The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today challenge us to maintain our faith in difficult times as we contemplate the mystery of God in our lives.
Faith connections
The reading from the Prophet Habakkuk presents God’s reply to the Prophet’s complaint.
* [2:4] The just one who is righteous because of faith shall live: the faithful survive the impending doom because they trust in God’s justice and wait patiently for God to carry it out. Several New Testament passages cite these words (Rom 1:17; Gal 3:11; cf. Heb 10:38) to confirm the teaching that people receive justification and supernatural life through faith in Christ.1
Psalm 9 praises God’s power and justice.
* [Psalms 9–10] Ps 9 and Ps 10 in the Hebrew text have been transmitted as separate poems but they actually form a single acrostic poem and are so transmitted in the Greek and Latin tradition. Each verse of the two Psalms begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet (though several letters have no corresponding stanza). The Psalm states loosely connected themes: the rescue of the helpless poor from their enemies, God’s worldwide judgment and rule over the nations, the psalmist’s own concern for rescue (Ps 9:14–15).2
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus cures a boy with a demon and addresses the need for faith.
* [17:17] Faithless and perverse: so Matthew and Luke (Lk 9:41) against Mark’s faithless (Mk 9:19). The Greek word here translated perverse is the same as that in Dt 32:5 LXX, where Moses speaks to his people. There is a problem in knowing to whom the reproach is addressed. Since the Matthean Jesus normally chides his disciples for their little faith (as in Mt 17:20), it would appear that the charge of lack of faith could not be made against them and that the reproach is addressed to unbelievers among the Jews. However in Mt 17:20b (if you have faith the size of a mustard seed), which is certainly addressed to the disciples, they appear to have not even the smallest faith; if they had, they would have been able to cure the boy. In the light of Mt 17:20b the reproach of Mt 17:17 could have applied to the disciples. There seems to be an inconsistency between the charge of little faith in Mt 17:20a and that of not even a little in Mt 17:20b.3
Scripture scholar Peter Edmonds SJ asks how can we build a rich vision for a life of faith by looking at the different ways in which the evangelists use the word?
Matthew challenges the Church of today to acknowledge its ‘little faith’, as he did his disciples when they failed to cure the epileptic boy. ‘If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there and nothing will be impossible for you”’ (17:20). A similar saying about faith moving mountains is included in Matthew’s account of the withered fig-tree which he reproduces from Mark (21:21). Again faith and prayer go together.4
Jeanne Schuler comments that Habakkuk questions the justice of God. Is this punishment proportionate to our sins? Yahweh is not silent. God’s timetable is not ours. Prophets must imprint the urgency of our need for God in every heart. The city may be destroyed and the people enslaved. But hold fast to the vision and you will live.
John Lewis faced the violence of Jim Crow as a young man. Beaten at the lunch counter in Nashville, in the streets of Birmingham, and on the bridge in Selma, he felt the fire of injustice in every bone. But violence did not own him. Elders in the movement showed him the power of resistance and redemptive suffering. The everyday cruelties of racist society did not overcome his faith in the beloved community. The vision he embraced as a young man enlivened him until his last days.
This is the feast day of St. Dominic. Dominic was called from a contemplative life to fight a heresy that divided the Christian community. There is often a shine to errors. To hold fast to God we must learn to think. Not all questions can be answered. But God welcomes humanity in its wholeness. Dominic, the preacher, taught an understanding that sustains faith.5
Don Schwager notes that Jesus tells his disciples that they can "remove mountains" if they have faith in God. The expression to "remove mountains" was a common Jewish phrase for removing difficulties. A wise teacher who could solve difficulties was called a "mountain remover". Don quotes “Faith as a grain of mustard seed,” by Origen of Alexandria (185-254 AD).
