Living Catholic with Father Don Wolf
Father Don Wolf, a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, offers a Catholic perspective on the issues confronting each person today.
Living Catholic with Father Don Wolf
January 19, 2025 | "The Threat of Absence"
This episode explores the complexities of faith amid doubt, focusing on the Eucharistic revival and Christ's real presence in our lives. Father Wolf emphasizes that embracing uncertainty is part of the journey, reminding us that true conviction often arises through action, not merely belief.
• Examining the Eucharistic revival and its purpose
• The challenge of real absence in modern community life
• The impact of Archbishop Lipscomb's insights on presence
• Learning from the apostles and their experiences of doubt
• The significance of action over absolute certainty in faith
• Understanding the complexities of belief and presence
• Finding faith's richness beyond appearances and procedures
• Encouragement to navigate doubts while embracing faith's journey
************
Father Don Wolf is a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. Living Catholic also broadcasts on Oklahoma Catholic Radio several times per week, with new episodes airing every Sunday.
This is Living Catholic with Father Don Wolfe. This show deals with living the Catholic faith in our time, discovering God's presence in our lives and finding hope in His Word. And now your host, father Don Wolfe.
Speaker 2:Welcome Oklahoma to Living Catholic. I'm Father Don Wolfe, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish and the rector of the Shrine of Blessed Stanley Rother in Oklahoma City. When the American bishops decided they wanted to initiate the Eucharistic revival, they had in mind the beginning of a transformation of understanding and appreciation. They wanted their people to begin to understand in a more comprehensive and complete way the gift of the presence of Christ in their lives. Going forward, it was never in their estimation to be simply a couple of gestures and then silence. The bishops wanted results that would matter in the long term.
Speaker 2:As we examined last week, some of the initial responses to the data the bishops were working with were entirely negative. Many voices shouted out disapproval at church life and current practice among the faithful, as if we were in the grips of hopelessness. But it is not quite that way. We live in a time in which the bad news about incomplete catechesis is intermingled with the good news of faithful Catholics who embrace the sacramental life to the fullest. It's not the best of times, surely, but it's not the worst of times either. While we're deeply concerned about the affirmation of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist we celebrate, we're also challenged to deal with the truth of the real absence that defines our common community. No one is present to one another in permanent, un-self-forgetful ways. We suffer from the temporary and the insubstantial as we make our way through the labyrinth of society and its expectations. Asking if Christ is present in the Eucharist when hardly anyone experiences anyone being truly present to them in their lives is to prompt a likely false shadow across the answer. In many cases, we see the shadow, but we don't register what causes it.
Speaker 2:My favorite image of this set of expectations come from the late Archbishop Oscar Lipscomb of the Archdiocese of Mobile in Alabama. Archbishop Lipscomb would ask all the children in a parish who were to be confirmed to write him a letter detailing why they wanted to be confirmed, and he would often read portions of the letter when he preached as part of the confirmation ceremony there in their parishes. In one of the letters he received, the child wrote my name is Johnny, I'm 13 years old and my parents are still married. For the archbishop, growing up in the lap of a stable society and an intact family, it was inconceivable to imagine his parents might not have been there for him or might not have been able to stay together. This child knew simply by looking around, it was not possible to count on stability or certainty, even in the most foundational part of his life. Johnny was well aware of real absence in his life, even if he was haunted only by the threat of it. That's the challenge we face today. We're not left bereft, however.
Speaker 2:The scriptures give us a couple of good lessons we can draw on in order to strengthen what we can expect in our faith lives as we search to encounter the real presence of Jesus in our lives. While we might imagine the concerns of disbelief and insubstantiality to be only a contemporary problem, we can be assured that the questions they raise are as old as the faith—in fact, they go back to the day of the resurrection. I'm not sure it's salutary to remind ourselves that even the apostles wondered whether Jesus was truly present to them in the Eucharist. We can contend, however, in knowing that they did find the answer. Better than that, we can comfort ourselves in knowing that the answers they sought are still available to us. If we want the Eucharistic revival to have substance and continue to touch us throughout the whole of our lives, it'd be good to pay attention to what is said about Jesus' presence, as well as how that presence shows itself amidst the apostles.
