Scripture for Your Inner Outcasts

Transcript

"For this reason, it depends on faith, so that it may be a gift, and the promise may be guaranteed to all his descendants, not to those who only adhere to the law but to those who follow the faith of Abraham, who is the father of all of us, as it is written, I have made you father of many nations. He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into being what does not exist. He believed, hoping against hope, that he would become the father of many nations, according to what was said, Thus shall your descendants be."

Welcome to Scripture for Your Inner Outcasts. Today is March 19th, 2026, the Solemnity of Saint Joseph. Today we are joined by Bob Benson, a husband and father from New Jersey and a member of Souls and Hearts' Resilient Catholics Community.

Today's second reading is from Romans 4 and what stuck out to me was verses 16 through 18. "For this reason, it depends on faith, so that it may be a gift, and the promise may be guaranteed to all his descendants, not to those who only adhere to the law but to those who follow the faith of Abraham, who is the father of all of us, as it is written, I have made you father of many nations. He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into being what does not exist. He believed, hoping against hope, that he would become the father of many nations, according to what was said, Thus shall your descendants be." And there's a lot here about faith and trust in this reading, which can be incredibly difficult. To trust somebody means you have to feel safe around them. To hope means you have to believe that something greater can come out of something that's dying. Those are hard things to do. However, I'm very encouraged and I want to share that hope with you because faith itself is a gift. Often I myself can think of faith being something that I need to drum up or to increase inside of me, but that's not the case. It's not an ability that I can hone in myself by myself.

And I wanted to share that encouragement, that faith is a gift, to be able to trust in God our father, who loves us beyond anything in this world and cares for every hair on our head. To have trust in him. To also have hope against hope. That may sound scary. That might sound scary to have hope when you can't taste it, you can't feel it, and you can't sense it in this world. But through the gift of faith, we can have hope. We can have the gift of hope, the virtue of hope given to us if we ask. Now granted, that requires trust, and that may be challenging. However, the Scripture encourages us to look at the example of Abraham, our father in faith, who hoped against hope, who in his late years was still promised to have children and to be the father of many nations when he could not see it, roaming the desert with his wife. But through that faith God was able to act in him. So my encouragement today is, if you are struggling with faith or hope, is to listen to the Scripture and let God's Word speak to your heart. And you never know what God might do through faith and hope.

In the description of today's episode, you'll find an excellent article about having faith in God's providence. Thanks for joining us and we hope to see you again tomorrow.

Let's end with our invocations. Our Lady, our Mother, Untier of Knots, pray for us. Saint Joseph, pray for us. Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.