Joke: One Sunday morning, a mother was getting ready for church when she noticed her son wasn’t up yet. She finally went in to wake him up. “Come on, get up. You’ll be late for Mass!” she said. “I don’t want to go!” said her son as he buried his head under the pillow. “You have to go,” the mother insisted. “No, I’m not going,” he insisted. “And I’ll give you two reasons. Nobody there likes me and I don’t like them.” Indignantly, his mother replied, “You are to going to church, and I’ll give you two reasons: You’re forty-five years old and you’re the pastor!”

In today’s Gospel, a continuation of last weekend’s Gospel when Jesus said, “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” What fulfilled in their hearing that Jesus came to bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord. Jesus had done all these and many other good deeds in the other lands, not in his native land. This caused tension that Jesus told them saying, “Surely you will quote me this proverb, 'Physician, cure yourself,' and say, 'Do here in your native place the things that we heard were done in Capernaum.” Why couldn’t he do any good deed in his native land? Has he ever done any good deed in our blessed land of America? What would be considered his native land?

Jesus couldn’t do any good deed in his native land because people didn’t follow God’s commandments that in today’s first reading, prophet Jeremiah reported saying, “The word of the LORD came to me, saying: Before I formed you in the womb I knew you before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you. But do you gird your loins; stand up and tell them all that I command you.” Israelites were chosen to be the Lord’s chosen race, but they refused to follow his commandments. Therefore, the chosen race is not simply chosen by the Lord but more than that, it is a race that follows and observes his commandments. When they failed to follow and observe God’s commandments, they failed to recognize Jesus as Christ, the Anointed One, and the Son of God. Their lack of faith led them to turn their back to God not to follow and to observe God’s commandments.

Recalling reciting the Holy Rosary that it always begins with the first three beads of Hail Mary. We recite these first three beads of the Hail Mary to pray for the increase of faith, hope, and love. To follow and observe God’s commandments, we need to pray for an increase in faith. Without faith or when we lack faith, we fail to follow and observe God’s commandments. Therefore, the first bead of the three is always to pray for an increase of faith. Without faith, there is no hope. Without faith and hope, there is no love. It is only when we have a solid faith, we are strengthened with hope, the second theological virtue in the Catholic Church. Just as faith is the image of the cross, hope is the image of the current in an electrical circuit that binds all faith, hope, and love together. Love, however, as Saint Paul expressed in today’s second reading, is the greatest of all. Therefore, the first three beads of Hail Mary before we dive into the five decades of the Holy Rosary, we pray for the increase of faith, hope, and love. When we die, there would be no more faith, but we still hope that the living ones pray for us. When we get up there in heaven, there would be no more faith nor hope but love alone. Make no mistake when our emeritus Pope, Pope Benedict XVI, when he was still pope, he wrote a book, “God is Love.” So, when we get up there in heaven, there is only love remaining. The greatest of all the commandments that Jesus taught us is love, to love God, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. So, how do we love God and love one another?

In today’s second reading, Saint Paul teaches us saying, “Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, not pompous, not inflated, not rude, it does not seek its interests, not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, [and] endures all things. Love never fails.” When faith yielded to sight and hope to possession, love never fails. In other words, when we pray and pray, and we don’t receive what we pray for, do we still have faith in the Lord? When we believe in God and hope for well-being, a good condition of living, but we don’t possess it, do we still have faith and hope in the Lord? However, if we learn to love, love even our enemies, love even when we are suffering from sickness or any challenge of life, with true love, faith and hope will follow since love never fails.

Just as the Israelites, the chosen race, we are also God’s chosen race through our baptism. As a chosen race, they lacked faith that Jesus couldn’t perform any mighty deeds in their midst. As a chosen race through our baptism, how is our faith in the Lord Jesus? How is our faith in him during this pandemic? Without faith, we have no hope in this walk of life, and without hope, life has no meaning in this walk of life. What would you hope in this walk of life and the life to come? Love is the greatest of all three theological virtues, how is your love to God and one another? How are your faith, hope, and love in this stage of life? The decision is yours.