Speaker 2:In my estimation, there are four key stories that are good to look at as we go through the scriptures. Each one shows an additional aspect of Jesus' presence that he offers to his disciples, an additional aspect of Jesus' presence that he offers to his disciples. All of them together make for a good answer to the anxieties we live with as we strive to make our approach to the sacramental life of the church rich and meaningful, and those stories stretch over several programs here. This is the first thing to keep in mind. We're living out the life of the church in our day and time. We often imagine that this forces us to consider unique solutions to untested problems which make our days different than the other days of the church. And certainly we've never faced the problem of, say, broadcasting mass over electronic media and then answering the question of whether those who watch have really gone to mass quote, unquote or not. That's never been a question before. Now it is, and without a doubt, our contemporary concerns about, say, the number of priests who serve us or the quality of understanding among our people and all the other anxieties we have today. Those are real and sometimes troubling, but in all these things. We're living the life of the church, which also means that these problems we encounter are part of what it has always meant to be the church. The church lives in us. Our concerns are part of what it means for the bride of Christ to be alive in our day and to be among us. So also are the solutions given to us from the stories of the scriptures. They're there for us if we're willing to pay. Given to us from the stories of the scriptures. They're there for us if we're willing to pay attention to them.
Speaker 2:And the first story to pay attention to comes from Matthew's Gospel, chapter 28, commonly known as the Great Commission. It's the instructions given to the apostles by Jesus In his final meeting with his chosen ones. He tells them to go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to carry out everything that they're commanded. And this reading is straightforward and we've taken it seriously from the beginning. Indeed, even today, the formula that Jesus delivered to the apostles is still the one we use in our rite for baptism, just as Jesus instructed us. And certainly we have a remarkable record of carrying the gospel of Jesus to the fullest bounds of the earth.
Speaker 2:I remember coming on vacation to Angkor Wat, the temple complex in ruins in the middle of Cambodia. As I arrived there and the taxi was taking me to the hotel, there was a small sign on the road indicating get this. Where the Jesuit parish was just next to Angkor Wat. We've gone to every place and have stoutly maintained our proclamation there. This was no idle encounter between Jesus and the apostles. It set the stage for everything that would happen subsequently to the followers of Jesus as they began their own mission in the world.
Speaker 2:But the preliminary to Jesus' instruction is what we have to pay attention to. If we only focus on what Jesus told his followers, we'll miss a lot of what they heard and we'll miss a great deal of the context of our own time and place. This is because we've most often decided that the context of our own time and place, this is because we've most often decided that the power of our missionary work has to do with the depth of our convictions. If we falter in our belief or we determine that there are some difficulties in the level of our commitments, then we have to shore these up first before we do anything else. In my estimation, this is where we are in the missionary impulse of today. We're waiting for a more perfect church before we invest much time in bringing the gospel to the most abandoned and neediest places in the world. We've imagined that once our convictions are intact and the depth of our beliefs are shored up, all we need for the cultivation of the gospel will be in place, and then we can be fruitful. The flip side of this is that if we detect something that needs correcting, we're not quite ready to go out and do as we're commanded. An imperfect church or damaged integrity will keep the message of Christ bottled up and frustrate our work. So we spend our time making sure everything's right and our belief and practice are pristine, so that we can do the work necessary to make Jesus available to the whole world.
Speaker 2:It reminds me of inviting some friends of mine to have breakfast with a parishioner of mine when I was pastor in Altus many years ago. They'd come down to do some work in the parish on a documentary that they were preparing for a local TV station. Following their work from the previous evening, we received an invitation to have breakfast at this parishioner's house. Dutifully, that next morning we trooped over to her place. The kitchen in her house was a small lean-to attached to the house. We sat on a small picnic table in the kitchen area as she prepared our meal. Most of the pots and pans had no handles. She moved them around the stove with a large pair of pliers as the breakfast progressed. The walls were dark and scorched, the plates were chipped and faded, the cups were old jelly glasses that had been repurposed, the silverware was mismatched and bent and with all of that, the food was wonderful. In fact, any concerns about the kitchen disappeared as soon as the first bite was in the mouth, which is a lesson to us all.
Speaker 2:The measure is not the appearance or the conventions or the attractiveness, it's the taste. We've often forgotten that, especially in our age in which we value procedure and appearances above all else. If we look more closely at the encounter of the apostles with Jesus just before he delivers the great commission to them, we can see what's vital for us to understand in our time. It says now the 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them, and when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. Pay attention to that aspect of their encounter with Jesus. He had appeared to them over and over again. They had first encountered the conundrum of the empty tomb, and then they had seen him risen and had come face to face with him. He chided them about thinking he was a ghost, but instead was a man standing among them. And yet, at this encounter, there were some who still doubted it was he Jesus. Risen from the dead was a step they were not ready to acknowledge, an element of belief they were not ready to sign on to. There were some who still doubted.
