TWENTY SEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME ©
6 October 2013
Luke 17, 5-10
José Antonio Pagola
Are we believers?
Jesus repeated these words to them on various occasions: “How little faith
you have!” The disciples do not deny it. They know he’s right. They’ve been
with him quite some time. They see him totally devoted to the Project of God;
he lives only to do good; all he lives for is to make the lives of all more
dignified and more humane. Will they be able to follow him to the end?
According to Luke, the
disciples once said to Jesus: “Increase our faith” They feel their faith is
little and weak. They need to trust more in God and believe more in Jesus. They
don’t quite grasp what he’s driving at, but they don’t dispute what he says.
They do what’s most important: they ask him to
help them make their faith grow.
The religious crisis of our
times affects even practicing Christians. We talk of believers and unbelievers
as if they were two well defined groups:
one has faith, the other doesn’t. In fact it isn’t so. Almost always in the
human heart there is at the same time a believer and an unbeliever. Hence, even
those of us who call ourselves “Christians” must ask ourselves: Are we truly
believers? Who is God for us? Do we love him? Does he in fact direct our lives?
Faith can grow weak in us
without our ever having had any doubts. If we do not nurture it, it can
slowly keep growing weak in our hearts
till it is quite simply reduced to a habit we do not dare to give up just in
case…Distracted by a thousand things, we no longer get to communicating with
God. We practically live without him.
What can we do? In fact, we
don’t need to do much. It’s useless to make extraordinary resolutions, for
surely we aren’t going to keep them. The first thing to do is to pray like that
unknown person who one day came to Jesus and said: “I believe, Lord, help my
unbelief.” It is good to repeat them in the simplicity of our hearts. God understands
us. He will awaken faith in us.
We must not speak to God as if
he were outside us. He is within. It’s best to close our eyes and keep silence to feel and welcome his
Presence. Neither should we spend time in
thinking of him, as though he were only present in our heads. He is
present in the depths of our being. We must seek him in our hearts.
What’s important is to keep at
it until we have a first experience, even if it’s poor, even if lasts just a
few moments. If one day we see that we are not alone in life, if we grasp that
we are loved by God without having merited it, everything will change. It
doesn’t matter if we have lived having altogether forgotten him. To believe in
God, is, above all, to trust in his love for us.
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