11th
Sunday OT (2015)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church,
NOLA
Are
you courageous? Do you possess the strength of heart necessary to
speak the truth, to walk by faith, and to live in hope; to do always
and in every circumstance the right thing? Paul writes to the
Corinthians, “We are always courageous, brothers and sisters,
although. . .we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by
sight. Yet we are courageous. . .” Do we walk by faith? Live in
hope? Do we aspire to please the Lord? Why should we aspire to please
the Lord? “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of
Christ, so that each may receive recompense,” correction, and
repair. Christ will sit in judgment of our actions, whether good or
evil, and so it is Christ we must work to please. But b/c “we are
away from the Lord” and caught in the world of men, the temptation
to work for man's approval is nearly overwhelming. And so, we
desperately need courage: the strength of heart necessary to speak
the truth, to walk by faith, and to live in hope; the righteous
spirit required to turn the temptation of disastrous compromise and
to seed the world with the Good News so that the Lord's harvest may
yield abundant and excellent fruit.
Paul
says that we are always courageous, that our hearts are always strong
in the faith. But we might rightly suspect that he's flattering us,
so that we will hear and obey his call to faithfulness. You and I
both know that fighting the temptation to please the world with the
weapons of Christian courage is a day-to-day battle. Some days we
barely hold our own. Once and a while, we eek out a small win. One,
maybe two days in a lifetime, we are truly pressed against a wall,
and through sheer, muscular courage face down the temptation and
declare victory. But most days, most weeks and years, the fight seems
hardly worth the blood and sweat of a win. Hardly worth the time it
would take to muster a defense. C'mon, it's just a tiny compromise
in principle to keep the peace. We will gain so much in exchange for
something so small. How do I know that this is the right thing to do?
We all have different ideas of what's right. I don't want to lose my
job, my friends; anger my neighbors, my spouse, my kids. Everyone
else thinks this is OK; who am I to say otherwise? I feel like this
is right, so it must be right. We have the right to do this, so doing
it must be right, right? These are the small, daily challenges to
your courage that probe your heart, poking and prodding for
weaknesses so that the grand challenge to come might see you
defeated. The smallest seed—of cowardice, of bravery—can produce
abundant fruit, whether for good or for evil.
Jesus
grasps for a parable, an image that will help him to explain the
Kingdom of God. He settles on the image of a tiny mustard seed that
grows into an enormous tree. In his parable, the Kingdom of God is
“the largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the
birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.” This enormous tree,
deeply rooted and supporting many large branches, springs up from a
single, flyspeck of a seed. All those leaves, all those branches, the
weight of its trunk, the depth of its roots, its resting shade, all
of it comes out of the smallest of seeds. The smallest act of faith,
the tiniest word of hope, no matter how small, how apparently
insignificant the seed, properly sown and nurtured can spring up and
grow into a heart courageous enough to withstand the most savage
temptations wrought by the world of men. Jesus says that a farmer
sows his seed-wheat and overnight his harvest is ripe, ready for
reaping. When we sow the seeds of faith, hope, and love, the Kingdom
of God sprouts in our hearts—growing and growing and growing—just
waiting for the final reaping, waiting for the Christ to come so that
we might go before his judgment seat and have him weigh our harvest,
our words and deeds, whether good or evil. But before the harvest,
before our judgment, we are tested; probed, prodded, and poked, in
small ways and large, so that our courage might be measured.
Writing
to the Church in Thibaris in northeast Africa, in the first century,
St. Cyprian of Carthage warns the faithful there: “. . .the day of
affliction has begun to hang over our heads. . .so we must all stand
prepared for the battle.” Like most of his contemporaries, Cyprian
believed that the Anti-Christ roamed the world in his day and that
the Last Days were only weeks or months away; thus, he warns his
brothers and sisters in Christ that their martyrdom for the faith was
imminent. So, he exhorts them, “. . .a fiercer fight is now
threatening, for which the soldiers of Christ ought to prepare
themselves with uncorrupted faith and robust courage. . .” Our own
battles threaten, so we too are rightly exhorted to prepare ourselves
with an uncorrupted faith and a robust courage! It is unlikely that
our battles will end in violence and bloodshed, but this actually
makes the fight more dangerous for us. Threatened with a gun or a
knife, we would fight with all our physical strength and all our
determination to survive and win. But what if the faith is threatened
by a piece of legislation, an executive order, a court decision, or
the possibility of being ostracized for following Christ? What are
our weapons then?
Cyprian
tells the Christians in Thibaris, “Let us be armed, beloved
brethren, with our whole strength, and let us be prepared for
the struggle with an uncorrupted mind, with a sound
faith, with a devoted courage.” When we are tempted to
please the world of men, to compromise in the smallest way against
the faith, we are to arm ourselves with all the strength given to the
children of God: a mind uncorrupted by inordinate desires, base
passions, and irrational prejudices; a sound faith solidly rooted in
the apostolic tradition, guided by the Church's authentic teachers,
and lived with wholehearted charity; and a devoted courage, a heart
strengthened by a true love for God and an eagerness to see God loved
by all. When threatened, are we courageous? Do we reach up to Christ
and down into our spirit for the strength of heart necessary to speak
the truth, walk by faith, and live in hope; to speak, walk, and live
righteously with our God; to do always and in every circumstance the
right thing? Even when the right thing will take us to court, to
jail, to the unemployment line, the hospital, away from family and
friends?
Every
act of faith, every word of hope sows a tiny seed, a minuscule germ
of love from which the mighty tree of God's kingdom can take root and
grow. But the sower of these seeds must be courageous, stout-hearted,
and bravely immune to any temptation to worry about the approval and
applause of the world of men. It is Christ himself who will sit in
judgment of our words and deeds, whether good or evil; it is Christ
himself who will weigh our hearts, measure our trust, and sift from
us the wheat from the chafe. If you are courageous, go out and sow
the seeds that will bring about the Kingdom. If you live with a
spirit of cowardice, pray for strength and then go be strong anyway.
The battle against corruption in our faith is has always been with
us, is with us now, and will be with us until judgment day dawns. Arm
yourselves with the best weapons Christ and his Church have to offer,
and prepare to repel—with faith, reason, and love—the darker
spirits of this corrupting age.
__________________________
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