Growing More and More in Faith Through Storms, Third Saturday (I), January 28, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Saturday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor
January 28, 2023
Heb 11:1-2.8-19, Lk 1:69-75, Mk 4:35-41

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Throughout this week, Jesus has been teaching us and helping us to grow in faith. Over the last few days he’s been talking about what faith is and does — that faith is like rich soil that hears the seed of God’s word, accepts it wholeheartedly and bears abundant fruit; that faith is meant to illumine others like a light set on a lamp stand and grows through being measured out; that faith is like a mustard seed that God wants to help grow to become the biggest of shrubs — but today Jesus puts the disciples in a bootcamp experience to test their faith and help it to grow. The training happens on the Sea of Galilee.
• Jesus tells them, as night was coming, to get into the boat with him and cross to the other side. Jesus was so exhausted that he fell asleep in the stern of the boat and remained asleep even when the boat was beginning to rock, even when the waves that were “breaking over the boat” were doubtless splashing him in the face. Those storms were common to the Sea of Galilee because of the latitudinal mountain ranges stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Sea of Galilee that served as a wind tunnel and caused serious storms to begin almost out of nowhere. In the middle of the storm, the disciples didn’t respond with faith. They didn’t cry out to the Lord in prayer. They didn’t have confidence in the love of the Lord remaining with them. They feared for their life. They woke Jesus and said, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Do you not care? Their fears had gotten them to think Jesus was totally insensitive to their plight and to completing his own mission for the salvation of the world! Jesus got up and rebuked the wind and the sea, calming it. Then he rebuked the disciples. He asked, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?” Jesus allowed the entire storm to occur as a test of faith, to help them in the midst of it to pass the test so that their faith might grow.
• Jesus allows us to pass through similar tests, through analogous storms. The storms of pain and suffering, the storms of the suffering and death of loved ones, the storms of anxiety, failure, and various problems, the storms of temptations sometimes quite fierce so that in the midst of all of these tests, we might grow in faith. Every test of faith we can pass, and when we do, our faith grows. But it’s important that when we’re being tested, we respond not just with a vague perseverance, but by growing in trust of God and in trust of all that he has promised, because he is faithful to his promises.
• That’s what today’s first reading is about. The eleventh and twelfth chapters of the Letter to the Hebrews are among the most inspirational sections of the entire Bible. Yesterday we finished the tenth chapter focusing on the holy hypomone — perseverance — God wants us to have in contrast to those who “draw back.” We pondered how the early Christians allowed themselves to be dispossessed of so many of their earthly possessions — even their life! — because they knew that they had a greater possession (hyparxin) in God in faith. Today the Letter to the Hebrews builds on it. It defines faith as “the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” Faith is the hypostasis, the substance, the down payment, of what we hope for, the evidence of what we do not yet see but know is coming. It’s the embryo of the fulfillment that one day will grow. By faith we firmly believe that we already possess in part what we hope to possess in full later.
• Our late Pope Benedict talked about this in his beautiful encyclical letter on Christian hope, Spe Salvi, writing: “In the eleventh chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews, we find a kind of definition of faith that closely links this virtue with hope…: ‘Faith is the hypostasis of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen.’ For the Fathers and for the theologians of the Middle Ages, it was clear that the Greek word hypostasis was to be rendered in Latin with the term substantia …— faith is the ‘substance’ of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen. Saint Thomas Aquinas, using the terminology of the philosophical tradition to which he belonged, explains it as follows: faith is a habitus, that is, a stable disposition of the spirit, through which eternal life takes root in us and reason is led to consent to what it does not see. The concept of ‘substance’ is therefore modified in the sense that through faith, in a tentative way, or as we might say ‘in embryo’—and thus according to the ‘substance’—there are already present in us the things that are hoped for: the whole, true life. And precisely because the thing itself is already present, this presence of what is to come also creates certainty: this ‘thing’ that must come is not yet visible in the external world (it does not ‘appear’), but because of the fact that, as an initial and dynamic reality, we carry it within us, a certain perception of it has even now come into existence. … Faith is not merely a personal reaching out towards things to come that are still totally absent: it gives us something. It gives us even now something of the reality we are waiting for, and this present reality constitutes for us a ‘proof ‘of the things that are still unseen. Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a ‘not yet.’ The fact that this future exists changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality, and thus the things of the future spill over into those of the present and those of the present into those of the future.” Faith, as he says, is not just subjective conviction, but it gives us something even now of what God wants to give us forever. We can just ponder the fact that God gives himself to us on the altar right now, the Trinity dwells in us right now, and we can already grasp that we’re experiencing a small glimpse of what God wants to give us forever. For the apostles in the boat, hadn’t they already seen Jesus’ concern? Hadn’t they seen his power over the devil? Hadn’t they seen his ability to work miracles of healing? But they still hadn’t grasped that realization, that evidence, of faith to strengthen them in the midst of temptation.
