But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
In the gospel of Saint Luke, Jesus makes that disturbing remark after his teaching on persistent prayer. We should bring our needs before God confidently and persistently, assured as we are that we may ask God's help. Failing to do that is, apparently, gravely disappointing to the Lord.
I often hear the parents of adult children worrying about their children and grandchildren. They are watching slow-motion trainwrecks occur and yet their offers of help -- financial, emotional, or spiritual -- are consistently rejected. They have no intention of intruding; they have nothing to lose or gain by helping; but they are refused.
Jesus offers more than any parent can offer, and his salvation is absolutely necessary. He offers more than suggestions, and more than a whitewash to make the unacceptable presentable. (Some people think forgiveness is just acting as if it never happened, a whitewash of the past.) He offers healing, reconciling, and integrity. He offers existence -- that is life in its fullness -- to those who only want life on their own terms.
This life is in communion with oneself and with others. It is a home where one feels entirely welcome and known, where one can take risks, stumble, misjudge, make regrettable decisions, and still flourish and blossom into ever newer wellbeing. It is a heart with such divine assurance it might trust the untrustworthy and forgive the unforgiven.
By his death on a cross -- which was so graceful that a Roman centurion declared, "Truly this man was the Son of God!” -- Jesus has revealed our potential. You could be God. You have at your disposal, as God's gracious gift, the Holy Spirit which transforms even our sordid past into a Gospel of Revelation.
If you and I are not God, it's not because we have utterly failed, as if we should have tried harder. Nor is it because we are not worthy. These words only frustrate God's work. I am not God simply because the Father gave Divine Sonship to the son of Mary. Filled with the Holy Spirit he lived out his potential, which included complete surrender of himself.
His mother, too, in giving her only begotten Son to God, fulfilled her potential as the Mother of God. Growing from grace to grace, she became the Mother of all the Living.
In the gospel of Jesus, Mary, and all the Saints, we hear our potential. In today's teaching about prayer, we hear Jesus' invitation to ask and ask courageously, persistently, and relentlessly:
Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them? I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily.
The Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus demand speedy justice. He knows our potential! It must be accomplished. We hear his longing for that day in his human expression of weary frustration,
"But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
Or we could put it as the First Eucharistic Prayer says, "He is like us in all things but sin."
ReplyDeleteWhen I say, "You could be God," I remember that Jesus is fully human, as the Church insists. At his conception, the Father breathed divinity into his humanity as he breathed life into the mud of Adam. He became human as he became God. He did not cease to be human upon his death, resurrection or ascension.
So we can never consider his courage, generosity, or humility and say, "Yes, but he is God and I am not." Nor can we say of the saint, "They were saints and I am not."
There are differences, of course, of time, place, and vocation. I was not called to be Galilean healer or an Italian itinerant preacher. By going where God has sent me and following the vocation God has given me, I follow the trace of Jesus, Mary, and the saints. And when I sin I cannot excuse myself as "only human." BECAUSE I have no excuse and want no excuse, I remember God's mercy and turn back to the Lord.