Nineteenth Sunday Homily in the Ordinary Time Year C

NINETEENTH SUNDAY HOMILY IN ORDINARY TIME YEAR C

Wis 18: 6-9     Heb 11: 1-2, 8-19 (or 11: 1-2, 8-12)        Lk 12: 32-48 (or 12: 35-40)

Integrating Our Faith into Our Lives

Preparedness; Readiness for the Lord’s Coming; Let Go and Let God!; Urgency and Watchfulness; Trust in God.

1st Reading – Wisdom 18:6-9

⁶ The night of the passover was known beforehand to our fathers, that, with sure knowledge of the oaths in which they put their faith, they might have courage.

⁷ Your people awaited the salvation of the just and the destruction of their foes.

⁸ For when you punished our adversaries, in this you glorified us whom you had summoned.

⁹ For in secret the holy children of the good were offering sacrifice and putting into effect with one accord the divine institution.

Responsorial Psalm – Psalms 33:1, 12, 18-19, 20-22

R. (12b) Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.

¹ Exult, you just, in the LORD;
praise from the upright is fitting.
¹² Blessed the nation whose God is the LORD,
the people he has chosen for his own inheritance.
R. Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.

¹⁸ See, the eyes of the LORD are upon those who fear him,
upon those who hope for his kindness,
¹⁹ To deliver them from death
and preserve them in spite of famine.
R. Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.

²⁰ Our soul waits for the LORD,
who is our help and our shield.
²² May your kindness, O LORD, be upon us
who have put our hope in you.
R. Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.

2nd Reading – Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19

Brothers and sisters:
¹ Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.
² Because of it the ancients were well attested.

⁸ By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; he went out, not knowing where he was to go.

⁹ By faith he sojourned in the promised land as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs of the same promise;

¹⁰ for he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and maker is God.

¹¹ By faith he received power to generate, even though he was past the normal age -and Sarah herself was sterile- for he thought that the one who had made the promise was trustworthy.

¹² So it was that there came forth from one man, himself as good as dead,
descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sands on the seashore.

¹³ All these died in faith. They did not receive what had been promised but saw it and greeted it from afar and acknowledged themselves to be strangers and aliens on earth,

¹⁴ for those who speak thus show that they are seeking a homeland.

¹⁵ If they had been thinking of the land from which they had come, they would have had opportunity to return.

¹⁶ But now they desire a better homeland, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

¹⁷ By faith Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was ready to offer his only son,

¹⁸ of whom it was said, “Through Isaac descendants shall bear your name.”
He reasoned that God was able to raise even from the dead, and he received Isaac back as a symbol.

Or Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-12

Brothers and sisters:
¹ Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.
² Because of it the ancients were well attested.

⁸ By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; he went out, not knowing where he was to go.

⁹ By faith he sojourned in the promised land as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs of the same promise;

¹⁰ for he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and maker is God.

¹¹ By faith he received power to generate, even though he was past the normal age -and Sarah herself was sterile- for he thought that the one who had made the promise was trustworthy.

¹² So it was that there came forth from one man, himself as good as dead,
descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sands on the seashore.

Alleluia – Matthew 24;42A, 44

R. Alleluia, alleluia.
^42A Stay awake and be ready!
⁴⁴ For you do not know on what day your Lord will come.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.

Gospel – Luke 12:32-48

Jesus said to his disciples:
³² “Do not be afraid any longer, little flock, for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom.

³³ Sell your belongings and give alms. Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy.

³⁴ For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.

³⁵ “Gird your loins and light your lamps

³⁶ and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks.

³⁷ Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival.
Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself, have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them.

³⁸ And should he come in the second or third watch and find them prepared in this way, blessed are those servants.

³⁹ Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour when the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into.

⁴⁰ You also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.”

⁴¹ Then Peter said, “Lord, is this parable meant for us or for everyone?”

⁴² And the Lord replied, “Who, then, is the faithful and prudent steward
whom the master will put in charge of his servants to distribute the food allowance at the proper time?

