29th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Cycle C
October 20, 2019
8am at Saint Mary Parish, Pylesville
11am at Saint Matthew Parish, Baltimore
“Will he find faith…?”
“When the Son of Man comes, will he find any faith on earth?”
This is the very last sentence in today’s gospel. At first, it may seem out of place.
Jesus has just told a story about a widowed woman who keeps asking a judge to render a fair decision for her. Here it is important to recall that women in Jesus’ day had no rights at all.
For example, they couldn’t own any property – including money. So, if a woman became widowed, the money and property – which her husband owned – did not belong to her, as it usually does in our culture.
Instead, it would go to their son – if they had a son – or to some other male relative. The woman was left with nothing.
That’s the context for Jesus’ parable today. We are told that a widow is persistent or persevering in seeking a just decision, and that is the point here – her perseverance.
That is Jesus’ focus when he says: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find any faith on earth?” Jesus sees perseverance as central to faith.
3 Ingredients of Faith
This passage led me to recall a presentation that I recently heard about faith.
The presenter is a man named Don Bisson. He has been a Marist Brother, a religious in our Church for fifty years.
Brother Don Bisson has degrees in liturgy, spirituality, and psychology. He gives retreats and does spiritual direction.
Well, in his presentation, Brother Don says that there are three ingredients in becoming a person of real faith. These ingredients can be remembered by the letters I-P-A.
For those of us who enjoy beer, here I-P-A does not mean India Pale Ale. Instead, those letters stand for: 1) Insight, 2) Perseverance, and 3) Action.
1. Insight
First, we need Insight.
We need an understanding of ourselves as being created and loved by God. We need a blueprint for living, by loving God and loving others as we love ourselves.
And we need a vision that someday we will return to God and come to the fullness of life. So, we need this Insight.
But, Brother Don Bisson insists, this Insight is not enough. In fact, psychology can give us Insight, but we need more than that to become full persons of faith.
Left alone, by itself, Insight leaves us incomplete. It needs to be maintained throughout life and it needs to be lived and put into practice.
2. Perseverance
So, besides Insight, we also need Perseverance.
This isn’t always easy for us. We live in a culture that likes quick-fixes to things.
We want our chipped tooth fixed and a crown put on it right away, and on it goes. So, Perseverance can be difficult for us.
But we need this, for example, when we are sick, especially with a serious or prolonged illness. At some point, most of us will have to face this.
When this happens, we are invited to identify with Jesus in his emotional, spiritual, and physical suffering. We need to draw upon the power and grace of God to help us.
This Perseverance is an essential ingredient of faith and it helps us to become the kind of person God wants us to be. The woman in today’s gospel is a great example of this.
3. Action
And that leads to the final ingredient: Action.
The idea is that faith is not just a God-and-me thing. We are to share it by our words and definitely by our deeds.
So, we are to do what we can to assist those in need in our families and our community – like our parish community. And we are also to care for those who are on “the margins of life,” to use Pope Francis’ expression.
This would include the seventy million people in our world who are refugees – people fleeing where they have lived and seeking life or simply survival in another country. If nothing else, we at least pray for them.
Action like this helps to make our faith complete. So, I-P-A – not India Pale Ale, but 1) Insight, 2) Perseverance, and 3) Action – these are needed for us to become persons of real faith.
