Optional Memorial of Saint John of Capistrano, priest

Lectionary: 473

Abraham did not doubt God's promise in unbelief;
rather, he was empowered by faith and gave glory to God
and was fully convinced that what God had promised
he was also able to do.
That is why it was credited to him as righteousness.

Notions of faith are sometimes plagued by confusion with opinion. To say,  "Here's what I think..." or "I suppose that..." may be confused with one's religious faith. The confusion becomes critical when believers are measured by opinion polls, and counted among those who feel a certain way about something. 

When Abraham went to Mount Moriah to sacrifice his son, he didn't feel it was the right thing to do. His feelings must have opposed him at every step of the way. When Elias marched forty days into the desert with neither food nor drink, he was impelled by a command, not a feeling of weariness or fear. And certainly not by elation. When Moses raised his staff over the sea, he didn't say, "I think this will work." 

When Jesus took up his cross and walked to Calvary, he acted faithfully. He knew in his heart that his Father commanded it and the Holy Spirit directed it, but he was driven more by obedience than by his belief that this will somehow work out okay.

I like to use the words faith and fidelity interchangeably. A faithful husband practices fidelity. If we act with fidelity toward our family, friends, church, and God, we may be called faithful. Opinions are something else altogether. Similarly, the theological virtue of hope should not be confused with opinions or feelings about how things might work out. 

Holding a conviction might be the same as faith, since conviction drives one's behavior. The difference is that between thinking the ice is thick enough to bear one's weight and walking on it. 

Saint Paul contended with his converts over this difference between opinion and belief. He announced to his fellow Jews that the Father had raised Jesus from the dead, and they should join him in the breaking of bread and drinking of the cup. But that entailed leaving their synagogues to enter a communion with the apostle and his disciples. If some doubted that they must abandon their former rites and practices, the Jewish leaders insisted upon it and drove them out. That excommunication began in Jerusalem and continued in every Jewish quarter of every major city, wherever the Gospel went. 

There are Jews to this day who blame Paul for the rupture between the two religions, but the Gospels and Saint Luke's Acts of the Apostles bear witness to their incompatibility. It began before Paul's fateful encounter on the road to Damascus. 

Faith/fidelity insisted that every Jew who believed in Jesus must take up that cross and carry it away from the synagogue and into communion with the Church. Many former Jews could not be reconciled with their families and friends. For all intents and purposes, they died to their past life and were reborn into a whole new world of different relationships. 

Today that story is borne out when many alcoholics enter AA, and abused children abandon their families to seek healing. They act in faith and must leave their former lives and relationships  behind; and sometimes their careers. Some pacifists too are commanded by the Spirit to leave the military-industrial complex to find employment in a more hopeful industry. 

As difficult as it is, the way of the cross is not unfamiliar to ordinary life. We must often turn our backs on the past and many past relationships in our search for freedom. Like our Father Abraham, when we make such choices, we invest everything we have and are in God's promise of life.