Lord, Increase Our Faith! – 10.02.22 (27th Sunday OT- C)
“Lord, Increase Our Faith!”
By: Fr. David Schmidt
St. Pope John Paul II Shrine - Washington, D.C.
Mass Readings- https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/100222.cfm
In today’s Gospel Jesus teaches us the power of faith, and the incredible things that God can do if we have even a mustard seed of faith. We often hear people say things like, “If you have enough faith then it will happen” “Have faith and God will work a miracle.” This of course is true in a lot of ways, as faith does lead to God working in miraculous ways in our lives.
However, what happens when we pray with a mustard seed of faith, but that mulberry tree doesn’t obey us and uproot itself into the sea? What happens if we have faith, and the mountain doesn’t move?
We say:
“I had faith that my cancer would be healed, but it’s still there.”
“I had faith that I would get that job I really wanted, but I didn’t get it.”
“I had faith that this project I was working on would be successful, but it failed.”
We say, “I prayed so strongly, and I had great faith, but it didn’t happen. The mountain didn’t move with my mustard seed of faith. So what gives?”
We then start thinking to ourselves, “Did I do something wrong? Am I lacking faith? Did God ignore my prayer?”
The answer to these questions comes from today’s first reading:
In this reading from the Book of Habakkuk it says- “How long, O LORD? I cry for help but you do not listen! I cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not intervene.”
Habakkuk had this cry of the heart to God to end this violence and the ruin of the city, yet God did not intervene. He had faith, but nothing happened.
However, the Lord then responds to Habakkuk essentially telling him to be patient. That the vision still has its time and presses on to fulfillment and will not disappoint. The Lord assures Habakkuk that his prayer has been heard, and that it will be fulfilled at the proper time. Not only will it be fulfilled, but it also won’t disappoint.
He says, “If it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late.” Then He says, “The rash one has no integrity; but the just one, because of his faith, shall live.”
When these moments occur in our lives where God doesn’t seem to have answered our prayers despite our faith, He uses these moments as opportunities for us to grow in our faith even more. He wants us to increase in our faith. He seeks to help us become like the just one and not the rash one as we heard from Habakkuk.
At the beginning of the Gospel, the Apostles make this demand to Jesus saying to Him, “Increase our faith.” And then Jesus proceeds to use this imagery of the mulberry tree and the mustard seed to show the power of one’s faith and the effects that it can have.
These moments where God seemingly doesn’t come through for us allows our faith to increase and grow. We say, “Lord, I prayed for healing, but it didn’t happen. However, I still trust in you. I believe that you are at work in a way that I do not understand.”
For someone to make a prayer of trust and surrender to the Lord like this shows an incredible maturity of faith. This faith that will enable God to do even more powerful things in their life and in their heart then just bringing about their healing or helping them in a given situation.
Everything that God does in our lives is meant to help affirm and increase our faith. When healings happen in the Bible, they are meant to help bring faith to those around them. When God works in miraculous ways in our lives, such as someone we love converting after years away from the faith, or a broken friendship or family relationship being restored, it is meant to increase our faith in Him.
We have to ask ourselves, “What is the ultimate goal that God has in mind by putting us through all these situations to help increase our faith?”
The ultimate goal of this life is to be brought into union with God. He is the end that we are seeking, and that He is leading us toward. He wants us to have a deep and intimate relationship with Him here on earth, and then ultimately lead us to be with Him in heaven forever. In order to experience this union with God that we desire, faith plays such an important and vital role.
St. John of the Cross says that faith is the means to union with God. God desires to draw us into union with Himself and faith is the path to get there.
As our faith increases, the more closely we are drawn to God. This is because someone with great faith, has a great openness to God. The more open we are to God, the more we enable Him to draw closer to us and pour out His love into our hearts. It is an act of love to have faith in the Beloved. To live our life knowing that the Beloved is capable of anything. What true faith is, is knowing that our Beloved loves us with His whole heart, and that He is orchestrating everything in our lives to draw us deeper into His love as part of His great plan of love for each one of us. If we pray with faith for Him to act in a given situation and He doesn’t- it doesn’t mean that He doesn’t love us or has forgotten about us – it is because what we prayed for to happen wasn’t part of His plan of love that He has for our lives. He tells us as He told Habakkuk, “For the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late.”
What this means for us today, is this vision He is referring to is His plan of love for each of our lives. His plan for us to be brought into the depths of His heart and soul. His plan for us to know that we are chosen, loved, seen, wanted, and desired by Him. How no matter what happens in our lives, His vision presses onto fulfillment, and that it will not disappoint. God’s love never disappoints. What He has planned for us in the light of eternity will never disappoint. At times it will seemed delayed. We go through so many different sufferings and agonies throughout our lives. We experience so many disappointments and moments of discouragement. But God says to us, “Have faith. It will surely come. It will not be late.” God might relieve some of our earthly struggles, but some of these struggles might remain. We must not reduce God’s working in our lives to just one or two situations where He may or may not have answered our prayers the way we desired.
He has a plan. And this plan will not disappoint. It may take time for us to see the fulfillment of His plan, but we must have faith that He has a plan for our lives. A plan of love. A plan of union with Himself. A plan of eternal salvation. A plan of eternal love.
This is what made the saints so great. The saints were those who lived with radical trust and faith in God. The Lord put them in many situations in their lives that helped them to increase their faith and trust in Him. They experienced various sufferings, failures, consolations, miracles, hardships, successes. Yet, no matter what happened to them in their lives, or what the result of a given situation was, they allowed each situation to help them grow in faith and trust in God. And because of that, they experienced a deep union, love, and intimacy with our Lord, and our Lord was able to do so many incredible things through them. God’s glory manifested itself so powerfully in them that they moved mountains in people’s hearts, in the Church, and in the world because of their faith in God’s power and their faith that He is capable of anything.
So, my encouragement to all of us today is that we continue to pray with great faith in these various situations in our lives such as praying for healings, or to get that job or get into that school or anything else. Because God still desires to work in amazing ways and to work miracles in our lives. However, we must not get discouraged if when we pray for these things, and they don’t happen. We must pray that God may use these situations as moments in our lives where our faith is increased so that God can do even more powerful things in our lives than we could ever dream.
We must always pray with great trust in God that no matter what happens, He hears our cries, that He listens to our prayers, and that He has a plan in mind. A plan of love to draw us into deeper union with Himself, both now and for all eternity. So let us continue to trust in Him, so that we too might be like the saints and grow in greater faith, so that God’s love and power may manifest itself through us as He uses us to mountains in our hearts, in our lives, in our Church, and in our world.
