OCTOBER 6^th 2013. TWENTY-SEVENTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Gospel: Luke 17:5-10

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

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Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading ...

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GOSPEL                   Luke 17:5-10

The apostles said to the Lord, 'Increase our faith'. The Lord replied, 'Were your faith the size of a mustard seed you could say to this mulberry tree, "Be uprooted and planted in the sea", and it would obey you. Which of you, with a servant ploughing or minding sheep, would say to him when he returned from the fields, "Come and have your meal immediately"?  Would he not be more likely to say, "Get my supper laid; make yourself tidy and wait on me while I eat and drink. You can eat and drink yourself afterwards"? Must he be grateful to the servant for doing what he was told? So with you: when you have done all you have been told to do, say, "We are merely servants: we have done no more than our duty".'

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . . The apostles ask Jesus to increase their faith. Jesus responds with the stark and simple parable of the slave who is never allowed to rest and who must never expect gratitude for his service. Why does Jesus respond in this way? The apostles feel that walking in the faith is a difficult chore. They want Jesus to make the task easier for them, so they ask him to increase their faith. Jesus wants to make clear that faith is not something that is possessed statically once and forever. It is not something that is obtained once and kept for always. Like the servant who is never allowed to rest, the business of walking in the faith is a business from which we can never rest. If I entrust my life to the Lord today, then I will need to do so again tomorrow. Having faith is a continual way of life. It is not something that is confined to one day of the week or to certain moments of our existence. It cannot be laid aside when I am watching television or when I am filling up my tax form. This does not mean, however, that faith is a chore. It does not mean that faith is something that involves gritting my teeth and exerting acts of the will that go against what I really want to do. If I have to struggle to entrust myself to the Lord, then this signifies that I wish to hold something back for myself. It means that there is an area of my life from which I wish to exclude the Lord. When we entrust ourselves to the Lord in faith then we experience the extraordinary beauty of God. When we go from one act of service to the Lord to another, then we go from joy to joy, from consolation to consolation.

Faith is not something that we possess in quantities. Faith is relationship

This brief passage is best understood in the context of the previous verses of Chapter 17 of Luke’s Gospel. In those verses Jesus had told the disciples that they must be ready always to forgive. Confronted with this difficult task, the disciples ask for help: “Increase our faith” they implore Jesus. Jesus responds by saying that if they had faith the size of a mustard seed then they would be able to uproot a tree and plant it in the sea. This is an impossible task! What can Jesus mean by such a statement? What Jesus is really saying to them is that faith is not something that is measured in quantities. It is not something that you possess in the way that you possess other things, things that you can have less or more of. Faith is a relationship! It is time that we rid ourselves of some mistaken and poorly conceived notions regarding the faith. Faith is a theological virtue. Faith bestows new life – the life of Christ. It makes our existence throb with the vitality of the children of God. It is not measured in kilogrammes, and it is certainly not something that I possess in some sort of existential pocket inside of me. No. I walk in the faith. I act in the faith. Fundamentally, it is a personal relationship with God. Faith is not a list of beliefs that I adhere to in my mind. The Church clarifies for us the things that must be believed when one enters into relationship with the Lord.

Faith is not confined to church. If it is real then it must govern every moment of my life

The parable identifies the believer with a servant who does not simply rest once he has finished a particular task. That is part and parcel of being a slave; when you finish one job you are expected to start another! This simple and stark parable throws light on the nature of faith, but to understand the point of the parable we must be conscious of the relational character of faith. If faith is a true relationship then it is not something that is confined to certain types of acts or particular days of the week. Faith is not something that becomes irrelevant when I am queuing up in the post office or filling up my tax form. The slave cannot say to his master, “I’m finished work for today.” And neither can we say with regard to faith “I don’t need the faith for this area of my life.” What kind of life am I leading if every moment of it is not rooted in Christ? When I get home from work, I begin another type of activity that must remain an expression of the fundamental relationship with Christ.

Faith is not possessed once for always. If I manage to entrust myself to the Lord today, then that does not mean that I will not need to do so again tomorrow

The apostles ask, “Increase our faith.” They wish to be handed a certain quota of faith that will suffice for always. But faith is not something that can be obtained and possessed statically forever! We must always grow in the faith! When an athlete breaks a record, he doesn’t cease training. Just because he has achieved that measure of excellence once doesn’t mean that it will always be within his reach without further exertion on his part. Life is continuous growth, constant evolution, perennial discovery. If I manage to entrust myself to the Lord today, does that mean that I will not need to entrust myself to him tomorrow? Will I ever achieve a state in life where I can lay the Lord aside and survive on my own resources? Any area of life that can be lived without walking with the Lord would be unattractive and boring! Anything that does not have the life of Christ in it is of questionable value. If, like the slave, we go from one act of service to another, then we are really going from one joy to another, because serving Christ is the greatest joy imaginable! We go from discovery to discovery, from consolation to consolation.

If my faith is based purely on acts of the will then there is something lacking in my relationship with the Lord. I am clinging on to something that I wish to retain for myself. I am not entrusting myself utterly to the Lord

If my service to the Lord is something that ends at a particular moment and I head off for a period of rest from the Lord, then that means that my relationship with the Lord is something that involves compulsion and coercion on my part. But anything that is based purely on my efforts will not endure into eternal life. The only thing that takes us beyond death is the grace of God. If someone needs to take regular breaks from their acts of service to the Lord, then that indicates that there is something not healthy in those acts of service. There is something lacking in the relationship that grounds those acts of service. There is a failure to entrust oneself completely to the Lord. We entrust ourselves completely to a relationship of faith with the Lord when we no longer seek to retain something for ourselves. If we have truly entrusted ourselves to the Lord, then we experienced the extraordinary beauty of God. Who wants to take a break from the beautiful and the extraordinary? The people of Israel celebrated the Passover with their “loins girded”; it was a celebration that incorporated a state of readiness for the journey. Serving the Lord is not just about gritting our teeth and exercising a huge effort of the will. That to which the Lord calls us is always beautiful, always joyful, always novelty, always resurrection.