Sunday Sermons: Our Belief in Christ
by VP
Posted on Sunday October 05, 2025 at 01:00AM in Sunday Sermons
- Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost The Church's Year by Rev. Fr. Leonard Goffine
- MORTALIUM ANIMOS (ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS XI ON RELIGIOUS UNITY)
"The prophets had announced the coming of the Redeemer. The Jewish nation expected Him, and yet, when He came, what reception did they give Him? They disbelieved in Him; they rejected Him. He challenged them, "What think you of Christ ?" If you believe not My words, acknowledge the deeds that I have done in your midst. The evil spirits, that He had cast out of those possessed, cried out, "Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God!" But " He came unto His own and His own received Him not." Had they not taunted Him that He was a Samaritan and had a devil? How different was that noble answer that Peter gave Him, when our Lord had asked, "But whom do you say that I am? Simon Peter answered and said: Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matt. xvi. 15, 16).
This same question has been demanded of the world, age after age. And as Christ our Lord triumphed in suffering, so the most glorious answers have been given in the days of persecution. Not a verbal answer merely, but with their lives, amidst all manners of torments, unterrified by the rack, the scourgings, the fires, the wild beasts in the Coliseum, the martyrs gave their answer, professed Christ the Son of God; gloried in being the followers of the Crucified one, and gladly gave up their lives to seal their faith. How crowds of holy witnesses rise up before our memories-children, maidens, mothers, old men, rich and poor for three hundred years by their death proclaimed their faith in "Christ, the Son of the living God."
And when peace dawned and the Church was allowed to extend and propagate, alas! heresies sprung up. What then did men think of Christ? Arius denied His Divinity. His heresy spread like a devastating plague, and the world "groaned to find itself Arian." Other heresies followed, each with its false assertions in their answer to " What think you of Christ ?" And yet the truth prevailed. The Gospel tidings were received by nation after nation converted to the Faith, and through successive centuries up to the Reformation, the world at large gave the one universal answer, "Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God."
Though the powers of hell cannot prevail against Christ and His Church, yet the insidious warfare continues unremittingly, and a nation here, a nation there, falls away and denies its Redeemer, for a time leading astray and ruining the souls of men. "What think you of Christ?" Some years ago an atheistic catechism answered: Christ was a working man, and a socialist. And Unitarians deny that He is God, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity. And at the present time how mistaken is the faith of those who openly declare that Christ's teaching is obsolete, that it needs reforming and bringing up to date! Man daring to aspire to improve the work of the Eternal God! Man, the creature of a passing hour, to sit in judgment on the doctrine of eternal truth!
Living, as we do, in such times as these, it is to us, to each one of us, that our Blessed Lord addresses the question once again, "What think you of Christ?" and He looks to us to boldly proclaim an answer that will glorify Him. We cannot shirk the answer. We are Christ's, and we have to respond in word and deed, by the profession of our faith, and by our lives that live up to our faith. Alas! some by their sinful lives cry out as of old, and prefer Barabbas to Christ.
But we ourselves, children of the Church, we who have been redeemed by His precious Blood, give a loyal and abiding answer before the world of our unswerving faith in Christ, the Son of God. Our faith, our hope, our love, our devoutness to Him proclaim the answer. We stand by every word He spoke: we adhere to His every doctrine, handed down to us in sacred Tradition by His Church. We worship Him and receive Him in the Holy Eucharist, proving our faith by loving obedience to His word, "Do this in memory of Me."
What an example we each can be, in our little world, to those who as yet know Him not, and to those who have once professed their faith in Christ, but now have fallen away. Let our lives convey to them, impress even unwilling souls, what we think of Christ our Lord, that we believe that He is the God of Truth, Who became Man to teach us the way to heaven by word and example, that He freed us from the yoke of sin by His Redemption, that we might begin a new life, walking in His footsteps. Let them see, make them see, that He is all in all to us—our light, our strength, the motive of all our endeavors and endurance. This is what we think of Christ. Knowing Him, remembering Him constantly here in this life makes us faithful to Him now, buoyed up with the glorious hope that we shall reign with Him for ever in the life to come." Source: 17th Sunday after Pentecost. Short Sermons on the Epistles & Gospels of the Sundays of the Year by Dom Francis Paulinus Hickey, O.S.B. 1922
