Homily for 19th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
19th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Aug. 12, 2007

Heb 11: 1-2, 8-19
Christian Brothers, Iona College, New Rochelle, N.Y.
Willow Towers, New Rochelle
Ursulines, Willow Dr., New Rochelle

“By faith Abraham obeyed” (Heb 11: 8).

Our 2d readings shift for 4 weeks to a series from ch. 11-12 of the Letter to the Hebrews.  The anonymous author of this magnificent treatise is concerned about the perseverance of those he’s addressing.  They seem to be wearying of the Christian faith.

In the 11th chapter, the examples of the Old Testament patriarchs are held before the Church.  These were men and women of faith.  (The author cites one female exemplar—11:31.  He could easily enuf have found more, of course.)  The author begins by giving us his understanding of what faith is—the only definition of faith in the Bible.  It’s “the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen” (11:1).

That’s a bit foggy.  I take it to mean that we act as tho what we hope for but can’t see—with either our eyes or our understanding—is quite real, quite certain.

The March of Abraham (Jozsef Molnar)

And Hebrews, after brief mention of Abel, Enoch, and Noah in the 5 verses omitted from our reading, comes to the great example of Abraham, whom St. Paul calls our father in faith (Rom 4:16), the father of all who believe God’s word.  Abraham is held up to us as a model of faith because “he obeyed when he was called to go out … not knowing where he was to go” (Heb 11:8); because he believed he and Sarah could conceive, in spite of age and past failure, “for he thought that the one who made the promise was trustworthy” (11:11); because “when put to the test he offered up Isaac … his only son” (11:17).

These were acts of faith—acts because Abraham had to do something.  Faith can’t be only intellectual and rational.  In fact, by any rational assessment, Abraham was crazy:  leaving father and homeland and kin because God promised him some unseen foreign land; remaining with Sarah when he could easily have had any of his slave girls or arranged a new marriage with the daughter of another sheikh; being ready to sacrifice the long-awaited son of the promise.  But whenever God asked something of Abraham, he obeyed; he acted.  That was faith, confidence in the one he couldn’t see or understand, hope in a future reality of a land and a people—the kind of immortality people of Abraham’s time understood.

The author of Hebrews speaks of Abraham’s family as looking to a heavenly homeland, better than what they’d left behind.  As far as we know, they didn’t have an idea of heaven; that’s really the homeland for the Christians to whom our letter’s written.  Not that we have much of an idea of heaven, either.  It isn’t going to be a pair of designer wings, a halo, a harp, and a puffy cloud.  It’s a place—to use language we can understand—worth desiring; a state of everlasting happiness, way more than we can conceive because we’ve never been happy for an extended period in this existence so full of worry, pain, and sorrow; a permanent relationship with the one we love, the one the Song of Songs calls “you whom my heart loves,” the one whose love “is more delightful than wine” (1:7,2), viz., God; and at the same time a joyous relationship with all those who love God and have been saved.

All that’s more than our minds can imagine; it requires faith to hope for this reality, to see in the life, ministry, and resurrection of Jesus “evidence of things not seen,” to believe God “has prepared a city” for us, which the Book of Revelation calls the new and eternal Jerusalem (ch. 21), where the Son of God will be our everlasting light.  Jesus told his apostles at the Last Supper that he was going to prepare a place for them, for in his Father’s house there’s abundant living space (John 14:2).

That promise of a place in the Father’s house, the promise of a city on high with God at its center, is a promise made not just to the apostles but also to us.  When following Christ seems difficult, when we’re weary of doing good, when Christ seems to ask too much of us in patience, suffering, fidelity—then we need faith like Abraham’s in what we hope for, what we can’t see.  Like Abraham, we’re asked—often—to sacrifice what’s dear to us, even our own selves:  our wants, our time, our comfort, our ego.  Like Abraham, we’re asked to be faithful to the people in our lives because we have a covenant relationship with them thru marriage, vows, family tie, or some kind of promise; or simply because they’re part of God’s plan for us.  Like Abraham, we’re asked to obey when we don’t understand where God’s leading us:  to obey the commandments, the Gospels, the teaching of the Church, the Rule, lawful civil authority.  Like Abraham, we remember that we’re “strangers and aliens on earth … seeking a homeland … a better homeland, a heavenly one” (11:13-14,16).  We’re never going to be content in this life, and we’re not supposed to be.  We don’t put our faith in our material possessions; we don’t put our faith in people—not family, not scientists, not politicians, not even priests; we don’t put our faith in political systems or man-made laws.  We put our faith only in the God of Abraham, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the one who keeps his promises (cf. 11:11), the only one who can content the deepest longings of our hearts.