BECAUSE OF YOUR LITTLE FAITH
Ab 1,12-2,4; Ps 9; Mt 17,14-20
11 AUGUST
God is the Almighty and Creative Word by divine and eternal nature. Christ Jesus is also the Almighty and Creative Word by divine and eternal nature. Since He is also the true man, as a true man his Word becomes omnipotent for his faith. What is the faith of Christ Jesus? He must always believe that the Father has supplied his true humanity with an omnipotent and creative Word and he must always ask the Father to renew this gift of his. All the gifts of God act – outside the celebration of the sacraments – for our renewal of faith that can only take place through a prayer as rich in faith and with firm conviction in the Holy Spirit that the Lord will certainly grant, today for the prayer of today and tomorrow for tomorrow’s prayer, that our Word is omnipotent and creative. The Christian must be like Samson in the temple of Dagon. He must ask God for the renewal of his gift.
But the hair of his head began to grow as soon as it was shaved off. The lords of the Philistines assembled to offer a great sacrifice to their god Dagon and to make merry. They said, “Our god has delivered into our power Samson our enemy.” When their spirits were high, they said, “Call Samson that he may amuse us.” So they called Samson from the prison, and he played the buffoon before them. When the people saw him, they praised their god. For they said, “Our god has delivered into our power our enemy, the ravager of our land, the one who has multiplied our slain.” Then they stationed him between the columns. Samson said to the attendant who was holding his hand, “Put me where I may touch the columns that support the temple and may rest against them.” The temple was full of men and women: all the lords of the Philistines were there, and from the roof about three thousand men and women looked on as Samson provided amusement. Samson cried out to the Lord and said, “O Lord GOD, remember me! Strengthen me, O God, this last time that for my two eyes I may avenge myself once and for all on the Philistines.” Samson grasped the two middle columns on which the temple rested and braced himself against them, one at his right hand, the other at his left. And Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines!” He pushed hard, and the temple fell upon the lords and all the people who were in it. Those he killed at his death were more than those he had killed during his lifetime. All his family and kinsmen went down and bore him up for burial in the grave of his father Manoah between Zorah and Eshtaol. He had judged Israel for twenty years (Jdg 16,22-31).
Every night Jesus renewed his faith in the long hours of prayer. He asked the Father for the gift of an omnipotent and creative Word. Without this uninterrupted renewal, he could never have performed a single miracle. In fact, he worked everything by means of his true humanity and humanity must feed every energy in prayer. Even his strength and his grace he nourished in prayer. His intense prayer elevated to the Father before starting the path towards Golgotha and his Crucifixion attests it.
When they came to the crowd a man approached, knelt down before him, and said, “Lord, have pity on my son, for he is a lunatic and suffers severely; often he falls into fire, and often into water. I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him.” Jesus said in reply, “O faithless and perverse generation, how long will I be with you? How long will I endure you? Bring him here to me.” Jesus rebuked him and the demon came out of him, and from that hour the boy was cured. Then the disciples approached Jesus in private and said, “Why could we not drive it out?” He said to them, “Because of your little faith. Amen, I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
The disciples have received the power to drive out demons. They do not feed their faith in the gift received through prayer. They think it’s a gift without any renewal. They do not pray. At the time of exercise, they remain without any fruit. The strength of Jesus is his prayer. Christian fragility is the absence of true prayer and proper prayer. Sometimes we pray, but without any truth and often we do not pray at all.
Virgin Mary, Angels and Saints, teach us the true prayer, according to purity of faith.