Amazing Faith vs. Amazing Lack of Faith, 4th Wednesday (II), February 5, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Wednesday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Agatha
February 5, 2020
2 Sam 24:2.9-17, Ps 32, Mk 6:1-6

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click here: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• At the end of today’s Gospel we have an amazing declaration by St. Mark. He says that Jesus was “amazed at their lack of faith.” We’ve seen him elsewhere be amazed at the faith of the Centurion about whom he said that he had found no one with such faith in Israel, or about the Syro-Phoenician woman in Tyre to whom he said, “Woman, great is your faith.” But today Jesus had the opposite reaction. He was amazed that his fellow Jews from Nazareth, present at the Synagogue during the Sabbath, lacked faith. This expression means, I think, not that they needed to grow in faith, but more that they had none. Jesus was astonished that they had no faith. In many other circumstances he found some faith and said that even if someone had faith the size of a mustard seed you could move mountains into the sea. He didn’t even find a mustard seed’s worth of faith in his hometown. Let’s enter into the scene to find out why.
• Jesus returns to his hometown synagogue where for more than two decades he had worshipped every Saturday. He already had earned an almost unbelievable reputation for the miracles he had done elsewhere in Galilee. When he began to preach — St. Luke tells us it was on Isaiah 61, focused on how the Spirit of the Lord was upon him, on the traits of the coming Messiah, a passage Jesus said was being fulfilled as they were listening to him — they were all initially amazed, just like so many others were astonished when Jesus taught. But unlike the others who would normally begin to glorify God, those in Nazareth took offense. “Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary?,” they asked. They probably remembered his playing with some of their kids when he was younger. They probably had some chairs or tables or beds he had made in their house. They thought they knew him. They had him boxed into their own categories and were unwilling to have those categories changed or expanded. In St. Luke’s version, they tell him, “Do for us here what we heard you do in Capernaum.” They wanted him to put on a show. In a sense, they thought they deserved one. They thought that because he was a fellow Nazarene they had rights over him. Eventually he would tell them that no prophet is accepted in his native place, he would remind them that God doesn’t play the game of geographical nepotism but rewards with favor those with faith like the widow of Zarephath or Naaman the Syrian — and in a rage they sought to murder him by throwing him off the precipice on which Nazareth had been built. They not only believed they had the right to play him like a genie but also believed they had the right to dispose of his life. They believed they owned him. They wanted to control him, not follow him. They had no faith in what God was doing in him and that lack of faith led them, on the Sabbath, to try to kill him.
• We see a similar dynamism in today’s first reading and the census David ordered to be taken of Israel and Judah. Because we’re used to censuses being taken every ten years and because we know how God used the census of Caesar Augustus to bring about Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem according to prophecy, it’s initially hard for us to grasp why taking a census would be considered a sin at all by King David and why the punishment for doing so would seem so severe. But there were two reasons. The first reason is because David stopped looking at the people as a gift of God, but wanted to know how many there were and where they were, because he had begun to think of them as their own. He could then begin to tax them. He could begin to control them. The second reason, which is clear in the passage, is because he wanted to know how many soldiers he would have. They reported back to him 800,000 in Israel and 500,000 in Judah. Prior to this, from the time he fought Goliath to the time his troops defeated his son Absalom’s insurrection, David was always certain that the battle belonged to the Lord. He was convinced he would defeat Goliath not because of his slingshot and five smooth pebbles, but because he was going into battle in the name of the Lord. When Absalom was hunting him, he had entrusted himself to God as well. To take a census was to take a totally different approach. It was to begin to count on human resources rather than on the Lord. It wasn’t a total lack of faith, but it was a spiritual worldliness that was far from living and thinking by faith. God’s punishment was medicinal, meant to help him and all of his people —  because they too were spiritually worldly, desiring an earthly king in order that they would be like other nations, even though God had warned them about the abuses that would follow, including using their sons as pawns in war (1 Sam 8) — to learn anew how to entrust themselves totally to the Lord, which is the essence of faith. He was to choose either three years of famine, or three months of persecution, or three days of pestilence, all of which would occasion everyone’s turning anew to the Lord. David, as we see, chose the last option, but when he appealed to God, God relented, because the medicine had worked. David’s words at the end, “It is I who have sinned; it is I, the shepherd, who have done wrong. But these are sheep; what have they done? Punish me and my kindred,” would likewise be fulfilled when David’s kindred, his 28th generation grandson, would be punished for his sin and for the sins of the whole world. David needed to learn how to entrust himself to God again, rather than seek to control every situation with human means. He needed to learn once again to be faithful.
• There’s a similar risk for us, of course. We’re susceptible to the same spiritual cancer as the Nazarenes and the same presumption as David. Like those in Nazareth, most of us have grown up with Jesus since our earliest days when we were baptized. We’ve heard his words. We have his pictures and statues throughout our house. We’re “familiar” with him, being real members of his spiritual family. But sometimes that can lead us to take him for granted, to try to domesticate him, to try to control him. We can stop being filled with awe at him and reverence for everything he asks. And we can even choose to kill him within ourselves through sin. Just like with the Nazarenes, our familiarity with Jesus, rather than making us more like Jesus, rather than leading to an increase in faith, can sometimes make us take him for granted, try to control him for our own interests, or even take offense at him rather than allow him to take our offenses away. We can try to eliminate him from our life in particular choices rather than die to ourselves so that he can truly live within us. Like the Nazarenes, who had the routine of the practice of their faith each Sabbath at the Synagogue, at the Temple, at home, we, too, can start going through the motions of faith and living practically like those without faith live.
• There’s another way and that’s what we celebrate today on the feast of St. Agatha, the young virgin martyr who was killed for the faith in Catania, Sicily, in 251. She was pursued by one of the local leaders Quintian and refused his advances, something that led him to think he would teach her a lesson. After all, he was the local leader and he believed he should have the right to have sex with any virgin he wants and if she refused, he’d use the power of the state to force her compliance. He threatened her with being sent to a brothel, to prison, to being tortured, to being killed. She replied, in words that are significant, “Jesus Christ, Lord all, you see my heart, you know my desires. Possess all that I am. I am your sheep: make me worthy to overcome the devil.” She knew she was the Lord’s. On Sunday we celebrated the feast of the Lord’s presentation and we pondered the meaning of our own consecration. Pope Benedict said that consecration is first and foremost a “change of ownership,” we give the “title” of our life over to God with freedom and love. We say we are not our own but belong to the Lord. We don’t seek to control him. We allow him to control us, knowing that he respects our freedom and always not only wishes us well but wants the eternal best for us. Agatha had that trust in God and in his loving providence. While Quintian followed through on all his threats, it didn’t shake Agatha’s trust in God. God answered her prayers and now all that she is is possessed by him in heaven.
• Today we ask the Lord, through St. Agatha’s intercession, to help us entrust ourselves in faith to God in a similar way. To remain always astonished by his teaching. To never take offense at him and his teachings. To count on his support in good times and in bad. And to give courageous witness to him when people seek to do to us what they did to him, as we prepare to receive from this altar the food that filled her with holy audacity!

The readings for today’s Mass were: