Seeing or Believing

 Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I remember what a big deal it was when I was finally old enough to ride the Space Mountain roller coaster at Disney World.  I was nervous and excited, all at once.  I didn’t realize it was in the dark, and while I survived, that whole experience freaked me out!!  I like to see where I’m going, because I’ll know what to expect and how to adjust appropriate.
    The man in the Gospel whose son our Lord heals at first also wanted to see.  He asked Christ to come and heal his son, who was at the point of death.  Jesus bemoans that it must be seen in order to believe.  But that observation leads to the man having faith that the Savior could heal the man’s son, whether he was present or not.  And this faith led to the healing of the son.  Not only that, but the entire household believed in our Lord.  
    Do we have to see?  My desire to see everything that is coming up is sometimes virtuous, because it helps me to adjust for upcoming realities and plan.  But in other ways, it is pride, because I feel like I have to be in control.  Maybe some of you know that feeling, too.  If we see what is happening, we feel like we are in control of the situation.  When we feel like we cannot see, we don’t feel like we have control over what is going on, and when something else comes to us, we may not be as prepared for it.
    But over how much are we really in control?  During the pandemic, we have seen so many things change in a moment’s notice.  I remember 13 March, Thursday, hearing reports about schools closing down due to COVID, and then Friday, 14 March, the principal at St. Pius X school let me know that we were closed, and we didn’t reopen for the rest of that school year.  As a parish school, we laid off a number of employees eventually, because they were aids and there were no kids to watch over in the building.  I had plans to celebrate my tenth anniversary as a priest in June 2020, and even in March I was sure that it would still happen.  But by May I made the decision to cancel, and celebrated only with my immediate family who could attend a small dinner I held in my house.
    In our life, we control very little.  But God is control of all things.  He directs or allows things to happen for our good, but they don’t always seem that way.  But, through it all, God is in control, and we are not.  And because we are not in control, we are invited to have faith, to put our trust in God.  God invites us to loosen our grip on things we think we control, but we don’t.  He wants us to have confidence in Him as He cares for us.  
    Again, this can be hard for us, because our timing is not always God’s timing.  There are families who go through extreme illnesses; friends or family who are killed in an unforeseen accident; an unexpected child is conceived, or a couple wants to conceive and cannot; an employee loses a job.  In all these circumstances we so often presume that we know better.  We think that if God had simply left the decision up to us, then everything would be ok.  
    But how much really goes ok if we are left in charge?  We may be the best or one of the best in our particular field, but how many small examples of Divine Providence, which we had not organized or even considered, had to happen in our for our success to come about?  How many people had to get up at just the right time and leave the house in order for us to avoid a traffic crash?  If we think about all that happens for a single second to go right, it should make us fall on our knees in thanksgiving for that one second and all that had to occur just for that one second to go the way we want it to.  
    But even when we life doesn’t go as we want it to, St. Paul still reminds us to give thanks “for all things.”  We could write Paul off if his life had been easy.  Instead, the man who tells us to give thanks for all things was himself beaten, whipped, stoned, left for dead, abandoned by co-workers, and was held suspect by some believers.  St. Paul talks about being comfortable in having nothing, in going hungry.  And still, he says, give thanks.  
    It is easy to put our confidence in God when things are going the way we want it to, when we can see the healing taking place.  But the virtue of faith is truly exercised when we can’t see things going right, when nothing seems to be going right, and yet we trust in God anyway.  Faith is witnessed when we cannot see what God is doing, but we trust that He’s doing the best thing for our salvation, just as Jesus healed the man’s son even without the man being able to see that healing take place.
    Our days are evil.  Around us swirls hatred, confusion, division, immorality, idolatry, and a host of other evils too many to number here.  But God called us to live in this time, to be a witness of His love and truth in this time, when so many don’t want true love, don’t want truth.  We may sometimes say, with Frodo, that we wish that “none of this had ever happened.”  But God wanted us to be alive in this time, and He is accomplishing some good.  Further, we know it must be some great good, because it is opposed so much by the enemy.  We cannot decide the times in which we live, but we can decide “what to do with the time that is given to us.”  We cannot always see what God is doing, and the miracles He is accomplishing, but today, and everyday, the Lord invites us: have faith!

