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Letters Twentieth Sunday
in Ordinary Time |
The Catholic Telegraph
August 17, 2001Chapter 11 of Hebrews was a kind of historical overview of the heroes of faith, a commendation of the men and women who shared the conviction that the future would be as God had promised and that things not present and visible were nonetheless real. At the end of the chapter, the author points out that, although these people deserve respect for their faith, they didn’t personally receive what God had promised. That wouldn’t come for them until the gifts provided for us Christian believers had been made available.
Now, in chapter 12, the author deals with some of the implications of faith and Christian commitment for us. He begins with an image. He imagines this great throng of holy women and men from the past no longer as giving testimony to us of their faith, but watching us as we develop ours. They are like a crowd in a stadium watching athletes run a race. We are those athletes and the race we are in is not a sprint but a long distance run. The author encourages us to get rid of anything that might encumber us in our run ("every burden and sin that clings to us") and to commit ourselves to the course that lies ahead of us. We are not to keep our eyes on the spectators, but on Jesus Who has shown us the way of faith and Who has worked out all its implications.
Now he reflects on how Jesus did this. For the sake of heavenly life, He suffered the pains of the cross, without regard for the shame that it entailed. As a result He has now entered into eternal heavenly glory with His Father. ("Seated at the right of the throne of God" seems to be another allusion to Ps. 110 which has already been cited so often in Hebrews.) Jesus’ acceptance of effort and suffering in His earthly mission should be an encouragement for us to persevere in our struggles. After all, the author says, we may be engaged in a struggle against sin, but we have not yet been asked to shed our blood as Jesus did.
This short passage gives us some important teachings about faith. Faith is not a once and for all thing, like a credit card that offers us unlimited use once we have received it. On the contrary, faith is a relationship and relationships require attention if they are to persist.
In addition to that, our faith relationship with God is under constant threat. First and foremost, it is threatened by our own sinfulness, the inclination to selfishness that persists even after we have accepted faith in Christ. But our faith is also threatened by the world around us. In many ways, our world is just as pagan as was the world of the first readers of Hebrews. We are constantly bombarded with distraction, with sounds and sights that keep our attention focused away from the good things that God offers us. Our culture offers us false goals (wealth, amusement, comfort) and, through various kind of narcotics, liberation from all pain and discomfort. It encourages us to look for immediate satisfaction of every need and every want, and to discount any possible benefit that could come through suffering. In the face of all that, it’s not easy to keep our eyes trained on Jesus and to keep running in a race that most of the people around us consider a waste of effort.
There is more than one way to get out of the race that faith involves us in. One is simply and deliberately to give up our faith. "I don’t really think that God cares about me. There’s no longer any point in continuing a struggle that I no longer believe in." Another way of getting out of the race is to ease up slowly until we are no longer running. We can spend more and more attention on the demands that our world makes of us and less and less on the demands of Jesus. We can become erratic in our participation in the community of faith. We can deliberately begin to question whether all this religious stuff in our life makes any sense. And before we know it, we’re no longer running. We’re sitting down on the track, or even walking away from the course entirely.
This passage of Hebrews calls us to look after our faith, to take care of it just as we take care of our bodily health, just as we take care of our personal relationships with the people we love. Looking after our faith involves a conscious personal relationship with the Lord Jesus, an awareness of His participation in our lives. It involves daily prayer, deliberately turning our attention to Jesus in praise and thanksgiving. It involves regular attendance at Sunday Mass. Sunday Mass is not just one more obligation for believers. It’s the source of meaning and energy that keeps us going for the rest of the week. Taking care of our faith also involves nourishing our faith with personal reflection, with contact with Sacred Scripture, with other kinds of spiritual reading. In addition to all that, looking after our faith also demands extending the love of Christ to those around us.
This live letter reading uses verbs like "persevere, keep our eyes fixed, endure, not grow weary, struggle, resist." There’s more to faith, of course, than all of that, but without all of that, our faith is not likely to survive.
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Conversation Questions
How do I cultivate my faith?
What elements of the world are most dangerous to my faith?
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