Homily for Advent 4 - December 20, 2015

Homily for Advent 4

December 20, 2015

The Risk of Faith

 

            If you had a few thousand dollars to invest and you took it to a financial planner, I’d bet they’d give you a simple word of advice: diversify! Investments are safer if you diversify – buy many different types of stocks and bonds, so that if one of them goes down in price, it doesn’t affect you as much. It’s risky to put all of your eggs into one basket and buy only one type of stock, because if it fails, you’re left with nothing.

            But faith is a risk like that. Consider the risk that Mary took. Yes, we hear Elizabeth’s affirming words in the Gospel, “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled!” Yes, we know the end of the story, that because of Mary’s faith she is now Queen of Heaven and earth. But consider the risk she took in believing!

            Mary was a fourteen-year-old girl, probably uneducated, most likely poor, engaged to be married to a much older man. She is going about her daily business when all of a sudden she has a vision of an angel, who tells her that she is about to become pregnant with the Son of God – and the angel asks Mary’s permission for such a miracle to take place.

            If she said yes, she was risking a lot. She would be an unwed teenage mother. Surely her family would not have believed her story that the baby came about through the Holy Spirit – they would have said, “Yeah right! That’s ridiculous!” They might have thought she was crazy, or perhaps she would have been disowned by her family and forced into abject poverty. She could have lost her fiancée Joseph – who would want to marry a young woman who is mysteriously pregnant? Worst of all, she could have been stoned to death – that was the penalty for adultery in the Jewish Law.

            All of this must have gone through Mary’s mind. Would she lose her family, her good reputation, her fiancée, all of her possessions, even her very life? It was a very big risk to say, “Let it be done to me according to your word.” But she recognized that faith is a risk – a risk worth taking, because the Lord is trustworthy and will keep His promises. She said yes, and that yes changed the history of the world.

            True faith is indeed a risk! It’s not a “safe” investment! Consider – faith means that we are living our lives in hope of a reward that we can’t see, loving and serving a God who we can’t always sense, denying ourselves and taking up our cross in the hopes that we will find everlasting joy in Heaven. That’s a risk!

The world mocks those with faith and says, “What if heaven doesn’t exist? What if it’s not real and you’re wasting your time? Instead, just live your life for yourself – make money, enjoy yourself.” But what if the world is wrong – and there really is a God, and eternity really is forever? I wouldn’t want to risk the chance that I wasted my life…so I’m willing to take the risk of faith!

            I once heard faith described as “fire insurance” – in other words, the person was saying, “I go to church just so I can avoid Hell.” If that’s the entirety of their faith, then they don’t really understand faith at all. Faith is not a crutch that we only turn to when things get bad. We don't use faith to prevent bad things from happening. Rather, faith is the most dangerous virtue of all: it means giving your life away in hopes of finding it in eternity!

            Let me give you an example of faith that I just read about this past week. I really admire a man named Michael O’Brien, a Canadian Catholic man who is a painter and a novelist. When he was young, his paintings were starting to actually become quite famous. He was making a lot of money painting landscapes and giving art exhibitions. But in his mid-20s, he decided that he was going to consecrate his painting to Christ and only seek to paint for Him. He and his wife went to church one day and they put their paintbrushes on the altar, asking God for the grace to paint only for His glory. When he began to paint again after that, the art critics roundly criticized him for his Christian artwork; people stopped buying his paintings; he could no longer find art galleries that wanted to feature his work. He risked it all for faith! However, this time of trial in O’Brien’s life bore fruit. As he was an unemployed artist, he began to write…and one of his novels, “Father Elijah”, eventually became a bestseller and has sold hundreds of thousands of copies. He was able to glorify God through a different path. But it took a risk to put his entire life, his career, his talents into the hands of God…and God has done something beautiful with them.

            True faith is a risk. I say “true” faith because I mean a faith that permeates every aspect of our life. Yes, it’s safe to go to Church on Sunday mornings. It’s much less safe to be a Catholic when your friends invite you to a bar on a Friday night. Are you willing to risk mockery and scorn when you won’t get drunk with them or indulge in their impure jokes? It’s safe to speak about Christ to your fellow churchgoers. It’s much more risky to bring up your love for God with your friends or family members who don’t share that belief. It’s safe to pray when it’s convenient. It’s much more risky to stay faithful to your commitment of daily prayer when it’s hard, when it takes sacrifice, when you’re tired.

            But the risk is worth it because the reward is worth it. The reward for Mary’s faith is having the honor of being the Mother of the Son of God. The reward for our faith is joy in this life and in the life to come.