⁴³ Blessed is that servant whom his master on arrival finds doing so.

⁴⁴ Truly, I say to you, the master will put the servant in charge of all his property.

⁴⁵ But if that servant says to himself, ‘My master is delayed in coming,’ and begins to beat the menservants and the maidservants, to eat and drink and get drunk,

⁴⁶ then that servant’s master will come on an unexpected day and at an unknown hour and will punish the servant severely and assign him a place with the unfaithful.

⁴⁷ That servant who knew his master’s will but did not make preparations nor act in accord with his will shall be beaten severely;

⁴⁸ and the servant who was ignorant of his master’s will but acted in a way deserving of a severe beating shall be beaten only lightly. Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.”

Homily

Imagine that a catastrophe has occurred that is so great that our knowledge of the natural sciences is all completely lost. Physicists have been killed, books destroyed, laboratories sacked. All that is left are fragments, bits and pieces of theories, experimental equipment whose use has been forgotten, half-chapters of books, single pages from articles. Some of the scientific terminology survives, but its meaning is largely lost. Heated debates develop over scientific concepts that are only dimly understood.

That is what has in fact happened – not to science, but to our understanding of the language of religion. People continue to use many of its key expressions, but have – largely, if not entirely – lost their comprehension of many aspects of religion. Charity now typically means patronage of the poor by the well-off. Love means what goes on between movie stars, off and on screen. Service equals unpleasant menial duties or one pays a bill. Redemption is the process by which you get value for your stamps. The supernatural is that which has to do with hobgoblins and spooks. Faith is believing what is not so.

How different the Church’s definitions! The term “faith”, for example, is so important to the Church that there isn’t one definition, but many! The one in today’s letter to the Hebrews, written for Jewish converts to Christianity, is a good one. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen (v. 1). If the object of faith is seen or known by experience, it isn’t faith; but faith is more than mere opinion, because God’s own assurances are behind it. So even when we don’t understand the events of our lives, we have faith that God will fulfil His promises to us.

Faith entails leaving behind all things that are less than God in order to be able to accept the God Who contains all things. Even all science rests on a basis of faith, for it assumes the permanence and uniformity of natural laws – a thing that can’t be demonstrated. So the person of faith goes beyond the humdrum world of the everyday into a new vision and adventure. Faith goes a new outlook, a new set of values, a new world of meaning. It has an excitement analogous to the world of sports, from which the letter to the Hebrews derives so much of its imagery. (Its sports imagery is perhaps one of the reasons why this letter is wrongly attributed to St Paul, who often used such imagery.) Faith is backed by the best evidence in the world – God’s word.

Most of the rest of the reading from the letter to the Hebrews is an illustration of its definition of faith. Faith puts us into the world of such First Testament models as Abraham and his wife Sarah. God promised Abraham that he would father a son through whom his descendants would be as numerous as the stars. Because it was God speaking, the couple believed. But they were in the dark as to how and when God would fulfil His promise.

As time wore on, they thought of several cultural solutions offered to childless couples of their time: adopting the first most trusted slave of the household, for example, or having offspring by Sarah’s maid-servant. But God made it clear that none of these, though acceptable to their culture, was to be their route, and as they waited they relied on their confident assurance concerning what they hoped for. Only when their confident assurance was stretched to the limit – when Sarah was long past the age for childbearing and Abraham as good as dead – did God fulfil His promise of so many years earlier.

Abraham’s faith wasn’t according to the principle of most people, who, cautious and comfort-loving, put safety first;   his faith went into the unknown, where it couldn’t see the end of the path. Abraham did everything God wanted of him – and, sure enough, ultimately his wife conceived and his son Isaac was born. Then, when God asked him to leave the comforts of his home-town Ur in the Chaldean mountains for what came to be known as the Promised Land and endure all the problems of a stranger in a strange land, he did it – even though he wasn’t sure where God was leading him. God, to test him even further, some years later asked him to give his young son Isaac as a living sacrifice. Despite his hope that through Isaac he would have descendants, he prepared to do as God asked. It was only at the last moment that God prevented him from going through with his sacrifice.

