We Belong to You

Sunday, October 2, 2022 | By Rev. Michael P. Hanifin

Readings: HAB 1:2-3; 2:2-2-4; PS 95:1-2, 6-9; 2 TM 1:6-8, 13-14; LK 17:5-10

The Scripture readings this weekend challenge us to live as committed, intentional, and mission-minded disciples focused on serving God and building His Kingdom in our Saint Joachim community. They also show us that our lives belong to God, not to us, and that God will indeed bring about the fulfillment of His Kingdom in our hearts. We just need to have faith that He can do it and commit to our small part in His grand design. This is both our privilege and responsibility as Catholic Christians.

Jesus makes this privilege and responsibility clear in today’s Gospel passage from Saint Luke. When the apostles asked the Lord to increase their faith, He told them that even a mustard seed-sized faith is all that was needed to move mountains (because it is God who does the heavy lifting). We need only take the tiniest step forward, and He will do the rest.

But living our lives in His service is also very much our responsibility, as Jesus explained through the parable of the unprofitable servant later in this passage. Our Lord described a scene in which a servant had just come in from tending to the master’s affairs and asked whether it would be reasonable for the master to begin waiting on his servant. Of course, it would not be reasonable! The servant would be expected to continue to serve his master until he had completed the work the master had given him that day. Jesus said that we should have this same attitude before God.

If we have faith – no matter how great or small – we entrust our time, talent, and treasure to doing God’s will. As the song by Trevor Thomson tells us:

“We belong to you, O Lord of our longing, We belong to you.

In our daily living, dying, and rising — We belong to you.”

Whatever we do on God’s behalf with our lives and our gifts is simply our God-given responsibility.

As Catholics we are committed to a way of life – in what we say and do – that makes the privilege and responsibility of serving Christ and His Kingdom a concrete reality.