“The Four Challenges of Faith”
4th Sunday in Ordinary Time – C
In this cold “Ordinary Time” of winter in the northern hemisphere it is a great blessing to hear Paul’s letters to the Corinthians week after week – challenging us to grasp faith as a practical call to be with and for Jesus.
- Practical – that is practiced, enacted, something that we are about . . . that we do.
- Call – an invitation to life so deep and so total that we are drawn to maturity, to wisdom, to compassion by responding generously.
- To be with – to companion, to support, to care for, to see the world his way and to act like him.
- And for – to give all that we have and are to belong to his way, his work, his Being.
In the first and third scripture readings this weekend we are reminded of the ultimate cost of this kind of faith – the ultimate cost in this life but NOT the ultimate reward – which is eternal joy beyond our imagination.
But the reading of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians tells us of the ordinary cost in terms of a long definition of love. Anyone who has been to a Church Wedding in a Christian Church of any denomination has heard this definition often, so “familiarity can breed contempt” as the old saying goes. It takes grace for the passage to awaken us to the four challenges that I have just shared.
For us to follow this practical call to be with and for Jesus we learn slowly but surely how to love by doing it.
Year after year we ponder these words seeking for yet a deeper and clearer way to follow Jesus. And as we move closer and closer to Lent, perhaps this year what leaps out, at least for me, is the phrase “rejoices with the truth.”
In a world riddled with false claims, conspiracy theories, distortions of real situations, self-serving propaganda, lying under oath, we hear that love rejoices with the truth. Why is this? Because Truth is Love and Love is Truth, and both are names of the loving, generous God we worship.
A spiritual director once told me that if anyone wants to tell you a truth about yourself, realize first that it cannot be the truth if the person speaking does not love you. To speak truth, to walk in truth, to hold to the truth in the face of lies to journey with others only with truth – that is with genuine love – is a practical answer to the call to be with and for Jesus.
Paul also reminds us that love will never fail, so truth with never fail. Lies are practices of hatred and they will fail inevitably. We must walk closely with Jesus to fully understand that in this life. To see that those who lie will also kill, abandon, use the worst forms of violence, do everything to corrupt the innocent is to know that such behavior is finally and absolutely death.
But Love (and Truth) is life and never ends. This is the life we should desire in Jesus Christ our Savior.
God bless us, and all who live in simplicity of heart.