Faith in God

Reflection on Luke 17:5-10

The apostles asked Jesus to "increase their faith. The V meaning of Jesus' response is that the efficacy of faith does not depend on its quantity, its size, its volume. but rather on its quality, its worth. Consequently, the apostles did not need to have the volume of their faith increased. What they needed was for their faith be as solid, compact, unbroken as a mustard seed. That was a very small seed indeed; but even faith that was no bigger than that could uproot a tree move mountains, and do much more.

There is a popular notion that faith is something you do with your head. That is not correct. Rather, faith is something you do with your heart. It is an emotion of the heart. Its other name is trust. When you trust someone or something, you have faith in that person or thing. Something in you tells you that you can depend on that person or thing; that they will not let you down or fail you.

If we are normal human beings, we must trust someone. If we cannot trust anyone, there is something wrong with us; we are not normal. But we also know that we cannot trust any human being 100%. Experience will have taught us that even our most trusted relatives or friends can fail us. The reason is very simple: they are only human. Because they are human, they are limited. There is a limit to what they can be or do for us. As a result, even with the best of intentions, they can fail us when we least expect them to do so. That must have been the reason why the Prophet Jeremiah made a particularly strong statement about people who place their trust in human beings. He said: "Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength" (Jer. 17:5).

God is different. He is infinite. There is no limit to what he can be or do for us. He is the only one we can trust 100%. He will never let us down; he cannot let us down. It is not in his character. That is why we can have absolute trust in him, and our faith in him can be as solid and unbroken as a mustard seed. With that kind of faith in God, we shall be able to move mountains. Again, the Prophet Jeremiah had something to say on that. He said: "Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord" (Jer. 17:7).

GOD Before Money

Reflection on Luke 16:1-13

“Money is the root of all evils." The Bible does not say that. What the Bible says is “The love of money is the root of all evil" (1 Timothy 6: 10). The full text is: "The love of money is the root of all evils, and there are some who, pursuing it, have wandered away from the faith and so given their souls any number of fatal wounds."

The love of money may indeed be the root of all evils. But can we do any good without money? We need money to build churches, to furnish them; we need money to spread the Good News; we need money to train various categories of workers in the vineyard of the Lord; we need money to carry out the many works of mercy that the Church is known for. Therefore, money cannot be bad in itself. It is the love of it that is bad. Perhaps I should say "inordinate love" of money. That is what happens when we are prepared to sacrifice higher values in the pursuit of money, values like honesty, truth, justice, peace. The extreme of inordinate love of money is when we are prepared to sacrifice even our faith in the pursuit of money. That can happen at different levels. It can happen if we abandon our faith to join a secret cult or society in order to make money. It can also happen if we choose to do business on Sunday instead of going to church to worship God. On no account must our quest for money come between us and our obligations to God. Otherwise we shall be guilty of being slaves of money rather than God's. That is what Jesus warns against in our Gospel passage today.

Therefore we do not do any wrong if we work hard and make money, a lot of it, by honest means. The next important question is what we do with our money. We should put our money at the service of God and humanity, including our own family. If on the contrary, we hoard our money or we spend it on sheer frivolities that do not do anybody any good, we are guilty of wrongful use of money.

It has been said that money is a good servant but a bad master. As long as we are the ones using money, we are safe. But the moment we allow money to use us, we are in trouble. Money can be a hard taskmaster. If we subject ourselves to it, it can make outrageous demands on us: it can demand our family or loved ones, it can demand even our own soul. In the end, it will take away our happiness. A certain writer put it this way: "Money is a useful commodity, and can purchase everything except happiness. It is a passport to everywhere except to heaven."

The cost of Discipleship

Reflection on Luke 14:25-33

Many of the contemporaries of Jesus regarded him as one of the many Rabbis that the Israelite nation produced from time to time. Rabbis were highly respected religious teachers. People looked up to them to show them how to live in such a way that they would find favour with God.

It was customary for a Rabbi to have a retinue of followers. Those followers were called “disciples”. They followed the rabbi in every sense of the word. First, they went with him wherever he went, walking behind him, as it were. We might say walking in his footsteps, almost putting their feet on the footprints of their Master. That is to say, they followed him physically. But, more importantly, they also followed him morally and spiritually. That is, they did all they could to imitate his lifestyle, they modeled their lives after his own, trying to be copies of their Master.

