Wisdom 18:6-9; Heb 11:1-2, 8-19; Luke 12:32-48
Someone once said: "Faith is so rare and religion so common" and I have to say this is so true. Perhaps this is why when we read the holy scriptures, the Bible, we very quickly notice that faith and deep personal relationship with God, not religious rules and practices, are the main and the most important themes. Today's readings are no exception to this.
The author of the first reading from the book of Wisdom refers to the very first Passover observed by Moses and the Hebrew tribes after they left Egypt, and cites their faith in God, which inspired and empowered such an escape. Because of their faith they became God's people united with God in a covenantal love that would continue to define who they were: witnesses to the world that God cares, God sees, God loves, God liberates, God protects. Because of their witness, we, their spiritual descendents, continue to believe that God is the ultimate source of meaning in every human life.
In the second reading, the author of the letter to the Hebrews offers an extended reflection on Abraham and Sarah, our ancestral parents. Faith in God let them to embark on a lifelong journey to places they had not planned to go and among people they did not know. With God as their only compass, they endured and surmounted the sorrow of childlessness. Then, when at last the child was given them, they were tested by the unthinkable possibility that their child and his life and destiny were not theirs to plan or protect.
So many parents and caregivers face similarly unthinkable challenges in life. Yet faith, not religious practices and regulations, that is summoned by most of them in that very moment when logic fails to satisfy and every reasonable hope seems to wither. From deep within the human heart we grasp at faith that does not see or understand, but we trust God, who sees and knows all.
I have to say that this rings a bell for me quite a bit. As many of you know I went to Poland in July to see my very ill mother. In June, after many months of pain, she was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. She needs 24/7 care. I spent most of my time in Poland with her in the hospitals as she was going through radiation procedures and later at my sister's house helping my mom and my sister's family as much as I could. No one but God knows how long my mother will live, a month or four or longer? No one, but God, knows how much more we are all going to be tested.
As I think about my mother, my sister, my sister's family, my responsibilities in the parish, and my life in general, I have no desire for more religious practices and regulations to help me and my family, but I have a real need for more faith and deeper personal relationship with God to have the strength and the courage to carry on even when I do not know the answers. It is faith in God and relationship with Him, not multiplication of religious practices and increased observance of religious rules on my part, that seem to keep me going.
No wonder that this helped so many before me, too.
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