Seek Peace and Holiness

Homily for Wednesday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

With this passage the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews comes to the problems of everyday Christian life and living. The author knows that sometimes it is given to a person to mount up with wings as an eagle; sometimes a person is enabled to run and not grow weary in the pursuit of some great moment of endeavor; but the author also knew that of all things it is hardest to walk every day and not to faint.

No one can ever truly escape temptation and suffering in this life. While we do not reach out and search for them, they inevitably come our way. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews counsels us to see temptation and suffering as opportunities to grow in faith. They can be viewed as God’s way of providing the discipline we need to remain faithful to our way of life.

The writer begins by reminding us of our duties. To God we must present a clean heart; to our neighbors we must present an upright life. It is our Christian duty to show others the right way to walk by personal example, to remove from the path something that would make others stumble, to make the journey easier for faltering and lagging feet.

The aim or end of the Christian life is to seek peace and holiness. To this end we are admonished to strengthen our drooping hands and our weak knees. The peace that we seek is that which comes from obedience to God’s will, which raises a person’s life to its highest realization and enables us to live in and to produce right relationships between our neighbors and ourselves. The holiness we seek makes it evident that we are different from the standards of secular society, that while we are in the world we are not of the world.

In seeking peace and holiness, we will provide an example that will make it evident to others that our lives have been blessed by the grace of God. By imitating our example, the grace of God will also be available to them. At the Eucharist we receive the grace of patient endurance in the face of temptations and suffering.