Like the Rabbis of his day, Jesus too had his own disciples, with one important difference. Whereas disciples normally chose the Rabbis that they followed, in the case of Jesus, he chose his own disciples. He chose them; they did not choose him (John 15:16). However, his own disciples too were expected to follow him, some physically, like the twelve Apostles; all morally and spiritually. Jesus expected, indeed, he required all his disciples to model their lives after his own, to copy his lifestyle. That is what he said in John 13, after washing the feet of his disciples. He said, “I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you” (John 13: 15).

Jesus is saying exactly the same thing in today's Gospel reading to all his disciples down through the ages. That includes us. Hear him: “Anyone who does not carry his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple." When Jesus came into this world, he carried the cross from the crib at Bethlehem to the hill outside Jerusalem called Golgotha. He knew suffering from his birth to his crucifixion on Calvary. He drank the cup of suffering to the dregs. And when he asked his Father that the cup might be taken away from him, he added, “Nevertheless, let your will be done, not mine" (Luke 22:42). The cup was not taken away, and he had to drink it.

Now, he says that his disciples must follow in his footsteps if they are to be truly his disciples. They cannot be his disciples any other way. His disciples must be prepared to bear the cross of suffering as he bore his own.

It follows that the cross, suffering is part and parcel of being a Christian. Suffering is not alien or incidental to Christianity. If you take away suffering, you don't have Christianity any more. What you have is a mere palliative, an analgesic, like Panadol or Aspirin, a painkiller. Christians, authentic Christians, true Disciples of Christ must beware of salesmen who are peddling different brands of such palliatives that they call “churches”, and saying: "Suffering is not my portion." Well, suffering was the portion of Christ. If suffering is not your portion, then whose disciple are you? Certainly not Christ’s.

Universal Christianity

Reflection on Luke 13:22-30

The Jews of old had a neat division of the entire human race into two categories: Jews and the rest. Jews were the chosen race. All others were not chosen. Jews were chosen because of the promises God made to their ancestor, Abraham. Those promises passed on to Abraham’s descendants, Isaac, Jacob and the twelve sons of Jacob, out of whom, came the twelve tribes of Israel. "Israel" was Jacob's other name. As far as the Jews were concerned, only they, the chosen race, would have a place with their ancestor, Abraham, in the kingdom of God.

You can imagine their shock when Jesus told them that others too, “men from east and west, north and south, will come to feast in the kingdom of God" with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets, while they, the Jews, would be turned outside. In other words, people of other races, whom the Jews called gentiles or pagans, would be admitted into the kingdom of God, and the Jews turned outside.

One factor would determine who got admitted and who got turned outside: faith. The gentiles would be admitted because of their faith in the one sent by God, his Son, Jesus Christ. The Jews, on the other hand, would be turned outside because of their rejection of him. Of course, those Jews who believed in Jesus - and there were many of them, including his Twelve Apostles – would be admitted too. But the Jewish nation, as a nation, Israel, rejected Jesus as the Messiah, the Saviour of the world. It has continued to do so to this very day .

The prophecy of Jesus has been fully realized in the Church, which is the beginning of the kingdom of God right here on earth. The Church is made up literally of people from east and west, north and south, people of all races, colour, languages and cultures. That is why the Church is Catholic, meaning universal. What all those people have in common is their faith in Jesus Christ. And it is by their faith that they most resemble Abraham, who was the man of faith par excellence. It is that faith that makes them the real descendants of Abraham.

That was why St Paul taught that, after the coming of Christ, descent from Abrabam would no longer be reckoned merely on biological grounds or observance of the Jewish Law. Rather, descent f from Abraham would be based on faith. In the words of St. Paul, “That is why the promise is to faith, so that it comes as as a free gift and is secure for all the descendants, not only those who rely on the Law but all those others who rely on the faith of Abraham, the ancestor of us all” (Romans 4: 16).

