Increase our faith

Today we go to Jesus like the apostles and we ask him to increase our faith. Like them we have witnessed miracles, we have experienced things beyond our power, we have seen God’s grace, but we feel that our faith weak. We cannot do what Jesus is asking us to do, because Jesus normally asks for faith before he gives us a hand. After the transfiguration, coming down from the mountain, Jesus met the apostles trying to cast away a dumb spirit from a boy. They couldn’t because they didn’t have enough faith. His father came up to Jesus asking for help. Jesus told him that everything is possible for the one who believes. That man, sensing his lack of faith, realising that the cure of his son was dependent on him, gave us a great prayer: “I believe, but help my unbelief!”

Four men brought their friend to Jesus to be healed. He was complaining all the way, telling them that it was a waste of time. He couldn’t do much because he was paralysed. His friends were very stubborn. When they arrived at the house, it was packed with people. They weren’t discouraged and they dug a hole in the roof of the house, against the will of the owner. They lowered him through the hole right in front of Jesus. The people inside could see four faces looking down through the hole in the roof. The Gospel says that Jesus seeing their faith, healed him.

Jesus didn’t normally praise people. But he was impressed with the faith of the Roman Centurion, who trusted his word. His faith was shown when he told Jesus that just his word could heal his servant. We repeat his words during every Mass, just before Communion. We should say them with the conviction of the Centurion. Jesus commented: “I haven’t found this faith in Israel.” What would Jesus say about our faith? Would he praise us?

Jesus put clay on a blind man’s eyes and asked him to wash them on the pool of Siloe. He could have touched his eyes and healed them, but he demanded faith from the man. The blind man could have asked Jesus if he could wash his eyes in a nearby fountain. But he walked with clay on his eyes and recovered his sight. The man with a withered hand had tried millions of times to move it but with no avail. When Jesus asked him to stretch it out, it was healed. He could have refused to move it another time, but his hand wouldn’t had been healed.

What does Jesus need to do with us? What infirmity do we have that has to be cleaned? We can cry out like Bartimeus, the blind beggar at the side of the road of Jericho, from the top of his voice: Son of David, have pity of me! Or like the woman who suffered a flow of blood for twelve years and was healed when she touched the fringe of Jesus’ cloak. We have to do the same. We must go to the fountain of faith, to the springs of salvation, where the water gushes out pure and clear. We know where to find it, specially when Jesus comes to the altar after the consecration, and we only need to ask: increase our faith. There is plenty of it, and just a little bit, like a mustard seed, is enough for us.

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Parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus

We are both the men in the parable, whether we like or not, the rich man and the poor man Lazarus, with both their weakness and their strengths, with their aspirations and desires. Both lived parallel lives, clearly related to each other but completely opposite, in this life and the next in eternity, crossing each other at life’s intersections; the first will be last and the last will be first.

The rich man has no name. Possessions don’t give you real identity, don’t tell you who you are, don’t give you roots or indicate where you come from. In front of God we are the same, things have no value, they have no meaning. We are born naked and we are going to return naked, with nothing to hang on to, only with what we have given away. It is not important what you have, or what you have achieved, but who you are or what you have become. Things don’t make you who you are, but what you make of them. In front of God we are little children, with just toys in our hands.

We are the rich man. We live a life of our own, without realising that in front of us, there are so many people in need, both materially and spiritually. We normally have the door of our hearts closed. We live a life of self centredness, self conscious, navel gazing. We fail to be aware of the poverty that surrounds us. Lazarus’s sores are licked by the dogs, without us hearing their barking. Jesus tries to turn us around, to turn us inside out, to be aware of all the poor Lazarus’s outside our door. Pope Francis says that Lazarus “represents the silent cry of the poor of all times.” They are constantly knocking on our lives. The Pope reminds us that “to ignore the poor is to scorn God.” We need to see Jesus in the needy, disadvantaged, marginalised, ostracised. In every homeless person we can find him, even though they are dirty, smelly, and ungrateful.

Lazarus, on the other hand, has a name. Poverty is real and has real effects on people’s lives; you can identify it straight away. Some authors say that Lazarus was a real person in Jesus’ time, a well known poor man, perhaps sitting at the temple door, even helped sometimes by Jesus and his apostles. Judas would have given him some money reluctantly. We are also the poor Lazarus, at the side of the road of life, our sores in need of dressing, begging for God’s help. Lazarus precisely means God helps. Rich people don’t need God, they think they have everything figured out, only desiring more money. Rich countries abandon God, not feeling the need for God anymore. Cathedrals were built by the poor and the lame. Nowadays rich countries build structures for people, stadiums, arenas, courts for sports and games. God is absent from these buildings. When they are empty they have no soul.

We have to make sure that in this life we are poor in spirit, in need of help, another Lazarus; then in the next life we are going to be spiritually rich, to share the life of the angels and saints. The austerity of this life is transformed into the abundance of God.

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Parable of the unjust steward

This is a parable about stewardship. We have been given a bit of God’s harvest and Jesus is asking us today to examine ourselves how we are looking after it. We are at his service and we could be a bit easygoing, complacent or indifferent. It doesn’t matter if we are in charge of a big field, or we are only responsible for a small part of God’s vineyard. The important thing is to look after it well, and give a good account of our stewardship. The master commended the dishonest steward for acting prudently. Saint Augustine says that Jesus proposed this parable not to praise the dishonest servant, but to have an eye on the future. We should have the servant’s determination to secure our eternal reward. We cannot forget that we are passing by and eternity is all that matters.

The servant was a smart forward thinking man. I can imagine him well dressed, smooth and articulate. Jesus complains that “the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.” We know many people who put a lot of time and effort into their worldly affairs. They make unbelievable sacrifices to acquire more wealth, power or fame. We should have a similar ambition, to put the same amount of effortinto the service of God. Saint Josemaria says: “What zeal men put into their earthly affairs! When you and I put the same zeal into the affairs of our soul, then we’ll have a living and working faith.”

“The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones.” If we compare the things of this world with the events of the other life, we realise that our sacrifices are nothing compared with the reward promised. But because we cannot see the promised land, we have nothing to compare it to. Everything we have is a gift from God, and we are his stewards, who sooner or later will have to render an account to him.

What is behind this parable is a common, human vice: laziness. We are not good stewards of God’s gifts because we are lazy. It is a hidden defect that we don’t talk much about, but affects all of us; we are lazy in one way or another. We do what we shouldn’t do and we don’t do what we should be doing. We could be very active but not in what’s important.

“No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.” They say that we can only have one Lord; we cannot be schizophrenics. We need to choose the boss we want to love. “You cannot serve both God and mammon.” Mammon is a Hebrew word for riches or wealth. We cannot allow money to become our god, or let the objective of our life become the accumulation of the greatest number of goods and the highest level of comfort. The Prophet Amos thunders against the exploitation of the poor in the First Reading of today’s Mass. We cannot forget the poor. We may be unjust with our own goods, but we must be honest with other people’s money.

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