TWO MODELS OF TRUSTING FAITH

Homily for May 5^th, 2014: John 6:22-29.

          “This is the work of God,” Jesus says, “that you believe in the one he sent.” To believe in someone is to trust that person. To believe in the one God sent, Jesus, means to trust him. But it means more. It means entrusting our lives to him. Is that scary? Of course it is. Because it means losing control, turning our lives over to another. That is what the saints do – every one of them, no exceptions.

Consider our two most recent saints. St John XXII came from a desperately poor family. In our country they would have been called sharecroppers. As a child he went barefoot. His parents couldn’t afford shoes. Later they couldn’t afford train fare to Rome when he was ordained priest. Made a bishop at an early age, he chose a motto that showed that he had already turned over control of his life to others: Obedientia et pax. Sent for twenty long years to the fringes of the Catholic world – Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece – ignored and considered a simpleton at headquarters, he lived out his motto in ways that his Journal of a Soul shows were often lonely and painful. Those years, living among people who were not even on the Vatican radar screen, made him into a man who accepted without hesitation all that was asked of him and was totally at peace. This gave him the courage to call an ecumenical council which, according to his intent – the fulfillment of which we can see only now – would be for the Church a new Pentecost.

St. John Paul II was born into a world which offered little opportunity for control of any kind. He lost his mother at age 9, his older brother at 12, and his father at 19. The Nazis had already occupied Poland. Karol Wojtyla worked for a time in a stone quarry. A German truck hit and almost killed him. When he decided to seek priesthood, he had to attend a secret seminary in the Archbishop’s residence. No sooner were the Nazis defeated in 1945 than they were replaced by Russian communists, no less hostile to the Church and careless of human rights and lives. His whole life, until he was chosen as Bishop of Rome in 1978 was lived in an atmosphere of oppression and terror. His episcopal motto, reflecting his intense Marian devotion was similar to John XXIII’s: Totus tuus – Always yours, holy Mother of God. Happy if we can say the same!