19th Sunday in Ordinary Time
St. Mary's Cathedral, Sydney
Wis 18:6-9; Heb 11:1-2, 8-19; Lk 12:32-48
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
8 Aug 2010
We begin our National Vocations Awareness Week today, where we emphasise in particular the necessity (for us) of people, men and women, answering God's call to service and leadership within the Church.
I explain regularly to young people that the situation is quite simple and clear. Unless a percentage of them answer God's call and step up for these leadership positions, then the Church community will fall over. I am quite sure that enough of them will answer the challenge.
Our first need is for priests and we thank God that six young men were ordained for the Archdiocese this year and that we have over forty others in training for Sydney. More are needed here and in some other parts of Australia the needs are even greater.
Any man or woman who is considering a Church vocation needs a strong Christian faith. A goodly number of altruists, those who serve others, are not Christians and a few are atheists. I believe it is a great help to persevering in service to have the conviction that the deepest sufferers, and those who are most difficult and ungrateful, are also children of God. Many modern atheists deny creation, and therefore deny that there is any natural purpose to be found on earth or in the universe.
We do not fall into this category nor do we fall into that category of Australians who believe that faith of any sort is irrelevant except perhaps when it encourages people to harm others.
Those who are so tolerant as to be indifferent and are also morally relativist, (each person decides for himself what activities are right or wrong) are often inclined to join the Charlie Brown of old and declare that it does not matter what you believe as long as you are sincere!
The author of our second reading from the Epistle to the Hebrews belong to this relativist category. He is convinced of the importance of faith for us and for our salvation.
Traditionally assigned to St. Paul, most scholars do not think Paul was the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, because the themes are different and the Greek is better. The letter itself does not claim Pauline authorship and it is not so much a letter, as the first completed Christian sermon we possess. Certainly it continues Paul's great task of explaining Jesus' role in the categories of Jewish theology, explaining how God's promises to his Chosen People are fulfilled in Christ and his followers, the new priestly people.
Faith is not simply a topic for our minds, although intellectual assent is required because it also involves the movement of our hearts, our sentiments and will.
Faith is quite different from the truth embedded in the claim that "seeing is believing". In heaven we shall not need faith, when we shall see God as he is. Faith accepts and rejoices in "the existence of realities that at present remain unseen".
Abraham, our father in faith, and Sarah believed in the promises God made to them, in the reality of these future blessings and they acted on these convictions. Abraham left his homeland to journey towards the Promised Land. We also have the extraordinary story of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his only son Isaac, although he believed that God's promise of a mighty progeny "as many as the stars of heaven and the grains of sand on the seashore" was to be fulfilled through Isaac. Whatever else might be said of this terrifying incident we can be absolutely sure that Abraham did not see the matter clearly.
Thomas Aquinas is typically useful and clear when talking about faith: "the act of faith" he wrote, "has for its end not a proposition, but a reality", which is Almighty God, the Mystery of Love, incomprehensible, indescribable, unimaginable, whom Jesus addressed as "father".
Neither Paul nor the author of Hebrews believed that the leap of faith was irrational or ran counter to all the evidence. Writing to the Romans Paul made it clear that God can be seen, or at least glimpsed in the nature of the things He has created. Once again Aquinas helps us. "Faith is concerned with invisible realities, but certain visible indications can help us towards it".
We are followers of Jesus and the person of Jesus, true God and true man, is the focus of our belief. He told us that this kingdom is not of this world and Hebrews takes up this theme explaining that we are "only strangers and nomads on earth" and that we are searching for the real homeland, that we are longing for a better homeland, a heavenly homeland".
In their journey to the Promised Land, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob lived in tents, while they looked forward to a city founded, designed and built by God.
Sometimes, and perhaps often, it is difficult to believe this. At other times, when things are bad, heaven can seem very appealing. It reminds me of the story of the man with bad influenza, who for half the time was frightened he would die, and for the other half of the time was frightened he would not!
More seriously, on many occasions God's creation of family, friends and circumstances can seem much too beautiful to leave; to say nothing of all the natural beauties of creations.
It is an understatement to say that death is always difficult. But one particularly strange Christian claim is to believe, in faith, that Christ has conquered death. And he has.
As believers we should thank God for the gift of faith, for the sense of direction and purpose which it gives. We should pray for those whose faith is weakened or lost and especially that we can do our part, under God, to hand on the faith to the next generations.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
