Saturday of the Thirty-second Week in Ordinary Time
Today’s Gospel ends with a rattling question - “When the Son of Man comes - will he find faith on earth?” This question makes me stop and pause. When the son of man comes, what will he find? If he were to come today, I think he would be saddened and disappointed by what he would find - divisiveness, name-calling, fighting, death, fear, anxiety, apathy and so much more. But would he find faith?
Faith is when we put our complete confidence and trust in God. Is this what we are doing? Faith means that in the midst of the turmoil and the stress and the challenges of our world today, we hold on to a confidence and trust in God to deliver us, to rescue us, to bring us to eternal life in heaven.
In the first reading, we read about the Lord, the deliverer, saving the Israelites from their foes, parting the Red Sea and bringing them to freedom and safety. Do we hold on to the belief that God will deliver us as well or do we become saddened and overwhelmed by the current state of our world?
We are told in the Gospel that we must be like the widow - persistent. In the face of injustice and dishonesty we must remain persistent. This persistence must be rooted in faith - faith that our God, a loving, all-knowing, all-powerful God will deliver us, will fight for us and will see that justice is done. Persistent faith can be tiring, exhausting even, but it is essential to our bringing about the kingdom here on earth. And the kingdom starts with each of us. As I ponder these readings and our current climate, I find myself asking an even more personal question - when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith in me? Amen.
- AJ Grimm