So many
people I have met feel that they have very little faith, or
tell me that they are not very religious. However, I think most
people have far more faith than they give themselves credit for.
Being ‘religious’ and having faith are not the same thing.
Today we are
given the unusual image of something as tiny as a mustard seed, which
is about the size of the tip of a pen. Jesus tells the Apostles
that if their faith was even as big as that they could move
mountains, or in this case a mulberry tree! There are two ways
to look at this. First we could say, if it only takes faith the
size of a mustard seed to move mountains I must have very little
faith at all since I could never do anything spectacular like that!
But the other way to look at it is to say that with very little faith
you can do an awful lot. Most of us do have faith and that
faith grows as our relationship with God grows. We often talk
about the Lord ‘testing our faith’ when we find ourselves going
through a crisis. But by ‘testing’ I think what is meant is
that God is stretching our faith to full capacity. It is not so
much a test to see if we are up to standard, rather a time of
growth. God knows what we are capable of and God is all the
time helping us to reach our full potential.
The Apostles
had faith and must have seen extraordinary things when they were with
Jesus. Peter even walked on water for a few seconds, but then
he began to sink as he started to realize in human terms that that
couldn’t be happening. But even the Apostles had a lot to
learn with regards faith. After the crucifixion of Jesus they
hid themselves away in a room because they were afraid. It was
only after they received the gift of the Spirit that they were
transformed and began preaching fearlessly and working miracles.
They had to grow too and I’m sure that as their life went on their
faith continued to grow. No doubt their faith was very
different at the end of their lives than it was when they were with
Jesus. They then had a life-time of trying to serve God and
seeing many extraordinary things. Faith grows gradually, but it
does grow.
This weekend
we are also focusing on respect for life, reminding ourselves that
all life is a gift from God and all life is sacred from the moment of
conception to natural death. At the moment we are living in a
‘culture of death’ as John Paul II described it, where life is
quickly discarded if it is not convenient. The weakest and most
vulnerable are the first to be got rid of. If a child in the womb is
not convenient for our lifestyle, it is destroyed. This has to be a
terrible crime against God and his creation. When we decide
what can live and what can die we are playing God which we must not
do. Every human being has equal dignity, whether it is someone
who is severely handicapped, or someone who finds themselves living
on the street because of a crippling addiction. Whatever
situation we find ourselves in, we are still created in God’s image
and we all have the same dignity as human beings which deserves equal
respect.
When we hear
of all the terrible things that go on in our world, such as abortion,
human trafficking and so many others, we can feel very helpless.
But going back to the mustard seed it is good to remember that even
with very little faith we can do a lot. You could be cynical
and ask, ‘What difference will my faith make?’ But if you
remember recently when President Obama was threatening a military
strike against Syria because of the use of chemical weapons, Pope
Francis asked everyone to pray and fast for one day. Just after
this President Putin stepped in and offered to work out a deal with
Syria over its chemical weapons and a possible war was averted.
We never know what our faith can do, even if it is smaller than a
mustard seed. With this in mind let us keep praying and fasting
for the protection of life at all its stages.
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