20170812
FAITH AS A LOVING AND TRUSTING RESPONSE TO THE
PRIOR LOVE OF GOD FOR US
Readings
at Mass
Liturgical
Colour: Green.
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First reading
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Deuteronomy 6:4-13 ©
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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.’
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Responsorial Psalm
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Psalm 17(18):2-4,47,51(live) ©
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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.
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Gospel Acclamation
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cf.Ep1:17,18
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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!
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Or
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cf.2Tim1:10
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Alleluia, alleluia!
Our Saviour Jesus Christ abolished death
and he has proclaimed life through the Good News.
Alleluia!
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Gospel
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Matthew 17:14-20 ©
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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 flowed. 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 had
shown Himself as such, it was only right that they served 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 © All Rights Reserved
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