Homily for Ordinary Time 14 - July 4, 2021

 

Homily for Ordinary Time 14

July 4, 2021

Faith Is Not Blind

 

            Jesus was amazed at their lack of faith. Would He be amazed at our lack of faith in today’s world? Part of the reason why faith is a hard-sell in today’s world is a misunderstanding of what faith is.

            Most people would define faith as “believing in something they can’t see.” But people believe myths and legends all the time. In the ancient world, people believed in Zeus and Jupiter – I used to believe that thunder was caused by God bowling - so we need a better definition of faith than just believing something invisible.

            A better definition of faith is “believing in something we have not experienced based on the testimony of someone else.” When you think about it, we practice this kind of faith every day. I have not been to the Great Wall of China; I have never met Julius Caesar. But I believe in them because my teacher taught me about them, and I trusted my teacher’s testimony.

            If I were to tell you that I saw a bear yesterday in Monroe, what evidence would you have for believing that statement? (I didn’t really see a bear, just using it as an example!). Well, perhaps you would believe me because you know that I am trustworthy and honest, and have no ulterior motives for telling you that (I’m not trying to sell you bear spray, for example…yes, bear spray is a real thing!). Perhaps you would believe that statement because it is corroborated by others – maybe several people saw the bear. Perhaps you would believe that I saw a bear because you could see evidence like bear prints in the mud. So you wouldn’t just take my statement on face-value, you would want to know that I am trustworthy, my experience is corroborated, and there is physical evidence for it.

            Let’s apply this to Jesus! We learn about Him mainly because the Apostles wrote about Him and passed down oral tradition. Are they trustworthy? Well, they had nothing to gain by proclaiming to the world that Jesus is Lord. On the contrary, all of the twelve Apostles were martyred for that belief – Bartholomew was skinned alive, Peter was crucified upside-down, Paul was beheaded, Thomas was pierced with a lance. So why would they manufacture a story if it would lead to their death?

            Furthermore, these were hard-headed, uneducated, salt-of-the-earth laborers. Fishermen, carpenters, tax collectors. They were not hippies or dreamers; they wouldn’t have the education or time to invent some mythology.

            So, if the Apostles were trustworthy, is their testimony corroborated by others? Yes! Jesus did His miracles in public, seen by thousands. St. Paul even writes that Jesus appeared to over 500 people at once after His Resurrection. Of course, the Old Testament is also evidence pointing to Jesus – for example, Isaiah 7 speaks about “a virgin shall be with child and shall name Him Emmanuel” – a prophesy of Jesus from 700BC! Even non-Christian writers from the first century acknowledged that Jesus really existed – historians such as Tacitus and Josephus wrote that Jesus really existed and did extraordinary works.

            Finally, do we have any physical evidence of Jesus? We have plenty of evidence. For example, we have the Cross that Jesus was crucified on. It was found by Saint Helen, the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine. As soon as her son Constantine made Christianity legal in 313, Helen traveled to Jerusalem to find artifacts from Jesus’ life. She and her team excavated a pit in which they found dozens of crosses – the Romans crucified thousands every day – but she didn’t know which one belonged to the Lord. She found in Jerusalem a man suffering from leprosy, so she asked him to touch each of the crosses, and when he finally touched one specific cross, he was miraculously healed of his disease. Thus, she knew that it was the Cross of Christ – which can still be seen today.

We have the burial cloth of Jesus, too – it is called the Shroud of Turin, and it is kept in Turin, Italy. Back in 1898, it was photographed for the first time, and much to the photographer’s surprise, when he looked at the negative image of the Shroud, a face was staring back at him – Jesus’ face and body had been miraculously imprinted upon the burial cloth, but only clearly visible when viewed as a photographic negative. Scientists have done tests on the image and concluded that there was no paint or pigment of any kind, and that the image could only have come from a gigantic burst of radiation that occurred in the tomb – such as would happen when a man rises from the dead!

            So to believe in Jesus is not to believe in a myth or a legend. Rather, it is to believe in something that we have not seen because of the testimony of the men and women who lived with Him, walked with Him, saw Him perform miracles. Our faith is not just a blind belief – rather, it is, as the medieval scholars used to say, “Fides Quaerens Intellectum” – Faith Seeking Understanding. We believe, and we find good evidence for our belief in the Lord Jesus.

            St. Augustine summed it up best when he said, “Faith is to believe what we do not see, and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe.”