20th Sunday Year A

20th Sunday Year A – What is faith?

Good evening/morning to you all. I am not with you in person this weekend as I am away on holiday but know that I will be with you in my prayers when I attend mass this weekend.

What is faith? What do we mean when we question how strong our faith is or someone else’s is? What is the measure? Didn’t Jesus say to his apostles that if their faith were as small as a mustard seed they would still be able to move mountains?

So it is maybe not how big or large our faith is but more the quality of it. It is the quality of the faith that we hold that sets us up in how we live our lives and in how we tackle and deal with any and all challenges that may come our way.

It is the determination we have to live our lives full of the richness of God’s love for us and to show this in how we care for every other person that we might meet along our life’s journey.

I ask this question deliberately because  this question or one very similar to it was put to me by a young lady during her First Sacraments preparation class this past week.

She asked me, “If a person comes to mass every day and says their prayers every day but is then not a nice person in how they deal with the people they meet, are they a good Christian, do they love God? And similarly, if a person does not go to church at all and does not pray in the acceptable ways or believe in God, but is nice and kind and generous to all that they meet, does God love them?

What a great question! And as we chatted we explored the idea of what it is that will get us to heaven. Is it the church-going formula, or the praying formula or the loving our neighbour formula? And I referred back to Jesus saying to the young man who had asked him what the greatest of all the commandments was. Jesus answered, the greatest is this, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and strength. And the second is equally important – You shall love your neighbour as yourself: you shall love your neighbour just as your heavenly Father loves you.

He did not say, you shall say your prayers every day or that you will go to church every day. He DID say that you will love God with every element of our being and show this love and faith in how we speak with Him through prayer and in the take up of our sacraments. We will then show our love of God and His love for us in how we deal with each other. We will show that love alive and active in every word and thought and gesture to and for each human being that we come into contact with.

Our faith is our understanding of, and belief in, God’s love for us. Our faith is our certainty that we are saved now and for all eternity. Our faith is our knowledge that God made us to know Him, to love Him and to serve Him in this life and then be with Him forever in the next.

And we demonstrate this faith by how we live our lives in connection with each other: the good that we do for and to each other. The positive impact we have or at least try to have on those less fortunate than us. the unfairness that we check, challenge and change.

So, to come back to the young girl’s question – No, it is not enough to just come to church and say our prayers and then be as nasty as we want to anyone and everyone that we meet. We have to take our professed love of God, our faith, into the big, wide and sometimes uncertain world and put it into practice by loving our neighbour just as our heavenly Father loves us – without question or compromise.

And to the second part of her question, God believes in us and loves us, in each and every one of us, without question or compromise and as Jesus told his disciples, He will be with us always, Yes, to the end of time. Whenever we may turn away from Him or refuse to accept Him into our lives, He will still be there, ready to pick us up and to carry us through any and every bad situation we encounter until such times as we are ready to stand on our own feet. Then and only then will He put us down and continue to walk alongside us. God loves us. God loves you and He loves me.

Prayer and all of the sacraments build up our faith, our beliefs, our understandings so that we can then confidently go out into the world and be exemplars of love in every way and to every one that we meet.

We show this faith in our loving and caring actions. In how we invite people to us and welcome them into our space. In how we include them and care for them. In how we share ourselves with them and how we give to them and forgive them.

God showed His love for us and His faith in us by sending us His only Son to live and to die for us and then to be born again and to take on all of our sins for us.

We show our faith and our love of God by and through our openness to other people. We are His people, the sheep of His flock and the Shepherd knows and loves every one of His sheep.

“Faith of our fathers, we will love both and foe in all our strife and preach Thee too as love knows how by kindly words and virtuous life.

Faith of our fathers. Holy faith. We will be true to thee till death.”

Bidding Prayers

1.      That we live our faith alive in our thoughts, words and actions every day and in every way. Lord in your mercy

2.      That we are active in how we check, challenge and change unfairness and inequality where and when we meet them. Lord in your mercy

3.      That we promote love and care and faith in the Lord. Lord in your mercy

4.      That there is peace across our troubled world, especially in those countries torn apart by war and terror. Lord in your mercy

5.      That all those who feel alone, isolated or unloved may feel the warmth of our loving prayers and actions. Lord in your mercy

6.      That those who have died recently might find eternal rest with God their loving Father. Lord in your mercy

7.      That Mary our Mother joins her prayers with ours as we now pray, Hail Mary