“Be Uprooted” by Rev. Paul Berghout (@FatherPB)
Piety
How long, O LORD? I cry for help but you do not listen! I
cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not intervene. (Habakkuk 1:2)
Come, let us bow down in worship; let us kneel before the
LORD who made us. For he is our God, and we are the people he shepherds, the
flock he guides. (Psalm 95:6-7)
God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather
of power and love and self-control. (2 Timothy 1:7)
The apostles said to the
Lord, “Increase our faith.” The Lord replied, “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 17:5-6)
Study
A businessman had to travel to
a meeting and invited his wife to come with him. She was excited about the trip
until she learned her husband was flying in a small plane. She said, “Honey,
I’ve decided not to go. I am not going on a little-bitty plane.”
Her husband smiled and
knowingly said, “Honey, your faith is too small.” She quipped, “No, the plane
is too small.”
The husband re-booked travel on
a major airline. His wife went with him because, as she put it, “her faith grew
because the size of the plane grew.”
The strength of one’s faith is
inversely proportional to the concentration of one’s doubt.
Keep commanding your problem to
be uprooted.
When Jesus taught His disciples
to “say” to the mulberry tree (Luke 17:6), the Greek word used for “say” is in
the imperfect tense, which describes an action that was still going on in the
past. Repeatedly command the problem to depart. Don’t just say it once but keep
going until your breakthrough.
A couple of examples from
Venerable Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, who noted that often we want to be saved, but
not from our sins, or we want to be saved, but not at too high a cost, or we
want to be saved in our way, not His.
Uproot: Early in his
priesthood, he acquired the lifelong habit of sitting before the Blessed
Sacrament an hour each day. This daily devotion became “like an oxygen tank to
revive the breath of the Holy Spirit amid the foul and fetid atmosphere of the
world.”
The only way to increase our
faith, Jesus seems to be saying, is by using whatever faith we have. Even a
teeny-tiny faith the size of a mustard seed could uproot the tree with the most
tenacious roots and transplant it elsewhere, like the sea.
The most minuscule amount of
faith, if exercised, can accomplish the seemingly impossible. Use it or lose
it. Use it, and it will grow.
Growth can only occur if we
respond to God’s grace through constant acts of love, acts of kindness that
become ever more frequent, intense, generous, tender, and cheerful. Husbands
and wives “become conscious of their unity and experience it more deeply from
day to day”.(Gaudium et Spes, 48) Saint Thomas Aquinas said, “Charity, by its
very nature, has no limit to its increase, Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 24, art.
7) Saint Paul also prays: “May the Lord make you increase and abound in love to
one another” (1 Th 3:12), and again, “concerning fraternal love… we urge you,
beloved, to do so more and more” (1 Th 4:9-10).
Lastly, Jesus says, “When you
have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we
have done what we were obliged to do.’” Calling ourselves “unprofitable
servants” is not about a poor self-image but the doctrine that we cannot gain
salvation on human merit alone!
Ordinary faith can make you the
beneficiary of miracles and other divine blessings, but by extraordinary faith,
you can affect a healing or other mighty work—that is, direct the operation of
divine power upon other persons or things. If you have fervent, ardent faith,
even though it seemed to be small, you will accomplish great things.
Action
Every baptized and confirmed
Catholic should have an apostolate or lay ministry. Vatican II teaches, “The
whole Church is missionary, and the work of evangelization is a basic duty of
the People of God. Where lay responsibility is absent, the Church is
incomplete.” - Vatican II-AA 21
The Philippine Catholic Lay
Mission published the “missionary pilgrimages” of some members, called “Stories
Of The Heart, Treasures Of The Soul: 25 Journeys Of Filipino Lay Missionaries.”
They tell the life stories of Catholics in mission because they mirror the
‘Great Story,’ the story of the One who has called us and blesses our faithful
efforts.
My favorite entries:
“Mission had shaken my core and
drastically changed my outlook in life— I had learned to let go, to trust and
allow God to lead my life” (36).
“I learned to rely more heavily
upon God’s guidance, and our successes were of God’s providence.” (107)
“Our many moments of crisis
were transformed into moments of conversion.” (177)
“During difficult moments of
our mission, Jing and I always passed by the Blessed Sacrament to give thanks
and pray for guidance. Prayer and the Eucharist were the supreme sustenance of
our mission commitment” (49).
“By the end of my mission term,
I had learned to love Africans like my own family. I had found a home away from
home.” (189)
“We were sent on a mission to
preach, but in the end, it was us who had been converted.” (224)
And what was called maturation
in “mission wisdom, “a Catholic woman said,” It was really a very trying
mission area. Because women there do field labor and have few rights in that
region, the local people shouted “Mpumbavu (Lazy)” when they observed that “my
husband and another male co-missioner [were at] work in our backyard garden
[while I was not]. I felt so hurt and insulted I cried.” (121)
Two last entries: “But the
workload became light because we had learned to love the people.” (129)
And “I realized a true family
is not always being with my own flesh and blood but being surrounded by caring
strangers.” (169)
Amen.
2 comments:
I love it, be uprooted
I love it, be uprooted
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