For many Catholics, the Letter to the Hebrews is an unknown text. Yet it is one of the most meaningful Scriptural writings. It has much to offer to the modern church. As one commentator put it: “Prepare to be changed when you drink deeply from Hebrews. It will leave you better than when you started.”
Hebrews is not a letter, it is a sermon that has been written down, and it is not a writing of St. Paul but by an unknown author. The reason for the “letter” was that a sizeable number of Christians were falling away from the faith, and many were beginning to stay away from Christian worship. Sound familiar?
The preacher wanted to encourage them to persevere. He begins by reminding them of some benefits that come with Christianity, gives some cautions and warnings, and tells them to encourage one another. Then, in chapter 5, verse 11, he suddenly and unexpectedly breaks off from what he’s been saying and takes a new direction. He makes an attempt to shake up his listeners. He confronts his audience with the problem of their spiritual immaturity, the problem of their immaturity in the faith, and tells them that the main reason for Christians leaving the faith is their “lethargic” Christianity. They do not try to understand the faith at a deeper level. There is culpable negligence and “sluggishness.” Even though they have been engaged with the Christian faith long enough to now be teachers of others, they are still like infants at a mother’s breast. They are negligent of their responsibilities to study, to learn and to teach the faith. They still need someone to teach them the first principles of the faith. The preacher accuses his listeners of being recipients who can still take only milk, not solid food. By “solid food” he means deeper truths, more advanced, substantive doctrines. This situation is insufficient for perseverance in the faith. This ignorance leads to ineffectiveness in communicating the faith. They are not able to speak intelligibly. Hebrews 5:13: “for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the way of righteousness, for he is a child.” Such a situation makes believers vulnerable to leaving the faith. The preacher challenges his audience to move beyond a few basics of Catholic doctrine. Their Catholic development has been arrested.
With solid food one experiences new kinds of life and love.”
A famous Catholic Scriptural commentator, Raymond Brown, commented: “I have a fellow-feeling for what the writer of Hebrews says in this sudden and surprising passage. The author gives his analysis of where his audience was spiritually and intellectually and has the courage to say it straight to them. He clearly wants to wake up his audience.
In our churches today we need to recognize the same tendencies Hebrews comments about. So many Catholics are not only eager to stay with a diet of milk, but actually get angry at the suggestion that they should be eating something more substantive. This has puzzled and bothered me for years. I meet settled prejudice against making any effort at all to learn what the Catholic faith is about. As a result, we find an extraordinary ignorance about lives being transformed by the power of the scriptures and scholarly theology. Here and there I meet an eagerness to take in as much teaching as one can. Some Catholics are indeed eager for solid food. But I deeply regret that in most churches it seems that most people can only be persuaded to take another small helping of warm milk.”
(Research indicates that in places where substantive Bible classes and Catholic scholarship presentations are offered, they are attended by one-half of one percent of Catholics they are intended to reach. There seems to be a certain indifference to learning deeper aspects of the faith.)
Raymond Brown goes on: “Most Catholics today don’t even know much about the milk— the ABCs of the faith. Many (most) couldn’t tell you why we baptize people, or what precisely the resurrection is. It’s not that they learned their ABCs long ago and forgotten it. No: they haven’t ever learned it in the first place.”
Here are some disturbing statistics. One in five children who are baptized will not receive their first holy Communion, two in five will not make their confirmation, and by all accounts, we can expect about 85 percent of our youth and young adults to stop the practice of the faith by age 21.
Here’s another statistic: the majority (71 percent) of people who have drifted away from the faith have left not in anger, but in disappointment. They say, “I never felt that my spiritual needs were met by the church.”
The famous Catholic theologian Karl Rahner was once asked if those who leave the Catholic faith commit the sin of apostasy? He replied: “No, you can’t apostatize from what you don’t know.” Says a lot about what he thought was the depth of “regular” Catholics knowledge of the faith.
Thus, the preacher of Hebrews rebukes the immaturity of those who can still have only milk, not solid food. St. Paul did the same thing. First Corinthians 3:12: “And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready.”
Hebrews 6:1: “Therefore, let us leave the elementary doctrines of Christ and go on to maturity.”
Advanced teaching is the means of producing maturity. Education is nurture. How does one get believers to develop an appetite for more solid food? Most preaching today seems to consist of trite rehashes of some ABCs clothed in predictable words.
Pope Francis often speaks of wanting an Adult Church.
Finally, I think the most important characteristic of evangelizing is that the evangelizers know their way around the Bible. One of the enduring legacies of the Second Vatican Council is its call to return to Biblical Theology as the primary source of Catholic spirituality.
