By Father Kyle Seyler
When I was in elementary and middle school, I had a lot of various collections, one of which was precious stones. I did not have anything of much value, so you can imagine how excited I was to find a small nugget of what appeared to be gold. It turns out that what I really came into possession of was a piece of iron pyrite, also known as Fool’s Gold. It had a certain attractive luster to it, but it wasn’t worth much, hence the name “Fool’s Gold.” One pound of iron pyrite sells for just around $18 on Amazon, whereas one ounce of real gold is worth over $2,700! The real thing has a real beauty and a real value in which people are wise to invest. What is presented before us today, on this solemnity of All Saints, is a similar contrast, along with an important choice that determines where we spend eternity. Today, it is right and just for us to offer and celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, a treasure of incomparable value, and it is right and just for us to see the differences between Real Christianity and Fake, or Fool’s, Christianity.
Tragically, there are far too many people in the Church today, and far too many Christian politicians in particular, who subscribe to this Fake Christianity and promote it in the eyes of others. These pretenders and imposters of the faith look at it as a buffet. One often hears the term “Cafeteria Catholics,” referring to people who pick and choose what teachings of Christ and His Church they accept and what ones they reject, all the while wearing their Christian or Catholic Christian identity as a badge of honor, a badge worn by many Christian leaders in our government to gain more votes in our elections. These unfaithful Christians are much like the chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees of old, being all talk and no walk, talking about how much they love and cherish their faith and then blatantly contradicting it by how they vote, govern, and/or legislate, brazenly and proudly appearing to others as the real thing, while being “filled with dead men’s bones and all corruption (Matthew 23:27).” You often hear them claim to be personally pro-life and accepting of the Church’s moral teaching authority, all the while supporting candidates, policies, and legislation that uphold the abominable practice of abortion, even at the latest stage of a pregnancy, the power to euthanize older and more seriously ill patients whom they deign to no longer be worth the cost of healthcare, the practice of physicians (who take an oath to do no harm to their patients) helping people commit suicide, the perversion of the sacred institution of marriage and of the beautiful gift of human sexuality, and the sins of sodomy, fornication, and the widespread use of contraception.
They say they will not impose their religious beliefs on others on these issues that are in fact issues of natural law, which can and should be known and followed by every human person through a sound application of reason, but they have no problem imposing their evil ideologies, like transgenderism, upon their fellow citizens, under the guise of human rights and as sacrifices upon the altar of tolerance. They claim to treasure their Christian faith, even as they do everything in their power to oppose religious freedom. They relegate faith to a purely private matter that should not leave the church building or the home, claiming it has no place in the public sphere, apparently forgetting or ignoring Jesus’ command in the Great Commission to go and teach all nations and bear witness to him to the ends of the earth. They say that the commandments and demands of our faith are unreasonable and unrealistic in the face of the godless, amoral culture they help to create, asserting that people will and can live as promiscuously as they want and giving them all the birth control and abortifacients they need because it is presumably impossible for people to live celibately or practice abstinence before marriage. All of what I have just described amounts to Fool’s Christianity, a cheap, worthless imitation of our true, genuine religion.
On the other hand, there is Real Christianity, the priceless faith of real beauty, laid out before us today in our readings from Sacred Scripture and manifested to us by the great multitude of saints whom we honor and venerate throughout the year and in a special way on today’s solemnity. These are the faithful Christians we should strive to be ourselves, who, though sinners and in as much need of repentance and mercy as the unfaithful wolves in sheep’s clothing, struggle and strive to be the children of God whom they are by Baptism; who struggle to survive the time of great distress with their faith and integrity intact; who stand against, denounce, and hate the evils of their place and time, while actively and publicly standing for what is good, beautiful, and true; who take Jesus’ Beatitudes seriously and seek to live by them even unto martyrdom, red or white. The saints proudly bore and still bear the seal of the living God in the way they speak, live, and participate in public life. They are the holy men and women from every corner of the earth who have washed their garments in the saving Blood of the Lamb of God, the same blood poured out for us here in the Mass, as it was on the cross at Calvary. They were not perfect, but they strove and strive to be perfect, just as our Heavenly Father is perfect. Heeding the words of the prophet Micah, they did and do what is right, loving goodness and walking humbly with our God (Micah 6:8).
Today, we recognize the difference between fake and real, faithful and unfaithful, foolish and authentic. And the good news of it all is that it is possible for us to proclaim and live the real thing because countless men and women of the past and in the present have done it and are still doing it. What’s more is that the saints in heaven are cheering us onward to the finish line and lending us support by their merits and prayers. They already possess a treasure far more precious than gold, and they earnestly desire us to share it with them. That treasure is our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and the eternal, joyful vision of Him and communion with Him in a kingdom where there is no sin, darkness, error, or confusion, only virtue, light, truth, and endless love.
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