What Is The Truth?
We live in a time that does not recognize that truth is the same for everyone. We don’t accept the truth about anything. Right now this means that, most of all, we don’t accept the truth about ourselves. But this first comes from not accepting the truth about God.
In considering the truth, once again Deacon Michael shows that he loves history. On the feast of St. Ambrose, Michael gives a quick look at the state of the Church in Ambrose’s time. The period in which St. Ambrose lived was a wild one.
The Church was practically split in half because of the Arian heresy which denied that Jesus was God. This happened soon after the Catholic Church was free to exist without restriction. Then the emperor and his mother chose heresy and demanded that the Arians be given the cathedral at Milan, where St Ambrose was bishop.
Deacon Michael also mentions St. Augustine. St. Ambrose was a friend of St. Augustine, and Augustine helped convert Ambrose to Catholicism and taught him the beauty of the faith. They remained close friends. Both defended the faith and were prolific writers and both are doctors of the Church.
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The feast of St. Ambrose (December 7)
This period of time of St. Ambrose is a period of time where Constantine, you remember, made the Church legal and we have these great councils that were going on. The Nicene Creed comes from one of these councils. They were talking about the nature of Christ.
And there were also great heresies. The one that was of particular interest was Arianism at this point in time, and it appealed to a lot of people. And the issue again, was always, "Who do you say I am?"
(Arianism was a 4th century heresy named after Arius (c.250-336), a priest in Alexandria, Egypt. He taught that the Son of God was not co-eternal and consubstantial with His Father, but rather a created being with a definite origin in time. In Arius's words, "there was [a time] when he (the Son) was not." This led to the calling of the First Ecumenical Council, which condemned the idea and its author and established the Orthodox doctrine of the Holy Trinity.)
And when the Church was coming and formulating and understanding the nature of Christ… again we are celebrating the Immaculate Conception (on December 8), that was part of the understanding… the role of Mary in all of these things… of God's actions on Earth… and the Arians were questioning certain aspects. And it is very much in the line of, "if you take away an aspect of Christ, it changes the nature of the Church and your obligations."
And what we see in both Ephesians and in the gospel reading is the recognition that, as Jesus said, there will be one flock, one shepherd. The one flock being Christians, the followers of Christ, and ultimately, everyone. The one shepherd is Jesus. And the question is, then, "Okay, if you go out to the world like Paul was going out to the Ephesians, and it is a question I talk about and a question I wonder about constantly, is how do you go out to the world to present Jesus Christ?
And what we see in these readings and in the life of Ambrose, and in the life of Augustine, who is connected with Ambrose, is that the reality of how you bring Christ out to the world is the reality of: you preach Christ as taught by the Catholic Church. That's what those early councils were all about.
People were getting confused about the nature of Christ. There were heretics running around saying, "This is what it needs to be!" The Church came and said, "This is what it is!"
The Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed which we will be reciting shortly, are evidences of those. Each of those lines… I like to say as a lawyer, one of the things that I have never seen but I would have loved to see is if you take an insurance policy on your car or your house or whatever, and get a lawyer who really knows what he or she is doing, you could put a case cite behind every single line in that because there was a lawsuit dealing with that issue and they resolved it, and they are putting it in that insurance policy.
We have in Christianity, in Catholicism, a similar process. Everything that we see in the Creed is the result of great men sitting down, great men and women, sitting down and saying, "This is what we believe."
It is a very fundamental, simple statement that is wrought with enormous significance. And how do you, St. Ambrose, dealing with an Emperor and an Empress who don't like you, who believe in something that is a heresy, you are dealing with a city that is split in half over Catholicism and Arianism. They are arguing. The Emperor says, “See that church over there, I want you to give it to the Arians.” And Ambrose (who as bishop had control of the assets of the Church) says, 'No.'" How do you deal with that situation? How do you deal with the situation that you have here, today, in Farmers Branch, in Mary Immaculate Church?
And the way that you deal with it is the Truth. The truth basically is that if you can reach anybody's mind and go, "Oh!" Once they start thinking about it then they will be a follower of Christ and they will become a Catholic.
And that is a very fundamental part of Catholicism from the very beginning. I’ve talked about this before. Jesus talks indirectly. He says, "I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep." You go, "Okay, that's cool. I don't know any sheep, don't know any shepherds, but that makes sense." But it is also something that in light of what happened to Jesus on the Cross, and the Resurrection, and how He dealt in His life, you could write an entire book on the meaning of "a good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep" in the context of Christ and in the context the way we are called to live our lives.
So, by its very nature, as shown by Ambrose, as a doctor of the Church, the key to the Church is the truth, and that truth works. And we are to bring that truth to the world. And so when we go out to the world we speak the truth. Very simply, directly. The truth so many times, is, I will give a homily on Sunday, and now with this, then we will do the Creed and I will go, "Oh, is that what I was talking about?"
The Creed says exactly the Truth. That's where it is. And this is something that is central to Catholicism and is essential to the very wonder of what St. Ambrose was able to do and why he is recognized as a saint and a doctor of the Church.
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