19th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Cycle C
August 11, 2019
St. Mary Parish, Pylesville 4pm
Saint Matthew Parish, Baltimore11am
“Now that’s faith”
There’s a story that one day one of our Catholic Sisters was driving to the home of a person who was sick.
This Sister was a nurse and she was doing a home-health-care visit. She was driving through the streets of the town and to her dismay, her car ran out of gas.
Fortunately, the gas station that she often went to was just one block away. Unfortunately, the station had no gas can to lend the Sister.
But then Sister got an idea. She had a brand-new bedpan in the trunk of her car.
The gas station attendant knew her and trusted her and let her fill the bedpan with gasoline. Sister carefully carried it back to the car and started pouring the gasoline into the tank.
As she was doing this, a car slowed down to a stop and the driver was just staring at the Sister pouring from the bedpan into the gas tank. He called out through the passenger window, “Now that’s what I call real faith.”
Abraham’s Faith and Life
This theme of faith emerges in our second reading today.
The author extols the faith of Abraham. This Old Testament patriarch was probably illiterate, but he believed firmly in God.
God called him to leave the only land that he knew and journey to a foreign country. Abraham, because of his faith, did what God asked.
God promised Abraham that he and Sarah, in spite of being older, would have a son. Abraham, with his faith, trusted God and eventually rejoiced in the birth of his son Isaac.
God told Abraham that his “descendants would be as numerous as the stars of the sky and the sands on the seashore.”Abraham had faith and so it happened.
Abraham basically had only one article of faith – he believed in God and trusted in God’s power. And that one article of faith dominated his life and determined what he did.
We have many articles of faith – the basics are contained in our Creed or Profession of Faith. Like Abraham, we are to allow them to dominate our lives and determine how we live.
Our Faith and Life
For example, to believe in a Creator is to know that God abides in everything and in every person. To believe in the Father is to understand that God is a loving parent and that we have a home with God.
To believe that God became human is to know that there is a closeness, even a oneness between God and us. It is to understand that God and we can walk life together.
To believe that the Son of God suffered and died is to know that God’s love for us is unconditional. It is to understand that we are worthy and worthwhile and valuable in God’s eyes.
To believe that Jesus rose from the dead is to know that nothing in life is hopeless. It is to understand, as the gospel says, that nothing is impossible with God.
To believe in the Holy Spirit is to know that God lives within each of us and is the core of our identity. To believe in sacraments is to understand that God comes to us right now through ordinary things like bread and wine.
To believe in the Church is to know that God has formed us into a people, a community. It is to understand that we are to figure out how to love one another regardless of religious or racial or ethnic or cultural or national differences.
To believe in the communion of saints is to know that our community of life continues even beyond physical death. And to believe in the forgiveness of sins is to understand that no mistake is fatal in God’s eyes.
Conclusion
They are our basic articles of faith.
