Festive, Focused and Firm!
28th Sunday in Ordinary Time: 15th October, 2017
Is 25: 6-10a; Phil 4: 12-14, 19-20; Mt 22:1-14
Faith is the way we live our daily life in relation to God. It would be a dry and futile understanding to look at faith as a set of doctrines or principles to be known, learnt, memorised and repeated on occasions. Faith instead has to affect every day life and every moment of it. Faith, in theological terms, is explained as one's personal response to the self revealing God. But to make it simple we can just understand it as the way we live every moment of our life, within the perspective offered to us by God who created us and has called us to a specific vocation in life.
Today, the readings invite us to a clear understanding of what this faith is all about. The faith that the Lord invites us to, is a specific way of life, a mode of organising our life worthy of our call to be children of God! Here are three adjectives that the readings offer us on a Fitting Faith for today:
Faith is Festive: a life of faith is a call to celebrate. God has set up a feast and invites us to come and celebrate it! God has created us a wonderful world, filled it with persons to love and let us enjoy it all in freedom and cooperation. But what do we do? We choose to see the negative things that are around, we choose to take them in and be filled with them, we choose to have and spread negative feelings, we choose to hate, envy and ruin each other's life; in short we REFUSE TO CELEBRATE. We refuse to attend the feast, that the Lord has prepared! If only we live our life in relation to God, that is, with the perspective of God, we will find out how much we can celebrate. When St. Paul says, he knows to live in want and in plenty, he is not boasting of his capacity to endure; it is more about that mindset which looks at everything from the perspective of God.
Faith is Focused: a life of faith is a call to fix our eyes on God. Pressures, stress, problems, confusions, struggles, misunderstandings, competitions, disappointments, distractions, temptations, tears, treason...these are experiences that come our way sometime or the other. What would our point of reference be: luck, skills, human efficiency, proving oneself? 'Behold our God to whom we looked to save us', presents Isaiah. God will provide everything declares St. Paul. Our focus has to be on Christ. Look to Him and be radiant says the Psalm (34:5).
Faith is Firm: a life of faith is a call never to compromise. Today, the culture is such that there is a big confusion whether there is anything that is unacceptable. Every thing seems permissible and every thing seems 'alright', if not 'normal'! There is a justification for everything. It is growing to be a culture of 'what-ifs' and 'why-nots'...but faith provides us with a firm foundation, firm criteria to make our choices. "My friend, how is it that you got in without the wedding garments?"..."My friend how is it that you expect to be with me without making a choice for me?"..."My friend, how is it that you had chosen something, but lived totally another life?"...we have to be prepared to face these questions, if at all we compromise! Our faith is an 'yes' that we say to the Lord, which would involve a number of small yes'es and no's... and any compromise in it will make us unfit for the Feast of the Reign.
On a daily basis...let us evaluate our life and our choices...are they truly festive? fully focused? and really firm on the way to God?
