We hear in Psalm 33,
Our soul waits for the LORD, …
May your kindness, O LORD, be upon us
who have put our hope in you.
Perhaps one of the most difficult things for American Christians and Catholics is to put our hope and trust in the Lord. Really, really trust in Him. Not just to believe, but to put our lives in his hands.
The readings today give us three figures who truly live the words of the “Our Father”, … “… thy will be done.”
We say the words. But trusting can be challenging.
The three examples are Abraham, our father in faith, St. Paul and Jesus.
Each of the three changed the world. The world actually turned a different direction as a result of their lives and direction. Each of the three were asked to give their lives going a completely new direction than they had been going. Each of them died before they saw the fruit of their sacrifice. And, after each one, the world would never be the same.
Abraham and Sara were likely in their seventies and childless when the Lord appeared to Abram, his earlier name, when they lived in the land of Chaldeans, modern day Iraq.
The LORD said to Abram:
“Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk
and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.“I will make of you a great nation,
and I will bless you ….
Imagine an old man, my age, accepting a challenge to leave everything in his native land to move to a strange new land. God slowly revealed his promises to Abram and Sara. They were elderly and childless, but God promised them a child. Later God would promise Abram,
I will make your descendants like the dust of the earth; if anyone could count the dust of the earth, your descendants too might be counted.
No child came right away. Abram and Sara got older. Still, Abraham trusted God. And God fulfilled his promises. Abraham just didn’t live to see it, but he died trusting God. He is our father in faith.
St. Paul had his life completely changed when he encountered Jesus, after viciously persecuting the Church. As an older man, he left Israel and traveled the world spreading his new religion at great personal risk and sacrifice. Writing to one of his best friends, Timothy, Paul tells him about the reason they do what they do, saying of Jesus,
He saved us and called us to a holy life,
not according to our works
but according to his own design….
Paul became an entirely different person than he had been, very concerned about the well-being of the many new, small Church communities that he had created in his travels. Paul would die before he saw the outcome, but he died trusting Jesus with his life.
Jesus was a carpenter until his early thirties. Of course, he was the Son of God and the Son of Man. But his ministry did not begin until after his baptism in the River Jordan by John the Baptist and his Temptation in the desert by Satan. His life took a really unexpected turn as he brought the Kingdom of Heaven to earth, called and formed his disciples and established the Church.
At the end of his three years preaching, teaching and performing miracles, he revealed himself more completely to his closest disciples, Peter, James and John. His ministry was transforming the world around him. Now he was headed to Jerusalem, where he knew it would all end. But first,
Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother,
and led them up a high mountain by themselves.
And he was transfigured before them;
his face shone like the sun
and his clothes became white as light.
And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them,
conversing with him.
Moses and Elijah were informing him of the way Jesus would die. Jesus did not live on earth to see how it would end up, or the Church he had initiated through Peter and the Apostles.
Abraham, Paul and Jesus changed the world and subsequent history by their faithfulness to God, but they did not live to see it happen.
This Lent, we are called to allow conversion in us, and to trust that God’s plan for each of us could be radically different than we had expected.
That’s what happened to me, in my conversion to the Catholic Church, and my acceptance to the priesthood of the Church.
Learn to trust God.
Our soul waits for the LORD, …
May your kindness, O LORD, be upon us
who have put our hope in you.