07.11.2004 32nd Sunday Ordinary Season - Year C
First Reading: 2 Maccabaens 7,1-2,9-14 Psalm 16
Second Reading: 2 Thessalonians 2,16-3,5 Gospel Reading: Luke 20,27-38
"For not all have faith": with these words St Paul explains why Christians
will have much to suffer. There are "wicked and evil men" who are
as they are because they have no faith. Faith generates love, faith generates
wisdom and culture which cultivates peace and good works, faith looks to comfort
all, faith leads us to look for opportunities to give of ourselves. Faith is
a gift of the God of love, God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who offered
himself for us sinners.
Those who believe are able to offer themselves joyfully.
"For not all have faith": when a believer lives among people who do
not believe, he will have the sensation of being a lamb among wolves. Those
who are not believers, feel at ease when despising, limiting, conditioning and
making believers suffer. This is no novelty: history is full of examples, both
significant and insignificant, near and far, past, recent and contemporary.
St Paul is not intimidated by this situation. He knows that the Lord is faithful,
that He gives strength and protects from evil: He protects us, so that the hate
surrounding us does not enter our hearts and the incredulity that suffering
brings does not take root in our hearts. The Apostle recommends prayer and only
prayer: prayer that does not ask the Lord to stop the persecution, but to turn
it into an advantage for the spreading of the gospel and the joy of those who
embrace it!
The first reading is about persecution and describes a case that happened in
the reign of Antioch Epiphany, two centuries before Christ. Seven brothers chose
torture and death rather than disobey the laws of their religion, which harmed
no-one, or to act against their conscience and despise the God of their fathers.
Christians found themselves in this position not only during the times of St
Paul, but even today. I can think of many believers who suffer because of their
faith, because their choices clash daily with ways of thinking and doing of
those who despise their principles, both regarding life in the family and respect
for the life and purity of the heart and body: and all this simply because the
world despises Jesus.
"For not all have faith". Jesus himself suffered for the beauty of
his faith in God the Father, the friend of mankind who desires to win over sinners.
Even in Jesus' presence, there were those who did not want to believe. Faith
involves everything, even riches: hence those who were rich did not want to
believe in the revelation of the eternity of life and the existence of heaven
and hell. The Sadducees were among the wealthiest in Jerusalem: they tried to
create problems for those who had faith in Jesus with their reasoning for comfort.
Because of their own comfort, they would not accept the word of God beyond the
first five books of the Holy Scriptures in which there was no mention of a future
life. Jesus, however, knows how to read the Word of God with love and intelligence
and, therefore, even in the first five books he reads the Father's plans to
have us as his children in eternity. He did not create mankind to abandon them
at death, but to keep them with Him for ever: what love would it be otherwise?
And what faithfulness would His be? God is not the God of the dead, that is
of emptiness, of nothing, but God of the living and of Life. For Him we will
never die, but rather, when we pass on, our lives will no longer have those
limits that this world imposes on us. In the next world our love will no longer
be limited to a few, to a wife or a husband, but we will participate in the
fullness of the Father's love!
And Jesus rejoices in giving us some hints of how to approach this dimension
of love: some renounce marriage (an unheard of choice until now!) in order to
tell the world of different dimensions of love, God's dimensions, and to foretell
future life! Virginity given and accepted for the love of Jesus is a concrete
declaration of the resurrection which awaits us all. And if we await resurrection
we will not let ourselves be dominated by the riches and other honours of this
world, but we will hold on to our faith, even at the cost of suffering, even
at the cost of derision and injustice.
Today, let us renew our decision to live our faith seriously: the example of
a multitude of martyrs can help us, the news of the suffering of many of our
brothers throughout the world and the presence in our midst of people who have
renounced marriage in order to spread the news of the resurrection!