Enduring Faith

[W]e ourselves boast of you [ . . . ] regarding your endurance and faith in all your persecutions and the afflictions you endure. // 2 Thessalonians 1:4

My deacon husband had prayed many funeral vigils and burials with grieving families, but this time was different. The son of our dear friends, who were godparents to our youngest daughter, had died. Though our hearts ached for our friends and their children for whom we’d prayed for many years, we were far enough removed from their trauma to enter fully into the beauty of the funeral rites and take comfort in the certain hope Mother Church offers grieving families. 

My introverted friend received all who mourned the death of her son with remarkable grace and poise; her evident faith moved me deeply. The love she and her husband shared with others shone like a beacon of hope, especially the tender love they showed their son’s friends. 

The above experience serves as an example of a modern-day answer to Saint Paul’s prayer for the Church in the First Reading (see 1 Thessalonians 1:1-5, 11-12). He well understood that a good shepherd prays and trusts God’s work in and through the people he has been appointed to lead. In contrast, the religious leaders of Jesus’ day busied themselves with judging who was and wasn’t fit for God’s kingdom. Jesus knew that in spite of all their knowledge of the Scriptures and the law, many of their hearts were far from the heart of His Father. Twice in today’s Gospel Jesus calls the religious leaders blind (see Matthew 23:13-22).

Dear sister, let’s make sure we don’t fall into the trap of blindness, thinking that the path to Heaven is one we must traverse through only our own efforts. Though study and work are both good, we can neither study nor work our way to Heaven. As Saint Paul admonishes us, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so no one may boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9). Instead, we must humble ourselves, like sheep who receive everything from their Shepherd. Then we can find solace in the words in today’s Gospel Antiphon: “My sheep hear my voice, says the Lord; I know them and they follow Me” (John 10:27). With Him, surely our faith will endure to the end.