Heroes of Faith

Homily for the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Father John Kavanaugh, a Jesuit theologian and Scripture commentator, tells a story of the day that he met St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta. When he introduced himself, Mother Teresa asked him, “What can I do for you?” He answered, “Pray for me.” She continued, “What do you want me to pray for?” He voiced the request he had borne most of his life: “Pray that I have clarity.” She said “No”, and that was that.

When he asked why she would not honor his request, she announced that clarity was the last thing he was clinging to and had to let go of. When he commented that she herself had always seemed to have the clarity he longed for, she laughed: “I have never had clarity; what I’ve always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust.”

Thus, for him, Mother Teresa became a member of that cloud of witnesses to which the Letter to the Hebrews refers: heroes of faith, who had conviction about things unseen.

Chapter Eleven of the Letter to the Hebrews is almost a review lesson in the characters of the Old Testament.

Abraham and Sarah, believed they would give birth to a child in their old age (the very idea was enough to make Sarah laugh out loud) and make “descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sands of the seashore.”

The rest of chapter eleven goes on to speak of many of the characters that populate the pages of the Hebrew Scriptures. The Letter to the Hebrews celebrates the faith of Abel, dead but still teaching us; of Noah and his improbable ark; of Jacob, at death’s door, finally able to bless Joseph’s sons; of Moses, the child unguarded and abandoned, who would one day lead a nation against impossible odds into a territory his feet would never touch.

How much we have to learn from the great ones who have gone before us. Faith felled the walls of Jericho and saved the prostitute Rahab. It was faith, the letter says, that discovered new lands, bestowed wondrous strength, and inspired uncommon courage in ordinary men and women. “Some were pilloried, flogged, even chained in prison, stoned, beheaded, homeless, dressed in rags, penniless, given nothing but ill-treatment, living in caves and deserts and ravines.” They were all heroes of faith, the letter continues, but the amazing this is that they did not live to see what was promised.

It is not only the Hebrew saints that are praised in the Letter, but our own as well—those who, after Christ, believed in him despite adversity. We imagine faith to ease confusion, dull the pain, redeem the times, but we miss the testimony of the cloud of witnesses. Our faith does not bring final clarity on this earth. It does not disarm the demons. It does not still the chaos or dull the pain or provide a crutch so we might walk. When all else is unclear, the heart of faith says, “Into your hands I commend my spirit.”

So it was with all our heroes. As the letter to the Hebrews states: “These died in faith. They did not obtain what had been promised but saw and saluted it from afar … searching for a better, a heavenly home.”