OT XXVII [C] Hb 1:2-3; 2:2-4; II Tm 1:6-8, 13-14; Lk 17:5-10

All three readings for today speak about “Faith” and how it works in our lives. They give us three dimensions of Faith. The theological virtue of Faith enables us to believe something to be true and therefore worthy of trust simply because it has been revealed to us by God.

Sometimes our faith never gets beyond the mustard-seed stage because we have the wrong idea of what it really is. Faith involves believing in Christ and his goodness. But it's a kind of belief that also requires action. It is one thing to know something notionally, another to be able to take that knowledge to heart, to dwell upon its significance, so allowing it to calm fears, nurture hope, and strengthen resolve in courage to face such difficulties and sufferings as still lie ahead. 

The word "faith" is derived from the Latin word "fides" [FEE-days]. This is the same word at the root of the Latin motto used by the United States Marines [mr-eenz]: "Semper Fidelis" - always faithful. Faith always implies being faithful - it implies a commitment to another person, a trusting commitment. And that means sticking by that person's side. For us, that person is Christ.  Faith in Christ means following Christ.

Picture a man on a sinking ship.  He may believe in a life-preserver. He may remember cases of people being saved because they were wearing a life-preserver when their ship went down. He may be a physicist, and understand the laws of hydro-dynamics that make the life-preserver work. He may understand perfectly how the Velcro straps function and where to attach them. But if this man doesn't actually put on the life-preserver and strap himself in - his faith is absolutely useless. If we want to move mountains and to experience God's power doing wonders in our lives, we have to put what we believe into practice, more and more, day after day - "Semper Fidelis".

The Responsorial Psalm we heard today gives us one surefire way to activate the power of faith: "If today you hear his voice, harden not your heart." Faith is practical. If we believe in God's wisdom, love, and power, we will obey him. We will follow where he leads.  And he is always leading us somewhere - always making his voice heard. The most common way he does so is through our conscience. Our conscience is like an inner radio station that is always tuned to God's voice. But it's not the only station out there, and, unfortunately, it's not always the loudest. Sometimes we turn up the station of peer pressure and fashion really loud, or the station dedicated to self-indulgence, irresponsible pleasure, and other soothing but deadening sounds. That's why the Psalmist tells us: "If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts."

Christ wants us to experience the power of faith in our lives. One way to nourish our faith is through reading and studying the Bible. It is easy for us to take the Bible for granted. We have been listening to readings from the Bible every Sunday since we could walk. And yet, this familiarity can actually backfire - it can make us treat this treasure like a trophy: letting it gather dust in the closet. There is no other book in the world like the Bible.

It was written by about 40 different authors though out   15 hundred years, and yet, it tells one consistent story: the story of God's saving love for mankind. Every part of the story, every one of the 72 books in the Bible, although it was written by a human author, was composed under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. In other words, the Bible is the Word of God like no other book: when we read it with that in mind, reflecting on it, studying it - it feeds our faith.

Each one of us should have a favorite book, chapter, and verse in the Bible. Each one of us should know the Bible story as a whole. We should constantly be digging into it. Sister Lynn is going to start soon a bible study on the Gospel of Mark after Thursday evening Masses; Consider  joining it. The Bible is one of God's greatest gifts to us.  It is an inexhaustible fountain of supernatural wisdom.  Ignorance of Bible is ignorance of Christ. Without knowing Christ, we cannot believe in him or trust him with our lives.

Sometimes we don't experience the full power of faith in our lives because we have the wrong idea of what faith really is - we think a mature faith makes for smooth sailing in life, when in fact, it doesn't.

Doubleday book publishers put out a book of letters written by Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta to her spiritual directors. The public and the media were shocked by these letters. Everyone thought that Mother Teresa was the happiest person in the world, that her faith was so strong that nothing bothered her. And that is exactly the wrong idea of what faith is. Mother Teresa is a saint. Her faith was mature, strong, and contagious - it moved mountains, and it's still moving mountains. But it didn't make her crosses disappear. Her faith was so strong that she fulfilled her promise never to deny God anything that he asked - but it didn't take suffering out of her life. For fifty years she struggled with an interior darkness and the feeling of being abandoned by God.

There is a movie being released this week If you can get a ticket it is worth going.

Faith is increased by serving others like Mother Theresa, not by being served. Realizing that faith does not grow by itself, just like a seed that is sown does not grow on its own without water and sun light, let’s employ everything that is in our power to make it grow. May the Lord who rewards strong faith help us to make our faith grow to withstand all the challenges in our life.

