27th Sunday "Faith: Don't memorize it, live it!"

What an impressive insight from a largely unknown prophet of Israel. Habakkuk, having come to his wits end in the ensuing tumult of the nation, cries out in anguish to the LORD asking “don’t you see what’s going on? Don’t you care about us? Why are you not doing anything?” The prophet receives an answer that we deep down know to be true, but too often do not want to admit for we it’s losing control of our wills and lives.

The LORD tells the distressed prophet, “I see what’s going on. In fact, I see it and understand it more that you will ever know in this lifetime. I see the pain, the destruction and the sin – and I’m using it for my purpose.”

Today we could add to that, “Didn’t I send my Son to die for you? Didn’t I take your sin and conquer it by death? Didn’t I rise from the underworld for you? Don’t I extend to you my Mercy in every confession? Don’t I offer you my Body and my Blood at every mass? Don’t I sit on your altar so you and I to gaze upon each other in adoration? Don’t I send legions of angels every day and at every time in history to protect you, my beloved creation? Don’t I give you the example of the saints to follow as guides and intercessors? I do all this for you without asking anything out of you, but that you trust me, that you love me, that you seek me.”

This is the reminder Habakkuk received quite poignantly from the LORD – there is no need to wonder what the LORD knows and sees – he’s quite keen and astute to the topics of earthly and temporal affairs.

The key here is that we find within our faith the protection and strength to meet all life’s battles and tumults.

Faith, along with the word Love, is perhaps one of the most watered down  and misrepresented words within our language. Faith cannot be seen as merely having some set of codes and creeds in our back pocket to pull out and offer to the pagan, atheist, protestant, Jew, Muslim who differs from our way of thinking. If you’ve ever tried to convert with a battle over facts and ordinances, you know what a waste of time that really is. You can’t reason someone into a conversion of the heart, if you think you can, then I’d like to witness what other divine acts you can do for us!

No, faith is not a set of codes and ordinances of a Church or religion. Whenever it’s reduced to that, we encounter a dying religion. Not because our laws aren’t interesting, but because it gets off track and ineffective. That is not faith, it’s merely the context and the earthly way of living it out and understanding the theology of God and Church.

Faith is not the theology – theology is theology. Faith is an act of the will – Faith is a verb! Faith is coming before the LORD in the Eucharist and falling to your knees because you realize that on your best day, you can’t even begin to fathom how that bread becomes the body of your GOD. Faith is waking up each morning and realizing that you have been given another day on this earth, not because of your great healthy living tips, but because the LORD has a will for you to live out. Faith is taking the rosary in your hands and gripping them in utter surrender to the beauty of a life lived in the Blessed Mother and realizing that She and all the Saints are gazing upon the face of God and are intimately connected with you and never ceases to pray for you. Faith is looking at your family, your friends, your loved ones and realizing that God has given you a precious gift that nothing can ever replace – and sticking close by them and sacrificing for them so that you go without so they can have. Faith informs us that the posture of a Christian is the cross, and if you aren’t living your life in cruciform obedience, then you aren't tapping into your potential. Faith is everyday recognizing the incalculable beauty that’s penetrating your heart and mind, and it’s beckoning you to bask in the light of that beauty.

When our lives are this, when our lives look like this, then we have found the pearl and the essence of faith. Faith, reduced to some facts and figures is not faith – it’s exactly that: facts and figures. But a life conformed to the Mysteries and abandoned to the arms of our omnipotent God – that is faith. When our lives are built upon the essence and practices of God, and not merely our minds to the theology of it, then we find contentment in the will of the LORD. Then we understand, not Habakkuk’s desolation, but the consolation of the LORD he received.

If everyone lived the cross. If everyone surrendered to the Mysteries that penetrates the cosmos. If we surrender to the magnitude of what has been done for us, then we have begun to understand what faith really is – and it’s joyful! That is how we convert by our faith. In the freedom we have found in the arms of a GOD who loves us, we bring a new tinge and hue to the world. If all of us did that, if all of us were to live cruciform lives, what a different place this would be, what a vibrant Church we would have. The laws, ordinances and codes and creeds of the Faith – those are easy and will naturally follow – don’t obsess about it or make your faith about it. If you aren’t living it first, you’re life will be like a 9^th grade research paper instead of an intoxication of Divine Love!

This is achievable in everybody. Why? Because we are all made and destined for the same God! So believe and abandon yourselves into God. Make your faith first about that, then everything else will fall into place, you have my guarantee.

Only then, and I mean only then, will our lives really ever make sense. Only then will we ever begin to find meaning in our sufferings and death. Only then do we begin to finally live and live life to the fullest! If you do not find yourself coming before the mysteries of God everyday, you have not begun to understand what Faith means. You have perhaps grasped doctrine, but not what it means to have faith. Or you just really haven’t thought about it all together, and thus you really have no idea what you’ve been missing!

So go out today and be like our beloved saint, Saint Francis who, as the prayer attributed to him asks, making us instruments of God’s peace – becoming vessels and agents of the LORD and allowing the Spirit to grip hold and make amazing things happen!

