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The Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C)

“The just one, because of his faith, shall live” (Hab 2:4). This is the final verse of today’s first reading, taken from the Book of the Prophet Habakkuk. This line is quoted in three places in the New Testament: Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11; and Hebrews 10:38. If the authors of the New Testament were so familiar with this seemingly obscure prophet, then perhaps it is time we familiarize ourselves with the prophets and their messages through our own serious study of the Bible from within the heart of the Church of Christ.

The Liturgy of the Church goes beyond the Mass and the celebration of the other sacraments. It goes on to include the Liturgy of the Hours (i.e. The Divine Office): prayers for various times in the morning, the day, and at night. Most all priests, religious, and seminarians pray this, and it has become a popular source of prayer for many of the lay faithful. The responsorial psalm at Mass today is Psalm 95, which is prayed during the Invitatory, at the very beginning of every day’s prayer. It reminds us of God’s holy majesty and twice calls the people to praise and worship God, warning us to be more faithful than our ancestors were in their journey through the desert wilderness to the Promised Land.

In our second reading, St. Paul exhorts St. Timothy: “Take as your norm the sound words that you heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Guard this rich trust with the help of the Holy Spirit that dwells within us” (2 Tim 1:13-14). This rich trust is also called the deposit of faith, and the Catechism tells us what it consists of:

The apostles entrusted the sacred deposit of the faith (the depositum fidei), contained in Sacred Scripture and Tradition, to the whole of the Church. (Paragraph 84)

Paul also says to “not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord” (v. 8 ). We should never be ashamed to pray in public or to give testimony to God and our faith in him, for “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power” (v. 7). We, the Church, have been entrusted with divine truth not so that it may be hidden away, but rather so that it might be made manifest as we bear testimony to the Lord and share his truth with our family, our friends, our co-workers, our neighbors.

Due to the immense size of the task set before us, we turn to Jesus – like the apostles did in today’s Gospel – and say to him: “Increase our faith” (Luke 17:5). In turn, Jesus arouses and sustains our faith by the gift of the Spirit of truth. He guides and corrects our faith by the sacred teaching authority of the Church. He inspires our faith through the holy witness of the saints who have gone before us. Finally, he crowns our faith with the gift of eternal life if we remain united to him until the moment of our death by persevering in that same faith.