Today’s readings
Mass with special needs families.
The Apostle Saint James in our second reading today attacks what is, to me, a very prevalent attitude that people can often have. “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well” – we see that kind of thing all the time. When a tragedy happens, we will see people offering their “thoughts and prayers.” And not that that is a bad thing: thoughts and prayers are a great start. Certainly, we believe in the power of prayer and would hasten to encourage prayer as a regular habit.
But Saint James makes it very clear that thoughts and prayers can’t be the end of our compassion and care for others. He says that, if you say that to the person, “but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it?” Our faith leads us to thoughts and prayers, that’s why it’s the first thing we think of when there is a tragedy, or someone in our community is going through a hard time. But if we don’t live our faith by working to help those in need then, says Saint James, our faith, “if it does not have works, is dead.”
I had a priest professor in seminary who always used to tell us, “Brothers, the Christian faith looks like something.” And he’s right, people need to see that Jesus is Lord of our lives and sovereign in the world, and the only way they are going to see that is if Christians live their faith by getting out of the comfort zone, by going beyond thoughts and prayers to a living faith that, as Saint James says, is demonstrated from our works. A watching world isn’t going to see our thoughts and prayers; they are going to see what we do. They need to see by what we do that we are who we say we are, that our God is Lord.
That’s going to call us to be a little uncomfortable sometimes. It’s going to call us to do what Jesus calls us to do in the Gospel today: to take up our crosses and follow him. There is suffering out there in the world, and if we don’t wrap them in our arms and suffer with them, adding works of mercy to our thoughts and prayers, then our faith is meaningless. We can’t be Catholics for just one hour a week. We have to lose our lives in service of our brothers and sisters. That’s a tough thing to do, but it comes with a promise from our Lord:
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake
and that of the gospel will save it.
So let’s not stop thinking about and praying for those in need. But let’s stop saying, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well” and then forgetting about our brothers and sisters. Let’s demonstrate our faith by our works, taking up our crosses and following Our Lord, losing ourselves for his sake and that of the Gospel that we might save it for eternity.