27th Sunday in Ordinary Time
HABAKKUK 1:2-3 and 2:2-4
How long, O Lord, must I call for help,
but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, “Violence!”
but you do not save?
Why do you make me look at injustice?
Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and conflict abounds.
The Lord replied:
“Write down the revelation
and make it plain on tablets
so that a herald may run with it.
For the revelation awaits an appointed time;
it speaks of the end
and will not prove false.
Though it linger, wait for it;
it will certainly come
and will not delay.
See, the enemy is puffed up;
his desires are not upright—
but the righteous person will live by his faithfulness.
He is a prophet who is almost unknown, who exercised his ministry at the end of the 7th century (from 622 perhaps until 597). Therefore, a contemporary of Jeremiah and perhaps also or immediately after Nahum. A time of terrible international upheavals: the terrible power of the Assyrians, cruel destroyers of peoples, gives way to the emerging strength of the Chaldeans of Babylon. (Destruction of Nineveh 612) Around the year 600, first attacks of the Chaldeans on Jerusalem. 598, destruction of Jerusalem.
Habakkuk, shaken by so many international catastrophes, seems to call God to account. And he maintains a faith that seems irrational: evil will not prevail, even if it is so apparently omnipotent and presumptuous. In the most difficult moments is when it is necessary to trust entirely in God.
The book of Habakkuk, very short (55 verses), deserves to be read at once. Poetic, vibrant, deeply religious. The text is drawn here by the first part of the gospel.
2 TIMOTHY 1:6-8 and 13-14
For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline. So do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner. Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.
We continue reading the pious advice of Paul to his disciple Timothy, faithful collaborator in many missions and finally responsible for the church of Ephesus, so important and with so many conflicts. The exhortation we read today is generic, it encourages to face, not to be discouraged, in the midst of the innumerable difficulties of the ministry that Paul himself had entrusted to him.
José Enrique Galarreta, S.J.