Increasing my Faith: The Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Increasing my Faith:

The Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

predmore.blogspot.com | johnpremoresj.com

predmoresj@yahoo.com | 617.510.9673

October 6, 2019

Habakkuk 1:2-3, 2:2-4; Psalm 95; 2 Timothy 1:6-8, 13-14; Luke 17:5-10

I’m heartened to know that the apostles asked Jesus to increase their faith. Even the disciples wanted more faith because it is difficult to feel certitude in our relationship with Christ, and Jesus tells us that if we had more faith, we could move mountains. We take the word “faith” for granted without exploring what it means to have or increase it. It is the faith of Jesus that saves us. Unless we define it, it is unmeasurable, and it leaves us uncertain.

Saint Paul first introduced the word faith to the Christian community. He regarded it in certain ways. Let me go over some of these definitions. Faith is an enduring devotion and loyalty that marks a real follower of Christ. Faith is a conviction that something is true, one’s assent means we believe the Christian message is true. Faith is indestructible hope, that is, “we walk by faith, and not by sight.” Faith is total acceptance and absolute trust. It means betting your life that God exists, and that Jesus is the Son of God.

Do parts of these statements have to increase in your life. Faith, after all, begins with receptivity; it begins with hearing the words and integrating them into one’s being. We assent and then we surrender to the message. We hear the Christian message, say Amen, which means to agree it is true, and then we conform our lives to our belief.

How do we know if our faith is increasing? We must pay attention to what our body is telling us because if faith is more than reasoning, we have to listen to the other ways we learn. The Greeks wrote about five different kinds of knowledge: Scientific knowing relied only upon the resources of the mind, but the others depend upon our bodies: hunches, intuition, creativity, inspiration, revelation, and the wisdom that comes from experience.

Wisdom expresses far more than information. It draws upon a deep knowing, something that is beyond logic and the law, beyond analysis, reason, and hard thinking. It comes from the gut and we have to honor that which we cannot betray. We have a responsibility to inform our consciences, but the body has a way of knowing that is far beyond what the mind can know. The body speaks the truth when your mind cannot even begin thinking about what to do or say. We know. We remember. We believe.

For myself, I know I need to work on the submission part. I need to let God be God and be quiet enough to listen. When I’m working too much or doing what I believe to be the Lord’s work, I must step back, sit down, and breathe deeply, so that I can learn if I’m doing what I think is right or if I am giving the Lord enough room to work. We have God’s grace to keep us on the right path. As Christians, we want to look to God, not to ourselves. Many in the world pay attention to their own ideas, opinions, and speculations instead of paying attention to the will of God. People without faith make humans the master of all things. Their worldview is self-centered rather than God-centered, and that is idolatrous. The glory of God is exchanged for the glory of self. Even their forms of worship are for their own sake, not for God’s. I want to move closer to God. That is an act of increasing faith.

So, I guess I have to step back to behold God’s glory in the world more often, to let God’s glory increase, because when I permit myself to experience God’s glory, then my faith increases.

Scripture for Daily Mass

First Reading: 

Monday: (Jonah 1) But Jonah made ready to flee to Tarshish away from the Lord. He went down to Joppa, found a ship going to Tarshish, paid the fare, and went aboard to journey with them to Tarshish, away from the Lord.

Tuesday: (Jonah 3) So Jonah made ready and went to Nineveh, according to the Lord's bidding. Now Nineveh was an enormously large city; it took three days to go through it. Jonah began his journey through the city, and had gone but a single day's walk announcing, "Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed."

Wednesday: (Jonah 4) Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry that God did not carry out the evil he threatened against Nineveh. He prayed, “I beseech you, Lord, is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? This is why I fled at first to Tarshish.

Thursday: (Malachi 3) Then you will again see the distinction between the just and the wicked; Between the one who serves God, and the one who does not serve him. For lo, the day is coming, blazing like an oven, when all the proud and all evildoers will be stubble.

Friday (Joel 1) Gird yourselves and weep, O priests! wail, O ministers of the altar! Come, spend the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God! The house of your God is deprived of offering and libation.

