Daily Reflection Friday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

Today’s reading from Genesis concludes with tomorrow’s so I am going to use tomorrow’s readings for the reflection today. God establishes the covenant with Abram in chapter 17 of Genesis today, re-naming him Abraham and re-naming his wife Sarai, Sarah signifying their very new roles in life as the origin of the nation of the Chosen People. In chapter 17 it is Abraham who laughs at the word of God that Sarah will conceive, since they are both so very old. In chapter 18 we hear tomorrow, it is Sarah who laughs when she overhears the angels (who are actually God) tell Abraham (again) that she will conceive a son by the same time the following year. It’s interesting that only Sarah gets caught laughing here. It’s one of the very rare times in the Old Testament where anyone is depicted as finding something funny! 

The biggest lesson for us in all this should be that, in the words of Jesus, “With God, all things are possible.” If we understand this in a more spiritual way (as opposed to miraculous), it means that God can change our hearts completely and enable us to see everything in a completely new way (“So if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation.” 2Cor 5:17). Whatever we may have been before is transformed by God’s saving grace, if we would but have faith and seek it with all our hearts.

Then tomorrow’s gospel passage from Matthew 8 tells the story of the Roman Centurion, the only man in the Gospels whose faith Jesus praises (there were quite a few women Jesus told this to, however). That likens him to Abraham who, as Paul told the Romans, “believed God and that faith was reckoned to him as righteousness.” As for the poor Apostles at this point, Jesus was always calling them, “You of little faith!” But it was a pagan Roman soldier, the hated Romans, who Jesus praised for his great faith.

And all of that goes to show us that faith knows no boundaries. It is not confined to any religion or people or clan. Like the Spirit that brings it, it blows where it will. And we can never assume that simply because a person is Christian or Catholic that they have faith in God since Jesus (in all three Synoptic accounts) called his own people, the chosen people he was born from and lived with his entire life, “You faithless generation.” And John the Baptist warned the people, “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.”

Woe to us if we fall into any kind of religious snobbery, that we are somehow more blessed than others or in any way better. As Paul also told the Romans, “All have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory.” Best for us to lament to Jesus, in great humility and need, along with the poor father of the boy with the mute spirit, “I do believe; help my unbelief!”