Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time
A friend is a wife and mother of three boys, baptized and raised in a Christian church, and married to a Catholic. And they raised their children Catholic. But she has always gone with them to church and has been actively involved from day one in their religious formation. I knew Ana and her family from when I was assistant pastor at their parish about 25 years ago. For a woman who lived with four rumbunctious men, she was always refreshingly cheerful and upbeat, kind, compassionate, and very spiritually attuned. Not long after, Ana was diagnosed with colon cancer and began a treatment series that included surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Her good friend Lisa kept me updated through the treatment cycle. A few weeks after her first major surgery and the first round of chemo, an MRI was scheduled to gauge the effectiveness of the treatment. Everyone was hoping and praying and keeping their fingers crossed. The results were mixed, good news and bad news. The bad news was that the tumor was still there. The good news was that it was not any larger than before, but it was also not any smaller. Her family and close friends were devastated. But being the positive, cheerful, and upbeat person that she was, Ana didn’t let many people know how the news affected her spirit. And when friends came to visit her in the hospital, they were no great comfort. They tried to console her but instead ended up sharing their fears, their frustration, their anger, and their doubt. Now I am not a doctor. I don’t even play one on TV. But even I know that wasn’t what she needed.
I went to visit her at home one bright sunny day after that less than encouraging development. And I saw Ana as I had always known her: positive, cheerful, and upbeat. In my experience, whenever I show up at the hospital, the nursing home, or by the bedside of someone seriously ill, I don’t often have anything useful to say. But I do get to witness a variety of emotions, sometimes positively powerful, sometimes altogether painful. But with Ana, it did not take long before we were talking about faith and God’s presence in her life amid her suffering. She said she was at peace, but in my judgment, more resigned than trusting. “It’s going to be all right,” she told me, almost apologizing that I had to be inconvenienced by her illness. “I have known a lot of suffering. This is nothing. I raised three boys, remember? And a husband!”
That was when I shared a little story I told my ninth grade religion class from my days as a teacher in Catholic school in New Orleans. “When you pick up a can of green beans at the grocery store, you do not doubt it is exactly what you will get. The can of green beans is not transparent, so you implicitly trust the person who put the green beans in it, as well as the person who stuck the label on it. But you have met neither of them. You do not know them. They do not know you. And yet you trust them implicitly. Why is it so hard to trust God who has walked with you all your life?”
Weeks later, Ana returned to the hospital for a short stay. While she was there, her friend Lisa brought her a can of green beans, which she then placed on the TV in her room. She told me later that can of green beans became the most powerful symbol of her faith in God. When visitors came bringing comfort and consolation, she told them the lesson of the can of green beans and ended up comforting and consoling them instead, encouraging them to trust God who has walked with her all her life.
The prophet Jeremiah in the first reading was a very unpopular character in his time. He seemed to have only bad news to deliver, and no one wanted to listen to him speak, even if he told the truth and all he prophesied came true. The people took their frustrations out on him often, and Jeremiah complained to God just as often. “I hear the whisperings of many: ‘Terror on every side! Let us denounce him!’ All those who were my friends are on the watch for any misstep of mine. ‘Perhaps he will be trapped; then we can prevail and take our vengeance on him.’” Jeremiah probably didn’t get much sleep at night knowing how they despised him. And there was no other recourse available to him. He could have walked away from his prophetic calling. He could have moved to where people were more open to his message. But to the end, Jeremiah trusted God, neither giving in to discouragement nor walking away from his work of calling people to repentance. “O Lord of hosts, you who test the just, who probe mind and heart, let me witness the vengeance you take on them, for to you I have entrusted my cause.”
In his letter to the Christians in Rome, Paul continues to explain the depth of God’s compassion. Last weekend, he reminded us that it was God who initiated our salvation, sending Jesus to reconcile us through his death while we were still sinners. And God continues to take the initiative on our behalf, blessing us with life and good health, success and prosperity in our endeavors, loving families, forgiveness for our sins whenever we ask, and the promise of eternal joy and happiness in the life to come, despite that we are often unwilling to forgive one another, that we cling to pettiness and jealousy, that we are undeserving and ungrateful. And today, he reminds us that “if by the transgression of the one the many died, how much more did the grace of God and the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ overflow for the many?” The marvelous paradox of God’s mercy is that God was willing to reconcile a bunch of undeserving and ungrateful sinners to himself by his Son’s death so that we might live with him in eternal bliss one day. Why is it so difficult to trust that God would be willing to do anything less?
“Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge. Even all the hairs of your head are counted. So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.” If the life of one little sparrow is precious to God, how can we be worth less in God’s eyes, we for whom Jesus offered his life? Whatever the cross we must bear, however fearful the darkness that surrounds us, we can trust that the God who has walked with us all our life will not abandon us. Like Jeremiah, we may sometimes have to endure inconvenience and mistreatment. Like my friend Ana, we will sometimes have to endure debilitating illness, the hassle of medical treatment, the inconvenience of physical pain and mental anguish. Jesus invites us to trust God just a little more than we are accustomed, at least more than the anonymous laborers who pack green beans into tin cans and their equally anonymous co-workers who slap the labels on.
On a side note, Ana has been cancer-free the last 15 years. They are now grandparents to two little girls and a boy. And when we get together for lunch on occasion, we still marvel at the powerful lesson we learned from a can of green beans.
Rolo B Castillo © 2023