27th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C 2025

Habakkuk is not an ancient prophet. He could be classified as a “modern” one. He saw the injustice that existed during his lifetime. We too can notice the inequalities glaring back at us. Like us, Habbakuk cried out to a God who is seemingly silent and uncaring. But the Lord reminds him to have faith in the future and to continue living. Today’s prophets who fight can end up dispirited if they do not have faith that God will make right the situation that calls out for righteousness.

We are movers and shakers. We cannot sit still. In a way, we are keen to change the world for the better. It is a good attitude to have. Yet it might also lead to discouragement and disillusionment. Movers and shakers are performance-driven and also production-centred. In other words, we thrive on measurable results and count on successes. We have been bred to succeed and when we do not succeed, the result can be anxiety and depression.

Given that the organisation of the world we have is complex and knowledge about the universe is also immense there is a tendency to organise life through specialisation. The ever-increasing specialisation of knowledge has led to increasing fragmentation of our experience. With specialisation, we know more of less.

Sounds gibberish but take a look at our medical faculties. A doctor-friend told me that given his mother’s medical condition, it was a good thing that he himself is a doctor because specialisation has made the specialist an expert but he or she is often hampered by the lack of multi—disciplinary experiences. It made a wholistic diagnostic of his mother’s condition difficult. Does this sound familiar? And have you known of a person who had to be hospitalised but the doctors were unable to diagnose the condition? As a result, the person was subjected to a whole battery of tests and passed on from one specialist to another specialist.

The result of our inability to grasp the bigger picture and to solve a problem can create a sense of despair especially when we are unable to control our destiny.

If we are not the masters of our destiny, then who is? This is where Habakkuk comes in. His vision leads us along the path of trust and discipleship. We let God take charge and we keep faith with Him. Though we may be tempted by the need for results, what is best is to trust and have faith that God will come through for us.

Take a look at the Gospel. There are two themes inter-related. The first is how faith can do great wonders. What is faith? Remember the saying, “give God the best and not the rest”. For many of us, faith kicks in when we are helpless. God seems to be our fail-safe option and faith tends to be more like “I can do it first” rather than God is at the heart of all there is.

Perhaps the 2nd theme of Jesus in the Gospel on servanthood might be helpful. It is not about humility in service per se. Rather it is leaving all in the hands of God. It is a kind of attitude which can only be described of as letting God be God. This is where we will struggle because we like beings in charge and we need to be in control. We are afraid of letting go.

It is quite natural because humanity has been created a little less than a god. When we see a wrong, when we encounter a problem, we would want to rectify the situation because our human intelligence makes us problem-solvers.

The Camino pilgrimage has taught me one thing which I am still learning. Every journey undertaken, I seemed to have things which I had packed but did not need at all. The redundancies or fail-safe were never needed. The extra set of clothings that might come in handy. This gadget or that instrument. The point of faith is that God will meet us at the moment when we need Him most. That is faith. I must say that I have yet to learnt fully the meaning of having faith in the Lord’s Providence. But like the Camino, it is a life-long process of learning to trust. Perhaps death is the final act of faith that each one has to make because we can only enter eternity when we have placed ourselves fully into the loving embrace of God.