"The mountains here spoken of, in my opinion, are the hostile powers that have their being in a flood of great wickedness, such as are settled down, so to speak, in some souls of various people. But when someone has total faith, such that he no longer disbelieves in anything found in holy Scripture and has faith like that of Abraham, who so believed in God to such a degree that his faith was reckoned to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:6), then he has all faith like a grain of mustard seed. Then such a man will say to this mountain - I mean in this case the deaf and dumb spirit in him who is said to be epileptic - 'Move from here to another place.' It will move. This means it will move from the suffering person to the abyss. The apostle, taking this as his starting point, said with apostolic authority, 'If I have all faith, so as to remove mountains' (1 Corinthians 13:2). For he who has all faith - which is like a grain of mustard seed - moves not just one mountain but also more just like it. And nothing will be impossible for the person who has so much faith. Let us examine also this statement: 'This kind is not cast out except through prayer and fasting' (Mark 9:29). If at any time it is necessary that we should be engaged in the healing of one suffering from such a disorder, we are not to adjure nor put questions nor speak to the impure spirit as if it heard. But [by] devoting ourselves to prayer and fasting, we may be successful as we pray for the sufferer, and by our own fasting we may thrust out the unclean spirit from him." (excerpt from COMMENTARY ON MATTHEW 13.7.19)6
The Word Among Us Meditation on Habakkuk 1:12–2:4 suggests it would seem irreverent to accuse God of anything. But God welcomes our honest prayers. In fact, he wants us to bring him our complaints about pain and suffering, especially when it seems to serve no purpose.
God doesn’t punish Habakkuk for daring to speak up; he responds with a mysterious promise, a vision that “presses on to fulfillment; . . . if it delays, . . . it will surely come” (Habakkuk 2:3). Trust me, God tells him. I am doing something even in this horrible situation. Watch and wait.
What was true for Habakkuk is also true for us. We may be faced with suffering—whether sudden and piercing tragedy or a piling up of everyday frustrations. It’s better to turn to God and vent at him than to despair, or worse, to grit our teeth and bear it. We can always trust that our Father hears our cries and will answer in his good timing.7
Friar Jude Winkler compares Habakkuk to Job in the question of why God allows evil people to flourish. The disciples sought to heal through their own power. Friar Jude reminds us that trust in God is the source of the courage we need to live our faith.
A post by Franciscan Media on Saint Dominic, Saint of the Day for August 8, shares how he came face to face with the then virulent Albigensian heresy at Languedoc. The Albigensians–or Cathari, “the pure ones”–held to two principles—one good, one evil—in the world. All matter is evil—hence they denied the Incarnation and the sacraments… Dominic therefore, with three Cistercians, began itinerant preaching according to the gospel ideal. He continued this work for 10 years, being successful with the ordinary people but not with the leaders.
The Dominican ideal, like that of all religious communities, is for the imitation, not merely the admiration, of the rest of the Church. The effective combining of contemplation and activity is the vocation of truck driver Smith as well as theologian Aquinas. Acquired contemplation is the tranquil abiding in the presence of God, and is an integral part of any full human life. It must be the wellspring of all Christian activity.8
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, shares a practice from author and educator Anne Hillman, who invites us to contemplate how we can move toward a deeper sense of connectedness by nurturing what Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) called “the energies of Love.” Center for Action and Contemplation faculty member Cynthia Bourgeault found Hillman’s book The Dancing Animal Woman full of “deep feminine insights that have opened doors long closed.”
Being tender. First, I learned to be tender with myself; to tend the needs of my soul. Then I began to tend the other which is also my self. If I am not tending, caring for some small portion of the living creation, how can I commune with that creation, be it the earth or a child, in any but the most sentimental way? A woman learns, in caring for an infant, that she becomes bonded. A person who tends the land or gives to another discovers the same bond. These are not moral niceties, they are part of the mystery. They are law.
In this kind of communion with life, new languages arise in our bodies: languages of awe and wonder, gratitude and a joy that is overflowing. They soften us. . . . The more gratitude or awe I feel, the more life shows forth its beauty and terror, the more my life is graced. These are the languages of being. Of being alive. This is a life lived with passion: com-passion. . . .
There we await the mystery.9
The faithlessness we may encounter in our environment is a call to trust God as the Spirit guides us to build faith through our relationships with others.
References
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