When I was on vacation this past week, I knew I was going to be away from my day job, so I asked one of my colleagues at work if she could help with a project while I was gone. After I asked my colleague for help with this project and she said she would help with this project while I was gone, I didn’t have to worry about it getting done. That’s because I trusted that she would take care of it. I know I can depend on this person and that she is trustworthy.

When we ask for God’s help, do we feel this same way about God? Do we think of God as someone who is dependable and trustworthy? If we think of the person in our lives who we trust the most and we think of the person in our lives who we trust the least, where does God stand in that ranking? Our second reading today shows us that when it comes to faith and our relationship with God, trust is a must.

Since faith is often misunderstood and mischaracterized, let’s first talk about what faith is not. There are some who may try to portray people of faith as people who are unintelligent or who are irrational and who refuse to open their eyes to scientific reality.
Unintelligent and Irrational – Instead of faith and reason being opposed to one another, there are intellectual giants such as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas who have developed a strong foundation in our Catholic tradition of faith and reason working together.

Faith in God is not irrational. Instead, faith goes beyond the rational taking us further than reason alone can take us. The Catholic author Peter Kreeft said, rational “arguments can bring you to faith in the same sense as a car can bring you to the sea. The car can’t swim; you have to jump in to do that.” We see this truth about faith at work in our own loving relationships. There is no other way to know and to relate to another person than through faith. When we know a person only by what we can objectively verify about that person, you’ll never get to really know a person this way and by living this way, you’ll end up living a very lonely life. Can you imagine trying to fact check or objectively verify everything a person says before you trust them and believe them? That would be a very impractical and exhausting way of living that would result in you being a very lonely person. Not only that, we’d miss out on seeing the full reality of who a person is if we limit ourselves to only accepting as truth about the person those aspects of the person and what they say that can be objectively verified.

Scientific reality – While science is great and scientific advancements have benefitted our lives in many ways, the scientific method will give us only a certain limited type of knowledge that can be gained through experimentation. The creator of the universe is not an object to be dissected, put under a microscope, measured, analyzed, and experimented on.

Now, that we are clear on what faith is not, what is faith? Our second reading today from the Letter to the Hebrews began with this definition of faith: “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” The author anticipates that we may want this definition fleshed out more for us to understand what faith looks like when it is put into practice. So, the author goes on to highlight the best example of faith in the Old Testament: Abraham.

By sharing the story of Abraham, we are able to see what faith looks like through the lens of relationship. We are given three examples of Abraham’s faith in God:

a. God leading someplace new
b. God speaking more life into world, and
c. Showing God our willingness to make a sacrifice

God leading someplace new – The first example or faith experience that is highlighted of Abram, who would later go onto be called Abraham, was when God appeared to him and invited him to leave his ancestral home and to go to a place he was to receive as an inheritance. This was a place he had never been to and he didn’t even know where it was. God invited him to make a life altering decision at the age of 75. I don’t know the age of all of you, but what Abraham shows us is that you can become a hero of the faith at any age. He believed God and so he left his home and went off to find the promised land.

Speaking new life into our world – Now, let’s move onto the second example of Abraham’s faith. To understand and appreciate this one, it is important to have the background knowledge that it was the deepest desire of Jewish men and women to have children. Children were seen as the proof of God’s love. Children were seen as the future of the family. Whatever the family had would be passed onto these children. Abraham and Sarah had no children as they were both past the normal age of being able to conceive children and Sarah were sterile. God told him that he and his wife would be blessed with a child when Abraham was 100 and his wife was 90. Today’s second reading tells us that Abraham responded with faith. The reading says this about Abraham, “By faith he received power to generate, even though he was past the normal age —and Sarah herself was sterile— for he thought that the one who had made the promise was trustworthy.” Faith is seeing God as someone we can trust. Sarah then gave birth to a son and they named him Isaac. Abraham was so happy with having his son Isaac as a gift from God. In fact, Abraham may have been a little too happy with this gift from God.

