Friday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time
I think sometimes passages like today's first reading (Hebrews 10:32-39) are used to make people feel like they should suffer in silence, because this letter's author suggests that we should be "joyful about confiscation of property" because we know that we have a "better and lasting reward." Passages like this one can get used to promote spiritual passivity - an acceptance of the status quo and especially of great and terrible wrongs like physical suffering and abuse at the hands of a variety of authority figures - because God has something better in mind for us in a vague future, and we should think about that future instead.
To read the first reading as advocating a blanket submission of all wrongs suffered in favor of a vague future would be a serious misreading of the letter, however. There are two reasons. One is that we should note the author is asking people to remember previous days "after you had been enlightened about God. All the suffering that they experienced is a direct result of the relationship they have with God, and not simply a byproduct of life. The suffering was a result of a freely made choice to follow God. Suffering that happens that is not in the name of God should not be mis-named as one of God's blessings or as something just to put up with.
The second point is that the letter writer is exhorting people to remember what they did in the past, and to imitate their past selves! These were people who were fresh from conversion experiences, perhaps, who were charged up and on fire to proclaim the gospel. Now they are less enthused - and so the letter writer wants them to recall their former fire. This is less about passively accepting suffering as it is about joyfully re-engaging with their life with God, even when the going gets tough and the way seems long.
Today's gospel (Mark 4:26-34) is also an exhortation to joyfully engage with God, even when it's hard to see the end goal. Jesus gives his famous parable of the mustard seed to remind us that change is often imperceptible. We are part of that God's slow growth of the Kingdom.
Radical change rarely happens overnight - and even when it does, there are going to be lots of moments of hard or boring slogging. Maybe that's what the author of Hebrews is acknowledging: his audience had once been on fire for God and now they're discovering that things are longer and harder than they'd anticipated. But God asks us again and again to remember our fiery love for him and live in that love constantly.
It's harder than it looks. Today, let us take the time to remember those places and moments when we've been on fire for God, when we'd do anything for God. And let us pray for the grace to be that joyfully connected to God once again.
- Jana M. Bennett