We Christians constitute the kingdom of God that is here on earth. We shall remain in that till that kingdom and attain its fulfillment in heaven only if we continue in our faith in Jesus Christ. But, as St. James clearly taught, that faith is not exclusive of good deeds. In fact, it is manifested in good deeds. In his words, “… faith: if good deeds do not go with it, it is quite dead” (James 2: 17). Even Abraham's faith was manifested in his deeds. Alain, in the words of St. James, “Was not Abraham our father justified by his deed, because he offered his son Isaac on the altar?” (James 2:21).

Therefore, we are justified, that is, saved, purely by faith in Jesus Christ, as I have just described it, not by human considerations like race, tribe, nationality, colour, language, culture or gender. Justification, salvation is available to all who put their faith in Christ universally!

Solemnity of the Assumption

Reflection on the Solemnity of the Assumption

When we way the Creed, we say that we believe in the resurrection of the body. What that means is that after the Last Judgement on the last Day, our dead bodies will be reunited with our souls. Wherever our bodies will be at the time, God will make them come back together with our souls to share with our souls whatever is the reward for our lives here on earth.

Somehow God did not wait until the end of the world or the last judgement before uniting the soul and body of the Blessed Virgin Mary in heaven. That is to say, what we all shall experience at the end of the world, Mary is already experiencing before the end of the world. Her soul and body are already united in enjoying the bliss and happiness of heaven. That is what the Assumption is all about.

The reason why Mary was assumed into heaven was because she had no Sin, not even original sin. We know and we believe that Mary was conceived without sin. That is to say, from the first moment of her conception, God preserved her from every stain of sin, including the sin of our first parents. We know that death and bodily decay are the wages of original sin. If Adam and Eve had not sinned, there would have been no death, that is, the separation of soul and body, followed by decay of the of the body. Now, if Mary was not touched by the sin of Adam and Eve, then she should not suffer the consequences of a sin. It would have been a grave injustice on the part of God to allow her to suffer the consequences of a sin that the same God had preserved her from. That is the reason why, after her life here on earth, God took her body to body and soul to heaven, something that can happen to the rest of us only on the Last Day. Undoubtedly, the Assumption, like the Immaculate Conception, is a wonderful thing that God did for Mary. In our Gospel reading today (Luke 1:39-56), we hear Mary herself say that the Lord has done great things for her. The greatest thing that God did for her was to choose her to be the mother of his Son. Of all the women God has ever created and all the women God will ever create, Mary alone was chosen to be the mother of the Son of God. What honour can be greater than that? lt is a great honour for any woman to be the mother of a great man or woman, like a king, a queen, a president, prime minister, a bishop, a cardinal, a pope. But you cannot compare any of these with the honour of being the mother of the Son of God. That was Why Elizabeth said to Mary, "Of all women, you are the most blessed" because "biessed is the fruit of your womb". And she called Mary "the mother of my Lord". And she said she was highly honoured to be visited by the mother of her Lord.

The Assumption is one of consequences of the honour of being the Mother of God. God almighty decided that the Mother of his Son should not suffer death and decay in the grave. Therefore, he. took her body and soul to heaven. That is one of the great thtngs that God did for her. With today's feast, we are acknowledging what God did for Mary by taking her body and soul to heaven.

Be Vigilant

Reflection on Luke 12:32-48

Armed robbery is one of the greatest problems in our country today. It has become so brazen that robbers even operate in broad daylight. That has not always been the case. In the past, they would only come to your house in the middle of the night. Nowadays, they operate both at night and during the day. We can say that night and day are the same to them. Sometimes, robbers even send their victims advance notice to expect them on such and such a day. And they keep their appointment. Telling the Police is no use. They too have suffered terribly at the hands of the men of the underworld.

Now, suppose you receive a letter from a gang of armed robbers that they will be coming to your house on a particular day. I am sure you will take steps to reinforce the security of your house to deny them access. Or else, you might even pack out of the house completely, and move to another place before that day. But suppose they don't tell you the exact day, they are coming. You will begin to sleep with one eye open. You will keep some good money in the house to give to the robbers whenever they do come. In short, you will be on your guard, you will be vigilant or, as Jesus says in our Gospel reading today, you will "stand ready."