 OT XXVI [C]: Am 6:1a, 4-7; 1Tm 6:11-16; Lk 16:19-31

We often hear people say that they will get to heaven because they haven't committed any really, really heinous crimes. "I'm a good guy," they say, "I haven’t murdered anyone or sold weapons to terrorists." This attitude is not a Christian one. We do not go to heaven because we do not do any grave sins. We go to heaven because Christ wants us there and we live according to his commands pleasing him doing good and avoiding evil.

As Jesus teaches us in this story of Lazarus and the rich man, salvation and eternal life are not just about avoiding so-called "big" sins. That's a negative, passive approach to life. But Christ is not passive. Christ is active. He came to earth to save us. He took the initiative. He came to seek out the lost sheep. He came to light the fire of faith in a dark world. Being a Christian means following in those footsteps. It means much more than simply avoiding gruesome crimes.

Being a Christian means living like Christ, living for his Kingdom, living for others. It is interesting that when Jesus was asked which were the most important commandments, he didn't choose the negative ones, the "thou shalt not" ones. Instead he listed two active, positive, creative commandments: love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself.

The rich man in this parable had no particularly damaging "sins of commission" on his résumé. He was a pretty good guy. And yet, he failed to enter into eternal life. Why? Because of his "sins of omission". Day after day, he closed his heart to a neighbor who was in dire need of help. He spent his life becoming an expert in self-centeredness.

There is a story told by a rabbi. One day a certain old, rich man of a miserable disposition visited a rabbi. The Rabbi led him to a window. “Look out there into the street. What do you see?” asked the rabbi. “I see men, women, and children,” answered the rich man. Again the rabbi led him to a mirror. He asked, “Now what do you see?” The man replied, “Now I can only see myself,”.

Then the rabbi said, “Look, in the window there is glass, and in the mirror there is glass. But the glass of the mirror is covered with a little silver, and no sooner is the silver added than you cease to see others, and you see only yourself.”

That is the problem with most of us. When we begin to love money and wealth and life’s luxuries, we become insensitive to the needs of others. The moment we stop seeing the misery of the one next to us we become self-centered.

In 1993, Steven Spielberg came out with a movie called Schindler's List. It's a true story of a rather mediocre Catholic businessman, Oskar Schindler, who lived in Poland during World War II. When the war started, he saw it as an opportunity to make money. He made friends with some of the German officials and worked out a deal with them to use Jewish prisoners as free labor for his munitions factory. Since he didn't have to pay his workers, he was able to rake in a handsome profit. But little by little his eyes opened to the horrors of the Nazi regime. His heart changed, and he started using his factories and his connections with German officers to save his Jewish workers from the Holocaust. He used the money he had made during the early part of the war to "buy" more and more Jewish workers, just so he could save their lives.

By the end of the war he was as broke as he had been at the beginning, but he had managed to save hundreds of Jews from being massacred.

In the last scene of the movie, when the Germans are fleeing as allied troops approach the town where the factory is located, we see Schindler surrounded by the workers whom he had saved, and they are thanking him. But then Schindler starts to cry. He looks around at the faces of the people he saved, and he tells them, "I could have done so much more." He holds up his gold watch, and says, "This could have bought someone's freedom." He cries out that if he had started sooner he could have saved twice as many. Every face he sees makes him think of another face that he could have saved if he had been less self-centered. He is completely distraught. Schindler had experienced firsthand the destructive power of the sin of omission.

A Sunday-school teacher asked the class, "can any of you tell me what are sins of omission?"

"Yes, sir," said the small boy. "They are the sins we ought to have done and haven't."

We know sin of omission is not that, it is the omission or failure to do the good we are obliged to do. In the confiteor in the beginning of the Mass, we said, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do, through my fault… Sin of omission is as grave of a sin as sin of commission. But we seldom focus on them.

One way to avoid falling into the sin of omission is simply to purposely keep our eyes open for opportunities to serve those around us. Even making the commitment to perform at least one voluntary, selfless, Christ-like act of service every day can help keep the passive, sin-of-omission mentality at bay. Imagine if the rich man in the parable had been granted another chance, would he have changed, and been able to change his own brother from Hell? We do not know for sure, but Jesus said, they have the scriptures as warners for them. There is no greater warning than God’s own warning in the Scripture. How are we taking those warnings? Let’s pray today that the Lord may grant us the clear eyes and wisdom to look at and understand God’s clear warnings to us and not fail to look at the Lazaruses in our community.