Billy Graham once quipped—“If God doesn’t judge America He
will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.”
Today
we enter into the detailed dialogue between God and Abraham. God was on the brink of destroying
Sodom and Gomorrah for their wickedness—inhospitality and the desire to
abuse. Abraham intercedes for
these people, “chipping away” at God’s plan until they agree that if ten
righteous people were found in these cities, they would be spared. The end of the story, though, is that
Sodom and Gomorrah were in fact destroyed. This implies that there were not ten righteous men and women in these cities.
Our
country—the United States—has many similarities with Sodom and Gomorrah. We live in a society in which our human
sexuality has been brutalized over the past few decades. Sodom and Gomorrah did not have a
multi-billion dollar pornography business. Nor did they have sexting. Infidelity in our country is far too common, as is
cohabitation, contraception and the like.
Our culture has even lost its sense of what marriage is. Added to this, we live in a country which supports abortion
that kills many innocent unborn babies each day. Materialism, individualism and relativism are the norm.
Now I am not asking God to smite us
with sulfer from heaven, or point fingers, but this reading from Genesis begs
the question—are there ten righteous people in our country? Are there ten righteous people at St.
John’s?
I
hope so. I hope we are of the
ten. We must be of the ten in order
to save our society!
In
dark times like this, we must be guided by the light of faith. Indeed, Pope Francis has providentially
given us his first encyclical called by this very title—Lumen Fidei—light of faith.
I encourage you to read it as it is nothing short of God’s inspiration
for us. In it, our Holy Father
writes, “Our culture has lost its sense
of God’s tangible presence and activity in our world. We think that God is to be found in the beyond, on another
level of reality, far removed from our everyday relationships. But if this were the case, if God could
not act in the world, his love would not be truly powerful, truly real, and
thus not even true, a love capable of delivering the bliss that it
promises. It would make no
difference at all whether we believed in him or not. Christians, on the contrary, profess their faith in God’s
tangible and powerful love which really does act in history and determines its
final destiny: a love that can be encountered, a love fully revealed in
Christ’s passion, death and resurrection.”
We
can gaze on another light of faith occurring in our world today. As we celebrate Mass in Duluth,
Minnesota, Pope Francis is celebrating Mass with three million young people
from around the world in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. They are gathered to celebrate the faith throughout World
Youth Day. Earlier this week, Pope
Francis encouraged the young people: “In
the face of those moments of discouragement we experience in life, in our
efforts to evangelize or to embody our faith as parents within the family, I
would like to say forcefully: Always know in your heart that God is by your
side; he never abandons you! Let
us never lose hope! Let us never
allow it to die in our hearts!”
God is near us. You have been “buried with [Christ] in Baptism, in which you were also raised with him
through faith in the power of God…”
You can trust in God! You
can trust in His sacraments! You
can trust in His Church and in her teachings! The same God with Whom Abraham pleas says in our Gospel, “…ask and you will receive; seek and you will
find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”
Ask. Seek. Knock. Pray that God may give you the courage
and confidence to be near Him.
Ask, seek and knock that you may be one of the ten righteous. Pray that your family, friends and
coworkers may be as well. Be one
of the ten and reflect the light of faith to our world.
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