March
12, 2024 ~ 4th Tuesday in Lent
The power of faith is the power of goodness and truth,
which is
the power of God…
The opposite of faith is therefore fatalism...[that] finds
expression in statements like 'Nothing can be done about it.' and 'There is no
hope.' These are the statements of people who do not really believe in the
power of God, people who do not really hope for what God has
promised.
~ Albert Nolan, O.P.*
Faith....do I have
it? I think I do ~ I must, I go to church, I pray ~ but then there are
those moments when I am unsure of what God means to my life. There are times
when I am certain there is nothing I can do that will make any useful
difference in the world. I even struggle with hope as the world seems to be in
constant chaos and turmoil, twisting and turning in violence and calamity. I
question my faith often and I suppose I always will. And then what helps
is seeing that tiny mustard seed ~ is that really all I need? I think I
can muster that much in my way of Faith.
Dear Jesus,
In the Gospel of Matthew 17:20,You said that if I have faith as small as a mustard seed I can move mountains. I feel that strength and know I can move anything larger than myself on those "good days." On those not so good days, sometimes it's all I can do to move myself. But when I look at that tiny seed, I begin to approach hope. For today, I'll give up pondering the details of what I'm sure I believe and what I'm not so sure of. I'll take on walking through each day with that mustard seed as a tangible sign of Your love and inspiration ~ from its tiny beginnings to its full leafing of surprising height that produces more seeds to give flavor and warmth to my life. I'll pray for more hope and more confidence in my faith. In the meantime, I have faith in that tiny seed's magic ~ within it there is the potential for tremendous growth, just as there is within me when I feel my faith reaching for You. amen.
In the Gospel of Matthew 17:20,You said that if I have faith as small as a mustard seed I can move mountains. I feel that strength and know I can move anything larger than myself on those "good days." On those not so good days, sometimes it's all I can do to move myself. But when I look at that tiny seed, I begin to approach hope. For today, I'll give up pondering the details of what I'm sure I believe and what I'm not so sure of. I'll take on walking through each day with that mustard seed as a tangible sign of Your love and inspiration ~ from its tiny beginnings to its full leafing of surprising height that produces more seeds to give flavor and warmth to my life. I'll pray for more hope and more confidence in my faith. In the meantime, I have faith in that tiny seed's magic ~ within it there is the potential for tremendous growth, just as there is within me when I feel my faith reaching for You. amen.
A Full-Grown Israeli Mustard Tree
*Albert Nolan, OP [1934-2022], was born in Cape Town as a 4th generation South
African of English descent. With
inspiration from reading the works of Thomas Merton, he entered the Dominican
Order in 1954. He taught theology to and had been Vicar General of the
Dominicans in South Africa. The author of several books, his 1976, Jesus
Before Christianity, is the most well-known and has been reissued
several times and as recently as 2001, its 25th Anniversary edition. In
it, Nolan discusses Jesus' radical struggle for the full humanity of the poor in
the time of first-century Palestine. Nolan writes that Jesus "challenged
the rich to identify in solidarity with the poor," a universal theme that
is persistently relevant across time and culture.
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