Written by The question posed by the prophet in the first reading is the same as one asked in the last century by millions of Jews and other victims of the Nazis rampaging through Europe and perpetuating the Holocaust. It’s being asked today by Ukrainian Christians suffering at the hands of the invading Russian army. And it’s also one asked frequently by us when life takes a wrong turn and we are dogged by ill-health or other distressing problems. It’s ‘Why, Lord, and how long must this go on?’ And when thee s no immediate solution in sight, we wonder what we have done to deserve it while we also feel that God does not care or listen.
In the First Reading the Prophet Habakkuk in 6 BCE cries out against the injustices he and his fellow Jews were suffering at the hand of their Babylonian conquerors. It was a time of distress and great difficulty caused not just by their oppressors but also by the greed and corruption amongst their own people. The prophet was not afraid to ask serious questions, as we do, about God’s role in their suffering. Thus his anguished cry: how long, God, will you let this go on and not intervene?
After an interval of reflection, in the second part of the Reading the prophet finds an answer to his struggle: God will intervene, he says, but in God’s own good time and not anyone else’s. Although the response from God may seem slow, he is certain that come it will. In the meantime, however, he says that what God requires of his people is what he calls “faith”. He declares “the upright person will live by their faithfulness.” In spite of everything they are enduring, they will hold on in trust and obedience to God, persevering even when it apparently pays no dividends or even makes sense. He asks them: don’t give up on God, don’t lose faith.
In the Gospel Our Lord speaks about the power and nature of faith. Our faith may be weak, he acknowledges, but even a small amount of it, even as small as a mustard seed, can be enough to work wonders. What looks completely impossible to us can become possible if it is approached with faith. Drawing on the eastern custom of using language in the most vivid (exaggerating) way, he says that what looks completely impossible becomes possible if it is approached with faith. ‘Faith can move mountains …
“We have only to think of the number of scientific marvels, of the number of surgical operations, of the feats of endurance which today have been achieved and which less than 50 years ago would have been regarded as utterly impossible. If we approach a thing saying, ‘it can’t be done’, it will not; if we approach it saying ‘it must be done’, the chances are that it will. We must always remember that [in faith] we approach no task alone, but that with us there is God and all his power.” (William Barclay, The Gospel of Luke)
We live in an age where it is increasingly difficult to have that strength of faith Jesus asks of us. Our times are very different than his and the challenges to Christian belief more severe. When our health, relationships and lives are going well, we feel happy and full of hope; but the reverse is also true. When things aren’t going well, the bottom can fall out of our world and we can easily lack a sustaining faith or vision of anything beyond the present moment and the mere earthly life we live now. It’s faith in him, Jesus says, even as small as a seed, that provides the bigger vision or wider perspective beyond the ups and downs of our everyday lives and helps us cope.
So the plea the disciples to Jesus is ours too –’ Lord, increase our faith’.
Michael Campion
Holy Name, Jesmond
2 October 2022
Sunday Mass: Saturday 4pm, Sunday 10am 