Archbishop of Sydney

27th Sunday in Ordinary Time

St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney
Hab 1:23, 2:2-4; 2 Tim 1:6-8, 13-14; Lk 17:5-10

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
7/10/2007

This is a strange, but rich gospel, which contains four unrelated sayings of Our Lord, touching on different aspects of discipleship, set in the context of His journey to Jerusalem.

The topics of faith and duty are important and their nature and the consequences which follow from being faithful and dutiful are enormous.  Today I will talk on faith.

Earlier in my priesthood the young people I was dealing with tended to equate faith with goodness, so that the accusation that a person was faithless or had little faith was seen as an accusation of personal moral evil.  This was a misunderstanding as reality is more complicated.  As an example, serious criminals can have genuine faith.  I have often recounted the story of the Catholic jail chaplain explaining that a well known Catholic criminal regularly attended the jail Mass.  When asked whether he took Communion, the chaplain explained “of course not.  He has genuine faith and knows that his moral life is too disordered to go to Communion”.  On the other hand, all of us would know good upright people, who seem unable to believe in God, or the divinity of Christ.

Faith is not a “given”, a quality we receive from nature, like the ability to be a good sprinter or distance runner; or outstanding ability at maths or music.

Certainly it is a great help to have parents of faith, where we can learn from their example and follow.  And certainly we can and should deepen our faith through regular prayer, good living and study.  If a person is highly educated in some secular field but has a theological understanding typical of a thirteen year old, problems and tensions must follow.

When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, taught us by Jesus himself, the translation we use has us praying “lead us not into temptation”.  The meaning and the more correct translation of the Greek is disputed here as some pray that we not be put to the test, forced into a time of trial.  Still others see the phrase as a request for help so that we will not succumb, give in when we are tempted.

Both thoughts are useful to us as Christians and some scholars claim that the two different English translations could be used for an ambiguous text.  For our purposes we should remember that temptations and trials arrive not only in the realm of morals, but that our faith also can come under enormous strain through external circumstances or through our own sinful behaviour.

Faith can be tried sorely by natural disasters such as drought or equine flu, and in those situations others have to be the hands of God and help those in trouble.

Habakkuk lived in a time of oppression and turmoil and we cannot be sure whether the threats were coming from Chaldeans or Assyrians or some other source.  But in any terrible crisis, where law and order breaks down, participants are forced to depth their faith or lose it at least temporarily.  Where is God in that extreme suffering? Where was God in the Nazi extermination camps and the Soviet Gulag which killed even more people?  It is very prudent to pray regularly that we not find ourselves in extreme situations, not be brought to times of trial in faith as well as morals.

Habakkuk tells us that God never forgets us, especially in terrible trials, even when the vision comes slowly; but come it eventually does to console us.

The spread of Christian faith across two millennia is a fascinating story, because Our Lord and the twelve apostles were certainly not well placed in a strategic sense for an assault on civilization.  In fact the progress of the Church is an example of the mulberry bush uprooting itself into the sea and then flourishing.

Today with our institutions, networks and larger numbers we are much better placed (humanly speaking) than the apostles ever were to spread the Good News.  However the problem seems to be that too often our faith is less than that of the mustard seed.

I wonder too whether we suffer from another disadvantage.  Once I was discussing the principle of double effect and trying to give clear, everyday examples everyone would accept.  One example: the higher number of people who are educated the more people there are with breakdowns and nervous illness.

Faith is offered first of all to the poor and dispossessed.  Education usually removes us from among the poor in every sense.  Is one price of education, not just a plurality of theological views, but often a significant increase of difficulty in believing; even in continuing to believe?  The answer is not to reject secular education, but to complement it with appropriate religious or theological education.

When we consider the challenge of faith in the wider community, two factors make faith harder: materialism or love of money; and sexual irresponsibility, the hedonism urged upon us by many elements in the media.  We learn in the beatitudes that “the pure in heart see God” and both these vices dry up our hearts, make it more difficult for the eye of the heart to see.

Let us conclude now by praying in thanks for the gift of faith, for our exemplars and mentors in the faith, parents or family or teachers and friends and let us pray that we will not be put to the test too often in matters of faith or morals.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.