Homily for the week of October 3, 2010

Twenty Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2010

Habakkuk 1:2-3, 2:2-4

Psalms 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9

2 Timothy 1:6-8, 13-14

Luke 17:5-10

If I were to ask you which is your favorite book of the Bible, I doubt if any of you would answer Habakkuk. Yet this Old Testament book is the source of our first reading, but it is not at the top of most people's reading list. Habakkuk was one of the Old Testament prophets, which means he was a teacher about God and how God wants us to live. Today many parents name their sons after Bible names such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Joel, Nathan, Adam, Matthew, Luke, Mark, John, James. But Habakkuk? It has been a long time since I have baptized a baby boy by the name of Habakkuk.

The Book of Habakkuk is not a familiar book. It was written within a very short time span, between 605-597 B.C. Habakkuk had watched many of the Kings destroy Assyria and Babylon and Jerusalem. Habakkuk asked the familiar question, “Why, God are you letting this happen to us? Why are you not listening?” God responded to Habakkuk in a vision which Habakkuk was to write down on tablets. Writing on stone tablets would preserve the vision permanently. he urged the people to patience, reminding them that God’s way always triumphs. But in a sense if you were to read all three pages of Habakkuk book you might wonder if he wrote this book one night after watching the nightly news. He was living at a time of tremendous violence in the Jewish country.

Habakkuk is the voice of the oppressed, crying for help to God. It could be the voice of the child torn from her mother's womb, or the quiet groan of the old man as he is given an extra shot of morphine to end his "inconvenient" life. It could be the fearful grasp of the executed prisoner, or the neglected and abused child put out on the street by her own parent and picked up by sex trafficker who told her she was pretty and he wanted to be her boyfriend. It is the voice of the voiceless and the cry of the desperate.

In a sense we in the 21st century are living in a culture of violence. The solution for so many things is to destroy life either through abortion, physical abuse, sex trafficking and pornography, homicides or suicides. During the hot summer, this year several U.S. cities saw a spike in gun violence and senseless deaths.

Today is Respect Life Sunday throughout our country. A weekend that gives us an opportunity to examine God’s gift of life and how that gift might be might at risk. It invites all Catholics to examine the value that life has and to truly respect life. Life is a gift from God. It is sacred and precious. Life in all of its forms should be respected because life is not of human origin. All life originates with God.

At one time or other, regardless of age or circumstances all of us struggle with human suffering. It is not pleasant. It is not only difficult to suffer ourselves, it is hard to watch another person suffer. Being with an ill person at the end of life can be one of the most difficult things we do. We are encouraged to care for each other even unto death.

There are many issues surrounding our love and respect for life. What the Church teaches is neither easy nor a popular path. No doubt the Church’s stance on life issues is most often a minority stance. The Church is ridiculed and attacked for its belief in the sanctity of life.

Habakkuk invites us to examine our stance on human life. Have we replaced God? Have we chosen our own idolatry such as pleasure, convenience, selfishness, or revenge? Have we lost our way and find that life is just as disposable as a paper napkin?

Paul’s words to Timothy are for courage, to take a stand, to give testimony: “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love.” Peace comes only where there is respect for life in all its forms. We too must give testimony to our love of what God has created, and we must show it courageously.

It is precisely when things seem at their worst that a prophet is called to articulate the vision. In the struggle for civil rights in the United States, it was when the backlash against Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision for an end to racism was most intense that he publicly proclaimed his dream for equality and freedom for all. Likewise, it is from prison, where Paul is suffering great hardship, that he writes the vision for Timothy, reminding him that God has given him the power of love, self-control and strength. By stirring this gift into flame, he can overcome any fear.

Not unlike Habakkuk, the followers of Jesus in today’s Gospel want Jesus to fix things by giving them more faith. Jesus reminds them that they already have faith enough to transform what seems utterly immovable. He gives examples. Jesus says a mulberry tree has a deep and extensive root system and is extremely difficult to uproot and replant. How we care for a parent suffering from cognitive impairment, or an infant with a disability does not reflect the degree of their humanity, but our own. We are dependent on them as they are on us. There can be no compromise with the standard Jesus set and continually call us to: The measure of our love is to love without measure.