Belief

Homily for Friday of the Second Week of the Christmas Season

Someone once defined belief as that which gets us up out of bed in the morning. What we hear in today’s first reading goes further: “the one who believes that Jesus is the son of God” is victorious over the shaky convictions and superficial values of our world. Believing makes us victorious over the attitude which would say: “Why get up? Nothing will change. What am I doing that will make any difference?” Once we are up, we are able to live with the confidence and assurance that our belief gives us; we are no longer on shaky ground but possess a basic conviction from which to live. Believing, in other words, is an assurance we get from God that we are justified in living with hope and spirit because we put our trust in the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus. We know that it is worthwhile to get up and face the daily battles and often seemingly the very same ones. With Jesus as the center of our belief, we can have confidence that the forces causing suffering, sin, and death can only be temporarily victorious. The kind of belief we are talking about here does not claim to have or give the answers to all sorts of scientific questions or questions about the nature of the universe. It would be nice to know the answers to all the issues that we face every day. However, that is the purpose of our quest for knowledge and understanding. What belief in God tells us is, rather, that we are not wrong in practicing self-giving love and in seeing even life’s crushing moments as something that will be overcome by the power of the resurrection in our lives.

Believing is what not only gets us up in the morning, but it also brings us to this table every day. We believe that Jesus is the son of God and that Jesus is the son of Mary. Jesus is both human and divine. St. John uses the images of blood and water to emphasize the fact that Jesus has two natures. Jesus sustains us and gives us an example through his human nature, and Jesus also gives us faith in that day when we will be like him and see him face-to-face. Until that day, we hold onto our faith in the Eucharist as a foretaste of what will come after this life.