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Office Of Readings | Week 32, Wednesday, Ordinary Time | A Reading From A Homily Of A Second-Century Author | Let Us Be Patient And Hope In Jesus
‘Let us be patient and hope.’
The early Christian homily continues by addressing the tension between present struggle and future fulfilment. The author writes with pastoral urgency, urging the community to hold fast in faith and to persevere in virtue despite delay, doubt, and the lure of worldly ease. The dominant theme is endurance in hope—the steadfast adherence to divine promise in the face of moral testing and temporal uncertainty.
The homilist opens with a clear exhortation: obedience to the Father’s will is the path to eternal life. Hope is not passive expectation but active fidelity expressed through moral resistance. The text identifies two opposing movements of the soul—reverent fear of God and indulgent attachment to temporal pleasure. The first preserves peace, the second breeds restlessness and corruption. The contrast is drawn not merely for individual conscience but for the community’s moral integrity; those who abandon discipline also mislead others and thereby incur a ‘double condemnation’. Moral example has social weight, a recurrent emphasis in early Christian instruction.
A distinctive feature of the homily is its use of natural imagery. The homilist’s comparison of human life to a vine in its seasons—leaf-fall, budding, sour grape, and ripened fruit—renders patience as part of the created order. Growth, whether moral or biological, cannot be hurried. In this, the homily recognises the rhythm of divine providence: tribulation precedes reward, affliction matures into joy. The tone recalls scriptural wisdom literature, where the fruit of endurance is not only survival but transformation.
Faith, in this vision, is both knowledge and perseverance. To doubt divine promise is to misunderstand the nature of time and the reliability of God. The homilist rebukes those of ‘wavering faith’ who dismiss the hope of salvation as delayed or uncertain. The impatience of disbelief is answered with an appeal to the Creator’s fidelity: the God who made the promise will keep it. The passage thus forms an early meditation on divine constancy and human steadfastness, linking moral endurance with eschatological trust.
The homily proceeds to practical consequences. The believer is to live in ‘hourly expectation’ of the kingdom—an attitude that unites ethical alertness with interior humility. Repentance must be immediate and continuous; it erases past failure and renews moral purpose. The homilist warns against the desire for social approval, insisting that Christian conduct must win respect not through conformity but through integrity. The name of God must not be blasphemed on account of believers; thus Christian life carries a public witness, binding personal holiness to the credibility of faith itself.
Throughout, the homily maintains a restrained clarity. It assumes that moral endurance and hope are inseparable: endurance sustains hope through time, and hope gives endurance its meaning. Together they shape the Christian life as an ongoing contest of trust, patience, and fidelity to the unseen promise.
A Reading From A Homily Of A Second-Century Author | Let Us Be Patient And Hope In Jesus
For the sake of eternal life, my brothers, let us do the will of the Father who called us, resisting the temptations that lead us into sin and striving earnestly to advance in virtue. Let us revere God for fear of the evils that spring from impiety. If we are zealous in doing good, we shall have peace, but there is no peace for those who, governed by human respect, prefer present enjoyment to the future promises. They realize neither the torment that is laid up for them on account of these momentary pleasures, nor the joy of the promises to come. And indeed it could be endured if their conduct affected only themselves, but as it is, they persist in corrupting the innocent, unaware that they incur a double condemnation, for themselves and their disciples.
So let us serve God with a pure heart, and then we shall be living as we should. If we fail to serve him because of our disbelief, we shall only be miserable. Wretched are those of wavering faith, says the prophet, the people who double in their hearts and say: We heard all this even when our parents were alive and day after day we have waited in vain for any proof of it. O foolish ones! Think of a tree, and see how you resemble it. A vine, for example, first sheds its leaves and then the bud appears; after that there comes the sour grape and finally a cluster of ripened fruit. So it is with my people. They have had their tumults and afflictions, but afterward will come to their reward.
Therefore, my brothers, in order to obtain the reward, we must endure in hope with unwavering faith. He who made the promise to repay every man as his deeds deserve will be faithful to it. If we do what is right in God’s sight, we shall enter into his kingdom and receive the promise which no ear has heard, no eye seen, no human heart conceived.
So let us live loving and upright lives, in hourly expectation of the kingdom of God, since we do not know when it will come. Let us repent at once of our great folly and wickedness, and from now on always be ready to do good. We should blot out past sins by being truly sorry for them, and then we shall be saved. We must have no desire to curry favour with men, nor should we think only of making ourselves acceptable to our fellow Christians. We should live upright lives in order to win the respect of non-Christians as well. The Name must not be blasphemed on our account.
Christian Prayer With Jesus Christ
Eternal Father,
you have promised life to those who persevere in your will.
