Homily for the Week of October 6, 2013

Twenty Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2013
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 teachers. 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. It tells about the problems that the Jewish people were having with the Assyrians, the same country that has been in the news in the last 2 years. 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 to God for help. In our society, if Habakkuk were living, he could hear of the child torn from her mother's womb. It could be the fearful grasp of the neglected and abused child put out on the street by her own parent and picked up by sex trafficker. 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.

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.

Today in our second reading we can find Paul’s words to Timothy encouraging: “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.

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:

Jesus also tells us that we a tiny bit of faith we can do unbelievable things. At the end of the Gospel we are told that we should do what we are expected to do. The only way we can increase our faith is to live our faith by taking time to do the things that help us to live it such as taking time to pray, to read the Bible and by what you are now doing by coming to Mass. If we don’t live our faith it will be like muscles that we do not use. Maybe we have seen that happen in our own life, or have seen it in the life of others.

It is also important that we repeat the words that we have learned or have heard from the Bible. Words are so important, especially he words we tell ourselves. A whole area of counseling has developed around this idea of how what we tell ourselves affects our moods. It is called cognitive therapy. What we tell ourselves also affects our faith. If we always tell ourselves negative things such as God does not love me, he is too busy for me; God can’t forgive me; God does not hear my prayers; God is not here when I come to church we are going to believe these things. Instead we should tell oursleves what we have heard from the Bible: God does love me; Jesus hears me when I pray even when he says no; Jesus really comes to me in Holy Communion. Telling ourselves these things,
expecially we don’t feel it, or when the devil whispers doubts in our ears, helps strenghten our religious faith.

Jesus offers us faith in order to conquer despair. He gives us he example of the mustard seed. Mustard is a spice. The mustard seed is very small but it reproduces rapidly. Once planted it produces so many plants that it can be uncontrollable. Jesus told us today that with faith as small as a mustard seed we can do amazing things.