In today’s gospel, Christ asks “When the Son of Man comes will he find any faith on earth?” Before we can answer that question, we have to ask what does he mean by “faith”. One thing is for sure, He doesn’t mean simply professing all the right creeds, essential as they are, or knowing the answer to the questions of the catechism. When Jesus asks the Apostles elsewhere in the Gospel “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”, Peter knows the right answer. “You are the Son of God”. But then
Peter, rather than gladly accepting the plans of Christ, tries to dissuade him from going up to Jerusalem to die for us. In other words, at that moment Peter was a believer but not truly a follower, living the way the Lord expected of him. So faith is first of all a belief in Christ which leads
to a certain way of living, His way, God’s way. An intellectual belief in all the creeds of the Church which does not result in living out the life Christ reveals to us is not real faith. So the businessman who doesn’t pay his employees a fair wage, the politician who lies simply to get votes, the husband
and father who always puts his own desires ahead of the needs of his family, the priest who neglects the spiritual growth of the people of the parish, the person who refuses to forgive someone even when that person is truly sorry, such people lack the kind of faith Christ expects to find on earth now and on the day of His final coming. As He says to us, “It is not the person who says ‘Lord, Lord’ who will inherit the kingdom but the one who does the will of my Father”.
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