19th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2025
Wisdom 18:6-9 Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-9 Luke 12:32-48
Our Gospel Reading begins with the Lord, yet again, saying to His disciples, ‘Do not be afraid’. This advice, assurance and comfort is repeated in the Scriptures no less than 365 times and still we give into fear and sometimes are paralysed by fear. The fear that the Scripture readings of today’s Mass refer to is the fear of darkness.
Our first Reading from Genesis refers to the night on which the Israelites were delivered from their slavery in Egypt. In the second Reading, from Hebrews, we are reminded of the way that Abraham and Sarah overcame their dark moments and were given courage to act with great Faith. These two Readings prepare us for the Gospel Reading which has the theme of persevering through the darkness of the night. Jesus speaks of watching through the night! The night speaks to us of darkness, fear and evil and, because of that, we are always longing for the day.
So, how do we cope with the darkness, how do we overcome the fear and how can we deal with the evil that surrounds us and threatens us? Notice the phrases in the Reading from Hebrews: ‘Only faith can guarantee the blessings that we hope for’; ‘it was by faith that Abraham obeyed the call’; ‘By faith Sarah was made able to conceive’; ‘All of these died in faith before receiving any of the things that had been promised’; ‘It was by faith that Abraham offered up Isaac’.
Yet we struggle and wonder at how it is that our faith stalls and stutters and, at times, seems to have left us. We are no different from all who have gone before us, even those of great holiness and saintliness. Spiritual writers and saints, such as Saint Catherine of Sienna, Saint Therese of Lisieux and Saint John of the Cross have always warned us of the dark-night of Faith, which each of them experienced in their own lives.
In that dark-night of Faith it can be well-nigh impossible to focus our attention on prayer. Pleasant feelings and satisfaction in prayer are absent, our inner-life is dry and empty and temptations are many. This night-time can lead to despair. But the message of today’s Gospel is that God is present in darkness as well as in the light. Our journey of Faith is like the order of God’s creation of day and night! In ‘day-light Faith’ we advance in knowing what God is like and are drawn to worship God. In ‘night-light Faith’ we realise the limitations of our own knowledge. And the limitations of our knowledge are good in themselves.
Saint John of the Cross advises us: “Do not be satisfied with what you understand about God. Nourish yourself instead on what you do not understand about God. Do not base your happiness and delight on what you may hear or feel of God, but rather on what you can neither feel nor hear. The less one understands, the closer one gets to God”
Psalm 138 gives a person of Faith a wonderful prayer of Praise of God who is always present:
“Even the darkness is not dark for You and the night is as clear as the day”