October 5, 2025

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle C

Habakkuk 1:2-3, 2:2-4; 2 Timothy 1:6-8, 13-14; Luke 17:5-10

There was a poor old widow who lived next to a cranky old man. Every morning, she would open her front door and sigh, “I'm so poor, but God will provide.” And every day, her cranky neighbor would yell back: “There is no God.” One morning, she opened her door and found a bag of groceries on her front step. She said, “I'm so poor, but God has provided me in my time of need.” Her cranky neighbor yelled: “Little you know. I bought them and set them there.” The woman thought for a second, and said: “God is good. God has helped me in my poverty and, what's even better, he has tricked the devil into paying for it.”

Talk about somebody with a lively faith. All of our readings today touch on the theme of faith. We could discuss Jesus' teaching to the apostles or Paul's encouragement of Timothy and his congregation, but maybe we would benefit from examining our First Reading, the only time during our three-year Sunday Lectionary cycle we will read from this book of the Old Testament. Habakkuk was a minor prophet writing in the time of the Babylonian invasions. It is a short book, only three chapters and, like the book of Job, it deals mostly with the question of justice: why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? Habakkuk is harder to read than Job since Job is a story of an everyday person that we can all relate to. If you read Habakkuk, you need to understand the history of the southern Kingdom of Judah at the time, understand that the Chaldeans, which is another name for Babylonians, were initially seen by Habakkuk as good, since they conquered one of Judah's enemies, the Egyptians, but then became its enemy and attacked, conquered, and put the Judean people to exile. Our reading this morning has carefully edited out a lot of the political issues of the time that are mentioned in this book, so what we are left with in today's First Reading is the overall lament by Habakkuk in the first half of the reading, and God's response to him in the second half. To Habakkuk's complaint of violence all around him, God tells him, like he tells Job, that he answers all of this in his own time and in his own way. God says that you may have to wait for it, but the final sentence from our reading has God's ultimate answer: “See, the rash have no integrity; but the just one who is righteous because of his faith shall live” [Habakkuk 2:4 NABRE].

There we have it: faith is the important aspect here; faith makes the difference between truly living and just existing. But maybe we should slow down and talk about faith a minute. I have been attending our parish Alpha course, which is designed to introduce Jesus Christ to people of all religions and those of no religion. So it starts with the basic understanding of Christian faith, which I often skip over in a homily, assuming that, if you are here today, you agree with the fundamentals of our Church. But lets take a minute to state them explicitly and simply. There is a God. This God made us and all that is around us. This God loves his creation, and shares the fullness of his creation with those who also share in his love. God gave us free will, so we can choose to share in this or not. Then, most importantly, God the Father sent God the Son into the world to reveal to us how to share in the love of God most fully. Those that accept Jesus into their lives and center their lives around God and his teachings have the faith that God tells Habakkuk is necessary for life in all its fullness, both in this life and the next, what we term salvation.

This year I am working with the group of adults that want to join our Church, what is known as OCIA, for Order of Christian Initiation for Adults, what was formerly RCIA. Let me tell you how inspired this group has made me. Understand, the Catholic Church makes it more difficult to join than other denominations. We insist that they learn about all aspects of our faith before they make their final profession of that faith with the sacraments of initiation. But the group I have impress me, since they all seem to me not to be going through the motions just to get it over with. No, they have all done a lot of homework, and I find they know a tremendous amount of our faith already. Some have read the Church Fathers, such as Saints Augustine or Ignatius, and others had already read through the Catechism, which is quite a read. Let me say this: they challenge me to do more to deepen my own faith, and I share this with you to challenge you as well.

Every vocation or profession that is worth its salt requires their people to engage in continuing education. Would you go to a doctor that is still only using his med school textbooks from the 1970s or 80s? Yet how many of us figured out long ago what we felt we needed to do to live a “good” life, or maybe better stated “good enough” life, and have been on autopilot ever since? The fundamental belief of the Church is that what is most important is a relationship with God and sharing his love, both with God and with the rest of his creation. The living of a “good” life is a part of this relationship, the active part of it, but is not the most fundamental aspect of our religion. Faith includes heart, soul, mind, and muscle. And all aspects require ongoing practice, development, and rejuvenation. If this does not happen, stagnation will inevitably result. Jesus reinforces this in the Gospel when he tells the servants of the parable that they have just done what they were obligated to do, they have just done “enough.” Jesus tells them that, if they want praise, we must do something praiseworthy and not just go through the motions. As I mentioned several weeks ago, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus is ultimately a story about someone who thought he did enough, only to find out that God had higher standards. So we ask ourselves today: is our faith growing, is it good enough, or is it stagnant?

Last week the parish intention was to pray for those celebrating the Jubilee for Catechists during this Jubilee Year of Hope. We certainly need to pray for them, that they will help all that they instruct grow in their faith. We should also pray for their students, that they will heed the promptings of the Holy Spirit to take their lessons to heart. We pray especially for those teens who were confirmed here at St. James this weekend, that this beautiful sacrament not be seen as a graduation from religious education but a springboard to higher learning in the faith and a deepening of their relationship with God. Finally, we should pray for those who no longer take formal religious instruction, that is to say most of us here, that we may not feel that we have learned enough but always maintain a healthy attitude to grow even deeper in our relationship with God and one another.

My OCIA class is challenging me in this regard. They have decided that they want to grow in faith, and have taken the steps necessary to do that. They are doing what Saint Paul tells the bishop Timothy, to “stir into flame the gift of God that you have” [2 Timothy 1:6]. The challenge then to us in our readings today is to ask ourselves how we've stirred our flame to live a fully Christian life. Do we have a dynamic and ongoing relationship with Jesus Christ, with God, or are we mailing it in. The prophet Habakkuk tells the Israelites, and us here today, that we had better not be rash in our belief that we've done enough, but seek righteousness in every aspect of our lives. That at the end of the day is our fundamental faith in God.

As we continue with the celebration of the Eucharist, let us receive this close communion with our God as a moment to strengthen our relationship with God and one another. Let us take up the challenge of my OCIA class to renew our faith. Then, when they receive their sacraments of initiation, they will find a community of disciples here that shares a deep, ever-renewing faith in God and one another.