Leafcutter ants carry up to 50 times their body weight in the leaves they cut to build their huge colonies and provide food for the nymphs who will live after them. Their purposeful and persistent life purpose is built into them by instinct. We humans have to work consciously toward our purposeful and persistent lives. So, not surprisingly, there will be times when our resolve dissolves. We lose hope and perspective about why we are carrying such burdens.
That is the situation the prophet Habakkuk finds himself in during our first reading. How long, O Lord? I cry for help but you do not listen! I cry out to you, “Violence,” but you do not intervene. Habakkuk the prophet lived between about 626 and 609 BCE, when his own society was violent and unjust, and as Habakkuk realized, God’s solution was to send an even more violent and unjust enemy to conquer them. There are times when things have to get worse before they get better, it seems, in our individual lives or in our worlds. Then we also ask, “How long, O Lord?”
Our Gospel parable seems to provide a solution: faith, even that as small as a mustard seed, is needed. And that small faith is helped by having awareness of our limited powers to change things. For we are merely “unprofitable servants” doing what we are obliged to do. Perhaps you know someone living in a “from bad to worse” situation; perhaps it is you carrying 50 times your body weight in burdens right now. Leafcutter ants don’t work alone but in work teams. We know that God works to bring good from evil, but we also know that God’s work is “slow,” gradual. So we badly need support from others during times of trouble. We also need their support when it is time to call the question, something today’s readings don’t address. Let us pray this week for people we know or know about who are living amid terrible troubles, and offer support to them as we can.
— Blog entry by Sister Mary Garascia; photo by Scott Bauer
The post October 5, 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Patience: a Sunday Scriptures blog first appeared on Sisters of the Precious Blood.