From the Heart of the Shepherd

From the bulletin for The Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time (2025 October 05)

Oct 5: The Lord’s Day: Deeper Dive

In the interest of “living for the Day of the Lord” all the more, or (since most of you will see this on Sunday itself) living this Day for the Lord, as well as in the interest of not trying to say everything in the homily (whose laser beam of focus I intend to train on the First Reading), here is a deeper dive on this Sunday’s challenging Gospel passage. 

There is no way around it: Jesus is saying that He expects mighty deeds of faith from His followers. And He reminds those who perform such deeds that they have not cause for boasting, let alone for thinking God owes them anything. They have simply done what was asked of them. 

It would be a rare scenario indeed in which uprooting a mulberry tree and replanting it (somehow) in the churning sea would be conducive to the glory of God and the salvation of souls (beyond the persuasive force of the miracle itself). So it would seem that Our Lord is using this image as an example of the “impossibilities” which faith is capable of effecting. A drop of true faith really can move mountains, though it may rarely need to move literal ones. (But read up on the “hill miracle” of St. David of Wales for a curious instance of when something similar can actually advance the Gospel cause!). 

Yesterday we celebrated the feast of a man whose faith really did move mountains. St. Francis’ faith proved capable of lifting enormous bodies of rock and earth. Not those smallish stones with which he rebuilt the chapel that had fallen into ruins. I mean the living stones out of which the Church is built. The dignity of these is tremendous, and some (all?) require nothing less than a moral miracle to remove from the life of sin in which they are sunk in order to be immersed in the sea of God’s grace in which they are reborn. But this is what St. Francis did by his prayers and example, as soon as God had performed this same miracle on his own once-sinful soul. 

As our Gospel parable suggests, and St. Francis’ life confirms, when God finds a servant with such faith, He puts him to work. Now plowing the field of sinner’s souls with prayer or preaching, now tending the sheep of Christ’s flock, now serving his Lord at the table of the altar. When St. Francis died at the age of 44 (just 20 years after his conversion), he was entirely exhausted and completely drained. And poor, sick, naked, and blind to boot. Oh, but what a feast awaited that poor servant of Assisi when his Master was “finished” with and in him and finally let him rest! Jesus Himself “put on the apron and had him sit at table, and he served him” (cf. Lk 13:37) that feast for the soul which is the vision of God Himself.

Was St. Francis an “unprofitable servant”? Obviously not. His short life continues to bear abundant fruit and the Franciscan tree and spirit have not ceased to flourish. But he would be the first to tell us that his admirable life was simply what the grace of God both obliged and accomplished. In his humility, Francis understood that all the great good in his soul was put there by God, beginning with the gift of faith, and that it was God who had accomplished all that he had done (cf. Is 26:12). 

Where does this leave us, great boulders of pride that we are? We who fall so far short of both St. Francis’ faith-shown-in-deeds and his humility, which set no limits on what God could ask of him? How all does this ”increase our faith”? How does grappling with the fact that we must not have faith even the size of a mustard seed (since the mountains and mulberry trees in our lives remain planted in place) help us to accomplish the impossible? By humbling us. And reminding us that the faith Jesus speaks of is completely beyond us, an adventure we cannot complete on our own, but only with the power of God at work in us. Jesus’ reply to the disciples subtly corrects their petition, which assumes they already have some faith. “Increase our faith?” No: Lord, grant us faith. Then do with us what You will.

From the Heart of the Shepherd: The Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time