Sunday, October 3, 2010

How do we live in faith?

The texts in the Roman Catholic Lectionary today invite us to ask the question about how we live. What are our expectations? What is our response to the fulfillment or the apparent failure to realize the expectations? The events in life may have biased our response to this question. We have almost always realized expectations or perhaps we have often been disappointed. The Prophet Habakkuk is advised to wait on God. The proud will be impatient. The misunderstanding of our place in the scheme of things may cause us to attribute more importance to our desires and will than it is best for our growth in the intimate relationship with the Divine. The ancients try to tell us that this is not a relationship between equals. It is a relationship initiated and maintained by God. It is the gift of delight in His creature. It is a journey to fulfillment of God’s will for us which faith in the unseen and faith beyond the limits of our senses is required. The full vision is not likely to be ours as it is far beyond the limits to which we can usually surrender our human nature but the vision and the promise of kinship with the Divine are revealed in the lives of those we encounter and within which we recognize the action of the Divine. Fr Larry Gillick picks up on the theme in Luke’s Gospel that entering the Kingdom will be a violent attack on our ego. Jesus delivers the faith we will need to surrender ego and be prepared to be “washed in the blood of the Lamb” not as heroes earning recognition and glory but as servants doing the will of the Master.

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