The Courage to Be who we are, Catholic

We must take responsibility for our faith lives. Call no man “father” or “rabbi” or “teacher” means “call no man guru.” If we have a guru, then we don’t take responsibility for what we do. We call our priests father in that they are the head of our faith family in our parishes, but we do not give our priests the position of guru, entrusting them with the responsibility for our lives. We entrust our lives to God and God only. Only Christ can be our guide.

Let’s look at the teaching in four stages.

Clergy E-Notes

“…if the family is the sanctuary of life, the place where life is conceived and cared for, it is a horrendous contradiction when it becomes a place where life is rejected and destroyed. So great is the value of a human life, and so inalienable the right to life of an innocent child growing in the mother’s womb, that no alleged right to one’s own body can justify a decision to terminate that life, which is an end in itself and which can never be considered the “property” of another human being.”

— Pope Francis

Call no one father? We call priests “Father”… Teacher? We call our catechists “teachers” 

In today’s Gospel we have a passage that enemies of the Church use out of context to discredit Catholicism and confuse simple believers. They twist Jesus’ words so that they appear to say something quite different from what he had in mind.

Against All Forms of Idolatry

Bottom line: Jesus uses dramatic language to warn against all forms of idolatry – including making a person into an idol. And he reminds teachers, doctors, fathers that our purpose is to lead others to the one Teacher, the one Doctor, the one Father.

Priests take a beating in today’s readings. First, the prophet Malachi has strong words regarding our failures to give proper instruction. Then in the Gospel, Jesus says to call no man “father.” Other Christians sometimes ask why we use that title for priests when Jesus seems to rule it out. Before answering that question, I would like address the basic message of today’s Gospel:

Have We Not All One Father? The Greatest Among You Must Be Your Servant

In the eyes of the Gospel, there is no exclusive club that makes you feel like an outsider. In the eyes of the Gospel, there is no reason to look down on anybody else. The world may consider you great for many different reasons: success, fame, money, achievements etc. The Gospel considers you great for a different reason: you are great if you serve. At the end we are all the same because we all face the same end: death.

A Teaching Father

If we wish honor or pre-eminence, let it be in service, rather than in being served. If we aspire to be Number One, let us be the first to forgive, to heal, to minister. We can’t escape the message. Jesus is getting at something here.

We are brothers and sisters. That’s that. In this matter of grace and salvation, there is no one of us above the other, even though some of us, by the grace of God, are asked to read the book, preach the word, offer the consecration, or pray the absolution.

Authority and Authenticity

“Authority” in Greek is “exousia”. Exousia means literally “out of our being.” True authority therefore does not come from titles. Authority comes from our being. For example, I think most of us priests are very conscious that when a priest is appointed pastor of a parish, he has got the title to be sure. They may even call him “Father”. But if the priest does not have “exousia”, if he doesn’t lead and love his people out of his very being, he is pastor in title only. This is a helpful reminder to me personally because I know I am far from perfect. We would be remiss, however, to think that Jesus’ critique is just for ministers.