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
had 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 if our faith is dwindling? 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 would
always have rock solid faith in Jesus. Thus, no problems and life challenges no
matter how difficult can defeat us. – Marino J. Dasmarinas
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