Speaker 2:It's not clear in Matthew's gospel whether their doubts were assuaged by Jesus' commands to go forth, but sometimes, the more often we are directed, the less our doubts control us. Perhaps it was this way with them. Certainly, no one can argue with the results. They did indeed go out and proclaim the gospel fearlessly, but even at that moment, there were those among them who were unclear about what they were seeing. Even at that moment, there were those among them who were unclear about what they were seeing, uncertain about what they were to do and unconvinced about what they were encountering.
Speaker 2:It would appear that absolute conviction is not a prerequisite for apostolic work. We might also note that Jesus didn't spend any time trying to convince them any further. They were left to themselves to handle whatever doubts lingered in their thoughts or remained among their memories. On the journey, they were to come to terms with what they had seen and experienced, and this is important to all of us. Absolute certainty is not the product of teaching. It's the product of action. If we want those among us to believe and embrace the message of the gospel, our premium is on fulfilling the commission, on having everyone going and making disciples Think about it.
Speaker 2:Questions concerning whether the Eucharist is the real presence or not is most likely to be asked and answered by those who confront the fundamental questions of the presence of Christ. Amidst all the anxieties and problems of the world. There is nothing more powerfully convincing concerning the presence of Christ than the journey to make Christ present in the lives of others. So what about those who have not yet embraced the real presence? Certainly, there are huge numbers of people who resist the Catholic teaching concerning the real presence as part of their doctrine. What about them? A good number of them have gone out to bring Christ to the nations. One of our greatest complaints is that they've done so incompletely and contrarily to the instruction Jesus himself gave. What about them if they haven't come to the truth of this doctrine? It's a good question.
Speaker 2:The only thing I can say about that, since that's the question to be answered by them and not by me, is to relate an experience I had once with my girlfriend in college. My girlfriend wasn't a Catholic, but she went with me to Mass every Sunday and every Wednesday night at OSU. In fact, our first date was to go on to the evening Mass on a Wednesday night at the student center there. So in reciprocity, she invited me to accompany her to her church one Sunday, and that weekend was Communion Sunday. So the minister got up and explained what was to happen, which he did with just about everything, since it was a church next to the campus and it normally had lots of people like me who didn't know what was expected or what might occur next.
Speaker 2:And his instructions were interesting because he instructed us to take the bread and grape juice passed down to us and to remember the last supper and Jesus's instructions to take and eat and to take and drink. And he added one more clarification we were not to think this was anything more than a memorial. Don't think it's anything more than that he said and that sparked a moment of interest for me. He felt compelled to clarify for all of us, those who were regular and those who weren't, that we were not to believe that this was the body and the blood of Christ. The real presence was something he had to instruct us not to believe. I suppose this is how it goes in those places whose doctrine differs from church teaching, but I wondered at that moment if the default position of everyone familiar with the Last Supper is that we simply believe what Jesus said and accept what he offered. Perhaps it's only the explicit instructions of the authorities and leaders that keeps this default position from being accepted and acted on. If we just let people go with what they experience, they might come to this on their own. Maybe For most of the first thousand years of Christian practice, the understanding everywhere was of the real presence in the Eucharistic celebration.
Speaker 2:It was only about 500 years ago when the complaints began to surface that the teaching of the doctrine was faulty and should be censured. Even then, some of the greatest proponents of changing the teaching simply wanted to affirm that the presence of Christ was something more complicated and intricate than consuming a host or taking a sip from the chalice, and who could argue with that? But as in all things, the small complaints became gigantic causes which crowded out any nuance or subtlety, until all notion of presence was simply tossed out and communion services in non-Catholic settings became the pale imitations that they have been for so long. Knowing the apostles' doubted also gives us a chance to address one additional aspect of the anxiety that seems to be so much a part of church life today.
Speaker 2:We have a hard time holding on to our convictions with the sophistication that they deserve. It's not that we're not sophisticated, it's that we tend to presume the things of great value that underlie our lives have to be as simple and as solid as stones. If they're anything other than the most simple or the most straightforward, either we mistrust them or we look for a simpler version of them. I'm not sure why that's so pronounced among us, and I don't know if it's a characteristic of all societies, but it certainly is an aspect of our situation right now. We presume the solidity of life has to be simple. That's especially true of the faith. We have a hard time embracing the depth and intricacy of the life of faith that we have been entrusted. In fact, it's a common strategy of those who want to dissuade Catholics in the faith to claim that the precepts of the church and the dogmas of belief are too complicated and intricate to fathom, much less to be confident in. Their appeal is that their faith is straightforward and hints at nothing but a few simple points. Believe them, they say, and it's all you have to do. There's nothing much complicated about their faith at all. That spirit is alive and well among us, without a doubt.
Speaker 2:I think back to the times in the 60s, when priests, for example, began to tell people that they didn't have to go to confession so often. Since I hear confessions at the shrine for more than eight hours a week, I begin to understand what priests at that time, all those years ago, were saying. They wanted their parishioners to understand that the confessional moment should be richer and more filled with grace than, say, I missed Mass on Sunday and ate meat on Friday. Those actions are contrary to a grace-filled life, but the priests of the time longed for confession to be something more than a transactional experience giving and getting in a kind of sacramental exchange. Their suggestions were sophisticated. They wanted the experience of the sacrament of reconciliation to be as intricate and as full as redemption can be. But what people heard, what I heard, was that it wasn't important to go to confession any longer. Nobody had to go unless he'd shot somebody or stolen a million dollars or something like that. That is to say, their appeal to a greater sense of sophistication produced in us an even greater simplicity. The result was that the general ignoring of the practice of the sacrament of reconciliation among us for a generation in favor of the simple narration that it just wasn't necessary to go to confession because Father had said so.
Speaker 2:There's something of this appeal in the response to the poll information about the real presence as well. When someone approaches and asks a question in straightforward, simple ways to ask is it this or is it that Anyone who responds with anything other than a one-word, one-level answer is regarded as not believing or not affirming and therefore is regarded as a bad believer? Yes, of course it's true that a person might not believe in the real presence and answers just as simply and straightforwardly and unbelievingly as his ignorant dictates. But it can also be the case that the answer is more sophisticated than the question. That's why we have to be careful not to be content with the dynamics of question and answer, of not reducing everything to the function of a one answer to the one question, and allow in some sophistication, at least to allow in the sophistication of humanity.
Speaker 2:The apostles who gathered in the presence of Jesus could touch his body and hear his words. They were being primed to go into the world and offer their lives as they spread the message of forgiveness and redemption. In all of this, some of them doubted whether the person they encountered was the real Jesus, the one they had known and had been around for years. The experience of standing in his presence was not sufficiently clear or simple enough for them to put away all doubt and to bask in the goodness of the moment. They still doubt it. We might have some patience with those among us who have not yet come to the fullest understanding of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. They may need more time, a fuller experience of the meaning of Christ in their lives, before their yes is full on and their affirmations guide them to a greater mission. It was just so among the apostles. The Eucharistic revival is an important element of the life of the church in our time. We're striving to live out the gift of the presence of Christ in our lives in the fullest and the most fruitful way that we can. Jesus has promised us the intimacy of his presence as the heart of the church. We do our best to leave this intimacy with our yes to him. In imitation of the apostles, we ought to find the presence of Christ to be at the heart of our lives as we stand together in our mission with one another. Back in just a moment. Welcome back to our final segment Faith in Verse.
Speaker 2:We have a poem today called the Argument. I saw on YouTube yesterday a debate between what Religionists all very interesting, you could say each holding his own among revisionists, claiming exclusive insights and beliefs. They went after it hammer and tongs. When they stopped talking it was a relief to not hear who was right or wrong. It's all very entertaining, I know, and important in its own way. All truth must be defended, high and low. The curse of ignorance facts can allay. But, as in so many moments like this one, both sides ended their briefs with a shout.
Speaker 2:Demanding the other submit and come to see their position leaves only doubt. Demanding the others submit and come to see their position leaves only doubt, I know. I know. Such is the price to pay in the fallen world we do occupy. Someone has to invest the time and say all that we can trust and justify.
Speaker 2:But I admit such makes me weary as the clarifications fly back and forth. I would prefer a bit more clarity in the pointings to Deep Springs and True North. For me it's entertainment no longer, as once I enjoyed such things in the past. I come to prefer God's loving raiment and the true gifts of charity that last. That's the argument. The invitation that we've received always is to trust in the promise of the presence of Christ in our lives and the promise that Christ has committed in the work of the Spirit to accompany us, especially as we encounter the difficulties and the obstacles of life. That's the invitation of the true presence of Christ in our lives. Our invitation is to receive what he offers and in receiving it that our lives might be transformed. I hope that's what we can celebrate as we continue to be Living Catholic.
Speaker 1:Living Catholic is a production of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City for Oklahoma Catholic Radio. To learn more visit okcrorg.