The Strength of Faith

Last evening, I concluded the tour of the Roman Missal that I was doing for the three parishes that I serve. These sessions allowed us to take a deeper look into the Roman Missal that will begin on the First Sunday of Advent. My hope and prayer is that people will fall in love again with the Mass and their devotion to the Holy Eucharist. This is an exciting time for us as church as we begin praying the prayers that are closely linked with the latin language. It will take time to get the responses down and learn the musical settings but this is truly an effort that includes all the people of God. At those sessions, one of the questions that I asked was, "On a scale of 1-10, where would you rate your faith?" I ask my readers here that same question! Our faith is a gift from God and we are called to live our faith each day. The gospel for today, Luke 17:1-6, is a wonderful passage for us as we talk about faith. The Apostles said to our Lord, "Increase our faith." In reply, Jesus said, "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." We know that the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds but fully grown it is the largest of all bushes. It can be said that great things do come in small packages. Just think how strong our faith is when it comes to looking at the mustard seed. To keep our faith strong we need to do our part. Some of what we can do is pray each day, scripture and spiritual reading, Mass and the Sacraments, and putting our faith into action by the service that we do. If we find that our faith may be falling behind we can make that simple request of the Apostles, "Increase our faith." That grace and renewal to strengthen our faith is always there for the asking. We have received a great gift from God, let us live it to the fullest! God Bless You!!!