Gospel Reflection for the Twenty Forth Sunday in Ordinary Time

16th. September – Living our Faith every day…

When we were baptised, regardless of when or at what age, we were brought into the Family God and received the wonderful gift of faith. The faith we freely received was just a seed; it doesn’t grow and mature on it’s own. We have to nourish and nature it; we have to care for and protect it. How do we do actually do this? We help our faith to grow when we put it into practise in our ordinary lives. The second reading this Sunday has some very encouraging and challenging words for us about this. If we say have faith but do anything with this faith, what use is that? If we see someone who is in need, pray for them and wish them well, but don’t actually do anything practical to help them, is there any good in that all? St. James is very clear; ‘faith… without good works is dead.’

 In one gospel, Jesus even tells us, ‘It is not those who say, “Lord, Lord who will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but the person who does the will of my father.” Like the letter from St. James, Jesus too is telling us that it is not enough just to say that we have faith, say lots pf prayers, but do nothing concrete with our faith. Perhaps for us, sometimes, it’s far easier to be an admirer of Jesus than to be his follower and disciple. But Jesus is not calling for silent passive admirers. He calls each of us buy own personal names and wants us to take up our cross and follow him. This is the demand that faith puts on each of us each and every day.

The question that Jesus puts to his followers, he also asks us; Who do you say that I am? There are many older wiser people and many more books that will help us with this question, but they can’t answer it for us. This is a question that we have to answer for ourselves. We answer this question through the quality of our lives and how we treat each other. We answer this question by putting our faith into action in countless small and seemingly insignificant ways every day of our lives. Every small decision we make and every action we take proclaims who we believe Jesus is and what his gospel means to and for us. Again, this can be very challenging because it asks that we just don’t say we have faith, but that we are ready, willing and able to live our faith in real concrete ways.

Jesus asks who we say that he is; he asks us to take up our cross and follow him; he calls us to  his disciples. To be a follower of Jesus and not just a casual admirer is to put our faith into action whenever and where we can. To be a follower of Jesus is to answer this question; ‘But, you, who do you say that I am?’

Michael Moore OMI