19th. Sunday of Year (C)
(Wisdom 18:6-9; Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-12; Luke12:32-48)
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Today's readings afford us both encouragement and
warning: the warning, however, is only given to help us hold fast to the hope
we are encouraged to treasure:
Do not be afraid, for it is your Father’s good pleasure
to give you the kingdom.
We know that the Father has indeed chosen to give us
the kingdom because He has called us to become disciples of Jesus:
No one can come to Me unless the Father Who sent Me draws
him (John 6:44);
and we actually became disciples of Jesus through Faith and Baptism:
All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, (and
we are) justified as a gift by (God's) grace through the redemption which is in
Christ Jesus;
Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless
one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of
God." (Romans 3:23; John 3:5)
What about the warning I spoke of? It was contained in those words of Our Lord:
Be prepared; for, on an unexpected day and at an unknown
hour, the Son of Man will come and punish the (unprepared and disobedient) servant
severely and assign him a place with the unfaithful.
What then is this gift of Faith that we have been
given? In the second reading we heard:
Faith is the realization of what is hoped for, the evidence
of things not seen.
How can we have a faith-based conviction about things not
seen? Because God has solemnly promised
us that these blessings can be ours in Jesus by the Spirit. Therefore, we see that faith is very, very,
important, it is a personal, existential acknowledgment of God's absolute truthfulness
and utter reliability; whereas to refuse to have faith in His promise would be
the same as saying that if He exists He could be a liar, or at
the very least, that His promises cannot be trusted to the extent of life-long
faith and obedience. For us, however,
who believe whole-heartedly in Jesus, faith in Him and His Good News proclaimed
by His Church opens up for us a totally new awareness and appreciation of our
human life, its meaning, and significance.
By faith we can more delightfully admire and humbly appreciate the glory
of creation all around us; and what is immeasurably more than that great blessing,
we can actually experience something of what God has promised for heaven: that
is, we can be given a Spirit-bestowed
foretaste of what a heavenly relationship is like. We, no longer mere earthlings but now children
of God redeemed by and renewed in Jesus, can experience and gratefully embrace –
even here and now -- something of the BEAUTY and WONDER of our ‘sonship’
in Jesus with the Father by the Gift of God’s most Holy Spirit
Therefore, faith is not only a supreme witness to God, it
is also a sublime calling for us to discover something wonderful; indeed -- as unbelievers
mockingly at times but truthfully say -- an opportunity to experience and live
something truly "out of this world".
Jesus Himself told us something of the wonder of faith:
If you had faith like a mustard seed, you would say to
this mulberry tree, "Be uprooted and be planted in the sea", and it
would obey you. (Luke 17:6)
All things are possible to
him who believes. (Mark 9:23)
And the Scriptures give us examples of the very many men
and women who trusted God and lived by faith.
In the first reading we heard that:
The night of the Passover was known beforehand to our
fathers that, with sure knowledge of the oaths in which they had put their
trust, they might have courage. Your
People awaited the salvation of the just and the destruction of their foes.
Their faith was not misplaced: God did indeed bring them
to arrive at, and take possession of, the Promised Land. And in the second reading we heard of Noah
and then of Abraham "our father in faith" as we hear at Mass:
By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out
to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; he went out, not knowing
where he was going.
By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac
his only begotten son.
Because of his faith, Abraham was given the promised
fulfilment from God: descendants as numerous as the grains of sand on the
sea-shore, through Isaac, whom he had been prepared to offer in sacrifice
trusting in God.
There are striking examples of the need and power of faith
in the Gospel accounts of the disciples' life with and response to Jesus in the course of His Public Mission. After Jesus
had miraculously fed the five thousand, He had remained behind on shore, alone
in prayer. The disciples, crossing the Sea of Galilee in their boat, suddenly found
themselves in distress when a severe storm arose unexpectedly, and it was then
that Jesus came walking over the rough waters to the succour of His struggling
disciples (Matthew 14:28-31):
Peter said to Him, "Lord, if it is You, command me
to come to You on the water." And
He said, "Come!" And Peter got out of the boat, and walked on the
water and came toward Jesus. But seeing the wind, he became frightened, and
beginning to sink, he cried out, " Lord, save me!" Immediately, Jesus stretched out His hand and
took hold of him, and said to him, "You of little faith, why did you
doubt?"
On another occasion:
As they were sailing along, He fell asleep; and a fierce
gale of wind descended on the lake, and they began to be swamped and to be in
danger. They came to Jesus and woke Him
up, saying, "Master, Master, we are perishing!" And He got up and
rebuked the wind and the surging waves, and they stopped, and it became
calm. And He said to them, "Where
is your faith?" (Luke 8:23-25)
On those two occasions, the disciples of Jesus, becoming
frightened by what was happening around them, began to doubt God, and very many
Christians, and too many Catholics, show the same weakness today. They quickly lose faith because they want to
see, experience, faith-blessings now, whereas faith requires, indeed
demands, HOPE and TRUST in the supreme goodness and power of God the Father Who
is in charge of our lives. Many so-called
Christians basically want what this world has to offer, and therefore
the promises of God for life-after-death gradually mean less and less to them
as they yield to and indulge the weakness of their faith or the clamour of
their worldly desires and/or sinful lusts.
