Witness To Christ!

Over two hundred millions years ago, two huge stars crashed together. Their impact caused gravity waves to go out through the universe and continue on. According to the TED Radio Hour from which I received this information, within the past decade scientists discovered a device that for the first time detected the existence of gravity waves that are ubiquitous in the universe. They were able to measure them and even trace their origin.

According to scientists the gravity waves that went out of those two stars that crashed together so long ago eventually found their way to our planet and in 2016 those same waves passed through our atmosphere and then through each one of us as they continued on their journey throughout the universe.

You did not feel them and in fact, although waves like these were recently discovered, they are something that your body deals with everyday and compensates for all the time.

I explain this to you because fifteen years ago what I just told you was an unknown. There are realities in the universe that have yet to be discovered. However, those are physical realities. There are other types of realities that are also part of our existence. One of those is the spiritual realm to which we are connected through each and everyone of our souls.

Like scientists who testify to the physical realities around us, you and I are witnesses also to the spiritual realities in which we are connected. Our role, like that of the scientists is to testify to these powerful realities by the way we live our lives. That is the point of being Catholic. As I said last week, it is not about being good enough to get to Heaven, it is about being aware and in touch with Christ and allowing Him to help us understand that part of our existence that is beyond the realm of science and to live in that truth.

It is about understanding that just as gravity waves go through us daily as do much of the radiation on the vast majority of the light spectrum that is invisible so too are there spiritual realities in our universe that likewise have an impact on our existence.

It is to understand as we see mentioned in today’s Gospel to know the manipulation of the forces of evil as led by the devil seeking to lead us astray, to recognize them and to call them what they are. As Jesus shows us in other Gospels we recognize them, we seek the wisdom to avoid their manipulation and we seek what leads us to the truth which is Christ.

When we can stand in awe at the marvels of science, this should also lead us to understand more powerfully the marvels of God and His creation. St. Teresa of Avila taught that in humility we can draw God into our hearts with a thread. However, the world around us that rejects everything to do with the spiritual realm or allows itself to be manipulated by it cannot see this. They become a spiritual version of those who sit in a cave and tell everyone that there is nothing outside the cave. All that exists they say can be summed in the cave. But we know that there is something beyond that cave, we can see a reality of truth that they have yet to understand.

We are a new version of Copernicus. Copernicus discovered that the Earth revolved around the sun and not the other way around. He knew that to speak those words to the people of his days was going to cause great resistance, so he kept quiet that is until he was near death when he revealed the truth that he discovered everyone had it wrong. The Earth revolved around the sun. This simple fact which is taught in pre-kindergarten today was so shocking that it took two hundred years to be fully accepted.

You and I have been called to be witnesses to the truth of Christ. As we begin this time of Lent let us not make it a time to do nothing more than give up candy. Let us not make it a time to focus on losing weight or not watching TV, let us understand the purpose of this time. It is to grow closer to Christ so that we can live a truth that so many have yet to discover or like many of the contemporaries of Copernicus refuse to believe.

Understand who you are, what you were called to be at your Baptism and Confirmation, what you are receiving in the Eucharist then spend this time of Lent learning prayer to Christ that will transform you. Seek the Wisdom of the Prophets that will enlighten you and put the Gospel it into action in powerful and new ways. For there is much at stake by our witness that is why we must live it.

People are telling us that we have to change our teachings, that we need to modernize them, but if you study those teachings that they want to impose on us, they are actually based on an older understanding of our existence. They may seem to make sense in the short run, but in the long run they don’t. Similarly, in the short run the Earth does actually look like it is flat, but in truth we learn that it is a sphere. The devil’s greatest tool is to keep you focused on what makes sense in the short run without looking at the deeper truth.

The temptation of the devil is to look at surface reality and act as things appear, Jesus teaches us a deeper truth that leads us to understand reality to profound levels beyond the superficial realities and it is those profound levels to which we are called to witness.

Because we are the witnesses to a greater reality to what is beyond the cave and to the way the truth and the life.