Bear witness to your faith

Here is the text of the homily I shared with the gathered community this weekend: a call to bear witness, even in difficult or challenging times.

An opportunity to testify

We have almost come to the end of the Liturgical Year.  In just two weeks’ time, we will begin the Season of Advent, the beginning of a new Church Year.  The readings provided for the liturgies during these final weeks of the year paint increasingly stark images.  Today, the prophet Malachi foretells a time of intense burning which will leave neither root nor branch.  Saint Luke also uses images of war, earthquakes, famines, plagues and signs in the heavens.  All of this would make for a blockbuster movie, yet I doubt whether God wants to use scare tactics in order to compel us to follow him.  The scriptures have always spoken of the great promise and hope that is entrusted to God’s people, and of the day when we will once again be one with Him in heaven.  These passages from scripture too are filled with this promise.

Listen again to the first words of the gospel: When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, Jesus said, ‘As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another.  The temple in Jerusalem was a masterpiece of engineering and artistry.  King Herod himself had had it built in magnificent glory, but like all physical buildings, it was but a shadow of the true glory of God, and because it was made of stones and mortar, it was subject to decay.  Eventually, even the beautiful temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in 70AD, yet even today, its ruins represent a holy place, a place of prayer, a place where hope for the future is still alive.  Jesus encouraged his disciples, as he encourages us today to cling not to a false sense of security, found in physical structures, but in hope of the eternal life that is yet to come.

People who were listening to Jesus asked him questions about the kingdom, and about how they would recognize the time when it was about to appear.  Jesus answered by warning them not to be misled by false prophets.  In fact, at another time when he was asked similar questions, he answered, About the day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.  Anyone else who claims to know the answers to these questions is lying, and we should not go after them. In fact the only one who knows, the only one we can trust is Jesus himself; since he is the way, the truth and the life, we can always believe in his words.

How then should the disciples of Jesus live our lives?  Saint Paul says that we should do our work quietly and earn our own living.  Instead of allowing every sign in the heavens to scare us, we should strive every day to be people of faith, people who trust in the promise of life, people who place our confidence in the living God.  In the meanwhile, be on the lookout for signs that confirm the arrival of the kingdom.  One of the most telling signs is persecution.  Even Jesus warns that they will arrest you and persecute you.  The first three centuries of the Church’s existence were marked with great suffering and persecution on the part of the early Christians.  During the Reformation, many in England suffered rejection and ridicule; in more recent times, during the French and Russian Revolutions, and even in our times, many Christians continue to suffer, yet their faith seems almost miraculously to be strengthened by their trials.

Like the disciples of every age, we too are being given an opportunity to testify to our time.  Ours is in invitation to allow our faith to guide our decisions and our understandings about life.  In the face of natural disasters, like the Typhoon that has ravaged the Philippines, ours is a call to bear witness to hope.  In the face of  controversial questions about when life begins or when it should end, ours is a call to believe that there is only one God, and we are not Him.  In the face of pressure to choose responses based on political correctness, ours is a call to recognize that unpopular choices are often a sign of something new that is coming to birth.  Like the pain experienced during childbirth, let us not be afraid to bear the pain of witnessing to our faith, and of trusting that not a hair on our heads will perish, indeed that something new, something wonderful is still to come.