Eagerly waiting

Today’s readings: Habakkuk 1, 2-3; 2, 2-4; 2 Timothy 1, 6-8.13-14; Luke 17, 5-10.

The Apostles’ request to Jesus to increase their faith may be understood as the desire of many today to deeply experience a true connection with God and to concretely taste the power of faith in daily life.

A weak faith is doomed to lead only to big God delusions. We are living in times which are demanding on our inner strength.

In the first reading, the prophet Habakkuk writes about his and peoples’ direct experience of evil and injustice, and he implores: “How long shall I cry for help, and You will not listen?” This is a common feeling when believers experience the opposite of what faith promises.

When crude reality contradicts and shakes our certainties, we need to be strengthened in our faith. Otherwise we find ourselves, in the words of the Jewish theologian David Blumenthal, “facing the abusing God”.

This is an issue that intrigues us all socially and personally. But Habakkuk combines two essential means to hear and discern God’s will. The essential preliminary to wisdom is worship, and the necessary preliminary to worship is silence. These are two ingredients in the process of coming to believe.

St Augustine says: “Since God is the highest good, He would not allow any evil to exist in His works unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil.”

But it is not always easy to argue and to understand how God writes straight with crooked lines. When we are in the midst of it, it’s not always easy to argue, even with God.

Yet we believe there should be an answer to the most fundamental questions of faith, even if the answer is not evident for all to see. Letting go for the believer is not surrendering just because there is no alternative.

“The upright man will live by his faithfulness,” insists the prophet. God takes the inquisitive and troubled prophet to a high place to see a high vision.

In St Paul’s words, it is “relying on the power of God”. This is what the prayer of the Apostles to Jesus to increase their faith boils down to.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus’s reference to “useless servants” highlights that doing one’s duty is nothing extra­ordinary. One need not be a disciple of Christ or a believer to do what one is, after all, in duty bound to do. Jesus invites us to avoid the self-justifying posture of the Pharisees.

In this sense, Jesus’ words about the useless servants are deflating. Not all that seems to be faith is faith. The struggle of all the prophets of the Old Testament was to come to terms with the true God of their faith and to guide the people to discern God’s footprints in the daily lives.

Habakkuk’s prayer is a very unusual prayer, particularly when he sort of takes God to task: “Why do You look on where there is tyranny?” It reminds us of dramatic moments in history and in daily life when the God we believe in just stares at things happening, seemingly powerless.

In the face of all that we go through, what matters is the hope dimension of our faith because, as the prophet says, we are eager for the fulfilment of the vision. Believing is hoping. From time to time we need the assurance of things hoped for, the assurance that faith does not deceive; “if it comes slowly, wait, for come it will, without fail”.

Our problem is that we want to be in control. We value what we do more than who we are. We evade, repudiate or resent experiences of passivity, of waiting.

Timothy Radcliffe writes that “hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out”.

In our impatience, we give in to all sorts of oppression and depression, to all forms of enslavements, just because we fail to discern that God’s gift is a spirit of power, not of timidity.