Feast of St. Polycarp
Reading 1 Heb 11:1-7
Brothers and sisters:
Faith is the realization of what is hoped for
and evidence of things not seen.
Because of it the ancients were well attested.
By faith, we understand that the universe was ordered by the word of God,
so that what is visible came into being through the invisible.
By faith Abel offered to God a sacrifice greater than Cain’s.
Through this, he was attested to be righteous,
God bearing witness to his gifts,
and through this, though dead, he still speaks.
By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death,
and he was found no more because God had taken him.
Before he was taken up, he was attested to have pleased God.
But without faith it is impossible to please him,
for anyone who approaches God must believe that he exists
and that he rewards those who seek him.
By faith Noah, warned about what was not yet seen,
with reverence built an ark for the salvation of his household.
Through this, he condemned the world
and inherited the righteousness that comes through faith.
Gospel Mk 9:2-13
Jesus took Peter, James, and John
and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves.
And he was transfigured before them,
and his clothes became dazzling white,
such as no fuller on earth could bleach them.
Then Elijah appeared to them along with Moses,
and they were conversing with Jesus.
Then Peter said to Jesus in reply,
“Rabbi, it is good that we are here!
Let us make three tents:
one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
He hardly knew what to say, they were so terrified.
Then a cloud came, casting a shadow over them;
then from the cloud came a voice,
“This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”
Suddenly, looking around, the disciples no longer saw anyone
but Jesus alone with them.As they were coming down from the mountain,
he charged them not to relate what they had seen to anyone,
except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
So they kept the matter to themselves,
questioning what rising from the dead meant.
Then they asked him,
“Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?”
He told them, “Elijah will indeed come first and restore all things,
yet how is it written regarding the Son of Man
that he must suffer greatly and be treated with contempt?
But I tell you that Elijah has come
and they did to him whatever they pleased,
as it is written of him.”
We are in an age of rationalism. People want to reason and understand everything. People are becoming suspicious and intolerant of mysteries. People are no longer impressed by the notion that some things are beyond human intellectual capacity. There is a shift from believing to knowing with certainty.
Unfortunately, the human mind cannot comprehend the whole truth about the mysteries of life. This is where reason must acknowledge his own limitation and unite with faith in appraising the truth about life.
This is where the first reading of today applies. It is a treatise on faith. It tells us it is only faith that can prove the existence of the realities that are at present unseen. We are told that it is impossible to please God without faith. We also have a reference to Abel, Enoch and Noah, these are people who related to God through faith and they received God’s favour.
This morning let us reflect on two measures of faith that are pleasing to God
- We must believe that God exists even though we can’t see Him and He is in charge of our lives and events around us. We must see him present in the greatest and smallest events of our lives.
In the Gospel, the disciples were made to see the splendour of divinity latent in the humanity of Jesus, they saw God in man, and they saw visibly what they had accepted in faith. The reward of faith is to eventually see what we believe.
- We must believe in His words and His promises. Faith is believing in God’s word, and shaping our lives according to His teachings.
In the Gospel, the voice of the Father commands us to listen to Jesus, faith is listening to God and obeying what He commands simply because He commands and not because we understand it. It is accepting God’s words and promises to be true and being ready to give all because of what we believe. An example of this faith is Polycarp.
Polycarp was a disciple of St John the Apostle. He was converted and ordained by St John the Apostle. He was the bishop of Smyrna and a friend of Ignatius of Antioch. Because of his faith in God and the promise of eternal life, he accepted martyrdom during the reign of Statius Quadratus for refusing to burn incense to the image of the emperor. He died on the 23rd of February 155/156AD.
This is faith, he laid down his life because he believed that God’s promise of eternal life is true and now He is experiencing with joy the reality of what he once believed in faith.
Sermon Preached by Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Okami on Saturday, February 23, 2019.