October 3, 2010
Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
By Rev. Joe McCloskey, SJ
How long, O LORD? I cry for help but you do not listen! I cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not intervene. Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and clamorous discord. Habakkuk 1:2-3
For this reason, I remind you to stir into flame the gift of God that you have through the imposition of my hands. For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control. So do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord, nor of me, a prisoner for his sake; but bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God. 2 Timothy 1:6-8
And the apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.” The Lord replied, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to (this) mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” Luke 17:5-6
Piety
Piety flows out of the strength of our faith. Faith is a gift. It empowers us to do the impossible. Imagine what would happen if we had the faith the size of the mustard seed. We would be able to say to a mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea,” and it would obey us. What am I willing to ask the Lord? I know I have never asked enough. We are all waiting to be asked to do something important for the Lord but it seems we are never asked. The better question is what am I willing to do for the Lord? I know I want to be a Spiritual Director. Yet no matter how many people call be a Spiritual Director, I realize I can never work with as many as I would like to. How can I do enough for the Lord who died for me? What return can I make to the Lord for all that he does for me? How I companion people on their journey to the Lord needs the vision of faith. How I see Christ as the Way, the Truth and the Life, is how my faith takes form. How I nourish my faith by spiritual reading, Sacraments and Prayer is how my piety finds nourishment and my faith grows. The road of faith in Christ takes us up to Jerusalem with him. Piety is faith given the direction of the road of Christ that will lead us to the Resurrection. Spiritual direction allows us to see more clearly that there is no bypass of the cross of Christ. Christ identifies with the lowest and the least of our lives and our journey to Christ helps us to do what can be done for those in our lives who suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Spiritual Direction helps us to live our lives with the view of Christ from his Cross.
Study
Our study reveals to us that we are unprofitable servants. We do too often only what we are obliged to do. Our study teaches us how to love as we our challenged to give our lives for the sake of others. Study makes true love possible. There is no love that is easy since the bottom line of love is the giving of our own lives for the sake of others. Study brings us to the Christ meaning of our lives. He came for us. We learn from him to live our lives as people for others. Our efforts to do more than what is asked of us make us into the profitable servants of the gospel. We come in from the field of our labors and feed the Christ of the other by doing for them what we would have done for ourselves.
Action
The just one lives because of his faith. God takes the ordinary of our lives and makes it important by our love. Our actions are not to be judged by virtue of how important they are. They are to be judged by how much love we do what we do. The thirty years of Christ’s hidden life make sense out of the little we think we do as unprofitable servants. Love does more than make our world go round. Love is the deeper level of life from which we can look at our lives and find the deeper meaning of a life lived in Christ. God gave us a spirit of power and love and self-control. What we do for the sake of Christ is what we do in our love for one another. Our norm of life is the living out the example of Christ in all the saints down through the ages. We are called to be updates of Christ in the way we give our lives for a better world. Because of our faith in Christ we shall live. Because of our faith, we are transparencies of Christ.
