Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Feb 15, 2015

Homily for February 15, 2015
Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
The Gift of Faith

 In the deep South in the 1950s, there was a young girl who lived near a convent of nuns who ran a home for the elderly. Very often, the girl would go over to help the nuns with the home – she would clean the house for them, or take care of the patients, or join them for prayers. The nuns were wonderful women of God, but their ministry was constantly short of money. One evening, they were going to prepare breakfast for the next day, when they realized that they had no food left in the house, and no money to buy any. The only thing left in the house was half of a plain donut.
 The girl was very worried about what would happen to the residents, who would have nothing to eat the next day. But the mother superior wasn’t one to worry. She put the half-donut on a plate, and taking the girl with her, they both went into the chapel where the mother superior laid the donut down before the altar. Kneeling down, she prayed out-loud, “Jesus, You know that we need food. And we trust that You will provide it.”
 That was all she prayed. She got up and encouraged the girl to go about setting the table for the next day’s breakfast.
 About an hour later the doorbell rang. The girl and the mother superior answered it – it was the local baker who explained, “Dear Sister, my assistant was baking donuts for tomorrow but he made all of the wrong type, so I can’t sell these like I want to. Would you be willing to take them?”
 The baker opened the box to reveal dozens upon dozens of plain donuts – all cut exactly in half. The nun turned to the little girl and said something she never forgot: “Honey, Jesus is real.”
 This is a true story – it was told to me by a friend who knows the girl, who is currently a nun herself.
 Before Jesus ever does a miracle in the Scriptures, there is something required: faith. He never heals someone without faith. Now it may be easy to think, “Well, why doesn’t Jesus heal them and then they’ll have faith?” But the physical healing is less important than their faith in Him – they have to believe that He is the Son of God before He heals them.
 Today’s Gospel is another example of this. The leper expresses his faith – he says, “If you will it, you can heal me!” He acknowledges that Jesus does have this type of power! If you think about it, it was really a leap into the unknown – the leper would have looked like a fool if he put his trust in Jesus but then Jesus couldn’t really heal him. So the leper trusted that Jesus was who He said He was (even though Jesus probably looked like an ordinary man), and this gift of faith proved to be his healing.
 I love the definition of faith from the book of Hebrews: “Faith is the evidence of things unseen.” Faith means knowing the truth about reality without having seen it. We look with our eyes and see what looks like bread – but our faith tells us it is the Body of Jesus. We don’t see Heaven – yet our lives should be directed towards it. We don’t physically see the Holy Spirit living in our immortal souls – but we trust that He is there.
 Faith is both a gift and a choice. It is a gift that God gives – so ask Him to increase your faith! But at the same time, faith is a choice – we must decide to acknowledge Jesus as Lord, we must decide to live for a Heaven that we cannot see.
 Even though faith is a gift from God and somewhat of a mystery, our faith is not blind. There are very good reasons to believe in God, in the Resurrection, in Heaven. I don’t have time right now to give you proofs for these articles of faith, but they are there, I assure you, and I’d be happy to tell you after Mass any of the proofs for our faith. So our faith is not irrational at all – it’s not like we have to throw out science and reason in order to have faith.
 But faith is superrational – it goes beyond science and reason. Science is based upon the material world – its proper role is to discover what we can see and touch and measure. But the world that we cannot see or measure is even more real than the material world – angels, souls, eternity. It’s simply outside of the realm of science. Science can’t disprove faith – it simply must recognize that faith goes beyond what science can measure.
 So how do we grow in faith? Pray for it, since it is a gift. But we also must feed it – we should study our faith, because our faith makes sense! Read a good spiritual book (we have some in the back of church), come to our Lenten Catholicism series. And right here, right now, make a decision to turn your life over to Jesus as Lord. He has the power to do in you what He did for the leper – to completely heal you and change your life, giving you the hope of eternal life.