Weekly HOMILY for August 12, 2007: Faith -- Assurance and Conviction

19th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Cycle C
Our Lady of Grace
August 12, 2007

Faith: Assurance and Conviction
By (Rev. Msgr.) Nicholas P. Amato


Trust Not Clarity

Back in the early 1990’s, a priest named John Kavanaugh went to Calcutta to spend a month working at Mother Teresa’s “House of the Dying.”

Father Kavanaugh was seeking a clear answer to his future and whether to remain a priest. On his first morning there, he met Mother Teresa.

She asked, “What can I do for you?” He asked her to pray for him.

Mother Teresa asked, “What do you want me to pray for?” Father Kavanaugh responded, “Pray that I have clarity.”

Mother Teresa responded, “No!” When Kavanaugh asked why, she said that clarity was the last thing he was holding on to, and he needed to let go of it.

Father Kavanaugh responded that she always seemed to have clarity. Mother Teresa laughed and said, “I have never had clarity; what I’ve always had is trust.

“So I will pray that you trust.”


Faith as Trust

That experience significantly changed John Kavanaugh’s life.

Mother Teresa’s emphasis on trust is at the very core of our faith and we hear this in today’s second reading. The inspired writer gives us a wonderful description, almost a definition of faith.

The writer says, “Faith is confidant assurance [hands on chest in gesture of calmness] about what we hope for [point out to assembly], and conviction [2 fists moved downward] about things we do not see [cover eyes].”

You will notice that there are two dimensions to faith expressed here.

First, faith is trusting assurance [hands on chest in gesture of calmness] about what is not present, but awaited or hoped for [point out to assembly]. And second, faith is trusting conviction [2 fists moved downward] about what is present, but not seen [cover eyes].”

Let’s take a look at both of these.


1. Assurance: Not Present, but Awaited

First, faith is trusting assurance about what is not present, but hoped for.

The Letter to the Hebrews gives us Abraham as a wonderful model of this. Abraham and Sarah had lives as Bedouin nomads probably in what is now Iraq, but at God’s calling, they set out on a journey to an unknown land.

They were advanced in years, but they awaited the fulfillment of God’s promise of a child. Note, they had a trusting assurance in what was not present, but hoped for.

In our lives, we need – and can have – this same kind of faith.

At the very beginning, a child must leave the safety of the womb to be born into an unknown world. At the very end, we must let go of this life and move into a new life with God.

And in between birth and death, we must leave home and board a bus for the first day of school or the first day of college, or we must go from one job to another, or we must leave behind one habit or one mindset and adopt another.

We are constantly called to have this kind of faith, this trusting assurance in what is not present, but hoped for.


2. Conviction: Present, but Not Seen

Secondly, faith is also a conviction about what is present, but not seen.

Faith is a conviction that:
➢ That there is a Creator from whom we come and in whom we live and move and have our being.
➢ That God is a Father who cares and that we always have a home to go to.
➢ That God became human and that the chasm between God and us has been spanned. It is a conviction that because the Son of God suffered and died, nothing can now overwhelm us.
➢ That because Jesus Christ rose from the dead, life is not futile. It is a conviction that everything we do has meaning and value.
➢ Faith is a conviction that the Holy Spirit is present to us in the Church, in the Sacraments, in the Communion of Saints and in the forgiveness of sins.
➢ It is a conviction that all of us are members of God’s family and are to support one another in our journey.

It can be summed in the fact that Faith is this conviction in what is present, but not seen.


Conclusion

Mother Teresa got it right when she said that, “Faith is not so much clarity, as it is trust.”

Yes, it is a trusting assurance about what is not present, but hoped for…

and a trusting conviction about what is present, but not seen.

With that understanding, we proclaim our Profession of Faith with a whole new awareness.

We believe in God, the Father Almighty …