Despite what Father Honeycutt said, Mr. Walbert is not, in fact, one of our more beloved lectors – at least, not by me. I'm sure his wife always tells him after Mass what a wonderful job he did, but personally I've always been amazed by how dull he can make the Old Testament sound. He'll read some passage from Isaiah about the king being restored in splendor and wolves and sheep making up and becoming friends again, and it'll sound like the annual financial report at Johnson & Johnson or something.
That, combined with my pre-Mass revelation and the fact that Andrea was in charge of the lectionary, meant that I paid hardly any attention to the service until Father got up for the gospel reading and homily. We were in Year C, so he read something out of Luke (I forget what, though I think it had something to do with beating handmaidens), but he didn't preach on it. Instead, he turned back to the epistle. (That's pretty typical for Father Honeycutt. He always says that we have three readings for a reason, and he doesn't think much of priests who focus on the Gospel to the exclusion of the rest of the Bible. He's even written homilies around responsorial psalms once or twice.)
"You all heard today's epistle when Daniel read it just now," he said. "But I'd like to read part of it again, all the same – in the original Douay translation, if you don't mind, since Hebrews 11 isn't one of the NAB's proudest moments."
We all chuckled, and a couple of the older people in the front rows nodded and made go-ahead gestures. So Father reached under his chasuble, pulled out his loyal pocket New Testament (it was an ordination present from his mother, he says, and he never goes anywhere without it), and flipped through it until he found the passage.
"'By faith he that is called Abraham obeyed,'" he read aloud, "'to go out into a place which he was to receive for an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he abode in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in cottages with Isaac and Jacob, the co-heirs of the same promise. For he looked for a city that has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.'"
He closed the book again, slipped it back into his cassock, and stared out over the congregation. "I don't know about you good people, but Abraham always rather intimidated me," he said. "Here's a man who lives in one of the great cities of Mesopotamia, whose family clearly has some money and prestige associated with it, and one day God appears to him and says, 'Get up and leave everything,' and he does it. Meanwhile, I consider myself to be doing well if the Bishop sends me to St. Agnes's to cover for Father Kennedy on short notice and I don't use more than three swear words."
Personally, I don't believe Father Honeycutt's ever sworn in his life, but it made a nice little bit of humor.
"But I suppose that's why God didn't pick me to be the father of the Chosen People," he continued. "You need someone special for that role – someone whose faith can serve as a model for all the generations after him. And, whatever his other faults, Abraham had that. Leaving the comforts of Ur to wander in the wilderness; being willing to sacrifice Isaac; not turning in his résumé when God introduced the idea of circumcision – oh, definitely Abraham had faith." (More laughter.)
"But where do you get that kind of faith? That's the question that matters to those of us who aspire to be saints – to rest, as Christ put it, in Abraham's bosom. And that's the question St. Paul answers for us today. 'For he looked for a city that has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.' And, a little later on, talking about those who followed in Abraham's footsteps, he describes them as 'confessing that they are strangers and pilgrims on the earth; for they that say these things do signify that they seek a country'.
"You see the point? If you think you've found your city, or your country – your home, in other words – then you don't have any need for faith. That was the substance of the devil's charge against Job: his faith wasn't real, because it was based on contentment with the things of this world. It wasn't until those words had been forced out of his mouth – 'Although He should kill me, I will trust in Him' – that he could definitely be called a man of faith.
"Now, to those of us who have achieved a bit of comfort in this life, that sounds rather unfair. Why should you have to lose everything in order to be counted among the faithful? But what we tend to forget is that, eventually, all of us will lose everything. A day is coming for each of us, sooner or later – sooner, probably, in my case; hopefully later, in most of yours – when everything that we've accumulated will slip from our fingers, and only one thing in the universe will matter: Did we love God? Did we trust Him? Did we do what He asked of us, painful or arduous though it might be? Or did we let all that slide in a hopeless attempt to find happiness and contentment that we knew we couldn't keep?" (Probably it was just my imagination, but I could have sworn his eyes flickered to me as he said that last bit.)
"Which brings us back to St. Paul, and his city with foundations. Generally speaking, the foundations of this world's cities are things like rivers, or trade routes, or oases – the things that bring material prosperity to large numbers of people. And that's all very well, so long as you remember that it's not going to last. Oases dry up; trades routes shift over time; and even the largest river can be diverted or lose its source. And then what becomes of your great city? Look to the ruins of Nineveh for your answer.
"No, if you want a city that truly has foundations – a city that no drought can wither, and no earthquake can shatter – a city that will last as long as your soul is going to – then none of this world's cities are going to satisfy you. You have to turn your eyes elsewhere; you have to look, as the Apostle says, for a city 'whose builder and maker is God'.
"We all know what that city is. In one sense, as baptized members of the Church, we live in it already; in another sense, we're still waiting to catch a glimpse of it. It's a city of saints and heroes, of jasper and gold, built on the apostles and guarded by the patriarchs; it's a city that no one can reach except the ones who overcome – who persevere to the end in the will of the Father.
"It's not an easy thing to find. The road to it might lead you through poverty, suffering, loneliness, or any other kind of misfortune short of actual sin. Or, of course, it might not: on occasion, the search for the Eternal City has brought people long life, prosperity, and international influence. There's no way to say for certain until you've actually made it.
"But, whatever happens, know this much: when you're on that quest – as I hope everyone here will be when he or she walks out of this building today – what's important is the end. And when you reach that end, you'll see that everything you went through to get there doesn't matter a jot next to the end itself. The white stone, the morning star, the throne of Christ: that's what we're meant for, and everything else is just so much noise. So, whatever your situation in life might be right now, have faith, and remember that the goal is still ahead."
And he folded up his homily text, came down from the pulpit, and sat down in his chair behind the altar.
It wasn't one of his great homilies, maybe (not like the one he preached at my confirmation, where it was like Isaiah himself was speaking through his mouth), but it got under my skin for some reason. I wasn't sure why. After all, I knew all that about this world not being permanent, right? I knew that you could only find true happiness in heaven, and that faith meant not minding if your life on Earth was rotten; it was one of Father's favorite themes. So why was it bugging me so much that he had picked this Sunday to say it?
It was probably only about two minutes that I brooded on that, but it seemed like half an hour, at least. Eventually, though, Father took pity on me, and stood up and got the liturgy moving again. "Now let us rise and join together in our profession of faith…"