Have we been listening?

Across the last few weeks, one small word has loomed large over the gospels: Five letters that can make all the difference in the world.

Faith.

It’s been all about faith.

A couple weeks ago, Father Ferdi quoted the words we heard that Sunday in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians — and we hear them often in that familiar hymn:

We walk by faith and not by sight,
no gracious words we hear
from Him who spoke as none e’er spoke,
but we believe him near.

Think back on Jesus’s words these last weeks, the words of  “him who spoke as none e’er spoke.”

In the middle of a storm, he asked: “Do you not yet have faith?”  To a woman who touched a mere thread of his garment: “Your faith has saved you.” To the father of a dying child: “Do not be afraid. Just have faith.”

Walk by faith. Not by sight.

Have we been listening?

In Allentown, Pennsylvania there’s a priest by the name of Father Bernard Ezaki. When he was a little boy, he decided that he wanted to be a priest — in part, because he thought they only worked on Sunday. He got a Masters in theology from the Harvard Divinity School, and later attended St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia. After ordination, he spent decades teaching high school. He now serves at a big, bustling parish in Pennsylvania.

Father Ezaki is, by any measure, a gifted priest, a shepherd of souls.

He is also blind.

He is one of only a handful of priests in the United States who are legally blind — in fact, until 1983, blind men could not be ordained.

How does he do it?

Father Ezaki is able to record the Mass prayers and hear them on a small cassette player with an earphone during the liturgy. He has no problem distributing communion, he says, but has one request: “Be still,” he says. “I need a big landing field.”

Here is trust. Here is faith in action.

It has helped him to bring the incomparable gift of light, the light of Christ, to a world that is for him defined almost entirely by shadows.

In a recent homily, he said, “The good Lord gives grace on a need-to-have basis.  That’s why, as C.S. Lewis puts it, Jesus tells us to pray, ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’ We are simply to do the will of God right now — and to entrust the future to divine Providence.”

Part of the will of God right now, of course, is to believe. To have faith. No matter how dark the night, how fierce the storm or how impossible the odds.

In today’s gospel, Jesus says it himself, to a man named Jairus facing an unimaginable loss, the death of his daughter: “Do not be afraid. Just have faith.”

Don’t only trust what you can see. Have faith in what you can’t.

Believe in possibility. In God’s extravagant grace and love.

Let faith be your roadmap, your compass, your streetlight, your True North, your GPS.

Faith, of course, isn’t just an exercise in wish-fulfillment. It’s not like writing a letter to Santa Claus telling him what you want for Christmas.

It’s living in hope in a world that sometimes seems hopeless.

Archbishop Borys Gudziak is the Catholic patriarch of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Philadelphia. Last week, he spoke to a gathering of Catholic journalists at the Catholic Media Conference in Atlanta. The archbishop talked about the toll the last few years have taken on Ukraine — families shattered, lives lost, widespread poverty and homelessness.

But in spite of it all, hope endures.

“There isn’t much feel-good, soft news from war-torn Ukraine,” he said. “Yet there is truth and there is hope. Hope is not blind optimism. It means understanding that God is ultimately in charge.”

“Do not be afraid. Just have faith.”

This is where it begins.

Next week, we’ll get another reminder, as Jesus encounters people from his own hometown who lack faith.

Are we listening? Are we paying attention? This is what God requires of us, what our life as Christians demands of us.

It’s no secret we live in confusing, troubling, anxious times. And I think it’s no coincidence that we’re encountering these readings now. They offer a simple message for our complicated age:

“Do not be afraid. Just have faith.”

If you are doubting, if you are worrying, if you are troubled…pray for faith.

Pray for the faith to have patience. To listen, to learn, to believe what is unseen, to believe what seems unbelievable.

Pray to believe like Jairus.

To believe like the woman reaching for the hem of Christ’s robe.

To believe like Father Ezaki, who brings to those he cannot see something he cannot see, but that he holds in his heart and offers in his hand.

A gift we will receive in just a few moments.

The Body of Christ. A mystery of faith in a crumb of bread.

We walk by faith, not by sight.

The final words of that hymn speak to us today and always.

Help then, O Lord, our unbelief;
And may our faith abound
To call on You when You are near,
And seek where You are found.

That, when our life of faith is done,
In realms of clearer light,
May we behold You as You are
With full and endless sight.

Image: “Encounter” by Daniel Cariola, from The Encounter Chapel, Magdala