Homily for the Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, delivered (in the evening) in Our Lady Star of the Sea Church, Gladstone, Qld.

"'How long, O Lord, am I to cry for help while you will not listen;
to cry ‘Oppression!’ in your ear
and you will not save...?' Then the Lord answered..." (cf. Hab 1:1-4).

"I am reminding you to fan into a flame the gift that God gave you... guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us." (cf. 2 Tim 1:6-14).

"The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith.’ The Lord replied, ‘Were your faith the size of a mustard seed...’" (cf. Lk 17:5-10).
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"Faith is the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because he is truth itself. By faith [one] 'freely commits [their] entire self to God." For this reason the believer seeks to know and do God's will. 'The righteous shall live by faith.' Living faith 'work[s] through charity.' The gift of faith remains in one who has not sinned against it. But 'faith apart from works is dead': when it is deprived of hope and love, faith does not fully unite the believer to Christ and does not make him a living member of his Body. The disciple of Christ must not only keep the faith and live on it, but also profess it, confidently bear witness to it, and spread it: 'All however must be prepared to confess Christ before men and to follow him along the way of the Cross, amidst the persecutions which the Church never lacks.' Service of and witness to the faith are necessary for salvation: 'So every one who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.'" (CCC 1814-16).

Artwork: An untitled work by Deborah Calicchia, (n.d.), retrieved from Pinterest.