 |
The Archdiocese of Cincinnati Main Page || The Catholic Telegraph || Live Letters index |
Live
Letters Holy Family Hebrews 8:11-12, 17-19 |
For the feast of the Holy Family the Lectionary provides a different gospel for each year of the three year cycle of readings as well as standard Old Testament and apostolic readings that can be used in all three years. It also provides optional first and second readings for years B and C. Our selection from the letter to the Hebrews is the optional selection for year B. The introduction to the lectionary (no. 95) tells us that the gospel readings for this feast are about Jesus’ childhood, while the other readings are about the virtues of family life. Our optional reading for year B is about faith.
We catch sight of faith in the longer form of the gospel as we hear about Simeon, whose trust in God’s promise that he would see the Messiah is fulfilled. We see faith in Anna the devout woman who spent her years in the temple confidently "awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem."
Faith moves to center stage in the reading from the letter to the Hebrews. This "letter" is a message of encouragement to a group of people who were weary with the demands of Christian life. (We will be reading at some length from this book of the New Testament later in year B’s "Ordinary Time.") The selection provided for us today is from a section of the letter in which the author is inviting his readers to take heart from the example provided for them by Old Testament models of faith. We read the part that has to do with Abraham, whom the First Eucharistic prayer calls "our father in faith."
Faith is a complex concept in Scripture and Catholic teaching. It includes belief, i.e., accepting as true what God has revealed to us and what His Church teaches, but it also involves the commitment of ourselves in response to God’s initiatives in our regard. It has overtones of confidence, hope, and expectation. At the beginning of the chapter from which we read today, the author of Hebrews describes faith as "the realization of what is hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen." Not surprisingly, scholars are not in complete agreement about what this means. It seems clear, however, that what is involved in the faith that our author talks about is deep-seated confidence in God resulting from insight into the reality of the invisible world of God and into God’s goodness and reliability.
Our text speaks of the faith of Abraham in three contexts. God called him to leave his home and go to an unknown new land that would be given to him for his own. Abraham goes with confidence because of what he has learned about God. Secondly, because of what Abraham knew about God, he trusted in God’s promise to give him a son even though he was an old man and his wife was long past childbearing. Although he was as good as dead, he became the father of numberless descendants. Abraham’s insight into the realm of the divine and his confidence in God’s generosity reached its highest point when he showed his willingness to sacrifice his son at God’s command. He knew that God could and would bring that son back from the dead if necessary. Abraham was a man of faith.
What has faith got to do with our families? It’s what makes them Christian families.
When a man and a woman pledge themselves to each other for life in the sacrament of matrimony, they do so with the confidence that God will be part of their relationship until death parts them. Marriage is not just an act of faith in the partner, but in God as well.
Because of what their faith teaches them about the worth and dignity of each human life, they can be sure that their children will be as precious to God as they are to themselves. When their children are baptized, the parents take joy in the realization that these children are extensions of the life of Christ, each gifted with his or her own part to play in God’s providence.
When hard times come in the family - sickness, uncertainty, misunderstanding - the family members can all take confidence in the ongoing care of the Lord whom they have come to know in faith, a God who can bring amazing consequences out of the least promising situations.
Faith doesn’t make everything clear and easy in our families. Not everything was clear and easy in Abraham’s family, and Mary and Joseph in today’s gospel seem to have been troubles ("amazed") about what Simeon had to say about the infant Jesus. We don’t get to understand everything right now. More often than not we don’t get to see in detail how God is going to take care of us. But because we know God, because we have entrusted ourselves to Him, because we know how He operates, because we are people of faith, we are confident that our family history will have a happy ending. That’s what we celebrate today.
###
Conversation Questions:
What role does faith play in my family?
Have I ever experienced God at work in my family’s history?
###
Main Page
|| The Catholic Telegraph || Live Letters index
Copyright © 1999 the Archdiocese of Cincinnati.