Saturday (Joel 4) Apply the sickle, for the harvest is ripe; Come and tread, for the wine press is full; The vats overflow, for great is their malice. Crowd upon crowd in the valley of decision.

Gospel: 

Monday: (Luke 10) "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." He replied to him, "You have answered correctly; do this and you will live." But because he wished to justify himself, he said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

Tuesday: (Luke 10) Jesus entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him. She had a sister named Mary who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak. Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving?”

Wednesday (Luke 11) Father, hallowed be your name, your Kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us, and do not subject us to the final test."

Thursday (Luke 11) 'Do not bother me; the door has already been locked and my children and I are already in bed. I cannot get up to give you anything.' I tell you, if he does not get up to give him the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence.

Friday (Luke 11) "Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste and house will fall against house. And if Satan is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? For you say that it is by Beelzebul that I drive out demons. If I, then, drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your own people drive them out?

Saturday (Luke 11) "Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed." He replied, "Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it."

Saints of the Week

October 6: Bruno, priest (1030-1101), became a professor at Rheims and diocesan chancellor. He gave up his riches and began to live as a hermit with six other men. They had disdain for the rampant clerical corruption. The bishop of Grenoble gave them land in the Chartreuse Mountains, and they began the first Carthusian monastery. After serving in Rome for a few years, Bruno was given permission to found a second monastery in Calabria.

October 7: Our Lady of the Rosary recalls the events in 1571 of the Christian naval victory over the Turks at Lepanto near Corinth. Victory was credited to Mary as confraternities prayed the rosary for her intercession.

October 9: Denis, bishop and martyr, and companion martyrs (d. 258), was the first bishop of Paris. He died during the Decian persecutions by beheading at Montmarte, the highest hill in the city. Lore has it that he picked up his head after the beheading and walked six miles while giving a sermon. Denis was sent to Paris to bring Christianity and was thereby called, “The apostle to the Gauls.”

October 9: John Leonardi (1542-1609), was a pharmacist’s assistant before studying for the priesthood. He became interested in the reforms of the Council of Trent and gathered laymen around him to work in prisons and hospitals. He contracted the plague while ministering to those who were sick. He founded the Clerks Regular of the Mother of God to care for the sick.

October 12: John Beyzym, S.J., priest (1850-1912), was Ukranian-born, entered the Jesuits, and petitioned to work among the people of Madagascar who had Hansen’s disease (leprosy.) Since the lepers lived in remote shanty buildings with no windows or facilities, Beyzym worked hard to improve their living conditions, build a hospital, and a church. He died after contracting the disease.

This Week in Jesuit History

·      Oct 6, 1773. In London, Dr James Talbot, the Vicar Apostolic, promulgated the Brief of Suppression and sent copies to Maryland and Pennsylvania.

·      Oct 7, 1819. The death of Charles Emmanuel IV. He had been King of Sardinia and Piedmont. He abdicated in 1802 and entered the Jesuits as a brother in 1815. He is buried in San Andrea Quirinale in Rome.

·      Oct 8, 1871. The Great Chicago Fire. Most of the city was destroyed, but it missed Holy Family, the Jesuit parish, as the fire turned north thanks to the prayers of Fr. Arnold Damen. The fire lasted three days; 250 were killed.

·      Oct 9, 1627. Jansenius left Louvain for Salamanca to foment antipathy against the Jesuits and thus prevent Philip IV from giving the Society a large college in Madrid. The theological faculty at Salamanca were hostile to the Society.

·      October 10, 1806: The first novitiate of the Maryland Mission opened as ten novices began their Long Retreat under the direction of Fr. Francis Neale (himself a novice who had entered the Jesuits that day.)

·      October 11, 1688: King Louis XIV forbade all correspondence and interchange between the French Jesuits and Fr. Thyrsus Gonzalez, the Spanish General Superior of the Society.

·      October 12, 1976: The murder in rural Brazil of Joao Bosco Burnier, SJ, who was shot and killed by soldiers for protesting the torture of two poor women.