A Conversation on Encountering Christ

Homily for the Opening Mass at Mount de Sales Academy

I’m going to tell you all about a conversation I had last night.

Last night, I told my dear friend (and roommate) Fr. Tyler that I struggle sometimes because our language about encountering Christ makes little practical sense to me. I do not like how we use much of our spiritual language in the Church today. I told him that I had spent the much of my day here at Mount de Sales helping with adoration and listening to beautiful witness talks about encountering Christ in the Eucharist and about how lives can change—have changed—by meeting Christ in adoration. But to my mind, adoring Christ and encountering Christ are two different realities. To come into a chapel and adore Christ in the Eucharist makes all of the sense in the world to me . . . if you have already encountered Christ. Adoration—loving Christ with your whole heart, giving yourself to Christ in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament—that makes sense. If someone came to me with the question—how do I adore Christ? —I could give them an answer. But if someone came to me with the question—how do I encounter Christ? —I would not know what to tell them.

I told Fr. Tyler that our Gospel this morning describes an encounter with Christ; that Simon Peter, James, and John encounter Christ is clear to me. Christ walks onto their boat, he gives commands, they witness a demonstration of his power, and they commit themselves to leaving everything behind and following him. There is an encounter with Christ, and so now I know what an encounter with Christ looks like. But the problem is that I do not own a boat. And I do not know how to fish. And even if I did own a boat and knew how to fish, Christ is no longer in the walking onto boats business. Christ has retired from that line of work, and so the method of encounter that we see in the Gospel—that is a method of encountering Christ that is seen in the Gospel, and not in our lives in the same way. We need our own method—a way of encountering Christ in our world, today, in our lives.

Fr. Tyler offered a response: do you not think that encountering Christ has much to do with our openness and our vulnerability when we stand before the Lord? Fr. Tyler told me about something he has been reading recently, a spiritual exercise in which the author talks about the famous story of Martha rushing around the house cleaning and preparing things while Mary sits still in adoration of Christ. And what makes the experience for Martha into an encounter with Christ is Martha’s openness and vulnerability: who Martha is—her anxiety, her troubles—is exposed to Christ. Martha is laid bare before the Lord. And so, in that moment of openness and vulnerability, Martha encounters Christ. Before encountering Christ, Martha had met Christ; she had known Christ. But the encounter follows from the vulnerability and the openness and the allowing Christ to see the brokenness and the fragility in her life.

So, Fr. Tyler said to me, we do need to do a better job with our spiritual language: coming to adoration is not an encounter with Christ . . . coming to adoration is an opportunity to encounter Christ. We go into the chapel and if we expose ourselves to Christ, sharing with him our brokenness and our vulnerabilities, then we meet Christ on Christ’s terms and not our terms—and that is an encounter. And I told Fr. Tyler that I agree with him completely. In fact, our Gospel today makes it clear that to encounter Christ really does require openness and vulnerability. “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man,” says Simon Peter—and in that moment Simon Peter encounters Christ.

 But I told Fr. Tyler that to answer the question—how do I encounter Christ? —with the instruction—be open and vulnerable before the Lord—is still a failure to give a good answer to the question. I still do not own a boat, I still do not fish, and Christ is still retired from the walking onto boats business. Fr. Tyler then put the question to me: how have you encountered Christ in your life? And I gave him two answers: (1) I have come to Mass and consumed Christ’s flesh and blood thousands of times in my life, and those must be moments of encounter with Christ and (2) I have encountered Christ in the Church in a way that I cannot describe with clear language but yet is absolutely true. Those are my answers to the question, two answers that in an important way belong to one another and become a single response: I have encountered Christ in the life of the Church. And the life of the Church is a sacramental, mystical, relational reality. I have no remarkable stories about singular moments of encounter with Christ. I do not own a boat, I do not fish, and Christ has never told me to put out into the deep or to lower any kind of net. All I know is that through the relationships that have been given to me through the Church, through the grace that I know I have received through the sacraments, through the experiences that have broken me out of my own sad and selfish little world and exposed me to the glory of everything that God has done for my life and for the life of the world, I have encountered Christ. Here in the Church, I have encountered Christ.

Fr. Tyler liked that answer. He told me that his favorite Christians in the world are the Christians who say of Christianity: something happened to me—something outside of me happened to me—and my life is not the same. Fr. Tyler told me about the experience of looking back on his own life and realizing that at a certain point in seminary he was suddenly a different kind of person. Something had happened to him, and his life was not the same. Fr. Tyler then told me about me: about how when he came to visit me during my six months living in South America—about halfway through my own time in seminary—he saw me for the first time in weeks and realized that something had happened to me, and that my life was not the same.

Here is the Gospel truth: the something that happened to us from outside of us is a someone. We encountered Christ in the life of the Church, and our lives are not the same. There is nothing I would love more than to give you all some kind of a multi-step guide for encountering Christ. But I do not have one to give. What I do know—with complete conviction and with absolute certainty—is that Mount de Sales is a place for encountering Christ. The life of the Church is here in these hallways, in these classrooms, on these playing fields, in this chapel. You will be given relationships here that will fill your life with meaning; you will receive graces through the sacraments here that will fuel you with a spiritual energy for doing the work of love; you will have experiences here that will break you down and expose you to the glory of everything that God has done for your life and for the life of the world. There is a real chance for each of you here today at the start of this new school year that if you come to Christ open, exposed, vulnerable, laying bare to him the brokenness and fragility of your life—there is a real chance that some years down the road you will look back on your time at Mount de Sales and say: something happened to me there, something outside of me, and my life has never been the same. And that something will be a someone, because you will have encountered Christ.

Homily preached on September 1st, 2022 at Mount de Sales Academy.