Today is known affectionately by some as Good Shepherd Sunday. The Gospel is about the Good Shepherd who goes after the lost sheep. The Good Shepherd knows that the sheep that had strayed would soon die by itself. So he goes after the lost one to bring it back into Communion. So, He does with us. Thus, he is our Good Shepherd.

However, I do not want to preach about the Good Shepherd. I would like to continue our 3 part series of Why believe, Why be Christian, Why be Catholic. Today, we will talk about why be Christian.

Last week, I mentioned about belief and faith. I talked about how we believe all the time. Every time someone approaches us with a new piece of information, we either choose to believe that it is true or not. This might be a history book or something that is said in Church. It could be something your wife says or your son. You choose to say, “Yes, I accept this.” So it is with Christianity. Faith goes much deeper than belief. Ultimately, faith is the virtue given by God through knowledge gained by an encounter with God or a consistency in belief. So we aim at Faith.

Ultimately, we be Christian comes down for most of us to faith. We have had a personal encounter with the person of

God, known as Jesus Christ.

Cassie Bernall did. She lived most of her early teenage life in a way farthest from Christianity. She was a goth character wearing all black. She hated and hated herself. She dabbled with drugs and her friends only encouraged her. Her parents kept trying to intervene and then one day Jesus Christ did, her life began to change all around.You remember who she is. There is a book about her. She is the girl who was at Columbine High School during the shootings. The story goes that she was hiding and praying as one of the boys came into her room. She knew him, they used to do Goth stuff together. He saw her and turned toward her. He pointed the gun at her and said, “Do you believe in God?” When she said, yes, he pulled the trigger. What would you say?

First, what do we do with evil? For many of us, even if we have had an encounter with Jesus Christ, our faith struggles with the reality of suffering. One of the largest arguments against Christianity and belief in God is the reality of evil. People will say, “How can there be a God if there is so much evil in the world?” Questions come. Where was God when the Nazis killed millions in the gaschambers? Where was God when the earthquake struck and killed thousands in

Haiti? Other questions come closer to home. Where was God when my mom got cancer? Where is God when my baby died? Where was God when I lost my job? Where was God when those teenage boys raped me? These questions hit right at the point of suffering.

Many people will say, “If there is a God and he is all powerful and he is good, then there would not be evil.” But since there is evil,

either God does not exist, he is not all powerful, or that God is not good. Yet God answers powerfully the question of evil. He enters it. “God so loved the world that he Gave His Only Begotten Son that anyone who believes in Him will have eternal life. God became man to suffer to enter into the evil. This is God’s answer to the problem of evil. He says I will be with you. I have experienced the pain. I have experienced the lonliness, the abuse. I have experienced all of this so I walk with you. The mom who has cancer, the family who lost their baby, the man who has lost his job. He says come to me all of you who labor and are burdened and I will give you rest. This is ultimately the beautiful gift that God gives us in our Christian faith. He is always there with us. No other faith can boast such an amazing claim.

We as a people of faith also say that some suffering exists because God allows us to have free-will. We either are robots and obedient machines in God’s plan or we are given the freedom to be like God, to love. But to be able to love in its grandeur we have to have the capacity to hate. So suffering exists because of free-will. God also at times may permit suffering so that we can turn toward him. Remember Adam and Eve. They tried to grasp at being God. This was their sin. If we were in a perfect world, we would soon forget God. Suffering at times makes us turn to God - it helps our faith grow.

One of the worst kind of sufferings that I have ever seen happened in the hospital several years ago when I was a chaplain. The suffering was not as much physical as it was spiritual. You see, there was this man, who had little faith and belief. I think he said he was agnostic. He thought he could always do things his way. He was independent and an individualist. He came home after a good workout, sat on the couch to read the paper and tried to get up and he couldnt. He had a major stroke. Now in the hospital, he felt alone as there was little to help him and no belief in a God who walks with Him. The fragility of life had hit him hard.

Second, how can we believe that the Bible is true? We are able to believe because someone had told us about Jesus Christ. We have the tradition of the Church and the Bible. Some people may question the relevancy of the Bible. How could people so many years ago write a document that describes Jesus Christ? It must be all a made up story. This is what they will say. I go back to the George Washington question. How do we know that George Washington is the first president? Because, the history books line

up to detail the truth of this statement. The more that different documents say the samething, the more that we can believe the truth of the document.

For the Bible, the are a variety of authors that point to the same reality of Jesus Christ. There are many sources outside of the Bible that speak of the same thing within the first 150 years of the Catholic Church. There are Roman documents that show that they crucified a man named Jesus of Nazareth who is the King of the Jews. There are so many realities that corroborate with the authenticity of the Bible. This leads us to believe that what the Bible says is true. Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and he came to set us free from sin and give us eternal life.

Third, the Bible clearly tells us that Jesus is Lord. How many of you have heard of C.S. Lewis? He wrote masterpieces like the Chronicles of Narnia.

That’s the book that most 6th and 7th graders read. Or if you are like me a middle-aged adult can read it also as a good bed-time story. C.S. Lewis wrote some amazing works like the Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity. He brings up in Mere Christianity the proofs of the reality of Jesus Christ. Likewise Chesterton does the same in Everlasting Man. You mayknow him from his Father Brown Mysteries. Both Chesterton and C.S. Lewis sought to show that Jesus Christ is relevant in the modern age. C.S. Lewis said that Jesus Christ is either the Lord, with a capital L, a liar - an evil man, or a lunatic, a crazed man. Let’s look at the last two. Could Jesus have been a liar? Could he and the apostles tricked the thousands of disciples that followed him. Would his apostles be willing to die for a lie? Think of the modern age in all of our sophistication. Some of us was around during the Watergate Scandals. Think how long this secret operative was concealed. Not very long and it did not even require a single life. It is very improbable that the lie would have withstood all of the apostles death, except for John who cared for the Blessed Mother. Not it could not have been a lie.

Could Jesus been a lunatic? Could some who was mentally unbalanced perform miracles or heal those who were enfirmed? Could he had preached coherently and clearly? Could he had stood toe to toe with the greatest minds of the area tricking them with the same questions he sought to trick him with. No, these are not actions of someone who is lunatic. Jesus knew who he was, God, and knew his Mission. With this in mind, everything he did was planned accordingly.

This leaves the fact that Jesus must be the Lord. He must be whom he says he is. The Father and I are one. He is God who has as we heard in today’s Gospel, the power to lay his life down and to raise it up again.

Finally, many will say that Christianity is one option among many. They will say that it doesn’t matter if you are Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu. We just all need to coexist. have you seen the bumper stickers? Truly, we need to respect other religions and recognize that there are some truth in them, but always remember that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one can come to the Father except through Him. Remember the words from today’s first reading. “There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved.”

This is the biggest reason for Christianity: the promise of eternal life. Everything in our culture is about extending our comfort and pleasure on this earth. This can be a major distraction so that our youth, friends, or even ourselves will stop thinking about the reality that death will come. What will be next? For us, who are disciples of JesusChrist, we see hope for an eternal life, because Jesus, who is the Lord and proves it though his rising from the dead, has said - if you believe in me you will have eternal life. This for what I have come.

So whether one is Jewish, Hindu, or Muslim, they will experience eternal life only through the cross of Jesus Christ. They might discover this upon their death that thetruth they have sought after is the one called the Christ. But, they will pass into eternity only through Jesus Christ.

So my friends when the moment comes where you are asked are you a Christian or do you believe in Jesus Christ? What will be your answer? You answer with how you live your life now!