Week’s End & Sabbath Rest

Introduction

(What is faith?)

Our second scripture from Hebrews reads, “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for. Faith is the evidence of things unseen” (Heb 11: 1-2). I’m not too sure what that means, so I consult my big volume of eight different translations for every text of the New Testament. I read them all, and then come up with something that has more meaning for me, like this: “Faith is the full confidence or certainty that something we are hoping for is going to happen even though we cannot see it up ahead.”

(People famous for faith)

The second reading continues with even more “unclarity”: “Because of their faith, the ancients were well attested.” Now what in the world should that mean: “the ancients were well attested?” Why do they give us translations which in themselves really don’t make much sense, but which instead impart that idea that something very profound is being said here but we’re just too dumb to understand? Again the translation today sends me off to my book of “eight attempts at clarity,” and this is the clarity I find: “People of God in days of old were famous for their faith.” That’s a million light years clearer than: “Because of faith, the ancients were well attested.” If we work at it, we’ll always find the words that will say clearly what we want to say.

Here is some more clarity from my volume of eight attempts at it: “Faith is the full confidence or certainty that something we are hoping for is going to happen even though we cannot it see it up ahead…. God warned Noah of a great flood that was to come, and though Noah saw no sign of it up ahead, he built the Ark, and his faith saved both him and his household.” People of old were famous for their faith.

And again some more clarity: “God summoned Abraham to go forth into a land that he would eventually possessed. Having no idea of what lay up ahead for him, he set out like a foreigner into a strange land, having nothing more for a home than a tent he shared with Isaac and Jacob.” People of old were famous for their faith.

And still more clarity: “Though his wife Sarah was way beyond her child-bearing years, though he could not see how there could possibly be a child up ahead for him and his wife, Abraham believed God and the promise God made him. So from one man, though he was so old that he was as good as dead, there sprang descendants ‘as numerous as the stars, and as countless as the sands of the sea.’” People of old were famous for their faith.

(The promise of providence)

Faith is full confidence or certainty in what? In the divine promises. What are the divine promises? Oh, they are many. The earlier part of this chapter 11 from Luke contains a promise that we celebrated last Sunday: ” Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow nor do they reap nor do they have barns or bins. Look at the lilies of the field; they do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon was clothed as splendidly as they are. If God so cares for the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, how much more will God take care of you, oh you of little faith” (Lk 12: 22-29) “Do you not know you are worth more than a whole flock of sparrows” (Mt 10:31). That’s a promise of divine Providence, a promise of a help from above to take care of us. Faith is confidence in that promise.

(The promise of prayer)

There is a divine promise in last Sunday’s parable about a man who needs some food because a visitor has suddenly dropped in on him, and he wants to offer him the bread of hospitality. He goes to his neighbor who’s already in bed with the kids, and he keeps knocking away at the door. Because of the man’s persistent knocking, the neighbor finally gives in, opens the door and gives him what he wants. To that parable is attached this promise: “Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you” (Lk 11: 9-1). It’s a promise about prayer, and faith is confidence in that promise, and faith has us praying especially when we are in need.

(The promise of eternity)

The Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, is full of the divine promises: Blessed are the poor; the kingdom of God is theirs. That’s a promise. Blessed are the hungry; they shall be filled. That’s a promise. Blessed are those who weep; they shall be comforted. That, indeed, is a big promise. But the Mother of All the Divine Promises, the one which crowns and caps them all, the one which crowns and caps the very New Testament itself, written as it is on the very last pages of the bible in Revelation is this: “And God will live with God’s people, and God will wipe away all tears from their eyes. And there shall be no more crying in sorrow and pain, and no more dying” (Rev 21: 3-4).

That Mother of All Promises sooner or later catches up to all of us. Sooner or later it confronts us all squarely in the face, especially in those solemn moments when we carry our beloved ones to their graves. There in the cemetery, where the external appearances of things overwhelms us as we stand amidst the rows of the dead, there the Mother of All Promises takes on a very personal dimension and a very overwhelming proportion. In the not too long distant past, we have all laid to rest someone very near and dear to us, and that Mother of All Promises, either in our belief of it or disbelief of it, keeps staying with us, almost haunting us, through the weeks and months.

(Where does faith reside?)

Where does faith reside? Faith, this confidence or certainty in the divine promises, resides not in the head. It is not in the recitation of the creed. It is not in the answers of the catechism. Faith resides in the heart. Every now and then I am “attacked” after Mass for omitting the creed. The omission is really not sinister at all. It simply means the weather is too hot outside and I want to cut things shorter, or that the Packers are going to be playing at 12 noon and I notice the congregation is getting “nervous,” or that I have preached too long, and now I want to make up for my inconsideration.

