Where Do I Find God?

Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
    Where do you find God?  A lot of people will talk about finding God in nature.  Maybe you find God in the lyrics of a song that, as the young people say, hits you right in the feels (that means it gave you an emotional response).  Hopefully, you find God in reading Scripture, and in the Mass and the Sacraments.  But there’s another unlikely place where we can find God.
    Maybe it’s strange to say, but can we find God in suffering?  Can we find God in pain and sorrow?  Can we find God in the down times of life?  Because on earth there is no place we can go where God is not.  And that includes even in the darkest times in life.
    Habakkuk the prophet is speaking for God not long before the Babylonian Exile in 587 BC.  Things are not going well for Judah.  Ever since King Solomon, most of the kings had been pretty bad, with a few shining exceptions.  Judah is on a downward trajectory away from the Lord.  And Habakkuk is crying for help, but God does not seem to be listening.  But God tells Habakkuk to be patient, and speak what God tells him, “For the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint.”  God promises something better for Habakkuk in the future, but He also reminds Habakkuk (in the sections we didn’t hear today) that He is in the midst of whatever happens, even if it seems dark and dismal.
    St. Paul in our second reading corresponds with St. Timothy for a second time, and reminds St. Timothy to hold fast to the gift of God that St. Timothy received in ordination when St. Paul laid hands St. Timothy.  St. Paul alludes to the fact that he is a prisoner.  He had been arrested and taken to Rome after the Jews tried to condemn St. Paul on trumped-up charges.  But because St. Paul was a Roman citizen, he could appeal to the emperor.  While the judgement was being decided (and we know that St. Paul was eventually beheaded by the Emperor Nero, so it didn’t turn out well).  But in the midst of that, and even the trial that Paul’s situation must have been for Timothy, St. Paul says not to give up, but “bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God.”
    I think we often like to pretend that following God means an easy life.  We may tell ourselves that if we’re living like saints, then trouble won’t find us.  But that’s not the case.  Many people who have followed God have suffered.  Think of the myriad army of martyrs who suffered simply because they followed Jesus, starting with St. Stephen, all the way to the martyrs of the 20th and now 21st centuries.  Think of Mary, who never sinned at all.  And yet, in September we remember Our Lady of Sorrows and the seven sorrows of Mary, culminating in watching her Son and God die on the cross.
    But Jesus dying on the cross is exactly the good news that the world needs.  It doesn’t sound like good news, but when we go beyond the surface, we realize what a great thing the crucifixion is.  In Christianity, we profess God who entered into everything that is truly human.  And that includes suffering.  God loves us so much, that He even experience in Jesus the sorrow, pain, and darkness of human suffering.  He was abandoned, misunderstood, and experienced the death of his friends.  He was betrayed, unjustly incarcerated, and unjustly put to death in the most shameful way possible.  Jesus went to the darkest part of human existence, and redeemed it.  He didn’t take it away on earth, but met us there so that we would not be alone when we suffer. 
    That is truly news that does not disappoint, the vision that presses on to fulfillment.  No matter what pain and sorrow we are going through–from a hang nail, to a broken heart from a break-up, to a hospitalization, and even to the loss of a friend or family member through death–Jesus is there, and He does not leave us alone.
    In the midst of our sorrows and pain, we need to stir into flame the gift of faith that we received in baptism, that gift of trust in Jesus that He will never abandon us.  Life may not be a rose garden, but if we unite it to Jesus, then there’s no better place to be than with him.   
 

Jesus' Landscaping Company

Twenty-seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time

            On Thursday I had the pleasure of going up to Camp Leelanau with the seventh-graders from St. Thomas Aquinas School.  I went to spend time with them and to offer Mass for them on Friday morning.  One of the things they did while there was a ropes course.  I was really impressed when they, while secured to a steel cable, had to jump from one platform to another, which was about 3-4 feet away.  Oh, and did I mention that they were about 20 feet in the air?

