In our readings today, we are illuminated in our hearts and in our minds as to how important it is to depend more on God and to trust in him. In our first reading from the prophet Habakkuk, who lived in Judah toward the end of the seventh century before Christ, during a time of social corruption, violence, and the looming threat of Babylonian invasion, this prophet raised a cry that echoed through the ages: “How long, O Lord, I cry for help, but you do not listen.”
Habakkuk, in his despair and anguish, gives voice to our own difficulties at times—those same struggles every believer experiences when suffering under injustice or silence from heaven. Yet God responds. He responds not with an immediate solution, but with a promise.
Our Lord reminds him that “the rash one has no integrity, but the just one, because of his faith, shall live.” This promise of God becomes a cornerstone of biblical theology, later quoted by Saint Paul in his Letter to the Romans and in his Letter to the Galatians, to express that righteousness comes not through visible success, but through steadfast faith, which endures even the saddest of times.
My dear brothers and sisters, when we wait in faith, it transforms our impatience into fidelity. We learn what it means that the righteous live not by what they see, but by what they believe and how they live.
In the second reading, Saint Paul is writing to Saint Timothy. Saint Paul, most likely writing from a prison in Rome, urges his protégé Timothy to continue to look after the flock—the faithful, the converts in Ephesus. Timothy here is feeling discouraged, sad, and disheartened by the imprisonment of Paul, within whom, of course, he had seen God’s power at work.
And so Paul writes to him these words: “I remind you to stir into flame the gift of God that you have through the imposition of my hands.”
Here, of course, we have one of the original allusions to ordination—the reception of Holy Orders. We see that these sacraments are not something the Church invented in the third or fourth century. They go all the way back to the apostles, and they come from Jesus himself, who imposed his hands on the apostles, prayed for them, and made them his first priests, bishops, and apostles.
He gave them the power to do things that only God could do—not only the physical things like healing blindness, raising the dead, cleansing lepers, and walking on water—but even the spiritual things like the forgiveness of sins, things that only God could do. And yet, he gave that ministry to mere mortal beings.
This imposition of hands from a validly ordained bishop—in this case Saint Paul upon Timothy—has the power, by God’s grace, to create new priests, new bishops, and the deacons who will help them. Paul calls Timothy to bear hardship for the Gospel with the strength that comes from God, and to guard the rich trust, the deposit of faith, through the Holy Spirit dwelling within.
We know that Saint Timothy took these words to heart, because he too eventually enkindled his zeal for the Kingdom of God and died a martyr. We are told that Timothy continued to shepherd the Christians of Ephesus, and when they were confronted by a violent pagan procession that desecrated the city, he courageously proclaimed Christ and was beaten to death for his testimony. In the end, Timothy truly stirred into flame the gift he had received.
And so too with us—we are called to trust. To trust, notwithstanding our lack of faith at times. In the Gospel today, the apostles ask Jesus to “increase our faith.” So too, we need to ask the Lord to increase our faith, so that we can cling to him more authentically, more consistently, more faithfully, and more humbly.
We must come to a point in our spiritual lives where we can say, as he tells us in the Gospel, “We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.” Let us go above and beyond, and love Jesus with all our hearts, trusting in him to fulfil within us all the beautiful things that only he can bring about.
Amen.
Add comment
Comments