Willingness to sacrifice for God – God wanted to see which Abraham loved more, God as the giver of the gift, or Isaac the gift. For the third experience of faith, God asks Abraham to take his son only beloved son, Isaac, and to kill him, offering Isaac up as a sacrificial burnt offering to God. So, Abraham whose age has to be well into his 100s at this point, takes Isaac along with wood and they come to a mountain. Abraham asks Isaac to carry the wood up the mountain while Abraham takes the fire and the knife. As they are hiking up the mountain, Isaac and Abraham have a conversation that went something like this, “hey, Dad, you know that burnt sacrifice you said we are going to make on the alter on the mountain, well, where is the sheep we are going to sacrifice?” Abraham responds, saying to his son “God will provide the sacrificial offering.” So, they get to the designated spot on the mountain, and Abraham builds an altar there and put the wood on top of the altar. Next, Abraham ties his son Isaac up and places him on top of the wood on the altar. Then, Abraham pulls out the knife to kill his son and right before the fatal moment, God’s messenger tells Abraham not to do it. God was pleased to see Abraham show that he loved God the giver of the gift than the gift of Isaac.

So, this faith stuff is all well and good for Abraham, but what does all this have to do with us? The story of Abraham speaks to our current life. Just as Abraham’s faith begins with God taking the initiative, the same is true in our lives. Our faithfulness is built on God’s faithfulness.

Did you catch what Jesus said in today’s Gospel reading? Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart also be.” If we turn the expression around and view it from God’s perspective, where is God’s heart? God’s treasure is us. God has gone all in on us, because God has faith in you. More than anything else, God’s treasures you and me above everything else he has made. That’s why he came here to become one of us. He offered himself on the cross for us. God became a human to save humanity. Not just to save the pope, not just to save the pastor, not just to save the person sitting next to you, but to love, help, and save you.

The same God who came to Abraham desiring a profound relationship with him, comes to us and desires a profound relationship with each of us. What God asked Abraham to do in offering up his only son as a sacrifice. That was just a prefiguring or a preview of what God planned to do for us. Just as it was the God the Father’s will for Abraham to offer up his only son, Isaac, as a sacrifice, it was also God the father’s will to offer up his only son, Jesus, as a sacrifice for us. Just as Isaac was asked to carry the wood up a hill that would make the sacrificing of his life complete, so to Jesus was asked to carry the wood of his own cross up the hill of Golgotha that would make the sacrificing of his life complete. Just as it looked like Isaac’s death seemed certain but he went onto live, so too it looked like Jesus’ death seemed certain, but he went onto live.

What God did with Abraham and Isaac, God desires to do with and for us.

The three examples of faith we heard about from Abraham show us three ways we can grow in our faithful relationship with God: Let God lead us someplace new, be open to God speaking life into our world, and show God our willingness to make a sacrifice.

Go someplace new – Anyone who has been in a loving relationship like a marriage for more than a minute can tell you that a relationship is not all about one person writing the future place their relationship will go alone. The other person in the relationship might have something to say about what place their relationship together goes in the future. Similarly in our relationship with God, we need to be open to what the other person in the relationship, God, wants for our future together. Maybe this a geographic place God is calling you to go to help care for a loved one or maybe God is calling you to go from the place of singlehood to the place of married life.

Speaking new life into our world – This could be God asking a married couple to be open to God bringing new life into the world. This could also that new job opportunity you just heard about that sparked a part of you to life that had been laying dormant for years. Friends, pray, and let God speak new life into your world.

Making a sacrifice – whatever you prize most in your life, maybe it’s a person or maybe it’s your phone, whatever it is, chances are we’ve been focusing too much the whatever it is that we prize most at the expense of focusing on God. God is asking us to make the sacrifice of shifting some of our time and focus away from what we prize most and to shift that time and focus toward God. This will allow us to read scripture to hear what God is speaking to us and it will allow us to pause in prayer to provide space for God to tell us what he wants to communicate to us.

Just as I needed my trustworthy colleague at work to help show me what faith is all about, there is someone in your life who wants a trustworthy, dependable person to help them see what faith is all about. That’s where you come in.

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle C – August 7, 2022

Mass Readings:
Reading 1: Wis 18:6-9
Psalm: Ps 33:1, 12, 18-19, 20-22
Reading 2: Heb 11:1-2, 8-19
Gospel: Lk 12:32-48

What is your perspective on today’s Gospel reading? What is this Gospel saying to you right now? What is it speaking into your heart? I’m going to be silent now.

(10 seconds of silence). I have four children at home, so if no one wants to say anything, I will gladly take all the silence I can get. … (response about being silent in prayer). Yes, thanks for sharing. How did you feel about the silence when none of us were speaking? Did the silence feel uncomfortable?

As I was meditating on today’s Gospel reading, it became clear that God wants us to get comfortable with the uncomfortableness we feel when none of us are speaking and God is speaking to us in the silence. St. John of the Cross said, “God’s first language is silence.” Remember, that the Word of God, Jesus Christ, was with his Father and the Holy Spirit in silence before God ever said the words, “Let there be light.”

If we want to converse with God in his native tongue, silence is the language with which we should start the conversation. During Jesus’ transfiguration, instead of conversing with God in his first language of silence, we hear Peter give in to the temptation we may also sometimes give into. This is the temptation of feeling like we have to always be saying something in our own language or feeling like we have to always be doing something. Simply being in Jesus’ presence, listening to the words Jesus is speaking into our hearts, and basking in the glow of God is enough for us, in fact, it is more than enough.

In today’s Gospel reading, we hear a delicious morsel of truth in Matthew’s account of the transfiguration, which is not included in the accounts of Mark and Luke. When describing Jesus’ transfiguration, Matthew tells us that “his face shone like the sun.” Just as you cannot be exposed to the sun without receiving its rays, neither can you be exposed to Jesus without receiving his divine rays of grace, love, and peace. Instead of Peter just basking in and soaking up these divine rays in silence, Peter busies himself with talking and wanting to put up tents, which could result in blocking these divine rays from reaching others.
How many times have we blocked the blessings that come from these divine rays in our own lives? We block the blessings from these rays when we focus too much on acting as a human saying or a human doing, instead of living as we were created, as a human being.

During this penitential season of Lent, let us call to mind all those times we, like Peter, were so busy saying and doing things that we were blocking God’s blessings and grace from illuminating our lives. Maybe it was when we were so busy talking to others or doing a bunch of activities that we didn’t make time to receive God’s grace through the Eucharist at Mass on the weekend or on a holy day of obligation. Or it could have been during what is supposed to be our time conversing with God in prayer when we tried to dominate the conversation.

Let us come before God with contrite hearts for the times when we have turned into that annoying person in a conversation who was doing all the talking when we were instead meant to embrace the silence to make space for God to speak into our hearts. These are just a few of the ways that we may have given into the temptation of feeling like we always have to be saying something or doing something. In the process, we ended up blocking the rays of God’s blessings that Jesus wanted to touch our lives.

Just being fully present with and listening to someone who has wisdom they want to share with us could be the most important thing we do today. Our father reminds Peter on the mountaintop, and each of us here today, to listen to Jesus. So, before we go off saying and doing a bunch of things, let us simply be with and listen to Jesus as this is what he desires. Our God loves spending quality time with us, free from a bunch of talking, busyness, and distractions. God knows our hearts. God knows when our hearts desire divine help to resist the temptation Peter gave into, the temptation of always feeling like we have to be saying something or doing something.

Tomorrow, before we say anything or do anything, let us go be with Jesus in prayer and let us listen to what God has to say to us in the Bible. Then, after having spent time being with him in prayer and listening to his word in the Bible, let us feel Jesus touch us, as he touched Peter, James, and John in today’s account of the transfiguration, and say to us, “rise, and do not be afraid.” For when we have basked in the divine rays of being in Jesus’ presence and have clothed ourselves in his word to be the lamp to guide our day, as our feet hit the floor, it is not us who are afraid, it is the enemy who is afraid.

As we descend the mountain with Jesus, walking in his light, we are reminded that Jesus’ glory is both something he has and something Jesus gives away to each of us so that we may freely choose to bring this glory back to him. God’s will is for there to be a circulation of his grace and glory. Our hearts become radiant in Jesus presence, strengthened by our yearning for Jesus. It is when we are most satisfied in being with and listening to Jesus that God is most glorified in us.

With eyes of faith, we can see glory shining forth from Jesus here and now. Our participation in the Eucharist already gives us a foretaste of Jesus’ transfiguration of our bodies. As we receive the Eucharist, this is when we both give Jesus a home as well as give Jesus our hearts, so he can give our hearts a home in him. As the whole body of baptized believers, this is how we enter into the mystery of our transfiguration in Jesus.

Well, for a homily on silence, I’ve already said too much. So, I’m going to be silent now before a voice comes from the cloud saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” Does anyone else have anything you would like to say? (silence followed by thumbs up. Pointing to ear and point to Jesus on the crucifix.)

2nd Sunday of Lent Cycle A – March 8, 2020
Mass Readings:
Reading 1: Gn 12:1-4a
Psalm: Ps 33:4-5, 18-19, 20, 22.
Reading 2: 2 Tm 1:8b-10
Gospel: Mt 17:1-9