Trust in the Lord. Be prepared. This is the message we receive in our Scripture readings on this 19th Sunday of Ordinary Time. There is a wonderful quote from the comedian Woody Allen that 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….I’ve done both.” Yes, sometimes it is hard just to show up. Sometimes, it is hard to get up to go to mass on a Sunday morning with all that is going on in our lives. We may be having a dry period in their journey of faith. We may be seeking God and searching for him, but don’t feel his presence at all. We may cray out to God in our prayers, but he doesn’t seem to be answering. Yet, we are called 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’s difficult and painful to do so, we’re called 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. What a leap of faith for Abraham! Out of his faith in God, Abraham 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 trusted God’s promises. The Jewish Christians who heard this message in the letter to the Hebrews were no longer welcome in the traditional Jewish institutions, but they were assured that the promises that Christ offered them in his new covenant were far beyond what was offered to their Jewish ancestors.
We’re called to trust in the promises that Christ makes to us, but in response, we’re called to be vigilant and to be prepared. As our students go back to school, there’s the promise and hope of a new year. 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 there; with my many activities there and my part-time job at the seminary library, I needed to be very 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 spring break, getting a lot of the paper written. I worked very hard on it; I was confident that I had done a good job. In fact, I even finished it about a week ahead of the deadline and turned it in early. Late in the afternoon the day before the paper was due, I saw one of my classmates 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’m going to get started on that paper tonight, that he just about decided on his topic for the paper. He told me that he was going to be up all night writing it. You can imagine the look of horror I gave him at that moment – I was never 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. And that is exactly what he did.
That seminarian did not heed Jesus’ command to be prepared always, to keep lamps ready with the wicks trimmed and the oil full, so that when the master returns, we’ll be ready to greet him. That first generation of Christians in the Early Church were confident that Christ would come back soon. But when that moment didn’t 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 being vigilant and prepared. 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 studying 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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