The
power of sight is a great gift and if it is lost or impaired, it is
frightening. I can speak to this personally from an incident in high school
when one of my classmates was goofing around after the teacher left the room.
He three a piece of candy at another student but it hit me in the face and
caused bleeding in my eye. I was unable to see in that eye for several days
until the swelling and bleeding stopped. But you don't need a major injury to
your eyes to appreciate your sight. Even something as minor as losing our
glasses or a contact lens reminds us how much we rely on our vision. We all
know how hard it is to go somewhere we can't see, either literally with our own
eyes or symbolically with our mind's eye.
This
is what God does with Abram in the first reading today. Abram and his wife
Sarai are childless. But they long for a son to carry on the family name. God
takes Abram outside and says something strange. “Look up at the sky and count
the stars, if you can. Just so shall your descendants be.” That’s an amazing
promise. If you've ever tried to count the stars on a clear, dark night, you
know how impossible that would be. But God promises Abram that his descendants
will be that numerous.
However there’s more. If God had taken Abram
outside at night and told him to count the stars it would be amazing enough.
But it seems God took him outside during the day!
Later
in the reading it says when the sun had set and it was dark, the Lord made a
covenant with Abram. So it was still daylight when God told Abram to count the
stars. This required a leap of faith for Abram. A deep, terrifying darkness
surrounded Abram because God asked him to believe without seeing. He asked “Do
you believe in me and in my promise even though you don’t see the stars?” Abram
moves past the darkness of doubt, believes, and later he has a son, Isaac. And
Abram comes to be known as Abraham, which means “Father of a multitude.” From
this one old man and his wife comes an entire nation, we call Israel.
In
our own lives, God will ask us the same question, "will you believe in me,
will you follow, even though you cannot see?" There are times when we
can’t see the star of God’s promise, but he asks us to believe: not in an idea,
but in a person, in him. He asks us to entrust ourselves to Him. So we can say,
along with St Paul, “We walk by faith, not by sight.” Some people might think
of this as blind faith but it's not really blindness; it’s actively entrusting
our lives to the God who loves us.
In
1981 a Jesuit priest in Jamaica faced a decision that would change his life
forever. Fr. Richard Ho Lung was a popular professor at the University of the
West Indies. His career was a success. His life was comfortable and secure. But
then God asked him for a new level of faith. The poverty in Kingston, Jamaica,
kept haunting him, and he knew God was asking him to do something for the
poorest of the poor. On May 20th, 1980, a fire destroyed Eventide, a squalid
residence for Kingston’s abandoned poor. 150 people died in the fire, and Fr.
Richard realized the time to act had come. God was asking him to build centers
in Kingston to care for the poor, and create communities where they could
finally experience love. But this would mean leaving everything he had
accomplished as a professor. It would mean leaving what he knew behind. It
meant, like Abram, God was asking him to look up and count stars he could not
see.
“I
was in torture,” Fr. Richard said, “I wept and prayed about this. It meant
giving up my two Masters and my Doctorate.” But he trusted in God, and began a
group called the Missionaries of the Poor to care for the destitute. He had no
resources except 4 friends, and all of them lived in one borrowed room. Eventually
the bishop donated a residence to use as they welcomed the poor who were
flocking to them. Today, the Missionaries of the Poor number over 500, and have
missions in 8 countries. Like Abram, Fr. Richard believed in God’s promise. He
walked by faith and not by sight.
What
do the stories of Abraham and Fr. Richard mean for us today? Is it possible
that we too, are called to walk by faith? The answer, terrifying yet true, is
"yes".
How
do we develop this ability to walk by faith and not by sight? What is a
practical way to start taking those baby steps towards trusting God with
everything? I’d like to propose one simple thing. Each day, ask the Lord:
“Where are you leading me today?” Lent is a perfect time to do this, since it’s
a time to turn to God in a deeper way. Every time we ask that question, we’re
making an act of faith in God. We may not know exactly where he’s leading us.
We may not know exactly what will happen today. In fact St Philip Neri used to
say, “Lord, help me to get through today, and I won’t worry about tomorrow.” But
when we ask God to lead, we’re handing our lives over to him. Don't wait until
tomorrow; start today! In the silent time after communion, tell the Lord what’s
on your hearts, and to ask Him: Lord, where are you leading me today?” Wake up
and do it again tomorrow. Like Abraham, we can begin to walk by faith, knowing
that God is leading us home towards him, towards heaven.
