God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love you have demonstrated for his name by having served and continuing to serve the holy ones. … So when God wanted to give the heirs of his promise an even clearer demonstration of the immutability of his purpose, he intervened with an oath, so that … we who have taken refuge might be strongly encouraged to hold fast to the hope that lies before us. (Hebrews 6: 10…18)
“The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath. That is why the Son of Man is Lord, even of the sabbath.” (Mark 2:27)
Christmas was about four weeks ago and perhaps our brief encounter with “good feelings,” as well as our reminders of our difficulties with being “family”, are not that far away. It might be that this is a good time to, in the shadow of all that, to ask ourselves why we “practice our faith,” to what degree do we practice it. Following that question is the further one: Is there more?
The Letter to the Hebrews is written to a Jewish-Christian community that has become discouraged. There was zeal and fervor in the beginning, but that has worn off. Difficult times have brought a loss of hope and a slackening of virtue and difficulty practicing their faith. This letter is a marvelous encouragement to this community, encouragement to place their hope in God’s promise, “as an anchor of the soul” and in Jesus as our High Priest. (Hebrews 6: 19-20) The central message of the letter is that “faith” is trusting in something we can’t hold on to as logical or tangible. The faith of the ancestors was demonstrated by their hope before them, trusting that what God promised will come true.
This can be quite comforting and helpful for us, too, in our troubled times. Whatever we suffer personally, or whenever we experience the mess of cultural values around us, we can, at times, find ourselves quite discouraged. The falling off of vocations to apostolic religious life and of vocations of young men called to be servants of their brothers and sisters as priests, is a warning sign of the cooling of our faith. The way we can become entangled in the values of our culture and at times simply reject the teaching of the Gospel, is evidence that something is happening within us and around us. The family itself is under attack. The media present images of people fighting with each other all the time, of parents caught up in their lives and neglecting their children, and of children who have total disregard for their parents.
This cultural confusion affects us negatively. But we can pause today and remember that God’s love for us is faithful. We are not alone. Our Savior came to us in the messiest of places and died for us on the greatest sign of rejection, so that we would know an unconditional love and be called to love others the same way. The challenge of these days, as Jesus indicates in his battle with the scribes and Pharisees in this part of Mark’s gospel, is our faith is not about obeying a number of rules. Faith is about a relationship with God. Ultimately, it is about letting the Holy Spirit, whom the Father and Jesus left us so that we would not be orphans in this world, letting the Holy Spirit open our hearts, comfort us with a relationship with Jesus, and sets us on fire to love and serve as Jesus did.
We can restore hope in our hearts by pausing today and simply saying, “Thank you.” It would be a “Thank you” addressed to a God who loves us. We won’t forget that. And, honest and grateful conversations will follow, in the brief “in between” times of our busy days. Discernment, which leads to freer choices, will follow. The restoration of our wounded relationships will follow. Self-sacrificing love will follow. Servant leadership will follow. Communities hearing the cry of the poor will follow. His promise will be fulfilled. Because our God is faithful!
May God Bless You and Grant You His Peace!