27th.
Sunday, Year C
(Habakkuk 1: 2-3; 2: 2-4; 2 Timothy 1: 6-8,
13-14; Luke 17: 5-10)
Faith is the
centre of attention this Sunday, People of God, for God wills to save us from
our sins by making us His children and heirs to an eternal blessedness in
Jesus, His beloved, only-begotten, Son, and earthly manifestation of His divine
glory. He wills to prepare us for such a
destiny by enabling us to live our earthly lives in mutual love, service, and
understanding, despite our native sinfulness, over and above all earthly obstacles
and barriers of race, colour or class, poverty or prosperity. He wills us to be
strong and free, neither fearing for the future nor despairing over what is
present or past, but with joy and firm purpose hoping all things of His goodness and mercy. He wills us to be holy for His glory and so
transform the world, even though we can only do it ultimately by sharing in the
Passion and Death of Jesus and praying God our Father for a share in the glory
of Jesus’ Resurrection.
Such is the
project set before us and the path we are called to tread as disciples of Jesus
and children of God; and without faith
we could not take even one step forward, let alone persevere till the end of
life’s journey. Consequently, let us too
cry out with the Apostles:
Lord, increase our faith!
Having heard
this cry, with its implicit acknowledgement of our native weakness and
inadequacy, the Lord’s answer is first of all encouragement, and then
instruction. He gives us encouragement
by insisting that we should never be anxious about the quantity of our faith, because quality
alone matters: if you have faith, He says, you can do anything, for even the
smallest grain of true faith can do things apparently impossible. Live your Catholic faith, which is a shoot of that Faith —one and true – which has been sheltered and cherished for two
thousand years in the bosom of Mother Church for love of Jesus and by the power
of His Spirit, being passed on and handed down over the ages, before ultimately
being given -- with divine intention -- to you personally. Live it, and, in your turn, cherish it, for
the goodness of that divine intention; and never insult God the Giver by
worrying about the size of His gift, because that gift carries along with
itself divine life which can so grow and flower -- even in you – as to reflect something
ever-new of the goodness and power of Jesus for the blessing of mankind in our
world today. Yes, indeed, live your faith
-- live the Faith in you -- by letting it direct and guide the course of your
life; do not allow yourself to be continually checking-up on God by looking
down to see where your every footstep might be treading; but, always and in
full trust, walk, stride, or even run, looking ever forward and upward toward
the goal of your aspirations in and for Christ by the power of His Spirit.
The mustard
seed of which Jesus spoke, though being proverbially small as St. Mark tells
us:
A mustard seed, when it is sown on the ground, is smaller
than all the seeds on earth (4:31);
is remarkably
powerful far beyond its measure. As for
the mulberry tree -- the most securely rooted of all Palestinian trees -- it was
much admired for its ability to survive, unshakeable and sure, through all
storms.
The Faith,
Jesus says, truly lived and loved in your
faith, can overcome the most intractable difficulties, were they even such as to
bear comparison with the uprooting and transplanting of a mulberry tree:
If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say
to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey
you;
because, it
is not you who would do such uprooting and planting, but God Himself (‘it would
obey you’), if you have faith.
Now, if and
when some such blessing from God happens in our life, we should always remember
the spiritual adage, ‘humility preserves what faith and love win’; an adage based
on the teaching Our blessed Lord gives immediately -- in our Gospel reading -- to
His disciples, telling them, ‘if faith works wonders in your life, bringing blessings upon your head, deep joy
and peace into your heart, do not begin to pride yourselves thereon, thinking
that such fruits were given because you had somehow deserved or merited them;
no, hear this parable I have for you’:
Who among you would say to your servant who has just come in
from ploughing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here immediately and take
your place at table?
In the Greek
and Roman world of that time a slave expected neither praise, preference, nor
pay, after having done his work; indeed, when had he finished his work? Here Jesus tells of one such slave --
arriving back at his master’s house after a hard day’s work in the fields -- being
immediately assigned yet another task:
Would he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare something for me to
eat. Put on your apron and wait on me while
I eat and drink. You may eat and drink
when I have finished’.
