27th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) - 2 October
2nd October 2022
27th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) - 2 October
A reflection on today's gospel reading by the Venerable Archbishop Fulton J Sheen:
"Faith is not, as too many believe, an emotional trust; it is not a belief that something will happen to you; it is not even a will to believe despite difficulties. Rather, faith is the acceptance of a truth on the authority of God revealing it. It, therefore, presupposes reason.
"What credit is to business, faith is to religion. Before extending you credit, the businessman must have a reason for extending that credit – namely, your ability to pay debts and your honesty. So it is with faith. You cannot start religion with faith, for to believe someone without a reason for belief is credulity and superstition.
"The principal cause for the decline of religion…is the irrational and groundless character of belief. Unless the foundation is solid, the superstructure soon totters and falls. Try out the experiment and ask those who call themselves Christians why they believe, and the majority of them will be found unable to give a reason.
"When anyone asks us to join the Church, he is not immediately accepted. He must first undergo instructions. Converts are not first told: ‘You must believe everything the Catholic Church teaches’ but rather, ‘You must have a reason for believing her teachings.’ Absolutely nothing is taken for granted. We do not say: ‘We will start with God.’ No! We start with the world. Using reason, we first prove the existence of God and His nature.
"Enquiry precedes conviction. Enquiry is a matter for reason that weighs the evidence and says: ‘I ought to believe.’ But submission is an act of the will. It is at this point many fail, either because they are too absorbed by the pleasures of the world, or because they are fearful of the scorn of others.
"But once it is admitted, thanks to the illuminating grace of God, that Christ is the Son of God, there can be no picking and choosing among the parts of His gospel.
"Faith is related to reason as a telescope to the eye, which does not destroy vision, but opens new worlds hitherto closed to it. We have the same eyes at night as we have in the day, but we cannot see at night because we lack normally the additional light of the sun.
"Let two minds with exactly the same education, one without and the other with faith, look on a piece of unleavened bread in a monstrance. The one sees bread; the other adores the Eucharistic Lord. One sees more than the other because he has a light that the other lacks – the light of faith.
"Too many interpret faith as that which should release us from the ills of earth and assume that if we suffer, it is because we lack faith. This is quite untrue. Faith in God is no assurance that we will be spared the ‘arrows of outrageous fortune.’ Our Lord was not. Why should we be? It was His enemies who thought that if He were one with God, He should not suffer [on the Cross]. Because He was not delivered, they concluded He must be wicked. No! Faith does not mean being taken down from a cross; it means be lifted up to heaven – sometimes by a cross.
"The only times some people think of God is when they are in trouble, or when their pocketbook is empty, or they have a chance to make it a little fatter. They flatter themselves that at such moments they have faith when really they have only earthly hope for good luck.
"It cannot be repeated too often: faith bears on the soul and its salvation in God, not on the baubles of earth.
"We must nourish ourselves with the truths of God, exercise our spiritual muscles in prayer, mortify ourselves of those things that are harmful to the soul, and be just as scrupulous in avoiding moral evil as we are in avoiding physical evil.
"Faith being a virtue is a habit – not an acquired habit like swimming, but an infused habit given to us by God in Baptism. Being a habit, it grows by practice. The ideal is to reach a point in practice, where, like Our Lord on the Cross, we witness to God even amidst abandonment and the agony of a crucifixion." (The Cries of Jesus from the Cross)
Prayer for Faith
Lord, I believe: I wish to believe in Thee.
Lord, let my faith be full and unreserved, and let it penetrate my thought, my way of judging Divine things and human things.
Lord, let my faith be joyful and give peace and gladness to my spirit, and dispose it for prayer with God and conversation with men, so that the inner bliss of its fortunate possession may shine forth in sacred and secular conversation.
Lord, let my faith be humble and not presume to be based on the experience of my thought and of my feeling; but let it surrender to the testimony of the Holy Spirit, and not have any better guarantee than in docility to Tradition and to the authority of the magisterium of the Holy Church. Amen. 💖🙏💐