Daily Reflection Monday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time

Today in the first reading we move from the minor prophets to Paul’s epistle to the Romans, which at sixteen chapters is by far his longest letter. It is also universally considered his greatest. Although not his first letter, it stands in the New Testament canon at the head of all the other Pauline letters, both the seven uncontested Pauline letters as well as all the rest. It is also unique in that it is the only letter he wrote that was not to a church he himself had founded. The church in Rome, the faith having been brought to that city by early Jewish converts from Palestine years before, had never met Paul since he had never yet gone there. This letter (really a theological treatise by Paul on Christianity) is therefore his introduction to that church he intended to visit on his way to Spain (although he never made it to Spain).

Today we hear Paul’s prologue to Romans, something he included in all his letters, usually in praise of the faith of the church he was writing to and full of thanksgiving for them (except that to the Galatians, with whom he was greatly disturbed). Here, since he does not yet know them, the prologue is more an introduction of himself and justification of his claim to apostolic authority. It will then almost immediately launch (in tomorrow’s reading) into his great treatise on what God has given the world in Christ, “the mystery kept hidden for long ages” (Rom 16:25), that will compose virtually the entire epistle. We will be in Romans at the liturgy for the next several weeks.

In today’s gospel passage from Luke 11 (the chapter that concludes with Jesus’ five woes to the Pharisees and scribes), Jesus chastises “this generation” for demanding signs, telling them famously that no sign will be given them, only the “sign of Jonah” (that is, the cross). He concludes his chastisement by telling them that something greater than Solomon and Jonah is before them but they will refuse to see it (yet even though Jesus suggests condemnation on the people of his day, from the “Queen of the South” and from the Ninevites who believed the sign they were given, he does not say that he himself condemns them, but only that those persons will).

Many people today, often many Christian people, continue to seek signs. It is generally true to say that if you go about looking for and expecting to see certain things, you will probably find them, even if you have to basically somehow manufacture them yourself. People are always tempted to find things that can confirm their faith, that testify to what they believe (or think they believe). It might be in certain coincidences (there really are things that are simply just coincidence) or a rare or unusual event (like a dove landing on your open windowsill or a butterfly upon your hand), or a strange seemingly random thought out of nowhere (from beyond, they will say), or escaping unharmed from either an accident or some dangerous occurrence. Or anything unusual, really.

The problem becomes that in putting trust or even hope in such things, they can come to take the place of actual faith which, as Hebrews 11:1 tells us, is “the assurance of things hoped for; the conviction of things not seen.” And we must always remember John 1:18, “No one has ever seen God.” We do not hope for what we already have. Looking for assurances in signs has nothing to do with hope since by its very nature, hope is in what we do not yet know or possess. And the fact that we walk by faith and not by sight (2Cor 5:7) means that we do not see what our faith believes, we simply believe it. If we saw it, if there was proof or compelling reason for it, we would not have to have faith in it, it would be manifest to us. 

True faith is to continue to believe, trust and hope in God when we are in the whirlwind, when the bottom seems to have fallen away from us and we are left in pain or reeling in bewildering and very difficult circumstances. True faith is to continue to walk in even utter darkness of perhaps the deepest kind, and still believe that God is there, that God loves us, cares for us and will ultimately redeem us from even what seems like the worst of calamities, when there is utterly no sign at all, like Jesus felt from the cross (“My God, my God! Why have you abandoned me?”). True faith says with the Psalmist, “Yea, though I walk through the dark valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are at my side with your rod and your staff that give me courage.” True faith says that even in the face of all evidence to the contrary, I will put all my trust in God, no matter what. That, finally, is the greatest and most powerful sign of all of God’s great grace and saving power. Blind faith. That is the sign of Jonah.