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The Lord Is My Chef Sunday Recipe, Wk. XXVII-C, 02 October 2016
Habakkuk 1:2-3; 2:2-4//2Timothy 1:6-8,13-14//Luke 17:5-10
“Passion is more important than efficiency.”
This is one of the important things that the late Mother Angelica would instill upon her collaborators in founding EWTN in 1981 in Irondale, Alabama, USA. She must have known it so well for what could have driven her to establish what is now considered as the largest Catholic broadcast network in the world considering her age and lack of any background in broadcasting or engineering? When she died last March 27 of this year, an Easter Sunday, I felt that Mother Angelica could be our next female saint in the Church during this lifetime because of her holiness and passion in spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Mother Angelica simply did what she felt God was asking her to do in her own situation, focusing more on what she had rather than on what she did not have. And the only thing she must have had was faith that she would always say, “unless you are willing to do the ridiculous, God will not do the miraculous.”
The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.” The Lord replied, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. Who among you would say to your servant who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here immediately and take your place at table’? Would he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare something for me to eat… You may eat and drink when I am finished?’ Is he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded? So should it be with you. When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.’” (Lk.17:5-10)
It seems at first glance that the Lord’s parable was inconsistent with the request of the apostles to increase their faith. Not really. A lot often like the Apostles, we do the same mistake of always quantifying everything including spiritual things like virtues. Faith like love and other virtues cannot, and need not, be measured because they are meant to be lived out in our relationships with God and with others. We are all gifted with virtues whether we like it or not. We simply have to turn it on to work like the computer or electric current. And when we allow our gift of faith to work in us, notice how we believe in such a degree that we always exceed the ordinary to go the extra-mile. The same is true when we love. God has given each of us with enough virtues to be faithful, hopeful, loving, just, kind, caring, forgiving, and so on and so forth. This is the whole point of Mother Angelica’s maxim that passion is more important than efficiency because it all boils down to the simple question of what drives us?
We are all equipped to do so much in this life and let us not waste it complaining and whining by always counting everything. We have a perfect teaching in tagalog that our elders used to tell us while growing up, “huwag mong tinutuos lahat ng bagay.” “Pagtutuos” is summing up or counting every cost wherein we do only things specified to us, lacking drive and passion to go the extra mile. And that is being a worthless servant in the parable of the Lord. Akin to our negative thoughts that impede us in living out our faith fully is when we spend more time wishful thinking, of how we have more money, more time, more tools, more strength, and more of everything to help the needy or accomplish things. Whatever we have in ourselves is always more than enough to love, to share, to understand because God is also present in our weaknesses and shortcomings.
St. Paul reminds us today through St. Timothy to “stir into flame the gift of God” that we have received in our baptism as Christians, meaning, let us keep on doing whatever good we could “for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control. So do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord, nor of me, a prisoner for his sake; but bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God.” (2Tm.1:6-8) Let us not be afraid or ashamed to make a stand for what is right and just, for what is good and moral especially at this time when evil is disguised as modernism or concern for others. God tells us in the first reading through His prophet Habakkuk that it always takes time before He responds to our pleas for help and justice not because He is deaf or slow but simply because our sense of time is different from His. God did not give Habakkuk any definitive time in answering his cries but solemnly declared His fidelity to His promises, “if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late.”(Hab. 2:3) Again, with God, things cannot be quantified because what He is asking from us is to be one with Him like what the Psalmist sings, “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” Having faith in God is living in Him by aligning our very selves with Him, journeying with Him and growing with Him in faith that is fulfilled in love.
“Lord Jesus Christ, make us grow in faith and be always faithful to Your call to love and to serve in our many flaws and weaknesses, in our sinfulness. Amen.” Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II, Parokya ni San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, Gov. F. Halili Ave., Bagbaguin, Sta. Maria, Bulacan.