This selfishness even leads some, in their search for present satisfaction,
to renege on the most solemn promises, break the closest bonds of love and commitment,
and even to destroy their own humanity as they stumble around in the clouds of
drug-addiction. Such people who imagine
that this world is all that we can possibly want or aspire to, that this world
can fulfil all our longings and desires, will never accept the offer of faith
or aspire to what is intangible and unseen.
An even closer likeness to the Twelve is shown in the
attitudes of other religious people today who fear just what the disciples'
feared: the imminent threat, not indeed, of the swelling waters of Galilee, but
of the uproar and tumult of the world's criticism, opposition, and
mockery. Many let go of their hold on faith
in the face of such threats, whilst others feverishly seek to change their
faith in such a way that it fits in comfortably with what the world around
thinks and feels.
If, however, there is something in YOU that makes you
long for something "better" than this world; a longing that lifts you
up from, makes you somewhat independent of, this world, then
there is for you the option of faith, because, as St. Paul tells us (Timothy
2:4):
God desires all men to be saved and
to come to the knowledge of the truth.
True humanity, that humanity which knows itself to be
more than the things of this world, is ever able to lift up its head again, and
even today one can hear some young people expressing the desire to give
themselves wholly to some worthwhile purpose, cause, or person. Such young persons are the hope for our
Christian civilization because they are capable of appreciating God's gift of
faith.
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience,
kindness, generosity, faithfulness. (Galatians 5:22)
For them and for all of us there is the example of Our Blessed
Lord, Who has won for all humankind the possibility of life, eternal and full
beyond all human measure. He, indeed, is
the author of our faith, and:
It was fitting for Him, for Whom are all things, and through
Whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the Author of
their salvation through sufferings. (Hebrews 2:10)
He went to the sufferings of death for our sake, trusting
entirely in His Father; and we who have faith in Him must, like Him, trust God
the Father totally, we must, like Jesus, have unshakeable faith in His promise
of the Kingdom:
Do not be afraid, for your Father has chosen gladly to
give you the kingdom.
However, our faith is not meant to be a stoic refusal to
yield to whatever trials may come our way; it should not involve cultivating a
stiff upper lip and a ramrod back whereby we might able to hold on to God no
matter what the mockery or criticism of those around us; for God Himself has
told us:
I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge
of God, rather than burnt offerings. (Hosea
6:6)
The Father has chosen gladly to give us the kingdom and
we must likewise joyfully take up that promise: our response of faith must be
not only firm but joyful, lit up with love because founded on true
knowledge. In this Our Lord is Himself
the example, for we are told in the Letter to the Hebrews (12:2):
(Let us) fix our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter
of faith, Who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the
shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
We too, like Him, should find such joy in what the Father
has promised us, in what He has already given us in Jesus, that we not only
endure the sufferings we must shoulder in this world, but positively despise
them as nothing in comparison with what awaits us in heaven. This was the attitude of St. Paul who tells:
I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing
value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for Whom I have suffered the loss of all
things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ. (Philippians 3:8)
The daily practice of responding by faith to all that may
occur in our worldly experience, can become the supreme joy of our lives
because it is the supreme love of which a human being is capable, in
Jesus. There are, as I mentioned, some
young people today, and there always will be some, who are not
only able -- for all humankind is able -- but also willing and indeed longing,
to give themselves whole-heartedly to what is greater than themselves. Human beings, however, do not remain young
for long, and as youth declines so, all too easily, can our longing to give and
receive real love and know the authentic truth gradually diminish. It is so easy for an elderly person to become
more selfish with the years and to begin to hanker after that which, in their
youth, they had egregiously set aside.
Therefore, we have to listen Our Lord's warning today, backed up by
words of St. Paul again:
Make no mistake: God is not mocked, for a person will
reap only what he sows, because the one who sows for his flesh will reap
corruption from the flesh, but the one who sows for the spirit will reap
eternal life from the Spirit. (Galatians
6:7–8)
We first embraced the faith with young love, now we need
to gradually love it more wholeheartedly, appreciate it more gratefully, and
admire it with deeper understanding, as our years come and go and the
fulfilment to which we aspire draws ever closer:
Where
your treasure is, there also will your heart be.
We have to recognize that our faith is indeed a treasure
beyond all: it can bring us greater peace, love, fellowship, joy and fulfilment
than the human mind can imagine or conceive, a share, that is, in Jesus' Own
beatitude with the Father and the Holy Spirit in the Kingdom of Heaven. Love,
peace, joy, will fulfil our whole being: we will become our true
selves, as God destined us to be from all eternity, and we will know that our
life and trials on earth have indeed been a wondrous blessing.
You
are My beloved child; in you I am well pleased.
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