5th Sunday of Lent Faith comes alive!

While a seminarian and doing chaplaincy work in a California hospital, I was called to a room. There a mother and a young daughter, the daughter was ill, and the mother visibly upset.

As we talked, I learned that they were new to the Christian faith (not Catholic) and they were told that once baptized nothing bad would happen to them.

It did. And they were struggling to make sense of it.

Faith must be nourished and grown, built upon, updated, rebooted
Faith to remain alive within us requires our effort.
Otherwise the first challenge to what we think we believe and know...could leave us struggling.

Another story, a man who was raised protestant with a literal understanding of Scripture, became Catholic. Later discerned a calling to the priesthood. He takes his first scripture class with a NON-Literal understanding of Scripture...so shaken he needs to take a leave of absence.


Faith can be tricky.
We can feel so strong in it. So assured in what we believe and what we think is correct. We think we know all of the 2000 years of Catholic faith, because we have gone to church for one hour per week, and we completed confirmation decades ago.
Then we are confronted with Alternative facts.
Or confronted with a situation that challenges us. And clearly there are no shortages of these situations.

What do we do? How do we react? How do we act?

Martha, Mary and Lazarus, friends of Jesus.
They believe in him. They know him.
Lazarus dies, and now Martha and Mary, and maybe even the twelve struggle to believe.
Why did this happen? What will happen? Why didn’t you do something for him?

Jesus takes it in.

What does he do...he wants them to grow beyond what they think they know.
He wants them to know that his love of them was never in doubt.
He wants them to know that there will always be hope.
He wants them with this seed of faith that they have, so see beyond the death; to see a hope.

Our own faith may become ill or even die.
Because we didn’t grow it, feed it, nourish it, exercise it.

There are parts of Eucharistic prayer, towards the end, in which we talk about those who have died….
II “Remember also our brothers and sisters who have fallen asleep in the hope of the resurrection…”
We interpret that as prayers for those who have died physically. I often wonder if it refers to those who faith has been shaken?

Faith grows with love; by our working for the will of the Father, through our works of compassion, mercy, generosity, all the qualities we believe of the Father.

Faith develops by allowing ourselves to be pushed beyond ourselves and what can be often our own narrow concepts of faith, an immature understanding of Catholicism.

Faith comes alive when the Spirit says “FORGIVE this person. “ACCEPT FORGIVENESS from that person.” “LiSTEN” “STAY CALM” “Be humble”  “Discern”

We grow by opening our eyes to miracles of life that happen in front of us.
Broken relationships being mended. Those in poverty being released.
Those acts of generosity…

There was a story on social media, a boy in Fernley, works for money, offers to sell his x-box, so that his mom, a single mother, could get a car.

Eucharist celebrates life.

Eucharist comforts us in our need, but it also pushes us forward.

To not be so comfortable with what we think that we know, but to also search for more.

Who came back to life in the Gospel?  

Lazarus, clearly. Yet, who else?
Who needs to come back to life here? Now?