Sunday of Week 19 of Ordinary Time (Year C)
Commentary on Wisdom 18:6-9; Hebrews 11:1-2,8-19; Luke 12:32-48
Where your treasure is, there will be your heart be also.
We continue today with the theme of last Sunday’s Mass. There we heard a parable Jesus told about a man who made a great deal of money and was very happy with himself:
…I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry. (Luke 12:19)
But God said to him:
You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?
(Luke 12:20)
And, when that man died and went before his God, what had he to offer? All that stuff in his barns? No, all that had to be left behind for others. When my turn comes to face my God and he asks me what I have and I respond: “Well, during my lifetime I managed to deposit quite sizeable sums of money in the bank”, how do you think God will answer? Will he be particularly impressed? He may ask further, “But what have you brought with you”?
Readiness is all
So today’s Gospel passage is a further reminder that we must not be like that man in last week’s Gospel. It tells us, on the contrary, to be truly ready, implying that the man, in spite of all his efforts to build up his financial and material security, was in fact far from ready.
First of all, he pictured a long and bright future before him. Secondly, he regarded the material wealth he had garnered for himself as the sign and the reward of a “successful” life. He also believed that all he possessed belonged exclusively to him. There are an awful lot of people who seem to think the same way—are we among them?
Jesus tells us today to be ready, to be ready when the Master comes. For all our care and precautions, there is absolutely no way we can know when or how the Master will come to call us to himself. Jesus says about the thief:
…he comes during the middle of the night or near dawn…
We have probably all experienced having had something stolen from our house, our car, or even our person. In most cases, if we had known in advance, we could easily have thwarted the thief. Sometimes the theft was simply due to our not having taken the simplest of precautions but, after the theft had taken place, it was too late.
More important than property
Jesus is warning us today about something much more important than the property we own, namely, the quality of our lives. Apparently, some people give top priority to the property they own. One can walk along roads in more affluent areas of a city where many of the houses can hardly be seen. They are hidden behind high walls topped with massive iron spikes. There are cameras monitoring movements 24 hours a day. As far as is humanly possible, nothing will be stolen from those houses. They are prepared for every eventuality—or are they?
Are they, are we, really ready to meet the Master when he comes? It is no use telling God, “Lord, I have oodles in the bank. I have a lovely house in one of the most trendy suburbs and there is a Ferrari for me and a Mercedes for my wife. My son is a prosperous surgeon in the States and my daughter a thriving lawyer in London…” Quite honestly, Jesus is not likely to be terribly impressed or interested in such a litany. The really important things have not yet been said.
Take a different example altogether. His name was John. He was a devout Catholic in China. Like thousands of others, he had remained true to his faith during the dark days of persecution in China and spent long years in prison purely and simply because of his belief in Jesus. Eventually he was released. His body was stooped from the years of ill treatment he had experienced. Then, one day while attending Mass at the shrine of St Francis Xavier in nearby Macau, he collapsed and died just after receiving communion. Anyone who knew John, a man of no wealth whatever, knew that he was ready. His whole life had been lived in the company of Jesus. Jesus was all he had; Jesus was all he wanted.
The friends of Jesus
Elsewhere in the Gospel Jesus makes this very plain. Those are his friends who have gone out of their way to share themselves and what they have (and not just their easily spared surplus) with the neediest of the needy—the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, those in prison—quite clearly only a sample list of those among us who are in need. Those who consistently make this their first priority in life are ready. They are no strangers to Jesus because they fully realise that:
…just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me. (Matt 25:40)
Our life, too, as the Second Reading suggests, is like that of Abraham. It is a journey into the unknown and no amount of precautions or insurance can take away all uncertainty:
By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance, and he set out, not knowing where he was going.
We would love to have complete control and plans for our future life, but it seldom works out like that. In fact, we, like Abraham, do not know where our life journey will lead us. We do know the final destination but we do not know how or when we will reach it.
A question of quality
The journey that the Scripture speaks about, of course, is not so much about travelling as about the style and quality and direction of our living. It includes every experience we will have and how we respond to each one. It will include the people we come face to face with—either by choice or by accident—and how we respond to them. We can see experiences and people as stepping stones to our own self-advancement, as many seem to do, or we can see them as opportunities to respond in truth and love and service to God entering our daily lives.
Life is a pilgrimage. It keeps moving. Abraham and his family:
…stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents…
We would like to have gilt-edged securities for ourselves, but our Christian faith offers us another programme. It is a life lived in love and service for the Kingdom of God—for a society of justice and peace designed and built by God. It is in doing this that we amass real wealth not only for ourselves, but for others as well. By living like this, we are ready, at any time, to meet our Lord and Saviour. And when we do meet him we will know that all along we had lived with him in those we loved and served during our pilgrimage.
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Saturday of Week 3 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Hebrews 11:1-2,8-19
We begin today chapter 11 of Hebrews which is a magnificent hymn on the meaning of faith.
The chapter is summarised by the New American Bible in these words:
“This chapter draws upon the people and events of the Old Testament to paint an inspiring portrait of religious faith, firm and unyielding in the face of any obstacles that confront it. These pages rank among the most lofty and eloquent to be found in the Bible. They expand the theme announced in 6:12, to which the author now returns (10:39). The material of this chapter is developed chronologically. Verses 3-7 draw up on the first 9 chapters of Genesis; vv 8-22, upon the period of the patriarchs; vv 23-31, upon the time of Moses; vv 32-38, upon the history of the judges, the prophets and the Maccabean martyrs.”