We, like Abraham, should let go and let God! Some researchers in India wanted to keep a monkey out of the trees and on the ground for various tests they wanted to perform. Knowing that the monkey loved coconuts and peanuts, they hollowed out a coconut, filled it with peanuts, and put it in a place where the monkey would be sure to come upon it. When the monkey did, he put his hand inside and grabbed hold of the peanuts. This kept the monkey out of the trees, but they couldn’t get the monkey to let go of the peanuts so he could get his hand out of the coconut. It took the researchers several hours and many subterfuges to get him to let go. We are often like that! With regard to what holds us back, St John of the cross said that it doesn’t matter if a bird is shackled by a chain or a thread. So long as its movement’s thwarted, the bird isn’t free.

God tests the faith of all. Today’s First Reading is an example from the last book of the First Testament to be written – the Book of Wisdom, written less than a hundred years before Christ. As with the letter to the Hebrews, it was written for people who were tempted to abandon their faith. Its author wrote to the Jews in Alexandria in Egypt that, rather than the skeptical and secular attitudes of the pagans around them with whom they were having frequent contact, the Israelites should be characterized by courage and joy (v. 6).

The Book of Wisdom reminded the Jews of a sign of faith and hope for all time. The “you” of the passage refers to God, to Whom this excerpt is an ancient prayer of thanks for deliverance. The “night” to which the reading refers was the night of the Passover – the night on which the angel of death destroyed the first-born of the Egyptians but passed over the homes of the Hebrews, the night on which those who were prepared were saved.

Today’s Gospel urges a similar attitude for Christians. Its two stories tell us to be ready for the Lord’s coming into our lives. They begin with the servants awaiting their master’s return during a wedding. In our Lord’s time, on the day of the wedding the bridesmaids assembled at the house of the bride. After sunset the bridegroom, accompanied by his male friends went into the bride’s house, where they were greeted by the bride and her bridesmaids, and then both parties returned together in a joyous procession that was illumined by lamps or torches, to the wedding feast in the house of the bridegroom. No one knew the exact time when the bridegroom would arrive. Our Lord then tells us – not without humour – that he will come into our lives like the unexpected arrival of a thief. How would we like him to find us? Certainly at peace with everyone and with ourselves.

Finally comes our Lord’s story of the steward. This man’s first mistake was doing what he liked while his master was away. We make the same mistake all the time. We do it every time we faithlessly divide our lives into compartments, like the sacred and the sacred and the secular. We   deceive ourselves if we think that we can give one part of our lives to God and another part to worldly pursuit. The secular penetrates the sacred, and the sacred the secular. The steward’s second mistake was in thinking he had plenty of time to put things right before the master would return. Those who have thought about it even a little realize that life is short and the time is now.

To retain a vibrant faith, Jesus makes three demands of his followers. First, we are to share with the needy (v. 33f.); the only worthwhile treasure is that which awaits us in heaven. Secondly, we are to be vigilant, prepared, and living lives that are integrated by our faith. And thirdly, whatever our task in life, we are to carry it our faithfully and responsibly in a spirit of service.

The faith of Abraham caused him to leave familiar territory and later to consider sacrificing his only son. The faith of Moses and the Israelite caused them to pull up stakes in the middle of the night and leave Egypt. Jesus was the faith – filled person par excellence. To become like all of them, our faith must be renewed and deepened daily. We battle constantly in the face of non-belief and apathy.

At the heart of Christian faith is the notion that God, who called me by name from eternity, made me unique, and loves me with a love that is infinite. But, as we said in the beginning, we aren’t living in an “Age of Faith”. That time did exist in the Western world many hundreds of years ago, when everything was at one with Christian faith- one’s peer group, one’s family, the marketplace, and the world of entertainment. Today, we must be constantly on our guard to preserve our faith and to find the strength and courage to share its light with those who don’t understand it.