Dear friends,
“But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8)
Faith. Our Lord today continues to teach us about the importance of faith in Him. As He continues on His way to Jerusalem, He is questioning us on our own resolve to follow Him faithfully there.
It is something the apostles struggled with. We heard in the gospel proclaimed two Sunday’s ago how they had prayed to Jesus, “Increase our faith.” Last Sunday, we heard how the Samaritan leper showed his faith in Jesus as the One in whom God heals and through whom God is thanked.
Today, our Lord wishes to strengthen our faith further with the parable of the widow and the dishonest judge. If the dishonest judge is going to give in to the persistent badgering of a widow, so much more will our God come swiftly to justifying us, saving us.
The God who sends us our Savior to save us by submitting to a shameful death on a cross, is presented to us today as the one in whom we must have faith.
To the eyes of the apostles, as they were following our Lord to the cross, faith in a crucified Savior is just completely counter intuitive. So is it to us. Our sense of justice often prefers a swift uprooting of evil and their proponents. No one is saved with this sense of justice.
The tired hands of Moses propped up in intercession for the warring Israelites is today superseded by the crucified hands of the Son of Man eternally interceding for all humanity.
With all the evil in the world, do we still have faith in the Crucified Savior whose blood is pleading most earnestly for us before God? To those who have no faith, God is doing nothing. To one who has faith, He is seeking us, forgiving, healing, saving us.
Image by Lumina Obscura from Pixabay
By Fr. Simione Volavola, MSC(Pennsylvania Community, Center Valley, PA)
Father Simi professed his first vows on February 20, 1995, and was ordained on January 27, 2001.