A FAITH MORE ALIVE IN JESUS
«Increase our faith». That’s what the apostles ask Jesus: «Add more faith to what we already have». They feel that the faith that they’ve lived out from childhood within Israel is insufficient. To that traditional faith they need to add «something more» in order to follow Jesus. And who better than him to give them what is lacking in their faith?
Jesus answers them with a pretty enigmatic saying: «If you had faith as big as a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, Pull yourself up by the roots and plant yourself in the sea! and it would obey you». The disciples are asking him for a new dose of faith, but what they need isn’t that. Their problem consists in that the authentic faith that there is in their heart doesn’t reach even «a mustard seed».
Jesus comes at them to say: what’s important isn’t the quantity of faith, but the quality. May you take care of a living, strong, and effective faith in your heart. If we can understand it, a faith capable of «uprooting» trees like the fig tree or sycamore, symbol of solidity and stability, in order to «plant it» in the middle of the sea of Galilee.
The first thing we Christians need today isn’t to «increase» our faith in all the doctrine we’ve gone about formulating throughout the centuries. What’s decisive is to revive within us a living and strong faith in Jesus. What’s important isn’t to believe in things, but to believe in him.
Jesus is the best that we have in the Church, and the best we can offer and communicate to today’s world. That’s why there’s nothing more urgent and decisive for Christians than to place Jesus in the center of Christianity, that is, in the center of our communities and our hearts.
To do that we need to get to know him in a more living and concrete way, to understand better his project, to grasp well his deep-down intention, to harmonize with him, to recover the «fire» that he lit in his first followers, to get infected with his passion for God and his compassion for the least. If it’s not this way, our faith will keep being even smaller than «a mustard seed». It won’t «uproot» trees or «plant» anything new.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