Space Mountain and Faith

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

            The first roller coaster on which I rode, at least that I can remember, was Space Mountain in Disney World.  And I remember being a bit nervous.  My parents had warned me about how fast it was, but it seemed like a rite of passage to actually go on the ride, now that I was tall enough, and brave the giant monster.

            What I hated the most, though, was that the roller coaster was in the dark, and not knowing where I was going.  Once I got on the ride, I was looking ahead to try to see the little lights that lined the rails of the coaster, in order not to be surprised by where the ride as taking a dip, or making a sharp turn.  I wanted to know exactly what was ahead.

            Today, our second reading and Gospel focused on faith.  Faith is a gift from God whereby we believe things that we cannot see, or, as the Letter to the Hebrews states, “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  But the frustrating part can be that growing in faith is really growing in darkness, as a wise Archabbot once told me while I was on retreat.  If faith is the evidence of things unseen, then the more we grow in faith, the less we see. 

            This can be hard for us, because we like to know where we are going.  We like safety.  We tend not to like surprises, especially when it comes to major life events.  We would rather be in control, or at least be able to the see the tracks of the rollercoaster of life, rather than going up and down and sideways in the dark.

            But our confidence, and the reason we have faith, comes from the one in whom we place our trust and faith.  If we place our faith in God, then we can be at ease, because, as Jesus said in our Gospel today, “‘Do not be afraid any longer, little flock, for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom.’”  No matter how high we may rise, or how low we may fall, or how much we get tossed from side to side, the Father is always there with us, loving us, and helping us to grow closer to him.

            But faith can be hard.  It can be hard, especially for those of us who are Type A personalities, who like to be in control of everything, rather than to let God be the Master of our life.  Sometimes our life can be like the disciples being tossed around in the boat in the middle of the sea, and it seems like Jesus is sleeping.  At those moments we cry out like the disciples, “Master, don’t you care that we’re about to drown?”  But Jesus is with us, and so we’re not going to sink or drown.  He has control of everything and is helping us to grow closer to Him by giving us opportunities to put more faith in Him.

            Of course, it still is not easy.  And it’s especially not easy in our own very skeptical age.  We can be like the Doubting Thomas who refuses to believe without proof.  We are so used to proving things by science, that we can start to think that if we can’t prove it, then it’s not real; if I can’t feel it, then it doesn’t really matter.  And yet, it is at these times that we most need faith. 

            Look at Abraham.  By faith he left modern-day Iraq and took his whole family to follow God, who called him to go to the land of Canaan.  And then he had faith in God who promised that He would multiply Abraham’s offspring like the stars in the sky, even though Sarah was sterile.  And then he had faith in God when, even with the promise God had made, Abraham was willing to sacrifice his only son, his beloved Isaac, because Abraham had faith that if God could raise up a son from parents who were as good as dead, then he could certainly create a great nation even without Isaac.

Or look at Blessed Teresa of Calcutta.  As it turns out, from the time she founded her order until the day she died, she was called to have a great deal of faith, because God rarely seemed or felt close to her.  But, she had faith that the same Jesus who had called her to quench His thirst by serving the poorest of the poor would not abandon her or the order she founded.  And how was she rewarded for her faith?  The same way Abraham was: “[they] acknowledged themselves to be strangers and aliens on earth” and so they were prepared for heaven, their true home, by trusting in God, even in the toughest times.

The fact is that the closer we get to God, the more we have to put our trust in Him, and trust less in our own visions and plans.  We can’t be so concerned with seeing the tracks ahead of us, but must trust that, even in the darkness when God seems the farthest away, He is still quite near, and is giving us the grace, His inner life, to help us to grow so that we can accept His gift of salvation.  In the times when there is a sharp turn in life, we must trust that God is our safety and security, and the closer we cling to Him in prayer, the safer and more secure we will be.  Let our prayer be the prayer of St. Faustina, who communicated to us the great devotion of Divine Mercy: “Jesus, I trust in you.  Jesus I trust in you.  Jesus I trust in you.”