During Ordinary Time, the readings on Sunday generally offer us a theme from our day to day lives and invite us then to find Jesus or the Gospel in this theme, and this Sunday the theme is very easy to identify – perseverance in faith/prayer.
The First Reading, taken from Exodus, is about a rather grueling battle between the Israelites and a desert people called the Amelek, where success depended on Moses’ ability to keep his arms extended in prayer. In the Gospel Reading were given the example of a widow who through her persistence, was able to wear down even a dishonest Judge to render a decision in her favor. We even find St. Paul’s admonition to Timothy to be “persistent” in the Second Reading. Rarely is the theme so obvious.
Now something that makes the theme interesting is relating it to the theme of last Sunday’s readings which were about healing. In last Sunday’s readings, we are presented in the Old Testament Reading with the Prophet Elisha’s healing of Naaman a military commander from a neighboring country called Aram, a people, when all things were considered was not particularly powerful, like the Amalek of the Old Testament Reading of this Sunday. In the Gospel Reading, last Sunday we were given the case of Jesus healing 10 lepers and one, a Samaritan it turns out, coming back to thank him. In the first reading last week, Naaman as well thanked Elisha for healing him, somewhat to Elisha’s embarrassment because Elisha did not particularly like (probably because he was a foreigner, hence a pagan, and even a military commander of this foreign, and presumably rival country).
So the Readings from last Sunday were about healing while the Readings this Sunday were about perseverance. Do we see a connection from the experience of our day to day lives? Probably because most of us don’t necessarily get healed right away. And some of us may actually never get healed, or see the healing of a loved one, despite our most sincere or urgent of prayers.
Taking this a bit further, we can be certain that if our prayers are specifically for healing, every single one of us will come to a point in our lives when that specific prayer will not be answered, as everyone of us will one day die and thus leave this world.
So what is the point of being “persistent” when we know that this prayer will at times not be answered (or will be refused)?
Well the first readings of the last couple of weeks may help us understand. By all accounts, the book of Exodus was compiled a number of hundred years after the event. The priests then putting in writing the account of Exodus, probably during the time of the Israelite monarchy, would have remembered (or chosen) to include the account of the Israelite battle with the Amalek in the desert of Sinai, probably because the story resonated with them (and the Israelite people) in their own time. The Amalek may have been the first foreign enemies of Israel but they were certainly not the last. In the time of the Judges and the Monarchy, the Israelites faced the neighboring peoples called Philistines, the Moabites, and the Edomites (interestingly enough, they never actually fought a significant war with Naaman’s Arameans). And in each case, there would have always been the worry, “will we prevail?” And the message of the priests was “pray to our God and we will succeed.”
So the people prayed and Israel eventually defeated the Philistines. The people prayed again, Israel defeated and occupied the neighboring country of the Moabites. And the people prayed once more when going off to battle against the Edomites – there are even Psalms in the Bible which note this impending battle against the Edomites – and once again the Israelites prevailed. But these were all, if worrisome battles, nevertheless against “B class” countries like Naaman’s Aram from last Sunday’s Readings.
Eventually came the bigger hitters. The Assyrians. The Israelites prayed, and they lost. Or at least the Kingdom of Israel was destroyed. After destroying that Northern Kingdom of Israel, the Assyrians continued to southward to lay seige to Jerusalem, threatening the destruction of even the Kingdom of Judah. But there suddenly the Assyrian army was beset by plague. A very fortunate turn of events, indeed possibly a miracle! The Assyrian army turned around and went home. And Judah was safe for another 100 years.
But then came the Babylonians. In the time of the prophet Jeremiah they laid siege to Jerusalem. The people prayed once more. And this time,
Or was it the end of the story?
When in trouble, we all probably pray a lot to God. And if we’re honest, _a lot of times_, we somehow get by. Little miracles do seem to happen. Even big ones do seem to happen.
But eventually, our luck seems to run out. (And I’m using the word _luck_ here with purpose). And we know that it certainly will run out eventually, because every single one us will eventually die (to meet our maker).
So what then is the point of praying if it all can be explained by luck? And yes, THE SAME SET OF EVIDENCE (both in the Bible and in our own lives) can be interpreted as both the result of luck and God’s intervention.
So why believe?
Well, the crises in our lives will not go away whether we believe in God or not. And I do believe that it _is_ easier to navigate them, if one believes that there is a God on our side helping us through them. Further, when finding ourselves staring at disaster, and despite the odds, suddenly things turn better, if we believe, we have someone to thank.
When I was in the seminary, we went several times to the Shrine of Our Lady of Pompei in Italy. There among the _hundreds_ of ex-voto pictures given to the Shrine in thanksgiving to miracles attributed to the work of the Blessed Virgin Mary, I counted no fewer than 4 incidents in which a child fell off a train and miraculously survived. Now, one _could_ attribute this merely to coincidence that the child happened to fall into a field rather than into a post or building or street or fall under the train itself. But what an unbelievably fortunate coincidence, that the child lived! And if one does not believe, who would one thank? It would seem _to me_ rather inconceivable to not be able to thank _someone_ for such a wonderfully fortunate coincidence (miracle).
So (1) the difficulties of our lives do not go away whether we believe or not, (2) the fortune incidents in our lives (when we suspect we deserved much worse but somehow squeaked by) don’t go away whether we believe or not, and whether we believe or not, (3) we will all eventually fail and die.
I do believe that all of these realities are much easier to navigate if we do believe that we do have God in our lives and at our sides. And even regarding the final failure that faces us all, death, IF WE BELIEVE, we believe that even death doesn’t have the final say, that in Christ’s death and resurrection, which we celebrate each time we come to Mass, we remember that this final say belongs to God. So while we may not search for death, we believe that even death is not the end.
So what a great gift we have in our Faith! And why it is something that can help us throughout our lives, in the good times, in the bad times, and especially when we approach our end here on earth. If we believe, we _can_ navigate it all, remembering that truly nothing can separate us from our God who created us, who loves all of us, and who will eventually bring us all home.
No comments:
Post a Comment