Today we hear for the only time in the
3-yr Sunday cycle from the prophet Habbakuk. This prophet comes
right before the Babylonian exile and he sees it unfolding right
before his eyes. God seems to be abandoning His people to these big
nasty bullies, and the Prophet Habbakuk tries to intervene: “How
long, O Lord?!” Don't you see this evil people rising up – they
will certainly wipe your people out! And what does God do? God
doesn't give him a direct answer. I think all of us can relate to
this prophet: we see evil in our world, we see the success and
worldly praise of the wicked. We ourselves throughout our life will
have to suffer tragedy, injustice, destruction and abandonment.
Sometimes it's a small thing: we get sick and feel weak and can't
even stand the smell of food. Other times it's a big thing: loss of
human life, a falling out between friends as we go separate ways. We
ourselves cry out to God: “Why, Lord? Why did you have to take him?
When will you stop this hurting?”
What is God's answer? Instead of
speaking directly, he tells Habbakuk: “Hold on to the vision and
pass it on. Wait for it! It will not disappoint!” God calls
us to hope – to remember that not all is lost, and that He has a
plan. God wants us to stake our lives on Him,
not on the things He gives us, and that's why sometimes He takes
those safety nets away.
CCC1820 Christian hope unfolds from
the beginning of Jesus' preaching in the proclamation of the
beatitudes. The beatitudes raise our hope toward heaven as the new
Promised Land; they trace the path that leads through the trials that
await the disciples of Jesus. But through the merits of Jesus Christ
and of his Passion, God keeps us in the "hope that does not
disappoint."88 Hope is the "sure and steadfast anchor of
the soul . . . that enters . . . where Jesus has gone as a forerunner
on our behalf."89 Hope is also a weapon that protects us in the
struggle of salvation: "Let us . . . put on the breastplate of
faith and charity, and for a helmet the hope of salvation."90 It
affords us joy even under trial: "Rejoice in your hope, be
patient in tribulation."91 Hope is expressed and nourished in
prayer, especially in the Our Father, the summary of everything that
hope leads us to desire.
Hope then is
founded on our faith in the Cross. And that is God's great answer to
the questions we have in life. When we ask “Why Lord?” He does
not give us a straight answer. Rather, God tells us a story, a story
about His Son who freely chose the most painful death so that we
could be healed from all the suffering in our world. God says, “Look
at the Cross and see how much I love you.”
We are
called to faith, just as Jesus says in the Gospel, “If
you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this
mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would
obey you.” Jesus wants us to
acknowledge that God is God and we are not – and when we do this,
then we will move obstacles (or God will do it for us).
So
when we are confronted with suffering in life (and it certainly will
come), let us every day look to the Cross, let us remember God's
answer, let us declare it to ourselves and witness it to others.
Lord Jesus, in the Eucharist from this Mass, fill our hearts with the
healing that you alone bring to the world!
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CCC1821 We can therefore hope in the
glory of heaven promised by God to those who love him and do his
will.92 In every circumstance, each one of us should hope, with the
grace of God, to persevere "to the end"93 and to obtain the
joy of heaven, as God's eternal reward for the good works
accomplished with the grace of Christ. In hope, the Church prays for
"all men to be saved."94 She longs to be united with
Christ, her Bridegroom, in the glory of heaven:
(Teresa of Avila) Hope, O my soul,
hope. You know neither the day nor the hour. Watch carefully, for
everything passes quickly, even though your impatience makes doubtful
what is certain, and turns a very short time into a long one. Dream
that the more you struggle, the more you prove the love that you bear
your God, and the more you will rejoice one day with your Beloved, in
a happiness and rapture that can never end.95
God's love is meant to be the cause of
our actions, not the result. We serve God because He has loved us so
completely and unconditionally in our lives, not
because we are trying to win Him over to us. The second
brother in the parable of the prodigal son was the opposite: He tried
to love His Father in order to earn things. God is madly in love
with us already, but our backwards world makes us forget that so
easily because in school and work we are constantly trying to climb
ladders, receiving praise for the good we do and meriting rewards for
it. God is not like that.
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