Today’s readings: Wisdom 18, 6-9; Hebrews 11, 1-2.8-19; Luke 12, 32-48.
One of the greatest revelations of the gospel is in the words of Jesus conveyed to us today: “There is no need to be afraid, little flock, for it has pleased your Father to give you the kingdom”. Yet there is so much in life as it is that distorts and even destroys that reality in our hearts. The challenge ahead is how to safeguard the treasure received, how not to fall into traps and lose connection with the true source.
The Book of Wisdom speaks of the tragic night when the Egyptians fell at the sword and the Jews were saved. St Luke narrates of the master who comes unexpectedly. These are the turning points in life which may turn tragic if they take us unaware. In this sense we all need to be ‘conservatives’, to know how to hold on to sure points of reference, and to hold our ground where beliefs and values are concerned.
What is the treasure on which our existence rests? Probably that is the pilot question Jesus is asking. We cannot consider our existence as if we are all the time being tested, only then to be gratified later in heaven. Faith, when nourished by God’s Word, becomes a more dense experience, more provocative, daring and worth endeavouring.
Abraham, says the Letter to the Hebrews, arrived as a foreigner in the Promised Land. As believers, we will always be foreigners because faith can never be domesticated. Faith is rooted in the past but it is not traditionalism. It has to remain open to the future because, like our father Abraham, we will always be in search of the real homeland.
The Second Vatican Council says it is “advancing through trials and tribulations that the Church is strengthened by God’s grace so that she may not waver from perfect fidelity”. It is openness to the future that stimulates the mind and heart to be open to God’s future, which will always be veiled in an element of suddenness and of the unexpected.
Pope Francis, while in Brazil for World Youth Day, spoke of “a Church capable of warming people’s hearts”. Warming the heart means rekindling the first love, acknowledging the treasure received. As believers, in this day and age, the more we address the mind the more we risk making faith look arid and sterile.
In an age which has become so scientific and so imbued with information technology, we’re past the argumentation phase. It’s no use today insisting on giving proof of God’s existence; or trying to make the point that it is only in the institution of marriage, as we have always defined it, that true and authentic love is possible.
From the way things are, we may come to dull conclusions when we ask about the faith of the future. But we better come to terms with the future of faith. Hebrews highlights strongly the element of journey towards the unknown.
“Only faith can prove the existence of the realities that at present remain unseen” – ‘prove’, of course, not empirically but experientially, as something that can warm the heart rather than as an argument that can convince the mind.
Many unfortunately, and to the detriment of true belief, exchange faith with immobility. And that is tragic. The imagery of Noah’s ark, which contains the few that are saved and which sails calmly over troubled waters, is anachronistic and not truthful to what the Church is for.
Jesus says: “Happy those servants whom the master finds awake”. We need to be awake, to have the wisdom to discern the times we are in, not as dull and void but as new times, as the Lord’s invitation to discover his love and live passionately.
As people who treasure the faith received, we cannot give in to the feeling of being lost and confused in the face of changing times. Those are the feelings that paralyse the Spirit in us. That is what breeds fear – exactly what Jesus today is asking us to resist.