In today’s Gospel reading, the apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”
And also this weekend, Ela our youngest granddaughter received her gift of Faith. She was baptized into the Community of Believers. The Lord assured his disciples, “If you had 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.” What amazes me here is not what happens when you believe (and indeed amazing things happen when one has faith) but how even faith the size of a small seed is sufficient for the Lord to come into our lives.
We lead fractured and often paradoxical lives, given to pain and suffering, condemned to suffer the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’. Many wise men (poets, artists, saints, great leaders, and even some men of science) have taught us that the answer to all the ache and longing in our hearts is love and caring. So we fall in love and give ourselves to caring for others – only to be hurt some more. Man seeks wisdom and knowledge and in his quest for learning becomes even more doubting and at times even cynical. Meanwhile, those of simple and unquestioning minds see the world with eyes of faith and wonder where every new experience is an awesome one. Isn’t it better to believe and be disappointed occasionally than to mistrust and be miserable all the time? Or even better still, just faith the size of a mustard seed is enough for the Lord.
“I am; therefore I choose to believe.” This is a memorable line from the movie we Prometheus. Set in distant future, people will still be asking the eternal questions on the purpose and meaning of man’s existence. In the vastness of the universe, it is unlikely we are the only intelligent life form. And yet, if there are others out there why have we not yet made contact? Life is so mysterious there is enough reason to believe that it is entirely random and fortuitous or that it was designed and created and guided by a superior intelligence. I choose to believe in the latter. I have always felt my life is led by the Supreme Spirit who loves us unconditionally and wanting for us the fullness of life, even as we don’t fully grasp it.
“Lord, increase our faith!”