HOMILY FOR THE TWENTY-SEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME YEAR C

AGORSOR AARON AGBESHIE

HABAKKUK 1:2-3;2:2-4/ PSALM 95/ 2TIMOTHY 1:6-8, 13-14/ LUKE 17:5-10

THEME: OUR FAITH MUST BE QUALITATIVE

In our Liturgy for today, we are invited to develop a qualitative faith in God. This is because faith gives us a new vision of the world. Without it we see only the darker side of life. Indeed, we become slaves to our fears and anxieties. It is faith which liberates us and makes us see the Spirit of power and love at work in our lives. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Faith is a theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because he is truth itself. The Church does not impose faith issues on us. This means that each one of us must strive to build his or her faith. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses are examples of Faith (Hebrews 11).

In the First Reading, the believer is impatient with God: “How Long, Yahweh am I to cry for help while you will not listen (Hab. 1:2)?” the believer sees injustice, tyranny, and violence. He sees all things, which come from foreign oppression and he believes that Yahweh stands by idly, will do nothing to right these wrongs. This is the complaint the believer has. God’s mill grinds slowly but with certainty. Yahweh answers the faithless believer “Write the vision down; inscribe it on tablets to be easily read, since this vision is for its own time only” (2:2-4).Qualitative faith has some characteristics:
The first is man’s realization that he is utterly dependent upon God for the good results of his deeds. As a school of thought once said ‘Work as if everything depended upon you; trust as if everything depended upon God.’ In order to speed up the plan of God we must cooperate.
The second quality of faith is that God alone knows man’s mind better than man does. If that is the case, then man should allow God to make the final decision in human affairs and should be patient with God until that decision is made. Such also was the philosophy of Mahatma Ghandi who said “God alone knows the mind of a person and the duty of God is to act as he is directed by his inner voice.

The Psalmist reminds us of the fact that it was due to the faithlessness of the Israelites that God was not pleased with them; that they did not see the Promised Land. That is how it will be for us if we do not have faith in God, we will not realize our destiny. We will miss every opportunity.
In the Gospel reading, the servant does the ploughing, and herding of sheep. When he returns, the master does not tell him to sit down and take it easy. He tells him, “Prepare my supper” and washes the dishes. St. Luke is by no means intimating that the master is a slave driver, but rather telling us subtly that the servant’s work is never finished. So it is with the work of the Priests and other Christians. They must constantly work to spread abroad Jesus’ Gospel in the Christian community. Indeed God owes us nothing for living good, Christian lives. His favours and blessings are matters of grace, they cannot be earned. We cannot even meet the basic requirement of discipleship from our own goodness and strength. Only through faith can we do what is required of us. Thus you can now understand why the disciples asked for an increase in faith.

In the second reading, Paul tells Timothy: “Guard the treasure put into your charge.” The treasure is the content of the deposit of faith handed onto us by our ancestors, the Apostles. In the same way Priests and Laity are to guard the treasure of faith given to them. Especially in these days, when much is changing in our Church and in our society at large; in this era of moral decadence, the Church must continue to be the conscience of society. Indeed, our understanding of that tradition may have to be purified, and then that purified treasure is to be handed on to posterity for guidance and their faith.

In these two lessons, we see that faith (a faith that is patient with Yahweh as Habakkuk draws our attention to and that is stirred up into liveliness as emphasized by Timothy is of primal importance. The Gospel affirms it when it begins with these words: “Lord, increase our faith.” What brought about the request of the Apostles? It was because Jesus asked to forgive one another as often as possible (Luke 17:3-4).The Apostles see the importance of faith and ask for more faith in order to fulfill this Christian obligation; the obligation to forgive one another even when in the sight of men it does not make sense. Jesus answers them, “If you had faith as small as a mustard seed you can do greater things. What Jesus emphasizes in this point is the fact that it is quality that counts and not quantity. Our faith, therefore, must be qualitative.