Where does faith come from?

Where does faith come from? What is its source in us? The appropriate answer, I suppose, is that “it comes from God.” But I usually never find such an answer satisfying, not because I am an atheist, but because it almost never says anything meaningful to me. It always seems to be the answer we give when we don’t know the real answer or when the real answer is a lot more difficult, a lot more profound, and takes a lot more time. Once you “blame God” for something, that’s the end of all discussion.

Let me share with you what is for me a huge source of faith. Over fifty long years as a priest, I have always had a deep conviction that the supreme faith moment in the life of God’s People, a Priestly People (that’s you), is the moment of the Sunday Assembly, or should be the moment of the Sunday Assembly. And accordingly I have always had a deep conviction also that the supreme moment in the life of the priest, head of the Priestly People (that’s me), is or should be, the moment of the Sunday Assembly. That conviction has only gotten deeper and deeper over the years, and over the years I have become more and more scrupulously faithful to it. That’s why at the end of Sunday Mass, I like to give thanks for “Week’s End and Sabbath Rest” and for the Sunday assembly.

I don’t know how other priests feel about it, but this is a conviction that I have been ” blessed” with (and here I don’t mind saying, “It comes from God”). It’s a blessing that always keeps reminding me, priestly head of the Priestly People, there is absolutely nothing more important, nothing more critical, that I could possibly be doing all week long than preparing heart, head, and homily for the Sunday Assembly. Though that conviction is a blessing, it’s also a huge weight around my neck. But at the end of the day, I always find myself saying, “It’s worth it all.”

Here in the Sunday Assembly, the unbelief that grows on me throughout the week gets challenged. Here in the Sunday Assembly, something almost always happens, often remarkable in its un-remarkability that cures or at least takes the edge off my unbelief and lights up faith again in me. Last week it was a gentlemen who, at the end of Mass and after most were gone, mourned mightily over his recently bereaved wife, and asked for a blessing upon his grief. Despite his weeping, he obviously had faith in the divine promise “to wipe all tears from our eyes, and to put end to all crying and all dying.” I must tell you that I carried that gentleman with me all week long, almost as a kind of haunting but benign thought, wondering how he was doing.

This past Thursday, when I got this far in my preparation of heart, head, and homily for this week’s supreme faith moment of ours, I put the matter aside for a bit of rest, and at the computer I switched over to email, there to find a message written to Fr. Rebatske and forwarded on to me. It was dated August 7^th (last Sunday) and it was timed at 1:55 p.m. (less than three hours after the ten o’clock mass). Among many things the e-mail said, “I am a visitor from Cocoa Beach, Florida, and I was blessed to attend the ten o’clock mass, and to receive a blessing over my grief upon the loss of my wife of 45 years. …I sobbed heavily in your church this morning, and I have not done that for months. At mass I experienced what I needed to experience, and heard what I needed to hear. It was good for me to be there. May God bless you and your beautiful church.”

For sure, God working faith in us is not limited to the Sunday Assembly, but the Sunday Assembly is a kind of divinely appointed faith moment in the weekly life of the Christian, just as “Shabbat,” Sabbath, was a divinely appointed faith moment for the Jew of old. Here in the Sunday Assembly, if anywhere our “dead-sure unbelief” (that what you see is all there is) is turned into doubt, and we prodigal sons and daughters begin the journey back to the House of the Father. And yes, here in the Sunday Assembly, even our “dead-sure belief”(that has everything about God and God’s church down pat) is also turned into doubt, and we begin the journey toward adult faith in adult human bodies.

Conclusion

(Our production)

This Sunday Assembly, this weekly faith moment, is the ”full production” of every single one of us: of readers, servers, singers, players, preachers, and celebrants. It is the full production of every single one of us, who come bringing our grief about death or our joy about birth, and who come to share that grief or joy, if with nothing more nor less than powerful vibes. And since nothing so kills the Sunday Assembly as the “collective expectation of nothing,” the Sunday Assembly is the full production of all of us who come here expecting something, and who are of a mindset to contribute to that expectation. Such an Assembly sets us all on Mount Tabor. And even in our grief, and perhaps because of ours grief, it has us crying out: “Oh, how good it is for us to be here on this Mount of Old St. Mary’s. May God bless our beautiful church.”