Weekly Reflection

The Church invites us to think about the end of things. Our world, in which we spend so much time planning and securing our worldly future, is only temporary. Our own lives in this world will not last for ever, but, while on earth, we have a duty to be faithful witnesses to the message of peace and love given by Jesus. Jesus warns that His followers will be manhandled, persecuted, summoned before synagogues and imprisoned because of their faith. Some will be betrayed by family, relatives and friends. Jesus asks His followers to remain committed to Him in an often hostile environment. He counsels them not to be frightened but to be faithful. Each follower is encouraged to accept whatever persecution or rejection may come as an opportunity for witnessing to that commitment.

The Gospel challenges us to get involved in the world, working for the common good, justice and peace. Jesus urges His followers not to be passive, complacent or apathetic, but to be willing to take a stand to promote God’s kingdom, regardless of cost. We are called to remain steadfast in our faith in God’s reign. In our times, we are seeing terrible famines, wars and environmental crises, which are threatening life as we have known it, and they frighten us. Jesus promises that good will triumph over evil, love over hate, justice and peace over injustice and war, life over death. However, for many of us, the problem is not anxiety about the end of our world but living as if there were an eternity of tomorrow. The words of Jesus in today’s Gospel are ignored. Yet the readings remind us how short and precious life is, calling us to reflect upon our lives, urging us to look ahead to see where we are headed and ask ourselves: What do we need to go to get ready for Christ?

Today’s readings confront us with the question of what death is – and what comes after. And that question is important because it helps us to shape how we live in the present. In the first reading, those 7 brothers were able to endure terrible hardship because of their faith in God’s ability to raise them up after death. Their belief in the resurrection enabled them to remain true to their identity, to their values, to their God. In the Gospel, the Sadducees, who believed there is no afterlife, dragged up a little-used law about marrying your dead brother’s wife in order to ridicule Jesus’ belief in the resurrection of the dead. Jesus says that for those who belong to God, there is no need for such devices to try to cheat death. Those who have died and “are judged worthy” are living with God, where there is no need to think of marrying and having children to try to preserve your name or to carry on the human race. Why? Quite simply, because there is no more death. Jesus is crystal clear: this life is not the end. God wants us to live in God’s presence for ever.

Our belief in the resurrection shows us that to God, life is absolutely important. God created us for life, not death. God is God of the living, Jesus tells us, and what we do with our life determines our future life with God. Faith in the resurrection led the 7 brothers to resist an evil king. It led Jesus to the cross. For Christians, it leads us to cherish life in the here and now and to defend life for all – especially those whose quality of life is most threatened.

For many people in Jericho, Zacchaeus was a write-off, a selfish waste of space. He was beyond the pale and beyond redemption. Many people in the world believe this to be true of others. The selfish behavior of human beings can lead us to conclude that this world is beyond saving. Certainly the extremes of violence that we see and hear of every day tend to make us feel somewhat hopeless about the prospects for a brighter future. Recent scientific studies by the Common Cause Foundation have turned up surprisingly positive results about human beings. The first says that we are far more unselfish than we are given credit for. The second conclusion is that others are thought to be more selfish than in fact they are. Science is coming to the same conviction that our faith already teaches us. Human kindness is greater than human wickedness. Salvation can come to this house. Followers of the Lord live by this conviction.

In Gospel according to St. Luke Jesus teaches us about prayer. First we learn to pray with Jesus to the Father in what we called “Lord’s Prayer”. We learn that we must remember to give thanks and praise to God, and that we must persevere in our petitions to God. God favors prayer which is humble. Such is the lesson within the parable of the 2 men who went up to the temple to pray. God wasn’t pleased with the prayer of the proud Pharisee. Actually it was no prayer but only a list of self-congratulations. But God was pleased with the humble tax collector. His was a sincere prayer of mercy. Jesus took delight in making the least likely candidate for imitation the hero of His stories. Everybody despised tax collectors, the ancient version of IRS, but this man acknowledged his sins and begged God for mercy.

The tax collector made the right choice. He went to the right person for the repairs he needed. He made no excuses. He diagnosed his own problem and asked God for the grace he needed in his simple prayer, “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

The tax collector’s prayer was one of to God. Authentic petitions, a plea for help, the type of prayer we often offer to God. We asked God favors because we know He is the right person to turn to, that He has the power to help us. That is half of humility: to acknowledge God’s power which is greater than any power in the universe. The second half of humility is to admit that we need God, that we cannot go it alone, that we depend on God’s love as well as on His power. Humble prayer expresses God’s power and our need. Our humble prayer goes right to heaven because the prayer of the lowly pierces the clouds and does not rest until reaches its goal.

In today’s Gospel we hear the apostles asking Jesus to increase their faith. It looks as though faith was their top priority too. This is one of only two occasions in the Gospel of St. Luke where the apostles make a precise request of Jesus. Real faith means committing oneself to a person and putting all one’s trust in him. And for the Christians that person is Jesus Christ. He is not expecting us to litter the sea with uprooted trees. It’s just a bold way of saying that faith can do the impossible. At the same time, trusting in the Lord is not the same thing as meekly accepting whatever happens in our world, without so much as a word of complaint. Just look at today’s first reading, where Habakkuk the prophet rebukes the Lord because a fearful enemy is approaching and it looks as though violence and power are going to win the day. Our Lord is big enough to accept our anger and our cries of indignation, provided only that we do not lose hold of our faith in God.

