas! What we see now is the result of 300 million years of erosion. So next time someone from Colorado says they wouldn’t even call Catoctin a mountain, you just laugh at them and say, “Well, let’s see in 300 million years what the Rockies will look like.” We should be proud of our ancient tough mountains that are still here for us to enjoy their beauty. Now I know this can be a lot to think about; how do we even imagine or conceive of 300 million years? Can you picture mountains as big as Mt. Everest right next to us and the power of erosion to wear them down? To think about Africa, now an ocean away was responsible to cause our local mountain range? But I believe it, why you might ask? Well, there are expert geologists and scientists that have studied this for 100s of years, much more than I’ve learned in a month or could share in a homily. There is a preponderance of evidence they have studied and gathered all of which supports this idea. So I have faith that it is true, I believe it.
Some people now a days think faith is unreasonable or unintelligent, but faith is the most important and essential aspect of human life. What often people mean when they denigrate faith is blind faith, which I think we can agree is not good. God gave us a brain and He expects us to use it. Faith should always be reasonable and based on history, experts, experience, and evidence. Before we move into the reasonableness of religious faith, let’s just remind ourselves of how essential faith is for human society and how all of us, whether we recognize it or not live by faith. My grandfather once told me that the kindness of a community is directly proportional to how many 4 way stops are in town. Frederick has a LOT of 4 way stops. All up and down Christopher’s Crossing, right outside the Church going into the neighborhood. You need supernatural faith at a 4 way stop. Is that car coming down the road really going to stop? If I got there first will I be given the right of way? Without faith we will all be paralyzed at these intersections, but experience, history, and evidence points to the fact that the kind folk of Frederick obey traffic laws (well most do). After the Sunday Mass we will have donuts and coffee. I noticed that nobody whips out a microscope to examine the donuts that they are safe to eat, nobody pulls out a test tube to make sure the coffee hasn’t been poisoned by something gross like cream or sugar. We enjoy it because we have faith. I’m amazed that still today, not a single one of you, even the staff, have asked to see my ID. Am I really Fr. Matt Buening? Without faith I guess you will never know. When I meet you after Mass and you tell me your name, which I quickly forget, I trust you and have faith you are who you say you are. Faith is the most natural act of a human being and it is not only reasonable, but necessary for human society.
Our readings today I think give us a quick glimpse into the history of human religious faith. St. Paul says to the Ephesians, “that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds;” With Gentiles think pagans, Greeks and Romans in particular who worshiped idols created in their own image, this makes sense for a culture that was focused on worldly things and the self. They created false gods of myth that were very much like them, warring, mean, and sometimes noble. It was also a simple way to try to explain natural phenomenon around them. There was the god of thunder, the god of the sky, the god of the sea, and the god of the mountains. The mountains exist because Zeus dropped them there, now let’s get back to doing what Greeks do wrestling, sophistry, or the Olympics. Then God revealed Himself to Abraham and monotheism, the belief in One True God and creator of all things came into being. This God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob who we worship showed a particular care for His people. He lead them out of slavery and when they grumbled against God in the wilderness longing for the idols and fertile land of Egypt with its fleshpots and food, He sent them quail to eat and this mysterious bread than lay on the ground in the morning. They looked at it and said, “What is it?” This phrase translated into Hebrew is, “Man hu?” The very word they called this bread means, “What is this stuff?” They didn’t know much about this one true God, they couldn’t see Him or even pronounce His name, He was distant in many ways but they began to see that God cared for them and could control nature itself and intervene on their behalf, but God was still a mysterious and hidden being up in the Heavens.
Then comes Jesus Christ and Christianity, this represents the summit of religious faith and it is like mountain building event for faith in God. God goes from the myth of the Greeks and pagans that they created to a distant, mysterious and hidden God who shows His love and care for humanity and now to a human person who walked into history. Christianity believes in a God who enters into history, we know when and where He walked on Earth. We have evidence of His life among us, a empty tomb that proclaims His resurrection, experiences of billions and billions of believers from the Apostles, the saints, and us here today who claim to have a real life transforming relationship with Him, we have thousands of years of theologians, experts in the Word of God and Tradition all that shows the reasonableness and truth of our Catholic faith, not to mention Eucharistic miracles and other miracles. In our Mary chapel the Knights of Columbus have on display a relic of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, evidence of how real and holy she was and is. Over these millennia our faith and understanding of God has not eroded away but grown from a handful of disciples to the largest religion on the planet.
In our Gospel the people find Jesus and they want signs, like food, that shows God still cares. Jesus tells them that “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one He sent.” All of human history has led to Jesus, true God and true man, and the greatest work of God is that we have faith in Jesus! All God has ever been slowly preparing us for is found in Jesus, a historical person, who we can love and who loves us – religious faith is about a relationship with God. Not in created idols, not in stone tablets, and manna, but in a personal life changing relationship with God who loves you. Jesus is the true bread come down from Heaven that gives life to the world. Jesus proclaims, “I am the bread of life.” The true presence of Jesus in the Eucharist is meant to foster in us an intimate personal relationship with God, who died and rose from the dead for you! This is the Gospel that we proclaim and invite people to have faith in, not some fairy tale or far off God, but a person, our savior, God incarnate who comes to us in the Bread of Life, because religion is about relationship, a loving personal relationship with Jesus and each other.
