Reflection on Mass readings for Aug. 10 (19th Sunday in Ordinary Time)
It seems that every summer heralds the release of the latest superhero movie. This year, it is the most recent reboot of the Superman franchise and the Fantastic Four. We love superhero stories because they are filled with the emotions that are part of our everyday lives: the choices between good and evil, love, compassion, courage, self-doubt and self-sacrifice. We walk with these characters through it all, and that can help us to process the same emotions in our own lives.
This summer, the Church gives us heroes of faith both as a model for us and an invitation to journey with them along the same path of faith. For the next four weeks, we will be reading from the Letter to the Hebrews, chapters 11 and 12.
Chapter 11 recalls the heroes of faith and how faith allowed them to live out their lives with courage, love, and self-sacrifice because of their hope in the one God in whom they believed but could not see.
By faith, Abel prefigures Christ’s resurrection in that his blood still gives testimony to his devotion to God. By faith, Enoch prefigures Christ’s ascension in that he was taken up into heaven before dying because he had pleased God. By faith, Noah allowed himself to be mocked by his obedience to God.
By faith, Abraham journeys to become a stranger in a land that was promised but not yet his own. By faith, Abraham and Sarah were given the power to conceive when they were past the age of childbearing. By faith, Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac prefigures Our Heavenly Father, who allows the sacrifice of his beloved Son.
All of them died in faith, not yet receiving the fulfillment of the promise, but trusting in its ultimate fulfillment. Over the next three weeks, we will continue reading from chapter 12 of the Letter to the Hebrews. In that chapter, we see that the fulfillment of these promises, given to these heroes of the faith, is to be found in Jesus Christ. Although these heroes of faith have much to teach us, the full flowering of faith’s promise is in the person of Jesus.
It is in following Christ’s example of faith that we are being asked to join the roll call of heroes of faith that began in the Old Testament, that continued in the Early Church, and that still call men and women to heroic faith to this very day.
It was by faith that Mother Teresa was called to serve the poorest of the poor in Calcutta. It was by faith that Cardinal Nguyễn Văn Thuận of Vietnam spent 13 years in a Communist reeducation camp – nine of them in solitary confinement – celebrating Mass in secret with a few drops of smuggled wine and a tiny piece of bread in the palm of his hand. It was by faith that the 21 Egyptian Coptic Martyrs were beheaded in Libya in 2015 rather than renounce their faith.
These true superheroes of faith are given to us, not as entertainment like the superheroes of a summer movie, but as real-life encouragement to live faith in the same way as they did: heroically.
Msgr. Timothy Keeney is pastor of Church of the Incarnation, Charlottesville, and Our Lady of the Rosary, Crozet.