“Hold Fast to Hope” by Colleen O’Sullivan

“Hold Fast to Hope” by Colleen O’Sullivan

Tuesday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time 

So, when God wanted to give the heirs of his promise an even clearer demonstration of the immutability of his purpose, he intervened with an oath, so that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge might be strongly encouraged to hold fast to the hope that lies before us. This we have as an anchor of the soul, sure and firm, which reaches into the interior behind the veil, where Jesus has entered on our behalf as forerunner, becoming high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. (Hebrews 6:13-20)

“The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath. That is why the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.” (Mark 2:27b-28) 

Piety

Lord, today we ask you to nourish within us your ancient gift of hope. It is easy to be discouraged in the darkness that seems to surround us on every side, the violence we have seen at our Capitol, the growing numbers of people suffering from Covid-19. Send your Spirit to renew our spirits today, we pray.

Study

Did you make any New Year’s resolutions this year? It’s now a little past the middle of January, and I’d be willing to bet many of us are finding it a slog to keep those promises we made to ourselves. Good thing we took advantage of that first-month discounted membership rate at the gym because it’s questionable whether we’ll even still be working out in a couple more weeks. By the end of the month, most of us will have tossed the resolutions out the window and gone back to the same old, same old. 

Initial bursts of enthusiasm are often challenging to sustain. The Hebrews addressed in today’s first reading would readily have admitted that. They were gung-ho when they first became Christians. The writer takes care to praise their efforts on behalf of another, suffering church, perhaps the church at Jerusalem. Their initial burst of Christian fervor then waned. But, faith, the author points out, is for the long haul. It’s a way of life to be kept up forever.

The letter writer takes them back to the days of Abraham. God swore an oath to this patriarch of our faith. God promised him descendants as numerous as the sands on the beaches and the stars in the sky. How difficult must that have been to believe, though, the day God led him out into the wilderness, his and Sarah’s only son’s hand in his, and asked him to sacrifice that son? Abraham chose to persevere in faith, and God, in turn, kept that divine promise. 

Hope is not always easy to find. But it is sound advice to look back at God’s promises and how the Lord has kept them through the ages. It’s a good exercise to look back over our own lives once in a while, maybe on a retreat, because it’s in looking back and realizing how God has always been there leading us, sometimes down surprising paths, that helps us to walk ahead in hope. If God has been faithful throughout our lives, why would that change now? Why would it change in the future? God is not necessarily going to make life easy for us, but life shouts the truth that God will always be with us.

Hope is what keeps us going amid adversity. Years ago, I read Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who also happened to be Jewish. He was seized and sent first to Theresienstadt and then on to Auschwitz. After the war, he wrote that it was hope that had kept him going in that gruesome death camp. He concentrated on the love he felt for his wife, and the fervent hope that they would be together again. It turned out at the end of the war that she had died in Bergen-Belsen, but that hope of being together had sustained him where the hopeless quickly gave up and gave out. 

God promised us a Savior who would live with us and know firsthand what human beings experience. In the Gospel reading, we see that Jesus always has our welfare at heart. It was a Sabbath, and the disciples were hungry. Jesus let them glean from the wheat in the field. Right away, there was another confrontation, the third one, between Jesus and the Pharisees. The Pharisees said the Law prohibited harvesting on the Sabbath. Jesus didn’t argue about their use of the word harvesting, which seemed like overkill in the face of snacking to appease hunger pangs. He brought up an incident from King David’s life where he and his hungry men took the loaves of offering, which only priests were supposed to eat. What could the Pharisees say in the face of this story from their Scriptures? Jesus’ statement that the Sabbath was made for human beings that we weren’t created for the Sabbath is a sign of the Lord’s great loving-kindness toward us, another reason for hope in faith.

Action

When you have some time this week, look back over the twists and turns of your life. I hope you will see the working of God in the pattern. Sometimes we see God leading us to good things, and other times we see God saving us from the messes of our creation. Whatever your story, I hope this prayerful rumination leads you to renewed faith and hope in the Lord’s love for you.