29th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Cycle C
October 16,
2016 4:00pm, 9:30 and 11:15am
Saint Mary Parish, Pylesville
“Will he find faith…?”
So,
Jesus asks: “When the Son of God comes,
will he find any faith on earth?”
When
Jesus asks “Will the Son of God find
faith on the earth?” he is referring to the woman in the parable tat we
just heard. You remember.
This
woman, a widow, just won’t give up asking a judge for a fair response to her
request. One of our Catholic authors
says that Jesus is not using this woman’s faith as an example of persons who know
all the teachings in the catechism, as good as that might be – so, not that
kind of faith.
Instead,
he uses her as an example of persons who trust in God, persons who trust in God
regardless of what is going on in their lives.
These persons center their lives on God when things are good and they turn
to God when things are tough.
There
are several other places in the gospel where Jesus says to people, “Your faith has saved you.” He says this as he heals people physically,
emotionally or spiritually.
And
when Jesus says “Your faith has saved
you,” he means that they trust in God in their heart. They have opened themselves to a personal
relationship with God that is heart-centered and not just head-centered.
They pray
to God out of their hearts. They trust
that God is with them and caring for them, even if things are difficult.
They
may not fully understand the ways of God and they may be living a very
imperfect life, but they have this heart faith, this trust in God. And this trust is first and foremost a matter
of the heart.
A Trusting, Heart Faith
So, this
seems to be the kind of faith that Jesus is talking about here.
You
know, today and every Sunday, we recite the Profession of Faith here at
Mass. It is an important expression of
our faith.
But, we
have to make sure that this is not just a mental, an intellectual thing, a head
faith. We have to make sure that there
is a trusting, heart faith at the basis of this.
This
seems to be what Pope Francis has been getting at. He has not been hammering away at just two or
three points of doctrine or moral teaching.
Instead,
Pope Francis has been focusing more on the love and mercy and goodness of God
and on our need to have a trusting relationship with God. He seems to see this as the core of faith.
He is
calling us to live with this inner sense of God, of Jesus being with us through
it all. And he is calling us to do our
best to live out of this relationship.
Heart Faith and Pope Francis
Maybe
this is why Pope Francis sees the Church, to use his image, as a large home for
many and not as a little chapel for a few.
Maybe
this is why the Pope seems reluctant to exclude people from the community of
the Church. At one point, he even says that
“the Eucharist is not a prize for the
perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.”
So,
maybe the bottom-line test of being part of God’s family is not that we live
perfectly or that we agree with each other on everything. Maybe the test is that we try to embrace this
kind of trusting, heart faith that Jesus lifts up today.
