Lord, please help us increase our faith so we can create a culture of life

Homily for the 27th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Cycle C

Good morning!   The theme of the readings for this Sunday is faith. This is also Respect Life Sunday.   I’ll focus on faith and then turn to how our faith is the foundation that supports our Respect for Life.

In today’s Gospel why did apostles ask Jesus to increase their faith? It’s because Jesus had given them a warning in the passage just before the one we read.   He said those who lead others to sin should be cast into the sea with a millstone tied around them.   So the apostles didn’t want to be subject to the punishment Jesus spoke about!  They needed a boost in faith.

Jesus knew the apostles were lacking in faith and wanted to make a point.  Jesus uses an example of a plant they were familiar with.  He tells them that if they had faith the size of a mustard seed they could command a mulberry tree to be uprooted moved into the sea and it would obey them.   The mustard seed was the smallest of all seeds barely the size of a pinhead.   Jesus was trying to tell the apostles they barely had any faith at all. 

Now, another word used for faith at the time was loyalty.   If we think of faith in terms being loyal to the one you love, Jesus was also telling the apostles that their loyalty to him was severely lacking. Jesus said if they had even little bit of loyalty they could do great things.   A few weeks ago Jesus told his followers they needed to be dedicated to him rather than one’s family by blood relation.  This sounds hard, but Jesus was saying that his family was those loyal to him and his mission of bringing the kingdom of God to the world. 

Now I’ve been talking about faith, but what is faith?   As mentioned earlier it’s being loyal to one you believe in, which is God.   It’s also belief in the truth revealed by God.   Faith isn’t something we can achieve on our own; it’s a gift from God, made possible through the Holy Spirit.   Faith is also a personal act of the human person, which is the free response to the gift of God revealing himself.   Even though faith is a personal act, we can’t come to it all on our own.   When God freely gives us the gift of faith, usually it comes to us through other believers in a community of faith.   As believers we have received the faith from God through others. Once we’ve received the gift of faith, our love of Jesus should motivate us to share our faith with others. We should pass on the gift.

However, sometimes we may be reluctant to share our faith.  We live in a culture that is increasingly “faithless”.  We feel pressured not to share our faith, as it’s not politically correct.  But, St. Paul reminded Timothy in our second reading today not to be ashamed his faith, reminding him he was not given a spirit of cowardice, but one of power, love, and self control.   We need to keep this in mind and have confidence that we too have been strengthened through the sacrament of Baptism and Confirmation to live and share our faith.  

As I mentioned earlier this is Respect Life Sunday.   Our Catholic faith teaches us that each person is created in the image and likeness of God.  This is why every person deserves to be treated with dignity and respect from conception to natural death.  Many times we find this teaching on life at odds with the culture we live in. The culture proclaims a message of doing what’s best for number one: It’s all about me.  I should be free to do what I want to do and not worry about how my choices affect others.  This attitude leads to death and destruction of lives of others because of being selfish.  

The prophet Habakkuk in the first reading spoke of this same situation, crying out for help to a God who seemed absent.  He cried out “Violence” but you did not intervene. Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery?  These are the same things we cry out for the issues of our day: The violence of abortion which takes live of innocent children, misery of our elderly population who are left alone and abandoned, and the ruin of families who have been effected by loss of jobs and homes due to focus only on profit rather than people. 

It’s tough to live your faith in a world where you are always swimming upstream and never making any progress.  But the prophet Habakkuk tells us that the Lord answered him in his crying out for help saying: the just one, because of his faith, shall live.   Now, How can we combat the challenges of our culture?  By living our faith showing love for God and our neighbors one person at a time.  We can build a culture of life.   If each of us can live our lives showing respect and dignity toward each person it can add up to do great things.          We have many opportunities to do this in our own parish.

-       Signing up for a time to pray and witness at the 40 days for life campaign.

-       Joining our youth & hundreds of others who will be at the Life chain on Sunday from 2:30 to 3:30 pm in downtown Indianapolis.

-       Volunteering to help young women in crisis pregnancy through the Gabriel project. 

-       Visiting a sick or shut in parish member at their home or a nursing home facility. 

Please consider dedicating some time each moth to build up the culture of life.

If you feel like the apostles and need to increase your faith you can get a boost by participating in a Christ Renews His parish retreat.  There’s one coming up for the Men October 18-19 or the Woman’s in the Spring.

Remember, we can make a difference in our lives and the lives of others through living and sharing our faith. I pray that each and every one of us ask Jesus the same that the apostles did to increase our faith, and respond by doing great things to show your loyalty to God.