Slaves in
the ancient world would not have been surprised at such treatment, because they
belonged to a master or mistress who was under no obligation to give them other
than food and shelter. Of course, today
society accepts that slavery is wrong; because no one can ever own another
human being since we are all equal in dignity, worth and acceptance, before
God. But Our Lord was taking a picture
from current life in His days on earth which mirrored forth the basic truth of
our relationship with God: God is our Creator and all that we do belongs
to Him since all we are, have, and can do, is from Him and ultimately for His
good purposes.
And so, the
slave returning from the fields and finding another job waiting for him is
meant to remind us that there is no limit to God’s claims on us; we can never rightly
turn round to Him and say, ‘I’ve done my whack, get somebody else.’ No, we can never rightly refuse His calls,
because He is love, creative and all-powerful, doing all things out of love in
order to share His love and blessedness with all who will obey Him. God is never in our debt; while it is our
supreme privilege and ultimate fulfilment to be able to respond to all His
calls with loving obedience and joyful gratitude.
Jesus
Himself exemplified His own teaching: making Himself like a servant at the Last
Supper when He washed His disciples’ feet, and giving Himself up for us in
obedience to His Father’s will, even though that will (oh! how hard it was to
embrace!) was that He should suffer and die on the Cross. And even when He comes again in glory, He
will rejoice to serve us:
Blessed are those servants whom the Master finds awake when
He comes; truly I say to you, He will gird Himself and have them sit at table,
and He will come and serve them. (Luke 12:37s.)
However,
until He comes in glory we have to work hard and travel far; and so that we can
persevere, we have God’s gift of faith, to be embraced with sincere love and
protected by true humility. And such
love and humility, given whole-heartedly, will lead us gradually to appreciate
and understand something of the splendour and majesty of God’s gift, as
happened to St. Paul most strikingly:
(I pray) that the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened;
that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the
glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who
believe,
according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He
raised Him from the dead and seated Him
at His right hand in the heavenly places,
far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name
that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. (Ephesians 1:18-21)
That is the
full understanding of the wondrous power and final purpose of Faith, to be embraced
by us, and working in and through us; it is that power of God which raised
Jesus from the dead unto the right hand of the Father in glory, and it can work
in us too, enabling each of us to fulfil our personal vocation and ultimately
be raised with and in Jesus to take our seat at the marriage feast of the Lamb,
in the presence of ‘Our Father in heaven’.
Dear
brothers and sisters in Christ, the prophet Habakkuk, in our first reading,
‘signed off’ with one of the most famous statements in the whole Bible:
The just one, because of his faith, shall live.
And in our
second reading we heard St. Paul call on Timothy:
Beloved (son), I remind you to stir into flame the gift of
God that you have … in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Guard this rich trust with the help of the
Holy Spirit that dwells within us.
Accordingly,
let us join with the Apostles who, in our Gospel reading, cried out:
Lord, increase our faith!
For our
appreciation of faith has been sharpened much, increasing in both clarity and
depth, through words such as those to be found in the Letter to the Hebrews
(10:38) and St. Paul’s doctrinal letter of introduction to the Romans (11:20):
Now the just shall live by faith; But if anyone draws back,
My soul has no pleasure in him.
Because of unbelief they were broken off; and you stand by
faith.
However, perhaps
the greatest incitement for us to seek constant growth in faith is to be found
in those other words of St. Paul, taken once again from his letter to the Romans (1:17):
In it (the Gospel) the righteousness of God is revealed through
faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The one who is righteous will live by faith’.
The
righteousness of God, His truth, goodness, mercy and fidelity is revealed to us
through, in and by, the Faith of Mother Church; for faith (yours and mine) to
love, embrace, live by, die in, and, as many Catholics and Christians are sadly
experiencing throughout the world today, die for.
How St. Paul
was able, at times, to make dogma light up and blaze with devotion! May he do for us this day, what he did so
successfully for Timothy!
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