Homily for the Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

When The Son Of Man Returns, Will He Find Faith On Earth?

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

St. Bridget Catholic Church, Minneapolis, MN

Sunday, October 16, 2022

One of the most frightening and disturbing lines in the entire New Testament is in our Gospel for this weekend. After narrating a parable to his disciples about the necessity “to pray always without becoming weary,” Jesus drops a bombshell question, “But when the Son of Man returns, will he find faith on earth?” Jesus came to set the earth on fire, that is the fire of the Holy Spirit. The fact that the Church has been in existence for more than two thousand years is a sign of the abiding presence of the fire of the Holy Spirit. But does it mean that the Church will always be around? “When the Son of Man returns, will he find faith on earth?” To answer the Lord’s question, let’s look at how faith is passed on. Faith is contagious. My siblings and I got it from our parents. My generation got it from the previous generation. But if we fail to pass on the faith, it can fade away in one generation. Couple disturbing facts show that we are always one generation away from the extinction of faith. If you think the Christian faith cannot fade away, look at some places in the world where the Christian faith was once very vibrant. But now, it has ceased to exist. Where did St. Paul mostly preach? In Asia Minor. Today, it comprises most of present-day Turkey. St. John Chrysostom and St. Maximus the Confessor also preached there. Add to it, some of the earliest Christian churches were formed there. In Turkey today, the Christian faith is practically non-existent. Where is the birthplace of the Christian faith? The Middle East. There were once vibrant churches there, great Christian figures, great saints, great theologians, but today only a handful of Christians are there. What about Egypt? Egypt was the home of Origen, one of the greatest Christian theologians of all time; it was the home of the Desert Fathers, and once had a very vibrant church in Alexandria. Today, Christians are a tiny minority in Egypt. What about North Africa? Great Christian figures like Cyprian of Carthage and Augustine of Hippo were North Africans. The region once had a vibrant Christian church in North Africa. Now, it is practically non-existent. Look at Western Europe today. It is even worse there. For centuries, it used to be the bedrock of the Christian faith, it was the place that produced many missionaries that went out to all the world, it was the continent that gave birth to pivotal figures like St. Francis of Assisi, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Alphonsus Liguori, St. Catherine Sienna, etc. Today, the Christian faith is seriously threatened over there. Faith is fading over there. What you find mostly in Europe today are historic huge cathedrals with a few elderly people in them. Faith can disappear. 

Today, Jesus asks a troubling question, “When the Son of Man returns, will he find faith on earth?” Do you want to know my answer? In some regions of the world, he will find lots of Christians but with little Christianity. In others, he will find lots of Christian arts, Christian architectures, huge and beautiful cathedrals, etc but with a few Christians fighting to survive. Basically, the prediction of the future is very dire. This beautiful faith of us, this thing that God has given to us, this everything that Jesus has offered us may fade away. Not because of God’s actions and activity, rather due to ours. The world is becoming aggressively resistant to the Christian faith. The secular culture is intensifying its war against the Christian Church and the proclamation of the Gospel. Our first reading for today taken from Exodus 17:8-13 says, “In those days, Amalek came and waged war against Israel. Moses, therefore, said to Joshua, ‘Pick out certain men, and tomorrow go out and engage Amalek in battle. I will be standing on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand.” In that short passage, Israel stands for God and for the Church, and the Amalekites stand for all the cultural forces that are fighting against the Church. If you don’t know it, know it now. We are in a fight, in a war, in a spiritual warfare. We have always been in a fight from the beginning. After all, we worship a crucified God who was put to death by cultural and political forces. 

Sisters and brothers, the survival of the Church and the spread of the faith is primarily God’s work, however it is our work too. It is also our responsibility to ensure that the Christian faith is passed on from one generation to the next. Tell others about your faith. Share your faith with your family, especially your children. When your children ask faith based questions, don’t ignore them, and don’t tell them to ask the priest or their faith formators. Be the one to answer their questions. If you don’t know the answer, be the one to make enquiries. Understand your faith and then be able to explain it to your children. Read good Catholic books, ask your priests, read Catholic newspapers, go online, but be mindful of the sources. Your children trust you a lot. If they don’t get the answer from you, they might become disappointed and may even conclude you have no reason for believing in what you believe and in what you are trying to teach them. I believe that one of the reasons why many of our young people are disconnecting from faith is due to lack of understanding of the faith. No one understands the Christian message and abandons it. If a child does not understand the reason to believe, to practice, to experience and express the faith, when he or she gains independence from the parents, they will disconnect. As you share your faith with others, especially your family, one thing you should emphasize is practice, practice, practice. In religious tradition, two things are important— the passing on of beliefs and the passing on of practices. Practices are the things we do, like prayer, rituals, sacraments, processions, signs of the cross, dipping your hand in the holy water, kneeling, genuflecting, doing the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. If you believe strongly, practice strongly. If you believe boldly, practice boldly. Do not privatize the faith. We have a fight in our hands, Christians. The secular world is fighting with everything it has, but we can fight back with love, with beauty, with practice and thereby hand on the faith to the next generation.