Grant us strength to endure in hope,
to resist what corrupts,
and to grow in the quiet fruitfulness of your grace.
Keep us from fear and from weariness of faith.
May our hearts remain steadfast,
our works upright,
and our lives a sign of your fidelity.
When the hour of trial comes,
sustain us with the remembrance of your promise,
that, waiting in patience,
we may at last rejoice in the harvest of your kingdom,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
Glossary Of Christian Terms
Eschatological hope – Confidence in the fulfilment of God’s promises at the end of time; the orientation of faith toward the future kingdom.
Endurance – Steadfast perseverance under trial; the moral strength to remain faithful through adversity.
Impiety – Irreverence or neglect of divine law; in early Christian usage, moral disorder opposed to true worship.
Providence – God’s sustaining wisdom and governance over creation, guiding events toward their destined good.
Repentance – Turning of life and mind from sin toward God; the continual renewal of moral purpose.
Righteousness – Conformity of conduct to divine will; moral rectitude.
Temporal – Relating to time and the present world, as distinct from what is eternal.
Theodicy – Reflection on divine justice in the face of suffering; implicit in the homily’s treatment of trial and reward.
Virtue – Habitual disposition to act according to moral excellence.
Witness – Public expression of faith through behaviour that reflects divine truth.
Christian Art | George Herbert | The Temple | The Church | The Sinner George Herbert | The Temple | The Church | The Sinner Lord, how I am all ague, when I seek What I have treasur’d in my memorie! Since, if my soul make even with the week, Each seventh note by right is due to thee. I finde there quarries of pil’d vanities, But shreds of holinesse, that dare not venture To shew their face, since crosse to thy decrees. There the circumference earth is, heav’n the centre. In so much dregs the quintessence is small: The spirit and good extract of my heart Comes to about the many hundredth part. Yet Lord restore thine image, heare my call: And though my hard heart scarce to thee can grone, Remember that thou once didst write in stone. George Herbert | The Temple | The Church | The Sinner The poet reflects on his spiritual state, describing a struggle with weakness, sin, and the desire for divine alignment. The poem opens with the poet addressing God, expressing discomfort, likened to an ‘ague’ (fever or chill), when he searches his memory for spiritual treasures. This ‘ague’ suggests both a physical and spiritual unease, revealing the tension the poet feels in self-examination. The second line conveys a sense of regret as the poet searches for ‘treasur’d’ holiness in his memory. He recognizes that, although he might strive to keep his soul ‘even with the week’, dedicating every seventh day to God, he falls short. This phrase reflects the expectation to honour the Sabbath, but the poet’s efforts are met with disappointment in their perceived spiritual emptiness. The poet goes on to examine his inner self, describing ‘quarries of pil’d vanities’ that dominate his mind. Here, ‘quarries’ implies an overwhelming quantity of earthly or superficial concerns, while ‘vanities’ suggests that these concerns are meaningless in the context of divine expectation. In contrast, he finds only ‘shreds of holinesse’, fragmented attempts at righteousness, which he hesitates to bring forward as these elements are ‘crosse to thy decrees’, or in opposition to God’s laws. This imagery underscores the poet’s internal conflict and recognition of shortcomings. Further, the poet contrasts earth and heaven, saying that ‘the circumference earth is, heav’n the centre.’ This phrase symbolizes the poet’s focus on worldly concerns (the circumference) that orbit around a neglected spiritual core (the heavenly center). The poet reflects that his life is filled with ‘dregs’, the lesser, unrefined aspects of his being, while ‘quintessence’, or the purest part of himself, is scarce. This ‘quintessence’ is described as the ‘spirit and good extract’ of the poet’s heart, amounting to a ‘many hundredth part’ — a small fraction of life’s essence. The poet realizes that, despite attempts to cultivate holiness, his internal state largely lacks spiritual substance. The final lines shift to a plea for restoration. The poet calls on God to ‘restore thine image’, asking for renewal and transformation. This restoration request implies a yearning to reflect God’s nature more fully, as humanity is believed to be made in God’s image. The poet acknowledges that his heart ‘scarce… can grone’ to God, reflecting the difficulty he feels in truly connecting with or petitioning the divine. The poem ends with reference to the biblical account of the Ten Commandments, when God ‘didst write in stone’. This allusion serves as both a reminder of God’s past willingness to communicate directly and a plea for a similar intervention to etch divine law into the poet’s heart. The poem examines themes of introspection, human fallibility, and a longing for divine transformation. The poet’s self-examination reveals struggle to balance earthly concerns with spiritual commitments, culminating in a plea for God’s direct action to restore spiritual integrity.
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