FAITH AS A LOVING AND TRUSTING RESPONSE TO THE PRIOR LOVE OF GOD FOR US

20150808 FAITH AS A LOVING AND TRUSTING RESPONSE TO THE PRIOR LOVE OF GOD FOR US

Readings at Mass

First reading

Deuteronomy 6:4-13 ©

Moses said to the people:

  ‘Listen, Israel: the Lord our God is the one Lord. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. Let these words I urge on you today be written on your heart. You shall repeat them to your children and say them over to them whether at rest in your house or walking abroad, at your lying down or at your rising; you shall fasten them on your hand as a sign and on your forehead as a circlet; you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

  ‘When the Lord has brought you into the land which he swore to your fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that he would give you, with great and prosperous cities not of your building, houses full of good things not furnished by you, wells you did not dig, vineyards and olives you did not plant, when you have eaten these and had your fill, then take care you do not forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You must fear the Lord your God, you must serve him, by his name you must swear.’

Psalm

Psalm 17:2-4,47,51 ©

I love you, Lord, my strength.

I love you, Lord, my strength,

  my rock, my fortress, my saviour.

I love you, Lord, my strength.

My God is the rock where I take refuge;

  my shield, my mighty help, my stronghold.

The Lord is worthy of all praise,

  when I call I am saved from my foes.

I love you, Lord, my strength.

Long life to the Lord, my rock!

  Praised be the God who saves me,

He has given great victories to his king

  and shown his love for his anointed.

I love you, Lord, my strength.

Gospel Acclamation

cf.Ep1:17,18

Alleluia, alleluia!

May the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ

enlighten the eyes of our mind,

so that we can see what hope his call holds for us.

Alleluia!

Or	cf.2Tim1:10

Alleluia, alleluia!

Our Saviour Jesus Christ abolished death

and he has proclaimed life through the Good News.

Alleluia!

Gospel

Matthew 17:14-20 ©

A man came up to Jesus and went down on his knees before him. ‘Lord,’ he said ‘take pity on my son: he is a lunatic and in a wretched state; he is always falling into the fire or into the water. I took him to your disciples and they were unable to cure him.’ ‘Faithless and perverse generation!’ Jesus said in reply ‘How much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him here to me.’ And when Jesus rebuked it the devil came out of the boy who was cured from that moment.

  Then the disciples came privately to Jesus. ‘Why were we unable to cast it out? they asked. He answered, ‘Because you have little faith. I tell you solemnly, if your faith were the size of a mustard seed you could say to this mountain, “Move from here to there,” and it would move; nothing would be impossible for you.’

FAITH AS A LOVING AND TRUSTING RESPONSE TO THE PRIOR LOVE OF GOD FOR US

SCRIPTURE READINGS: DT 6:4-13; MT 17:14-20

Today we touch on a very crucial issue in our life.  This is the question of faith.  Without faith, we cannot really live.  Without faith, there is no Christianity.  Without faith, we become ineffective and powerless ministers of Christ.  This was precisely what happened to the disciples.  They could not cure the lunatic because they did not have the proper faith to bring about such a healing.  Consequently, it is important that we must consider the real nature of faith that is required of us so that we can live beyond ourselves.

What then is faith?  The most basic level of faith is what I term as human faith.  This faith is an act of the will by affirming faith in oneself.  It is a kind of auto-suggestion or positive thinking.  And so if I want to pass my driving test, I must believe that I can drive; and if I want to be a great preacher, I imagine myself to be one.  This kind of faith is not totally useless.  It certainly helps to build up self-confidence and self-esteem.  However such a kind of faith in oneself is still deficient because we have to keep on conditioning ourselves.  Sometimes, we can even deceive ourselves and make ourselves to be what we are not.  This is true in all kinds of hypnosis where people act out their fantasies.

Then there is another kind of faith.  This faith is slightly higher than the first and is the normal faith that most of us have.  This faith is an act of the will to trust in God, especially in His power and providence.  So this faith, unlike the first, is not a trust in oneself but in God.  However, it is similar to the first in that the act of faith is made on the initiative of man.  This kind of faith is a kind of blind faith.  It is a leap in the dark.  However for such a faith, it requires super-human courage and perhaps naivety.  So when we are asked to pray for people, we pray with as much faith as we can in God’s power and providence.  But for most of us, at the back of our mind, we have a lurking doubt that God might not hear our prayers.  And so in the mind, we keep fighting within ourselves as to whether God will hear us.  But with such a fickle mind, we cannot but mediate the lack of confidence to those people that we pray for.  Thus, our prayers lack effectiveness and power since neither we nor those people whom we are interceding for are assured of God’s love and mercy.  This precisely was the way the disciples prayed for the lunatic and no results were seen.

So we can see that the first two levels of faith are deficient.  What then is the kind of faith that Jesus is asking of us?  It is a faith in the power and love of God, but in response to God who has already loved us previously and still loves us.  In other words, unlike the former kind of faith, it is not simply a blind trust in God’s love, nor the use our will to make that act of faith.  Rather it is a faith that springs from the prior love of God in our lives.  Indeed, this is the kind of faith of the Israelites which we read in the first reading.

Now when Moses told the people, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength”, he was not asking them to do the impossible.  For the command to love God with one’s whole being is rooted in the love which God has shown them already.  The adjunction to love God is founded on the fact that this God has demonstrated His unconditional love and mercy for them by leading them out of the slavery of the Egyptians, through the desert into the Promised Land where milk and honey flow.  So if they came to profess their trust in Yahweh, it was because He had manifested His love and providence in their history.  Hence, it is not a blind faith.  Certainly, it is still faith.  But it is a faith that is based on a reasonable trust, a trust that has been forged through the initiative of God who loved them and protected them from all their enemies.  On this basis, Moses could tell the people that, since God has shown Himself as such, it is only right that they must serve Him alone.

The implication for us therefore is that unless we have experienced God’s prior love for us, we cannot have a faith that is well founded on our personal experience and conviction.  It will only be an intellectual faith or a blind faith, not something that we can personally testify to.  If that were the case, of course our faith, which is a deficient faith, will lead us to pray without confidence and unsure of God’s response to our prayer.  However, if we have experienced God’s love and security before, then we can pray in faith that God will hear us today, since He has already heard us before.  Our faith therefore is rooted in God’s past actions in our lives.  For this reason, our faith is neither blind nor simply an act of the will but really a response to a loving God in our lives.  This is the only kind of faith that will move mountains and all obstacles in our lives.

Indeed, if Jesus had reprimanded His disciples by saying “How much longer must I be with you?” He was challenging the disciples to see that God was manifesting His love through Him.  Jesus was asking the disciples to open their eyes to see God’s love, mercy and power present in His whole being, words and deeds.  Unless they opened their eyes to God’s love in Him, they would not be able to experience God’s love and therefore lack trust in God’s willingness to hear their prayers.  But when they did, which was what happened after the death and resurrection of Jesus and particularly in the case of St Peter and St Paul, they then became faith-filled people.  It was such a kind of faith that empowered them to become effective ministers of Christ and in winning people over to the faith and build up their love for God and trust in Him.

Written by The Most Rev William Goh

Roman Catholic Archbishop of Singapore

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