Saint Bruno

I found this to be a beautifully written poetic biography on the life of St Bruno.

6 October 1101, Sunday, at the Hermitage of Santa Maria della Torre in Calabria, Italy there were some monks, and in the midst of them a man laid down. Tears were in their eyes and choking cries in their voices. The guide of their souls, their father . . . had reached the time of his birth into eternity. This man is you, Bruno. In this instant, your whole life, more than seventy years, is in your heart, the final offering to the Father.

Eleven more years, eleven years of hard work and asceticism, eleven years of light and joy in praise, here, in this rich land of monks and hermits, whose history is blessed with their presence. And so, that your joy may be complete, Bruno, one day found the happiness of a visit: Landuin, who brings with him the love of your first sons, and their fidelity. ‘O Bonitas! O Bonitas’! -- so as to accept this friend of yours in this land that fills your heart, with an embrace and a gaze.

The autumn of life nears the end and your eyes rise towards eternity. Two years have passed since Urban II left this world; a year later, on his return journey, Landuin dies professing the faith in the prisons of the antipope; three months before that, in June, Ruggero died. Bruno, heaven calls you. Now . . .

The Carthusians, founded by St Bruno and documented in the film 'Into Great Silence', are called to serve the Church by giving themselves completely to an intensely intimate relationship with God, asceticism and through constant prayer in an environment of solitude.

It is a life that interests and attracts me - a life I seriously prayed about - but I know I am not called to it, but I admire them greatly.

25th Sunday, Year A

Did you too get upset at the landowner when you heard this gospel passage? Did you side with the laborers and say to yourself ‘that’s not fair!”? I know I did. It takes a second look to really understand what is being said here and the underlying message of this parable.

In the previous passage in Matthew’s gospel, we hear the story of the rich young man who asks Jesus what he must do to enter eternal life. Jesus tells him to keep the commandments. The young man says that he observes them already, ‘am I lacking anything else?” he asks. Jesus then tells him to give away all his possessions and give them to the poor. Well, we know what happens, he walks away in sorrow because he was quite rich and didn’t want to give up anything.

Was Jesus unfair to him?

In the parable today, Jesus compares the Kingdom of Heaven to a landowner who hires workers throughout the work day to come work in his field. At the end of the day all the laborers are lined up and they get paid the usual daily wage, all of them! There is instant grumbling among the workers; ‘we worked all day and they worked one hour’, ‘why are they getting the same pay for less work’, ‘this is not fair!’

The landowner reminds them that they all agreed to work for the daily wage and indeed they all received it. So why are we seeing disgruntle laborers and, in the passage right before, a sad young man?

We need to look at the first reading for some context. God is telling Isaiah “my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways…as high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts”.

The way we reason, judge fairness, seek justice and think what is acceptable is not how God does it nor perceives it- this is the point of contention with the characters in the gospel.

The crowds of followers are beginning to see and grapple with the fact that Jesus is the real thing, He is God and what He is telling them is of importance for their salvation. They desire to be with God and to be saved. They desire the goodness and riches of the Kingdom, they just need to know how to get there. Obviously, they are going to think in their terms and are going to impress upon the Kingdom their ways.

Jesus is quickly dismissing this.

The landowner is willing to pay the usual daily wage if they come and work. He makes no stipulation about hours put into the work or how long you have been at it; all that matters to him is that you show up and do what is asked. The thinking of the workers is that you have to labor and sweat all day for the daily wage and that it is unfair to pay someone the same who has not done so. But, this is earthly thinking, human thinking. We are incessant upon earning what we have and deserving what we’ve earned – there is little room for generosity or free giving. This, though, is the thinking of the landowner. He desires to freely give the wage to everyone; it doesn’t matter to him that the ones who worked for one hour haven’t earned it in the sight of the other laborers.

This too is the method of payment in the Kingdom.

It doesn’t matter how long you have been living a life of holiness. It doesn’t matter how long you lived a life of sin. It doesn’t matter if you have been struggling your whole life or came to God at the moment of death; as long as you show up to work, the landowner is willing to pay you the wage anyways.

That wage is the Kingdom!

One of my favorite saints is St Dismas. He was the thief crucified to the side of Christ who begged him to remember him when He comes into His Kingdom. Jesus, in all his agony, assured him that ‘today, you will be with me in paradise’. Dismas, a thief and sentenced to death, desired in the final moments of his life, Jesus to remember him and love him and to see the Kingdom.

“If you want to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, you need to not only follow my commandments, but sell and give away all the wealth and riches you have accumulated, for they mean nothing in the Kingdom” “If you want to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, you must show up at the field to work”. We can hear Jesus impressing his followers that the way to the Kingdom is not by their means, ways or thoughts. The way is through Him and giving up everything because of Him.

Jealousy or envy over others and desiring what they have ‘earned’ only knocks us off course. We need to be willing to sell and give away everything and be willing to freely accept the gift of our salvation from a generous and loving God, not from our efforts of earning it. We do not deserve it so we cannot work to earn it. It is a gift and we need to accept it as that.

Let us listen to the landowner and come work in the field and receive our wage