Daniel 1:1-6, 8-20 / Luke 21:1-4 (2019)
Faith is not a passive or inert aspect of our lives. Faith responds visibly to something that might be expected to produce manifestations of an emotion or feeling.
Having faith would also mean participating readily or actively in the situations around us so as to reveal the presence of God in those situations.
In that sense, if we have faith then we would not be so easily influenced, acted upon, or affected by some external influence, and just being swept along with the flow.
In the 1st reading, the four young men faced a dilemma. They were exiled in a foreign land but were selected to be trained for the service of the king.
They were given food from the king's royal table, but it was food that had been first offered to idols and hence for the Jews to eat that food would be to defile themselves.
As exiles in a foreign land, going against orders would mean certain death.
But their faith in God made a way for them and as it turned out, God blessed them for their faithfulness.
In the gospel, that poverty-stricken widow put in two small coins into the treasury, and as Jesus commented, she put in all she had to live on.
In both cases of the four young men and the poverty-stricken widow, they could have just submit to their thinking and taken the easy and sensible way out of a difficult situation.
But their faith made them face the difficult situation and in doing so the presence of God was manifested in those situations and circumstances.
The world needs to experience the presence of God. That is why God chose us and gave us the faith. By our faith may we let God be present and may we call upon His blessings for our world.