The author of Hebrews gives the most extensive description of faith provided in the New Testament, though his interest does not lie in a technical, theological definition. In view of the needs of his audience, he describes what authentic faith does, not what it is in itself. Through faith, God guarantees the blessings to be hoped for from him, providing evidence in the gift of faith, that what he promises will eventually come to pass (v 1). Because they accepted in faith God’s guarantee of the future, the biblical personages discussed in vv 3-38 were themselves commended by God (v 2). Christians have even greater reason to remain firm in faith since they, unlike the Old Testament men and women of faith, have perceived the beginning of God’s fulfilment of his messianic promises (vv 39-40).
Our reading begins with a description of what faith is, and then goes on to discuss the faith of Abraham. The faith of some other Israelite heroes will be discussed in next Monday’s reading.
Faith is described in these words:
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
We are dealing here with a description of faith, not a theological definition.
Faith and hope deal with realities for which we have no absolutely concrete evidence, but they are realities on which we are prepared to base our lives. It does not mean that we have no evidence for these realities; at the same time they are of such a kind that we discover that by acting on the basis of their promise, we find what we are looking for. It is not just wishful thinking or a wild shot in the dark. No one who has genuinely based their lives on the Gospel message has been disappointed.
The Jewish Christians to whom the Letter is addressed have been discouraged by persecution in the past. So the author emphasises that it is only what is in the future and what is invisible that concerns hope. The examples from the Old Testament are intended to show how faith is the source of patience and strength.
Indeed, says the author, it was because of their faith in God’s word that the ancestors of the Jews won approval from God:
Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval.
The author then presents some magnificent examples of faith from the Old Testament. He begins with Abel, Enoch and Noah and then goes on to Abraham, who is the subject of our reading. Later, he will speak of Isaac, Joseph and Moses and others. In general, Abraham is presented in the New Testament as the outstanding example of those who live “by faith” and as “the ancestor of all who believe” (see Rom 4:9-12).
Abraham was called out by God from his birthplace deep in what is now southern Iraq and told to go to a strange, far distant land where he would find an inheritance for himself and his descendants. He set out not really knowing where he was going or what was ahead of him. This was his first act of faith.
He arrived, a foreigner and an outsider, in what was to become the Promised Land. Following him were his son, Isaac, and grandson, Jacob, who were heirs of the same Promise. They lived in Canaan as nomads taking care of their flocks of sheep and cattle. They looked forward to a permanent base:
…the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
The “city” speaks of permanence, in contrast to the tents in which the patriarch lived. That would not come for quite some time in the form of Jerusalem on Mount Zion, the citadel of King David. But the real city is the “heavenly Jerusalem”, “the city that is to come” and the “new Jerusalem” (see Rev 21).
Next, there is the faith of Sarah, Abraham’s wife. She had borne her husband no children and hence no legitimate heirs. Abraham did have a son, Ishmael, by Hagar (one of his slave women), but he did not count this child as part of God’s promise. Sarah never lost faith that God would keep his promise about Abraham’s inheritance, which could only come through a legitimate son borne by her. And her faith was rewarded when, already well past child-bearing age, she gave birth to Isaac. God’s action was clearly present in this event which was beyond all expectation, and yet so crucial for God’s promise to be realised. Says the author of Hebrews:
Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead [100 years old, according to Genesis], descendants were born, “as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore”.
The lateness and unlikeliness of the birth only emphasises God’s role in it.
The author then goes on to comment on the examples he has given (including those not in our reading). What these people all had in common was that they died before any of the things which had been promised became a reality:
…but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth…
They were nomads not only in the literal sense, but in the sense that this world was not destined to be their permanent home.
By speaking in the way they did they make it clear they were in search of their real homeland. They were certainly not talking about the place they came from, because they could easily have gone back there. They were on a forward journey from which there was no turning back:
…they desire a better homeland, that is, a heavenly one….Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.
That is, he has prepared a lasting home for them—their permanent home with God himself.
The third and final example of faith is when, being put to the test by God, Abraham was told to make a human sacrifice of his only legitimate son, Isaac. In human terms, this did not make any sense at all. Abraham had been promised innumerable descendants, but that could only happen by Isaac’s having sons of his own. With the death of Isaac, the promise had no way of being realised. Yet Abraham, in a supreme act of faith and trust in God’s keeping his promise, proceeded to carry out God’s command.
We know that, just as Abraham raised the knife to kill his son who was already bound on an altar, an angel of the Lord stopped him and substituted a ram for the sacrifice. Abraham’s extraordinary faith was rewarded and God’s promise was fulfilled—and is still being fulfilled. Says the author:
He considered the fact that God is able even to raise someone from the dead—and, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.
Some see in Isaac’s return from virtual death a symbol of Christ’s resurrection.
Clearly, the author of Hebrews tells these stories to encourage those to whom he is writing. Because of their difficulties, their faith is weakening. And indeed, for the early Church in general, especially in times of great persecution, great faith was needed. This is what the parables of the mustard seed and of the yeast in the dough are about. What would they think of the more than two-billion Christians in the world today?
There are many lessons for us here. In many parts of the world, including our own, Christians are in situations where their faith is under attack in one way or another. In some cases, it may be direct persecution and harassment; in others, it may be the pressure from the surrounding culture.
We need to go back to the heart of our faith, i.e. the core vision that Jesus handed on to us. Let us also go forward in faith and trust that God will keep his promises.
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