Life is like that. Nobody knows when the Ultimate Robber of them all will come. I mean Death."It can come at any time, at any age, anywhere. Sometimes people know that they are dying, and can prepare for it. Some of them are put off by the thought that they will die soon, and rebel against God, against everybody, against the world. They refuse to prepare for death. But the vast majority of people don't get any advance warning that they will soon die.

Since most of us don't know when death will come, what should we do? Jesus says that we must "stand ready" at all times. We must be vigilant. If we knew the exact date of our death, and that it was near, most of us would stop being wicked, sinning; we would begin to be good, kind, prayerful, very religious. That is exactly what we should do when we do not know the exact date of our death. All those things that we would do. if we knew the date, we should begin to do even when we don’t know the date. We should begin to live the kind of life that we would like death to find us living.

A man was once asked what he would do if he knew that he would die within the next 24 hours. The man replied that he would continue to do exactly what he was doing. The man was able to say that because he knew that what he was doing was good, the kind of life he was living was upright, honest and pleasing to God. It would take him to heaven. Now, suppose someone told us the same thing: that we would die within the next 24 hours, would we be able to say, like that man, that we would continue to do exactly what we are doing, living the kind of life that we are living? If we can say that, then we are ready, vigilant. We have nothing to fear from the Ancient Robber, Death. Death will have everything to fear from us.

The Rich Fool

Reflection on Luke 12:13-21

The parable in today’s gospel passage has often been referred to by biblical scholars as “The Parable of the Rich fool.” That is a rather curious title, somewhat like calling someone "an evil genius", and the person in question actually admitting that he is one. How can someone be rich and a fool at one and the same time? That is only too possible, as can be clearly from the parable in question.

The man in the parable was rich in material terms; that is, he had managed to amass a great amount of material wealth. But he had no sense. He made the mistake of reposing confidence in his wealth. He thought that it was all he needed for his security. He failed to reckon with God. When the demand was made for his soul, his entire material wealth was of no use to him.

The man’s foolishness becomes dearly evident when we consider that material wealth can evaporate as a result of some unforeseen circumstances, an accident of one sort or another. How often have we seen that happen? Someone was rich and comfortable yesterday. He was on top of the world; the whole world was at his feet. People were queuing to be admitted into his presence. Then maybe he became seriously ill and had to spend his entire fortune on hospital bills, and today he is penniless. Or else, maybe he made one wrong investment, hoping to make a "kill" In terms of financial returns. But instead, he lost his entire investment, capital, profit and all, and now he is left with nothing. That, sadly, has been the experience of many people in Nigeria in the recent past.

All that goes to justify the warning of Jesus in Matthew 6: 19-20: "Do not store up treasures for yourselves on earth, where moth and woodworm destroy them and thieves break in and steal. But store up treasures for yourselves in heaven, where neither moth nor woodworm destroys them and thieves cannot break in and steal." The rich man in the today's parable was a fool precisely because he stored up his treasure on earth rather than in heaven.

There was this other man, a maximum ruler, who built himself a fortress on a rock. He surrounded it with the most mind-boggling security apparatus, men and materials. He hardly ventured outside his fortress, and on the rare occasions that he did, the most formidable security cordon was thrown around him, such that even a mosquito could not penetrate to perch on the great one. Everything had to be done to keep him alive and in office at all costs. Unfortunately, the man and his entire security outfit had failed to reckon with one enemy that was invisible, noiseless, tasteless, odourless, intangible: death. On the day that it came calling, it took all of them unawares. In an instant, perhaps one of the most protected human beings on earth was felled by it, and a whole nation heaved a sigh of relief that reached up to the sky: "Good riddance to bad rubbish!"

The lesson of today's parable is that our real security can be found only in God. It cannot be found in material possessions. They can evaporate at short notice. It cannot be found in our natural and acquired endowments. They too can take leave of us In an Instant. It cannot be found in human beings either. They can let us down when we least expect or need them to do so. It cannot be found in the paraphernalia of power. These offer no protection against the ultimate enemy of them all, death. I believe that is what the Psalmist meant when he wrote, "If the Lord does not watch over the city, in vain do the watchmen keep vigil" (Psalm 127:1).