Gospel: Matthew
17:14-20
A man
came up to Jesus, knelt down before him, and said, “Lord, have pity on my son,
who is a lunatic and suffers severely; often he falls into fire, and often into
water. I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him.” Jesus
said in reply, “O faithless and perverse generation, how long will I be with
you? How long will I endure you? Bring the boy here to me.” Jesus rebuked him
and the demon came out of him, and from that hour the boy was cured. Then the
disciples approached Jesus in private and said, “Why could we not drive it out?
He said to them, “Because of your little faith. Amen, I say to you, if you have
faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from
here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
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Reflection:
What can
your faith in Jesus do to you? It will move you to have hope and it will move
you to hold-on to Jesus no matter how difficult the situation. The man in our
gospel who asked Jesus to cure his son has faith in Jesus. Otherwise he would
not have dared approach Jesus and asked for the healing of his son.
In
contrast to the faith of the man was the lack of faith of Jesus’ disciples.
What was the cause of the disciples’ lack of faith? Perhaps they treated Jesus
as an ordinary mortal like them. Perhaps their reverence for Jesus was little
by little being eroded by the trials of their discipleship.
If we
treat Jesus as an ordinary mortal we too are susceptible to a spiritual disease
called erosion of faith. And the result of this is we will be lukewarm towards
Jesus. There would be less motivation on our part to continue to pursue Jesus.
We would be more susceptible to doubts and spiritual apathy.
What then
is the cure to our dwindling faith? We should pray and ask Jesus for the gift
of increase of faith. We should be present and always paying attention to the
Eucharistic Celebration (Holy Mass). We should partake of His Body as often as
possible and we should give time for reading the words of Jesus in the bible.
If we
will have time to do all of these, we surely will always have rock solid faith
in Jesus. – Marino J. Dasmarinas
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