Hearth & Altar

Take care you remain tranquil and do not fear; let not your courage fail before these two stumps of smoldering brands. Two enemy armies are marching on Jerusalem. The king's heart trembles like a forest in the wind. And God sends the prophet with a message that sounds almost absurd in the circumstances: these are stumps. Smoldering brands. They look like fire, but the fire is almost out. Do not let stumps terrify you.

Unless your faith is firm you shall not be firm. The Hebrew plays on the root word: the strength of the standing is the faith. Not the strategy. Not the coalition. The faith. The man who trembles before stumps has not yet understood what he is standing on.

Woe to you Chorazin, woe to you Bethsaida. Jesus reproaches the towns that saw the most and repented the least. Tyre and Sidon, Sodom and Gomorrah - the great pagan cities of the ancient world - would have repented at far less. The tragedy of Chorazin is not the absence of the works. It is the presence of the works and the absence of the repentance.

Kateri Tekakwitha - the Lily of the Mohawks - received the faith at age nineteen in conditions that were far from favorable, held it against the opposition of her community, and gave her whole life to the Lord who had found her in the forest. She was a Capernaum that chose to be a Tyre.

• For our family, that when two enemy armies of anxiety are marching on our household we would receive the word: these are stumps; remain tranquil; unless your faith is firm you shall not be firm, we pray to the Lord.
• For those who have seen the mighty deeds and not yet repented - who have received the evidence and not changed - that the woe would arrive before the judgment day and produce the sackcloth, we pray to the Lord.
• On the feast of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, for those who hold the faith in conditions that are not favorable - surrounded by opposition, isolated by conviction - that her company would sustain them, we pray to the Lord.
• In this Precious Blood month, for the Precious Blood that is the mighty deed that most demands repentance - the sign that Tyre and Sidon would have recognized, we pray to the Lord.

Unless your faith is firm you shall not be firm. Name the specific thing trembling in your household right now - the two stumps of smoldering brands producing the anxiety. Name them as stumps. Then name what you are actually standing on. The faith-firmness and the standing-firm use the same root for a reason.

The towns that saw the most repented the least. Familiarity is the danger of the household formed in faith. The works are seen daily; the repentance can become routine. Name one mighty deed in your family's history and receive it freshly today as the work it actually was.