• After giving us this definition of faith, the Letter to the Hebrews immediately goes on to illustrate in in the lives of so many people who lived by faith. It starts with Abel, who in faith gave God not just meat but himself; with Enoch who walked with the Lord in faith and was brought into his presence forever; with Noah, who built an ark far from water because he believed what the Lord had revealed to him that eventually where he was would totally be submerged. Then we get to today’s passage about Abraham. “By faith,” the Letter to the Hebrews stresses in refrain — by this realization of things hoped for, this evidence of things not seen — Abraham left his native place to go to a place God would eventually show him; he dwelled in tents for a while rather than in the homes he had; he believed that he would become the father not just of a son in his old age through his seemingly sterile wife Sarah, but the father of many nations; by faith, when God tested him to sacrifice Isaac, the son of the promise, he was ready, reasoning that “God was able to raise even from the dead.” That is a remarkable expression of faith, 1800 years before Jesus’ resurrection, that even if Isaac was sacrificed, God would raise him from the dead! What faith that is! The Letter says that living by faith means that we acknowledge ourselves “to be strangers and aliens on earth” who are “seeking” and who “desire a better homeland, a heavenly one,” because we’re living off of the downpayment of the fullness of that kingdom. On Monday, we’ll have the continuation of this chapter, which shows that this type of faith is not supposed to be rare, and that it makes heroes. The author of the Letter, after talking about the faith of Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph the Patriarch, Moses, and Rahab, will ask, “What more shall I say? I have not time to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets, who by faith conquered kingdoms, did what was righteous, obtained the promises; they closed the mouths of lions, put out raging fires, escaped the devouring sword; out of weakness they were made powerful, became strong in battle, and turned back foreign invaders. Women received back their dead through resurrection. Some were tortured and would not accept deliverance, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others endured mockery, scourging, even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, sawed in two, put to death at sword’s point; they went about in skins of sheep or goats, needy, afflicted, tormented.  The world was not worthy of them. … Yet all these, though approved because of their faith, did not receive what had been promised. God had foreseen something better for us, so that without us they should not be made perfect.” They were all still awaiting the promise, looking forward to receiving it at the same time, God-willing, we will, if we but imitate their faith, the faith that the apostles in the boat eventually developed.
• Today the Church celebrates the feast of someone known for his great faith and whose words and example have helped nourish the faith of so many during the past eight centuries. Today we begin a special three-year Jubilee for St. Thomas Aquinas called for by his Dominican brothers since this year is the 700th anniversary of his canonization and next year is the 750th anniversary of his death and 2025 is the 800th anniversary of his birth. Early in his life we see in him the growth of faith. After meeting some of the newly founded members of the Order of Preachers, popularly called the Dominicans after their founder St. Dominic, he discovered God was calling him to be one of them. But that was very much opposed by Thomas’ family, particularly his mother, who had plans for Thomas to follow her brother as Abbot of the nearby prestigious Benedictine Monastery of Monte Cassino, where St. Benedict and St. Scholastica are buried. She would consent for him to become a priest, but only a type of priest consistent with his noble birth. She absolutely and inflexibly didn’t want him to become a priest of a mendicant order that begged for food. Thomas, therefore, when he reached majority ran away from home, heading to Paris to join the Dominicans. His mother sent his brothers, however, on horseback to capture him and bring him home, where she had him thrown into the dungeon of their castle imprisoned so that he wouldn’t escape. It’s there that they tried to break him from his desire to become a Dominican, his brothers going so far as to send a prostitute into the dungeon to try to have him fall in chastity, a temptation he thoroughly resisted because of his faith. Eventually he would escape — it seems with the help of his mother, who thought it would be less embarrassing for him to escape and follow his vocation than for the family to give him permission — and become a Dominican.
