Fr. Bob’s Homily for Sunday, January 5, 2025

One of my favorite Christmas Christian slogans, along with “Keep Christ in Christmas” and “Jesus is the reason for the season”, is this one: “Wise men still seek Him”. Wise men still seek him. Seek who? Justin Trudeau? Donald Trump? No, no, no, wise men still seek Jesus, to be their Lord, their Savior, their King. It is true wisdom to seek Christ.

It turns out, according to an article I was reading on X (formerly “Twitter”) online, this saying is not just true, as it were, spiritually, but also, literally. According to the writer, many intellectuals, having started out as atheists or agnostics, are now converting to faith in God. Many of these intellectuals are scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, who, hitherto, believed that all the secrets of the universe could be explained by recourse to science and reason. In other words, reason and science have revealed most of the facts behind the making of our universe, and those things that remain unexplained, will be answered in the near future. It turns out, according to the article I was reading, that, not only are there still many more secrets to be explained than first believed, but even the questions  that science thought had been solved, have created many more sub-questions to be investigated 

 Furthermore, these former atheists have discovered that, while science and reason can explain a lot about human existence, there is a whole dimension to human life which they cannot. That dimension embraces the whole realm of the spiritual, this instinctive reaching out on behalf of humanity to that which is beyond the limitation of the human senses, the innate search to “touch the face of God”, as one poet described it, All the mainstream religions of the world, of course, have always understood this, and sought to trace the contours of that search over thousands of years. St Augustine, in the 4th century A.D., after many years seeking an answer to his deepest longings for truth, a seeking which took him through all the main philosophies of the world, before finding his answers in the Catholic Christian faith, once wrote: “You have made us for yourself, O God, and we will find no rest until we come to rest in you”. Billions of human beings have reached the same conclusion, having started out as non-believers, and, according to the article I referred to earlier, are still continuing to do so.

Wise men (and women) still seek him.

Some of the so-called “wise” people still seek to resist God, reject the idea that our world is compromised by sin and all its awful effects, still being experienced today, in the 21st century, despite all the quantum leaps in scientific discovery that have been made, and which still do not quench  the thirst for something, or someone, more to explain, and to settle, the restlessness deep within our spirits. It is precisely the following of those deep intuitive paths that have led so many atheists and humanists to “discover“ God, unaware till that moment that it has really been God, all along, who was seeking to find them.

Another interesting, and, for me, deeply consoling, aspect of their whole search, as revealed in the article, was the aspect of a personal witness. Many people have been hugely guided, and influenced in their search for faith, for God, by the example of a friend who dared to share their faith, often in simple, non-intellectual, ways, that have, somehow, in the providence of God, managed to bypass the intellectual shield that many of these atheists and agnostics have erected and pierced their heart instead and tapped into their spiritual depths and opened up a vein of truth which had hitherto been closed to them.  As St Paul wrote, in his first letter to the Corinthians, “the Spirit of God searches the depths of everything, including the depths of God, and enables us to speak of such things, not through human wisdom, but as taught by the Spirit” (1 Corinthians 2: 10, 13).

But the article also unveiled another source of conversion in the lives of many of these intellectuals – the role of the small church. We are enthralled, often, by reading of the rise of so-called “mega churches”, especially in the West, which draw thousands of worshippers to their weekly services. We can feel rather humiliated, and intimidated, by these types of churches (especially we pastors) and can think “what is wrong with me, or with my church, that we don’t attract these kinds of numbers?” Worry no more, brothers and sisters. God can, and does, use these mega churches to do a great work of evangelization in the world. But, and this is so important to realize and never forget, God also can, and does, use the small church experience to win over, and to attract those who are looking for a sense of belonging, of community, of family, somewhere where their search for meaning, for truth, in their lives, can be gently nurtured and cultivated, till it reaches fruition. Our small, simple gatherings and communities are put in their own time and place, so that God, through his Spirit, can at a particular moment in time, bring in through our doors, a “big fish”, someone of influence in the world, whose search for something more than earthly  prowess, has brought them to this time and this place. We are here, now, because God has planted us here and now, because he intends to use us, here and now, and into the future, to draw souls to Him, through our simplicity, our humility, our faith, our peace, our joy, and our love.

And what of those who still resist the lure of God, who stubbornly hang onto a foolish notion that they can by the straining of their intellects and by human, earthly knowledge and reason alone, aspire to plumb the depths of human existence and the universe? We must pray for them, that they look above and out of, the darkness of this world’s limitations and seek for the light of the glory of God, in the words of our first reading today.