My Dear Parishioners,

In Last Sunday's Gospel the disciples were sent by Our Lord into the midst of a storm, and when He approached them, they thought they were doomed.  The disciples thought they saw a ghost and they thought it was a sign that they’d soon be ghosts too.  After all the miracles, you would think that walking on water should haven’t been shocking to them.  Instead, our Lord had to reassure them: “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.”  And then Peter took a risk and stepped out of the boat and into the storm.  He was compelled to come to Jesus.  He took one step, two steps, three steps, then the wind started to howl, and his feet started to sink in the water.  And you know the rest of the story.  The one thing that keeps haunting me are those saddest words Christ ever spoke, “O you of little faith!”

“O you of little faith!”  Almost thirty years as a priest and 40 years as a Catholic, those words seem to be directed at me.  “O you of little faith!  How long have I been with you?  You broke my heart!”  But what is a great faith? Who could show me a great faith?  And then it came to me from a recent spiritual exercise by a Cistercian abbot: why, old man Simeon, of course!  Looking at a helpless infant baby who could not even talk, he saw the Savor of the world.  Or the Blessed Mother with her fiat: “Let it be done unto me according to thy word!”  Or the pagan centurion who pleaded with Christ to save his servant, “O Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof!  Say but the word and my soul shall be healed!”  Or the Syro-Phoenician woman whose daughter was tormented by a demon and Christ refused to come to her assistant, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs!”  “Ah!  But Lord, even the little puppies eat the scraps that fall for their master’s table!”  “Woman, great is your faith!  It shall be done as you wish!”

Father Giuseppe Mauro Lepori insists that a great faith is a faith that allows Christ to act in us, a faith that allows His word to become an event for me, a faith that allows to save me, a faith that sees Christ behind everything and yearns for Him and reaches out to Him and begs Him to stay.  A great faith is not about raising the dead, about healing, about multiplying the loaves and the fishes.  A great faith has to do with the Person of Christ.  A great faith is a steadfast adherence to Christ even in the midst of everything that opposes it violently; a great faith is a clinging and a clutching at His Person, not just because of what Christ could do for me, because He is, because only He saves.