33rd SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME C

FOR YOUR HAIR

So much money, time, attention and care go to maintaining the beauty of a person’s hair.  Just look at most of the personal care commercials; if it’s not about the skin, it surely is about one’s hair.  Everybody wants that beautiful, long, silky, strong, dandruff-free hair.  Women will buy the perfect shampoo. Men will consult experts.  This vanity about hair transcends gender.

The Lord Jesus certainly understands this very human concern for hair.  Hair is an indicator of health.  A person with healthy hair is a person with a healthy body and worry-free life. When hair begins to fall on your pillow or gather on the shower drain, if it’s not heredity, it must be stress or sickness.

Jesus spoke of a life of challenges and trials for his disciples (Luke 21:5-19).  Those who would follow him will live through the most difficult forms of persecutions, hatred, banishment and fatigue.  To follow Jesus a person will sometimes have to “lose hair” in surrendering to the pressure, the stress and the tiredness of standing up to the world for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of being a witness to something different and more important.

But the Lord Jesus says: not a hair of your head will fall to the ground. What does it mean? A true disciple has nothing to fear.  A true disciple will walk this earth victorious over trials, not defeated by fear or anxiety. 

The gospel speaks of earthquakes and storms and wars.  We have these in our country in increasing frequency.  But aside from the natural and human calamities, there are personal and internal calamities that beset every Christian.  Yes, we are not immune from pain and suffering just because we carry the name of Jesus in our persons.   We share the same situation that befalls every man and woman on this earth.

But while other people lose hope, fall into despair, succumb to sadness and are paralyzed by fear, we as Christians recover fast, regain our composure, bounce back with more courage and even more enthusiasm for life, for love, for service.  Do you notice how after every storm, people gather the remains of their homes and start building again? Do you notice that after the earthquake people venture to return to their places and resume their interrupted lives?

How can one not be moved especially by the sign of faith that explains the Christian’s reason to look up and see the possibility in the midst of the rubbles?  People gathering for Mass in a roofless church… people gathering to worship outside a shattered church and in the midst of cracked earth. 

If you have faith in Jesus and devotedly cling to him in every moment, no adversity can destroy the hope in your heart.  In the face of all the odds, your faith will sustain you and preserve you.  Jesus is right, not a single head of our hair will fall to the ground.  We will move on and we will triumph because he is present in our hearts and in the midst of our believing community.