In our heart of hearts we all know that faith is a gift to be cherished as a top priority. Faith is the basis of our relationship with the Lord; without it, we can have no friendship with Him; without it, the reception of the sacraments would be worthless; without it, the words of the Bible would lose their power for us; without it, coming to Mass would be pointless; without it, we’d never understand, as today’s Gospel tells us, that even when we’ve done all that the Lord requires of us, we are doing no more than our duty. If faith is as vital to us as that, then we want not simply to hold on to it but to cultivate it, to encourage its growth. Apostles asked Jesus “Lord, teach us to pray.” Faith and prayer go together. If we pray, our faith grows; if our faith grows, we are drawn to prayer. Of course, “Lord, teach us to pray” is itself a prayer. It’s a prayer we could make especially our own today; perhaps we could repeat it time and time again throughout this day.

We are tempted to say that this kind of reflection is political and not religious; the Church’s job is to deal with worship, we say. But the Bible says something else. Amos is not a professional prophet – he doesn’t earn his living by uttering prophecies at shrines and sanctuaries. He is an outsider, since his real job is as a shepherd and agriculturalist: people do not expect him to speak in God’s name. The Holy Land is split in two after the reign of King Solomon, and Amos belongs to the southern section, to Jerusalem and its hinterland, which is called Judah. But God sends him to the northern kingdom of Israel, precisely to preach justice. He addresses the people of both kingdoms. His description of the rich is bitterly sarcastic: ivory beds, luscious meals, drinking, self-indulgent entertainment. “Watch out,” he says: exile and deportation are just around the corner. Why? Because you have lived unjustly, because you have been corrupt, because you have appropriated the land of those who are poor, and reduced them to slavery. The well-being of the country as a whole is forgotten, because you, the rich, are selfish beyond words. St. Luke reminds us that Jesus was equally concerned with social justice. The story of the rich man and Lazarus seems to be about two individuals. The rich man dresses in purple and feasts magnificently, while at the the gate is Lazarus, starving and covered with sores. Jesus underlines sadly the inability of those who are rich to change their ways: “They will not be convinced even if someone should rise from the dead.”

Respect for every human person, human solidarity that is stronger that the urge to feather one’s own nest, these are central to the Church’s teaching. The Church offers the world her teaching on the Eucharist, her explanation of the Bible, directives on sexual morality, the beauty of pilgrimage, the rosary, lovely music. Catholic social teaching is not an optional add-on to these. It is an integral part of the same message. We can thank God that so many Christians have taken this to heart.

One of the stranger elements of parables is that they can seem at times to be encouraging behavior that may not be in line with the Gospel message of love and mercy. Kings are harsh; their stewards deceitful. The content is not necessarily moral as such. They are rather stories that highlights certain choices and predicaments, with the sting always in the tail. The end of today’s parable has the rich man praising his steward for his astuteness. He has managed to get himself out of a sticky situation by getting his master’s debtors on his side. What matters is his cleverness in avoiding the full consequences of his actions. Jesus does get exasperated at times by His followers and especially those who claim to be righteous. He has just told the parable of the prodigal son, a story aimed not so much at the wastrels of the world but at those like elder son who are self-righteous.

What is Jesus asking us to do? He isn’t asking us to be as deceitful as the steward, for he goes on to stay that you have to choose to be the servant either of God or of money. So what are the skills a follower of Jesus needs that display the same ability or astuteness in matters of the Gospel that unjust steward reveals in his commercial dealings? The main quality Jesus highlights, something the unjust steward is certainly not an example of, is trustworthiness. He also asks for freedom from greed and from a devotion to riches and money, again the opposite of the unjust steward. Jesus uses the example of the steward to turn upside down the world and call us to defend with the same energy and passion his new option for those who are poor. We are to use all our wit and wisdom to promote the values of the Gospel and the recognition of those who are vulnerable and weak in the eyes of the world.

Jesus is not requiring us all to go home and hate our families. He is calling His disciples to something quite radical. This is a passage that speaks of the great cost of discipleship, the cost of remaining close to Jesus. The difficult, costly thing is that this is loving in God’s way, and not only in the ordinary ways that make life secure and happier for ourselves.

All this means that to be Jesus’ friend and follower, we are called to live lives of loving others. This is costly: ultimately it costs our lives, which is why we cannot “love” our ambitions, plans, investments and so forth, as if they were the real things of living. What Jesus teaches, and what we see reflected in the lives of saints like Therese, is a way of loving that calls us beyond these things, a sharing in the Wisdom of God, who sees things differently from our world. This is one of the reasons the Church encourages us to “give” up things – through fasting and almsgiving, through the dedicating of time to prayer and care of people in need. Jesus promises, it is in this giving away of ourselves that we will draw close to Him, and discover a new way of living and loving. In such a culture we cling to what we possess, with a kind of love and, often, a kind of selfishness. Inspired by today’s readings, let us pray to be able to lift our eyes to look beyond our own concerns and learn to pay the cost of discipleship – the cost of a love beyond our own needs and wants.