Homily for Friday of the 3rd Week in Ordinary Time

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God is capable of big works. He is capable of big signs. The great flood. Check. The parting of the Red Sea. Check. He is the almighty. He can overwhelm us anytime He wants to.

Yet He chooses to come among us like a mustard seed planted in the ground. He chooses a young virgin to be His mother. He is born most humbly in an out of the way town. He throws his life away, delivering Himself into the hands of sinners.

The Lord loves our freedom so much, He finds us human beings to be so very good, created in His image and likeness, that even though it is His right to demand obedience from His creation, He humbly asks for it instead. The Lord usually invites in small ways. The Lord whispers to us. Our vocation usually starts out this way. As a seed. As a whisper. As an invitation to move forward in faith rather than in fear.

The author of the Hebrews tells us that if we move forward in fear, we will avoid sufferings, and latch on to the things that require no faith, the simple pleasures that are closest and easiest. If we move forward in fear, we will conform our lives to the standards of the world.

But the just one will live by faith, and joyfully endure whatever sufferings are necessary for him to move toward the fullness of life and his eternal destiny. To move towards life with faith instead of towards death with fear requires endurance. Once we move forward in faith, we must not turn back. Building upon that initial gift of faith, that initial vocation to holiness, that first invitation to follow the Lord, each time thereafter that we choose faith and not fear, we grow closer to bearing that beautiful fruit that the Lord has called us to produce! +m