Faith is PERSONAL. In Latin, the first word of the Creed is “CREDO” which is the verb, “to believe” in the first person singular. The first two words of the creed are “I believe.” Someone once said that if one cannot share their personal faith with Jesus and can only cite theological facts and figures, then they are not sharing their faith, but rather the faith of another. Faith is not meant to be a semblance of facts and figures, theological insights that can be delivered from a pulpit or at a round-table debate. Faith is a lived, personal encounter between God and His beloved, the believer. This is why we each must profess the faith on our own. Faith is a relationship with God that needs to be nurtured by each believer through their own witness and life. That is why the act of faith is so potent: it binds that person to live according to those same tenants. A believer is only as good as their witness. Hypocrisy, remember, cuts to the core of the faith, because it shows an inconsistency between the believer and what they believe. It is no small thing to profess a creed, because of what that creed personally demands of the believer. That’s why St. Paul candidly says, “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? IF a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,” but do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it? So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” We also know that one can only be responsible for their own actions. That’s why it is up to each member of the community of believers to act in accordance with their faith, for faith is personal, and requires personal action. But, we are not alone! Notice, too, that God calls believers together. We stand together as a community of witnesses who, each in our own way, provide perspective in the life of faith. In each, God has presented Himself, and the life of faith is utterly personal, while at the same time, we believe together, strengthened by our community of believers.

Woe to the Complacent.” After this admonition it goes to describe what complacency looks like. They drink lavishly, they stretch comfortably on their couches, they eat lambs, and improvise music…they are enjoying the good life, and in the good life, they have found their comfort. They grow complacent in their comfort. To them, God offers this warning, “Woe.” What is the object of a good life? That’s the question at the heart of today’s readings… What is the aim of a good life? For the complacent — it is time. The wealthy want more of it, they want to savor it, they want to prolong it as much as they can. They want the pleasures of life to last. They want to throw luxurious parties, and spend their waking days basking in their own comfort and glory. But, when the day comes to an end, when their time has come, they will have already received their reward. The Gospel offers a similar warning: Jesus offers the parable of the rich man who enjoys the fruits of a good life while the beggar, Lazarus, suffers outside. The rich man was dressed in fine linen, dined sumptuously, enjoyed the comfortable life, while poor Lazarus starved with dogs licking his sores. At the end, they end up in opposite circumstances and we can hear underneath a similar warning: “Woe to the complacent in Zion.” One of the lessons offered today is to remember that life has an aim: an aim to live well in love. Victor Frankl said it best when he wrote, “The salvation of man is through love and in love.” In other words, we were not made by God to simply enjoy our own independence free from worries. We were made for communion, we were made for love. Frankl’s point was simple: contemplation of our beloved can be the sweet refuge we find even in the worst misery, and if love is our refuge in misery, then salvation comes from love, in love. Love moves the heart beyond its own circumstances into a shared life. We were made in God’s image, to love, and it is through love that we, men and women broken by sin, are saved. As we come closer to our Savior in love, we also see that God inspires us to love: “Love one another, as I have loved you”, Jesus commands.

Is anger the same as wrath? Is there a difference? In short, one is the cause, the other is its expression. The distinction between wrath and anger is important because too often they are conflated to mean the same thing, when in fact, one is a passion with the other a vice. To be clear, passion is not a sin in itself. Vices, however, are all sins, and wrath is one of them; one of the seven “deadly” sins. In contrast, anger is the passion that can lead down one of two possible roads, one is vice, the other is virtue. Anger is one of the passions. Passions unbridled go in any direction. They can lead to destruction as readily as victory. Like the other passions — love and hatred, desire and aversion, hope and despair, fear and daring, anger and joy — passions are movements in the soul, forward or back, towards or away from certain circumstances and situations. The intellect and the will serve to rein in one’s passions and provide direction for them. Without direction, they remain unruly, driving in whichever direction that seems most expedient. In the same way that the horse takes direction from its rider, the passions take their cue from the intellect and the will. The will and the intellect are the bridle and bit that move the passions towards their proper aim; for the virtuous, that aim is the Good. The question then, is where are those passions directed? The difference between anger and wrath is the final orientation of that passion. It would be better and more clear to say that anger is the passion that leads either to virtue or vice; the virtue would be charity, the vice, wrath. This clarification makes apparent the truth that anger in itself is no sin, but rather what one does with that passion. For instance if someone is angry at being wrongly treated, that anger is quite reasonable. Any injustice requires some reparation. Wrath, in contrast, seeks revenge. Wrath is an anger let loose; anger is unreasonable and their solution is the elimination of that which makes them angry. Children who have yet to learn how to master their passions, cannot express why they are angry; instead they throw tantrums, damage property (like breaking toys) and scream and yell.