The apostles said to the Lord, “increase our faith.” If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you!
Luke 17:5-10
Are
you a person of faith? No, I am not asking if have a lot of beliefs! What I am
asking is this: do you have faith? In other words, do you actively trust God to
guide you in life as you make decisions?
Surely you know that it is possible for religious people to have a list
of beliefs a mile long, but without much faith whatsoever!
Let
me give you an old example from my own life – one that I have no doubt shared
with you several times over the years! By the time I was ordained in 1970, I had been
in the seminary for 12 years. I would say that my head was crammed with the beliefs
that I had learned about in seminary classes!
I believed that those doctrines of the church were true, but the real question
was whether I had any real faith? In other words, did I trust God enough with
my life to follow his lead or did I think I knew better than God what was truly
good for me? Well, as God usually does in my life, he gave me a chance to
answer those questions during the first two weeks of my priesthood.
Even
though I had grown up in the country, I went to high school seminary up here in
Louisville. By the time I was ordained, I had been in the city long enough to
be thoroughly “urbanized.” Normally, the newly ordained at that time were
assigned to the big parishes here in Louisville as associate pastors, so I just
assumed that I would be serving one of our big Louisville parishes as an
associate pastor. Back then, we got a
couple of weeks of vacation after ordination and before our official
assignments started. I went to Florida
for a week, came back and was hanging around the rectory at St. John Vianney
Church on Southside Drive, waiting for “the call” from the Priests’ Personnel Board. It came one morning about 10:00 am. I freaked
out when they told me that I had been assigned, not to a Louisville parish as I
had expected, but to a mission parish the size of the state of Delaware, down
in southern Kentucky, along the Tennessee border. I pleaded.
I yelled. I begged. I whined.
It made no difference. Their minds were made up. Mad as hell, I packed
my bags, bought a road map and headed south, to a cluster of little churches I
had never seen before, in an area of the state I knew absolutely nothing about.
With my theology degree in the trunk, with my head full of beliefs, I
begrudgingly headed south. God and I had
it out in the car on the way down there, but in the end I had to admit that I
had a lot of beliefs, but I did not have much faith. I dawned on me, right there in the car,
half-way down there that I was not trusting God with this decision, but my own
preconceived plans. In a moment of
grace, I changed my mind. Since I did not get what I wanted, I decided that I
needed to want what I got! I decided to ask for the ability to trust God with
this unwelcomed assignment. What God did was to help me open my hand to receive
the incredible experiences that awaited me in the next ten years. I learned
then that a little faith can move mountains and the biggest mountains in the
world are often the ones in our heads and hearts.
There
is another example of “faithing” from my own life that I can share with you. It
happened during the years when I was pastor at the Cathedral of the Assumption
between 1983 – 1997. For years, I woke up with a prayer tape which I taped in
my own voice. I have used this prayer techniques for years, in various areas of
my life, and I can tell you that it has worked with some incredible results!
One of the things I said on the tape was: “I am a published spiritual writer.”
Even though I had never published anything, I prayed every morning, for over a
year, as if it were already true, leaving the details of how it would be
accomplished, to God. One day, a man showed up at the cathedral telling me at
the end of Mass that I should publish my homilies. He was a former theology
professor from Bellarmine. I told him that I had been praying for an
opportunity to publish something, but I didn’t have an editor and I didn’t have
any connections to a publishing company. Guess what he said to me? He said,
“I’m an editor for Crossroads Press in New York! Send me a manuscript and I’ll see what I
can do!” The short of it is this: I soon
published my first book and since then, I have published well over forty more,
counting Spanish, Vietnamese and Swahili translations, and collections of fifteen
years of columns from The Record! Yes
indeed, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move mountains!”
My
friends, I gave you two examples from my own life, but you need to know that every
serious follower of Jesus is tested sooner or later. The test question is this:
“Do you have faith in God or merely beliefs about God?” Sooner or later, every follower is asked
whether he or she is willing to trust God with the direction of his or her
life. Trusting God is certainly not about being passive. It is about opening our minds to receive the
help God wants to extend to us and opening our hands to receive the gifts that
God wants to give us, knowing that God only wants the best for us. If this opportunity to consciously trust God
has not happened to you yet, you may soon find yourself in a predicament where
you will have to decide to trust God on something. It may be an unfavorable and
serious health diagnosis, the end of a long treasured relationship, the death
of a beloved parent or sibling, unexpected unemployment or some other
unwelcomed and painful change. Depending
how you react to it, you will know whether you have faith in God or merely
beliefs about God. In such a situation, you may feel that you do not have much
faith. The good news today is this: you
don’t need much faith! A little will go a long way! Even if your faith is as
small as a mustard seed, it can help you move mountains in your heart and mind.
I
have learned one very important lesson from the times that I have trusted
God. I have discovered, again and again,
that when I have trusted, things turned out much better than I could have ever
imagined. In fact, I often shiver when I realized that what I initially wanted
was nothing compared to what I ended up receiving. When I resigned as pastor of the Cathedral in
1997 after fourteen intense years, I was pretty uneasy about what would happen to
me next. It was a wonderful fourteen years, but I thought the best was behind
me. I was mopping around my house
feeling that nothing would ever compare to my experience as pastor of our Cathedral. I was upstairs mumbling to myself when I
heard a distinct voice say, “Don’t worry!” I thought it was someone downstairs,
but there was no one there! I thought it might be the TV or the radio, but they
weren’t on! I looked outside! Nobody was there! I knew I had clearly heard a
voice, but I could not find out where it was coming from, so I just decided to just
follow what it said, “Do not worry!” Well, over the next 30 years, that amazing
assignment was followed by at least five more so far – some of them taking me
on speaking trips around the world and having several amazing pastoral experiences
that I could never have imagined when I left what I thought was my “golden age’
at the Cathedral. It has caused me to say over and over again, “Who said God only
gives you one golden age?”
I
often try to imagine how much different my life might be today if I had refused
to trust God with that first assignment or if I had fought it in my mind for
all those years that I was down there. One thing I have learned for sure: God knows
what he was doing, much better than I do! It was true then and it is true now! If we can trust him, with even a little dab
of faith, incredible and unexpected blessings await us! I hope I can remember all this when it is time to leave this world and transition to the next!
