6 October 2019
Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
“Increase our faith!” Today’s gospel contains a curious two-fold response to this request that the disciples make to Jesus (Lk 17:5-10). Initially, Jesus simply makes the observation that if a person had even just a little faith, faith the size of a mustard seed (which Jesus calls the “smallest of all seeds” in Mt 13:32), then that person could command a mulberry tree to be uprooted and planted in the sea and the tree would obey. If we simply allow the text to end there, then we could be left with a rather magical or voluntarist notion of the faith, one in which we are tempted to see the faith as something that one could acquire so that one could accomplish certain things. Unfortunately, some recent pious movies, often directed at a youthful audience, tend towards this sort of understanding of the faith. However, in the story of Simon the Magician (Acts 8:9-25) this desire to acquire “faith” in order to be able to accomplish something else is unmasked as a profound betrayal of the spirit of Christianity.
To have a better sense of the reality of the faith that God offers us, we need to listen to Jesus as he continues his exhortation on faith. Jesus invites the disciples never to consider themselves entitled to anything as a result of their Christian faith, but rather to always consider themselves “unprofitable servants” who simply have the privilege of serving in the way that the faith obliges them. Yes, indeed, in this same obedient service, they will be able to command trees to uproot and be replanted, and even move mountains (Cf. Mt 17:20), but this should never be anything other than a humble obedience that does nothing other than what God’s love requires. Faith is not magic, it is not a supreme act of the will, and it is not something we have in order to accomplish something else. Faith cannot even be reduced to doctrinal knowledge: without a proper loving attachment to God, that becomes gnosticism. Rather, faith is simply that loving relationship to the Father that the Son shares with us through the Holy Spirit, through which we can accomplish all things for God and those whom God loves.