21st Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)
Isaiah 22:19-23 | Psalm 137(138):1-3,6,8 | Romans 11:33-36 | Matthew 16:13-20
Your love, O Lord, is eternal:
discard not the work of your hands. (Psalm 138:8)
Yesterday, I finally returned to my primary school, 37 years after I graduated.
I was at St. Joseph’s Institution Junior for the archdiocese New Wine 2017 conference, but to me, it will forever be St. Michael’s School.
Sicut Michael Semper, indeed.
All the old familiar buildings are long gone, replaced by a spanking new campus that has a charm all its own.
Oddly, that neatly reflected one of the peripheral themes of the conference: No more “business as usual”.
It’s a perennial danger faced by all Catholics. We pray the same prayers over and over, perform the same actions over and over, and thereby sink into the same rut of faith over and over, neither blazing with belief nor rejecting the Lord entirely.
St. John had a disturbing revelation about God’s reaction to such Catholics:
I know all about you: how you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were one or the other, but since you are neither, but only lukewarm, I will spit you out of my mouth. (Rev 3:15-16)
We need to guard against such middle-of-the-road meanderings. It confirms something I’ve begun to implement in my life: Don’t Get Comfy In Faith.
I know I need to challenge myself every day, to not slip into “auto-prayer” mode, to focus in contemplation, to risk both silent and public scorn to share my faith in both word and deed.
For as Dr. Scott Hahn noted in his book Evangelizing Catholics:
You can’t keep the faith until you give it away.
The love of the Lord is never-changing because it is perfect.
We humans need to keep polishing.
Amen.