Every Page Counts...: “Increase our faith!”

This is a simple request yet embodies a deeper longing, a humble admission and a willing adherence.

1. To ask the Lord to increase our faith is to express our desire to understand the things we experience which are beyond our comprehension. We are delighted to have experienced miracles or to encounter extraordinary things yet our intellect is bogged down by the fact that those are beyond words to explain, that they’re just ‘too good to be true.’

2. To ask the Lord to increase our faith is to acknowledge our ‘littleness’ and limitations. Just because things are beyond our scope that we could not accept or could reject things easily. Our humble admission that without God’s grace we can do nothing is tantamount to the same request the apostles asked, ‘Lord, increase our faith!’

3. To ask the Lord to increase our faith is to obey, not in the context of ‘no matter what’ but in the context of ‘because the Lord said so.’ Our obedience must not be ‘blind’ but should be rooted in trust and love.

4. St Thomas Aquinas has this beautiful prayer which expresses the same petition as the Lord’s disciples’ only in an expounded form: "Grant me, O Lord my God, a mind to know you, a heart to seek you, wisdom to find you, conduct pleasing to you, faithful perseverance in waiting for you, and a hope of finally embracing you. Amen."

“Were your faith the size of a mustard seed you could say to the mulberry tree, be uprooted and planted in the sea, and it would obey you.”

The reply of the Lord seems problematic. True obedience requires reasoning. How can an irrational thing of vegetative soul obey? Or given that it obeys, would it not be contrary to its nature? A sycamore (mulberry) tree does not like to stand in water. It is impossible to plant one in the sea and make it live and grow to bear fruit. But that is exactly the point of the Lord. The exaggeration of his reply pointed to the truth on faith i.e. how powerful faith can be!

In the first place, the Lord:

1. Desires us to grow in knowledge of Him

2. Wishes us to grow in love of Him

3. He is our true friend, one who can be trusted, one who listens, one who keeps his promise to give life, and have it abundantly.

To have a bit of faith (like that of a mustard seed) is a beginning. That is why the Church exhorts us especially in this year of Faith to:

1. Learn about Jesus Christ

2. Grow in knowledge of Him and his life

3. Study, read, preach, share, pray and become obsess because the more we know, the more we grow in love.

Until the time that we embody the words and commands of God that we will be thinking the way He thinks, we will be extending help to others the way He helps, we will love the way He loves. Our help comes from the Lord, and the Lord will supply our needs in order to do the things which are beyond our control.