For 5 October 2025, The Twenty Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, based on Habakkuk 1:2-3; 2:2-4
(Image: Detail of a miniature of Habbakuk crying to God, from The British Library Board (picryl.com), Public Domain)
How long, O LORD? I cry for help
but you do not listen!
I cry out to you, “Violence!”
but you do not intervene.
Why do you let me see ruin;
why must I look at misery?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and clamorous discord.
Then the LORD answered me and said:
Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets,
so that one can read it readily.
For the vision still has its time,
presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint;
if it delays, wait for it,
it will surely come, it will not be late.
The rash one has no integrity;
but the just one, because of faith, shall live.
—————
An inescapable message of the Scriptures is that God calls us as disciples of Jesus to conform ourselves to the suffering and death of the master. We follow Jesus, who suffered, died, and was buried. Yes, God raises us up in the resurrection, but first we must go down with Jesus and follow him into the underbelly of our sinful and suffering world. The world needs us there.
The prophet Habakkuk lived several hundred years before Jesus, but their two worlds were remarkably similar. Habakkuk complained to God: “How long, O LORD? I cry for help, but you do not seem to listen! I cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ but you do not intervene. Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and clamorous discord.”
The good news in Habakkuk is that God answers with a loving vision for the world. God replies, “My vision still has its time; it presses on to fulfillment and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come.”
Howard Thurman, the Black theologian and Martin Luther King Jr.’s teacher, believed that God’s vision for our world is that of a community of relationships made possible and purified by charity and love. In the face of our world’s destruction and clamorous discord, we respond with Christ’s long-suffering and self-sacrificing love. By our attitudes and actions, we make Jesus present in our world. With Jesus, we are on a mission from God.
Our gospel parable today from chapter 17 of Luke invites us to invest at least a mustard seed of faith in that vision. God’s antidote to our world’s strife and misery is given in and through our mustard-seed faith and self-sacrificing love. We are but humble servants to God’s vision.
This Sunday, the prophet Habakkuk faces our world’s inauthenticity squarely and says that “God’s vision still has its time.” We believe that what God is doing in Jesus presses on to fulfillment and will not disappoint. We actively await the fulfillment of God’s promise of a transformed world with our self-sacrificing love and mustard-seed faith. We follow Jesus, and we will not be swayed.
Scripture passage from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright 1989, 1993, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
About Gregory Heille, O.P.
Gregory Heille, O.P., is an Emeritus Professor of Preaching and Evangelization at Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis, Missouri. He is a friar of the Province of St. Albert the Great USA and has a particular interest in racial equity education.
5 Oct 2025
How Long, O LORD?
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(Image: Detail of a miniature of Habbakuk crying to God, from The British Library Board (picryl.com), Public Domain)
How long, O LORD? I cry for help
but you do not listen!
I cry out to you, “Violence!”
but you do not intervene.
Why do you let me see ruin;
why must I look at misery?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and clamorous discord.
Then the LORD answered me and said:
Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets,
so that one can read it readily.
For the vision still has its time,
presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint;
if it delays, wait for it,
it will surely come, it will not be late.
The rash one has no integrity;
but the just one, because of faith, shall live.
—————
An inescapable message of the Scriptures is that God calls us as disciples of Jesus to conform ourselves to the suffering and death of the master. We follow Jesus, who suffered, died, and was buried. Yes, God raises us up in the resurrection, but first we must go down with Jesus and follow him into the underbelly of our sinful and suffering world. The world needs us there.
The prophet Habakkuk lived several hundred years before Jesus, but their two worlds were remarkably similar. Habakkuk complained to God: “How long, O LORD? I cry for help, but you do not seem to listen! I cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ but you do not intervene. Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and clamorous discord.”
The good news in Habakkuk is that God answers with a loving vision for the world. God replies, “My vision still has its time; it presses on to fulfillment and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come.”
Howard Thurman, the Black theologian and Martin Luther King Jr.’s teacher, believed that God’s vision for our world is that of a community of relationships made possible and purified by charity and love. In the face of our world’s destruction and clamorous discord, we respond with Christ’s long-suffering and self-sacrificing love. By our attitudes and actions, we make Jesus present in our world. With Jesus, we are on a mission from God.
Our gospel parable today from chapter 17 of Luke invites us to invest at least a mustard seed of faith in that vision. God’s antidote to our world’s strife and misery is given in and through our mustard-seed faith and self-sacrificing love. We are but humble servants to God’s vision.
This Sunday, the prophet Habakkuk faces our world’s inauthenticity squarely and says that “God’s vision still has its time.” We believe that what God is doing in Jesus presses on to fulfillment and will not disappoint. We actively await the fulfillment of God’s promise of a transformed world with our self-sacrificing love and mustard-seed faith. We follow Jesus, and we will not be swayed.
Scripture passage from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright 1989, 1993, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
About Gregory Heille, O.P.
Gregory Heille, O.P., is an Emeritus Professor of Preaching and Evangelization at Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis, Missouri. He is a friar of the Province of St. Albert the Great USA and has a particular interest in racial equity education.