Trust
in the Lord. Be prepared. This is the message we receive from God on
this 19th Sunday of Ordinary Time. There
is a wonderful quote from the comedian Woody Allen. A friend of his told an interviewer: “As my
friend Woody Allen said, ‘80% of life is showing up.’ Sometimes it is easier to
just stay in bed. And I’ve done both.” You
can imagine, I hear from parishioners that sometimes it is hard just to show
up; it is hard for them to get up to go to mass on a Sunday morning, to sometimes
find the desire and motivation to go.
They might be having a dry period in their journey of faith. They may be seeking God and searching for
him, but don’t feel his presence at all.
They may want an answer to a particular prayer, with the prayer
seemingly to go unanswered. Yet,
it is so important for us to put one foot in front of the other in our lives of
faith, no matter how difficult that may be some days. Even when it is difficult
and painful to do so, we need to continue to reach out to God, to continue to
go to mass and to pray with our community of faith. As
Woody Allen implies, nothing can happen if we don’t show up.
Having
trust and faith in the Lord is the subject of our reading from the letter to
the Hebrews. The
passage we hear today gives one of the most explicit definitions of faith in
the New Testament: “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence
of things not seen.” The
author of the Letter to the Hebrews was trying to strengthen the faith of Jewish
Christians by invoking the example of their ancestors who had believed in the
promises of God even when those promises had not yet been fulfilled. Abraham was the great patriarch of the Jewish faith; he was called out of his
native land to a new land God promised to him and to his descendants. What
a leap of faith that was for Abraham! Out
of his faith in God, he follows God’s promises, even being willing to sacrifice
his son at God’s command. Abraham’s road of faith was not always straight forward, but he put his trust
in God’s promises. The
Jewish Christians who heard this message in the letter to the Hebrews were no
longer welcome in their traditional Jewish institutions, but they were assured
that the promises that Christ offered them were far beyond what was offered to their
Jewish ancestors under this new covenant in Christ our Lord.
We
are to be assured of the promises that Christ makes to us, but in response, we
are called to be vigilant and to be prepared. As
our children and youth start back to school, there is the promise and hope of a
new year and they find out what their coursework will entail for the months
ahead. Back when
I was in seminary studying to be a priest, I knew that I had two master’s
degrees to complete in my four years up at Sacred Heart School of Theology in
Milwaukee, and with my many activities there and my part-time job at the
seminary library, I needed to be very prepared and organized. When
I was taking a class in the synoptic Gospels, I had a large research paper to
write that also included a 15-minute oral presentation of the research. That
semester, I stayed on campus during the spring break, getting a lot of the
paper written. I worked very hard on it,
had another student proof-read it for me, and I was confident that I had done a
good job. In fact, I even finished it about
a week ahead of the deadline to turn it in. Late
in the afternoon the day before the paper was due, I saw one of my classmates
from that course in the library checking out a big pile of books. I
asked if he was relieved that that big research paper was behind us and that
all we had to do was turn it in tomorrow. He
had a puzzled look on his face as he responded, saying, yeah, I think I’ve
pretty much decided on the topic I am going to choose for my paper. I need to start looking through these books
to get some more ideas. Then I’ll start writing – I’ll probably be up all
night. You
can imagine the look of horror I gave him at that moment – I was not someone
who waited until the very last minute to do my school work. It
was even more interesting in the morning right before class when this same
student, who was habitually late, was waiting for the professor frantically 15
minutes before class started. I knew
what had happened – he had not finished his paper and he was going to request
an extension.
I guess that seminarian was not heeding
Jesus’ command for us to be prepared always, to keep lamps ready with the wicks
trimmed and the oil full, so that whenever the master returns, we will be ready
to greet him. That
first generation of Christians in the Early Church were confident that Christ
would come back in their generation. But when
that moment did not come, they needed encouragement and assurances that they
still needed to be prepared for Christ’s second coming. Should Jesus come back suddenly and find us well prepared, the Gospel assures
us that we will be blessed for our vigilance and preparedness. Jesus
assures us, that to be prepared and to strengthen our relationship with God our
Father, we must constantly grow in our faith through our prayer life, through
our participation in the sacraments in the Church, through the reading and
study of Holy Scripture, and through acts of Christian service and charity. God
always gives us the grace and the courage to remain faithful, reminding us that
he will always reward our faithfulness.
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