One of the bad habits I have while reading the news online, is scrolling down and looking at the comments at the end of the article. I consider it a bad habit because I know I am not going to gain any new insights. If anything, there might be a funny joke or witty play on words but, more often than not, most comments end up being frivolous, rude, and forgettable. As some of the news stories have gotten darker, especially involving loss of life with natural disasters and mass casualty tragedies at concerts, schools, nightclubs, and places of work, there has been more and more commentary against God and prayer. For example, when someone writes, “our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims of this disaster.” More and more individuals are replying with something like: “keep your thoughts and prayers.” If God could do something or actually cared, he wouldn’t have let this horrible thing happen to these innocent people.” The essence of their message is, “prayer doesn’t do anything; God can’t or won’t help you; it’s up to us to solve this problem and make things right.”
What’s troubling to me is the increasing animosity in our culture towards the role of God and faith, especially in the face of human suffering and tragedy. There seems to be a growing feeling that offering prayers and having faith in God are not what will get things done and help people. More and more, there appears to be a false choice laid before us: either do something to help or say your little prayers and trust in God. But you can’t do both!” Of course we believe that nothing could be further from the truth and instead of making these two things an either/or, they ought to be a both/and.
This tension has been around a long time. Our first reading, from the prophet, Zephaniah, is an encouragement to the people of Israel to rejoice and be filled with hope. We might not think that’s such a big deal until we understand the background of this passage. Zephaniah was writing at a moment of great hardship for Israel. They were under attack and their world was falling apart. The people didn’t know it then, but things were about to get even worse! There were many in Israel saying that faithfulness to God and prayer were no longer working. It was time to take things into their own hands because God wouldn’t save them, they had to save themselves. In the chapters right before the passage we heard, the prophet is reminding his readers that the day of the Lord was coming and on that day, God would judge each person according to their faith in Him. Those who were faithful would be able to rejoice and all would be made right. Those who did wrong and hurt others and defied God would have to answer for what they did and would be punished.
St. Paul continues this theme of faith and joy in our second reading as he commands the Philippians to rejoice always by letting their kindness be known to all. He tells them not to be anxious but to pray to God for everything and then they will enjoy a peace beyond understanding. We might be tempted to think that this is easy for St. Paul to say, but he had no easy life. He was writing this from prison and he had already experienced incredible hardships for the gospel, including being beaten with iron rods, shipwrecks, nearly been stoned to death, and had many times been hungry, cold, and persecuted. And yet he still felt joy and peace and commanded the Philippians to do the same!!
This hope and joy is not just some sort of naive, happy face to be put on each day. We don’t make it happen on our own. In fact, the sort of joy described by Zephaniah and Paul is a by-product of a deep faith in God and his love for us. St. Paul and Zephaniah believed, beyond all else, that God was bigger and stronger than any bad thing that could happen in this world. No worldly power could defeat him and even if it appeared that evil was winning, and both of these guys saw a lot of evil happening around them, they still had faith that God was going to make things right before it was all said and done. Maybe it wouldn’t happen in their lifetime but it would happen in God’s time and that is the only time that matters. All they had to do is remain faithful to the Lord and he would sort out the rest.
If we want to rejoice always, we have to pray for more faith. Faith allows us to look past our sufferings and setbacks as well as the sufferings and setbacks of others, to the fact that this pain is only temporary. Faith gives us the patience and peace to know that the most important battle has already been decided: death, the devil, and evil cannot win. When we start to feel sadness, discouragement, or depression, and boy are there a lot of reasons to feel that when we look around the world today, we must remember the example of Paul and Zephaniah and beg the Lord to increase our faith!
One last thing about the faith we need to live joyfully. It has to be lived out in our actions. Today’s Gospel outlines the steps to getting there. When people ask John the Baptist what they must do in light of his message of repentance, he gives surprising simple advice. He tells them to do the ordinary things related to their everyday lives but to do them well: Share with the person who has less, don't cheat, tell the truth, no false accusations, find satisfaction in what you have. In other words, be kind, fair, and compassionate to others.
Many times, we are willing to do the big things for God. We like the extraordinary moments of discipleship because they are exciting and make us feel good and sometimes other people notice them. But God tends to like acting in small ways. Throughout the Scriptures he chooses the weak, the youngest, the despised, the nobodies to do His Will and reflect his glory. It wasn’t a famous queen who become the mother of Christ but a lowly virgin named Mary. And how did God enter the world to defeat Satan and redeem the world? Not as a mighty warrior king but as a little baby, helpless and utterly dependent on Mary and Joseph!
If we believe, we can rejoice always, in good times and in bad, when things are going our way and when the hits keep on coming. So rejoice always in Lord! No matter what your circumstances right now, the Day of the Lord is coming and he will makes things right for all who believe in him!