• But his imprisonment of more than a year was a time when the seed of faith grew large. It’s one of the most important things that happened in the history of theology, because it was during that time that Thomas, to spend his confinement profitably, got a copy of the Latin New Testament and memorized it inside out, so much so that for the rest of his life, the words of Christ, the insights of the apostles, were on the tip of his tongue, something that strengthened everything he ever wrote, a contemplata that was shared with all. Because he never answered questions in class, many of his classmates at the University of Paris called him the “Dumb Ox,” because of his size. But his professor, St. Albert the Great, who knew of his written homework, said that his “mooing” would one day echo around the world. Thomas sought to unite revelation to reason, with the help of the recently discovered texts of Aristotle, so that reason would help to deepen our understanding of the faith and faith would purify reason. Since the truths of faith and reason both come from God he knew that they could never truly be in conflict, just apparent conflict, and he began an incredibly prodigious output of writing that has influenced Christian theology and philosophy ever since.
• But as influential as his theological and philosophical corpus has been in the history of Christian thought, I believe his greatest legacy flowed out of his prayerful heart. After the Eucharistic Miracle of Bolsena, Pope Urban IV asked him and St. Bonaventure to compose the Office to celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi — the hymns, the lessons, the prayers. St. Thomas won the competition against his holy Franciscan friend. And we are still very much profiting from the fruits of his contemplation. He wrote the Tantum Ergo and the O Salutaris we still sing at Eucharistic Adoration. He wrote the Panis Angelicus. He wrote the Adoro Te Devote. He penned the Lauda Sion Salvatorem we chant on Corpus Christi. They all flow from his Eucharistic piety. And these hymns all feature pleas to God to help us grow in faith. In his Adoro Te Devote, he sang,  “Fac me tibi semper magis credere,” “Make me always believe in you more and more.” In the Tantum Ergo, we cry out “Praestet fides supplementum sensuum defectui,” May faith supplement what my senses fail to grasp.” And he gives, in his Adoro Te Devote, the means by which we grow in faith, in the Eucharist and elsewhere. He sang, “Visus, tactus, gustus in te fallitur, Sed auditu solo tuto creditur. Credo quidquid dixit Dei Filius; Nil hoc verbo veritátis verius. “Having seen, touched and tasted, we’re deceived about you. It’s only by hearing that we can believe. I believe whatever the Son of God has said because nothing is truer than the Word of Truth.” Faith comes from hearing Jesus’ words with faith, with having ears to hear and the soil to receive what the mustard seed of the Word of God and allowing it to grow.
• This growth happened throughout his life. Toward the end of short five decades God gave him on earth, he had two great mystical experiences (that we know of). In the first, he was so moved by the presence of the Lord that he stopped writing all together, recognizing everything he had written — some of the most important and penetrating theology anyone has ever written — were “like straw” compared to the experience he had of God in prayer. The second experience was when Jesus spoke to him from the Crucifix about three months before he died at the age of 49. Jesus said, “Bene scripsisti de me Thoma; quam ergo mercedem accipias?” “You have written well of me Thomas? What reward would you receive? What do you wish that I give you?” Thomas could have asked for anything, but he knew well who is treasure was. “Non aliam, Domine, nisi te ipsum,” he replied. “Nothing but you, Lord!” His whole life, his whole treasure, was the Lord. The Lord himself was the substance of what Thomas hoped for, the realization of the invisible God, the One not seen. The Lord was the One he sought in his vocation even against the objections and obstacles of his family. The Lord was the One he sought in his study of Sacred Scripture and all his Sacred Theology. The Lord was the One he loved in all of his Eucharistic hymns. He only and always wanted the Lord as his reward, and now, on this feast day and throughout this three-year Jubilee, we rejoice with him that with all the saints he has that “mercedem.”
• At the beginning of this Mass we prayed to God that he would grant us to “understand what [St. Thomas] taught and imitate what we accomplished.” Few of us will ever be able to read and understand all St. Thomas’ theology, but we can understand the most important thing he taught — about the gift of faith — as we pray that we, like him, may base our entire life on the substance, the evidence, that God has given us of his presence and the downpayment of the future fulfillment of his promises, so that we might like like Abel, Noah, Abraham, Moses, so many parents, grandparents, godparents, religious, priests, and catechists who taught us the faith, might one day come to rejoice in that kingdom with Jesus on the eternal shore! Today in the boat of the Church, despite whatever storms the Church, the world, our country, ourselves personally may be experiencing, Jesus wants us to know how much he cares, to help us go from little faith to greater. And as a promise of that help, he now gives us himself! And as he does, he strengthens us within by this “mercedam” to strive like St. Thomas for what he sang about in the last lines of the Panis Angelicus, words he prayed to God and we could pray to God and to him: “Per tuas semitas duc nos quo tendimus ad lucem quam inhabitas!” Through your footsteps, lead us on the way we are tending, to the light where you dwell!”

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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