27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
First Reading: Hab 1:2-3, 2:2-4
Second Reading: 2 Tim 1:6-8, 13-14
Gospel Reading: Lk 17:5-10
This Sunday’s Readings are about faith, which the Catechism of the Catholic Church defines as “the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because it is truth itself.”
“Having faith” usually means “trusting”: that God will “save us from final damnation”; that no matter what the devil accomplishes in the world, Christ has already “overcome the world.”
God asks Habakkuk to trust that what he has promised “will surely come.” Christ assures the apostles that if they have enough faith, they will be able to move mountains. St. Paul urges Timothy to guard the treasure entrusted to him.
Here, St. Paul refers to the content of faith: what Timothy believes rather than how much faith he has. We profess the content of our faith every Sunday.
We assert that God the Father created everything; that Jesus Christ was his Son, conceived not by a human father but by the Holy Spirit, and born of Mary, who was a virgin. We assert that He was put to death under Pontius Pilate, but that he rose again from the dead three days later, ascended to heaven, and will come again as our Judge. We assert our belief in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting.
We do not say we believe that we should love our neighbours as ourselves or that we should not murder, steal, or commit adultery. No; the things the Church wants us to remember, the things we can easily forget, are the facts, the “bones,” of our religion.
“Faith seeks understanding,” says the Catechism: “it is intrinsic to faith that a believer desires to know better the one in whom he has put his faith and to understand better what he has revealed; a more penetrating knowledge will in turn call forth a better faith, increasingly set afire by love.”
Do we seek to understand what we believe? Do we know what “the Communion of Saints” means? – that “the saints in heaven, the faithful on earth, and the souls in Purgatory are in communion with one another, as being one body in Jesus Christ”?
Do we think it matters? Is our “religious tolerance” really “religious indifference”?
Since the fall of Adam and Eve, we cannot see spiritual things clearly. Nevertheless, they are real: far more real than material things. If we do not become familiar with them now, we may not recognize them in the next world. What is infinitely worse, God may say to us, “Depart from me, for I do not know you.”
How can we get to know God? How can we become familiar with heaven’s history, its current events, or its customs?
Read the Bible, as my mother did. I can picture her meeting God face to face, peering up at him from her diminutive four-feet-ten and saying, “I feel I already know you.”
Listen to St. Paul, who told Timothy to guard the “treasure” of his faith “with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.”
Remember that the gifts the Holy Spirit gave us at confirmation include knowledge, understanding, and wisdom.
The Holy Spirit will “teach you all things” and “remind you of all I have said to you,” Christ promised his apostles.
He “will help people to understand the correct meaning of the content of Christ’s message” and “ensure continuity and identity of understanding in the midst of changing conditions and circumstances,” said Pope St. John Paul II in his 1986 encyclical on the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit maintains our faith in the sense of hope or trust, he said. “Given to the apostles as the Counsellor,” he is “the guardian and animator of this hope in the heart of the Church.”
Father Hawkswell will start teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English, with new insights, in September. The whole course will be available in written form and, one session per week, in YouTube form at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. Father will also be teaching the course in person: on Sundays at 2 p.m. in the John Paul II Pastoral Centre, 4885 St John Paul II Way, Vancouver (on 33rd Avenue between Cambie and Oak Streets) starting Sept. 11; and on Mondays at 10 a.m. in St. Anthony’s Church hall, 2347 Inglewood Avenue, West Vancouver, starting Sept. 12.