            Many of the students did jump, and really demonstrated to me an example of a very natural faith.  The kids had to have faith that they were securely fastened to the steel cables, and that if they jumped, they would land on the other side safe and sound, or just dangle from the cable if they missed.

            In the Gospel passage today, when the apostles ask for more faith, the Lord says that if they had just a small amount of faith, they could make a mulberry tree plant itself in the sea.  The point here is not so much that Jesus is opening a landscaping company, but that faith allows the disciple of the Lord to do what seems impossible.  The Lord is not advocating that, when we want to redecorate our yard, we make an act of faith, and then tell the maple tree to switch places with the oak tree in our front yard, or for the extra mound of dirt in the back yard to fill in the valley in our front yard, but to have faith in the work of the Lord: the salvation of our souls.

            What stands in the way of that salvation is not a mulberry tree, but sin.  Sin blocks the relationship that God wants to have with us by putting other, lesser goods higher than the will of God, which should be the greatest good that we’re pursuing.  It leads us to think that, rather than being a servant, who should be waiting on the master, and making sure he is happy, doing only what we were obliged to do by our status as servant, that we are the master who should be waited on.  It gives us a false view of reality.

            Now, we probably all know this, both intellectually and by experience.  And I’m sure that many of you have prayed that your temptations might cease.  Your words probably echoed the sentiments of Habakkuk from our first reading: “How long, O LORD?  I cry for help but you do not listen!  I cry out to you…but you do not intervene.  Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery?”  We may wonder why the Lord allows us to fall into the same, maybe major or grave, or minor sins.

            Or course, it isn’t the Lord’s fault that we sin.  When we sin we are exercising our free will.  But the Lord doesn’t just leave us to ourselves.  He gives us the great gift of the sacraments to assist us in making the Lord’s will our own, and choosing actions which are in accord with His will.

            In baptism, when either our parents or we first ask for faith, the Lord answers our prayers.  He gives us this gift of faith, to trust in the Lord and to overcome the obstacles of sin.  That’s right: all of you have the grace to avoid all mortal sins by virtue of your baptism.  And you have an even greater gift through Confirmation when the baptismal promises are reaffirmed and the gift of grace is increased.  By your baptism, God gives you all the sufficient grace for avoiding mortal sins.  He allows you to move the trees of sin which stand in the way of your holiness, into the abyss of the sea of darkness where sins belong.  We can think of the graces of baptism and confirmation like a spring, welling up in a river.  As long as we do not block the spring with the rocks of sin, then the waters will flow freely.  But we must allow, by our freedom, to let those waters flow.

            This teaching, that we all have the ability to remain free from mortal sin, may seem new to us.  You might be asking yourself, ‘Well, if I have this gift, how come it hasn’t worked yet?’  The gift is not forced upon us.  Like any other gift, it does not become ours if we do not receive it in freedom.  ‘Well then, Fr. Anthony, how do I receive it?’ 

            St. Paul tells us in the second reading: “stir into flame the gift of God that you have.”  Of course, when talking to St. Timothy, St. Paul was talking about his ordination, when St. Paul laid hands on St. Timothy to impart to him the spring of graces of the Sacrament of Holy Order.  But the same principle applies to our baptism and confirmation: we have that grace like hot embers, and all we must do is to stir that gift into flame by the fuel of our prayers to God, asking for His assistance to avoid sin and be faithful to the Gospel.  Just as a loving father does not give a snake to his child asking for a fish, or a stone when his child asks for a piece of bread, so our Father, if we truly want to avoid major sins, will give us the grace to avoid those sins and remain faithful to him. 

“God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather of power and love and self-control.”  We have the ability to do great things because of our faith in God granted to us by baptism, and confirmed in confirmation.  Let us remove the obstacles in our life that prevent that grace from flowing, so that we might enjoy forever the eternal banquet that Jesus has prepared for us, where He, the Master, will wait on us, the servants as a reward for our fidelity to Him on earth.